Chapter 13 #2
The arrow trembles with doubt. She doesn’t know what she’d aim for. The shoulder, or maybe a thigh. Something that would hurt, not kill. Something to make them stagger, to give her just enough time to reach the bridle—
A cold sting of steel presses between her shoulder blades. ‘Well now, what’s a little slip of a thing like you doing all alone in the woods with a bow in hand?’ His voice slithers into her ear, low and slick with cruelty.
Marian goes rigid. The arrow falls from her grasp, lost to the ferns.
The man behind her reeks of sweat and stale drink. His breath is sour against her neck. The point of the dagger shifts slightly, prodding her between the ribs.
‘Pretty thing like you ought to know better,’ he sneers. ‘You don’t belong out here.’
He jabs the blade harder, and she stumbles forward a step with a yelp. One of the men at the cart looks up, curiosity curling across his weathered face.
‘Look what I found,’ the drunk slurs, guiding her forward with the knife. ‘Stray wench with a fae bow. Might be the one they’re all whisperin’ about.’
The others laugh, but it’s a sound without mirth. ‘No, she don’t look noble,’ says the balding one.
‘Aye,’ the drunk scoffs, shoving her toward the clearing. ‘A lady like you shouldn’t be wearing trousers. Why don’t you let us help relieve you of them?’
‘Please,’ Marian begs, forcing her bottom lip to quiver despite the adrenaline pummelling through her body.
‘My horse threw a shoe not far back. I went looking for help, when I found that bow and figured it might scare off wolves. I meant no harm. Pray, I only want to get home. I don’t want any trouble. ’
‘Ah, but trouble’s already found you,’ the balding one says, calloused fingers brushing her chin.
Marian jerks her head sideways and sinks her teeth into the meat of his palm with everything she has left.
He wails as blood blooms between her lips, hot and metallic.
The drunkard with the knife charges forward.
Marian lashes out and kicks him square between the legs.
He drops with a strangled yelp. But before she can turn to run, the third man’s hands close around her arms, wrenching them behind her.
She thrashes, but his grip only tightens.
One man grabs her left wrist, the other her right, pinning her between them as they drag her back toward the cart.
‘HELP!’ she screams.
The drunk is already pushing himself back upright, crimson-faced and panting. He stumbles toward her, fury boiling in every step.
‘You’re gonna regret that,’ he slurs, knife held out in warning.
‘I am the Sheriff’s bride,’ she cries out, ‘and he’ll have your head for this!’ The words tear from Marian’s throat before she can think, flung on like hastily donned armour. ‘Please!’
The thin one barks a laugh so sharp that it jostles her. ‘If you were his lost dove, you wouldn’t be out here chewing dirt with the rest of us.’
‘Aye.’ The balding one spits into the mud, still nursing his bitten hand. His eyes rake over her trousers, the wild tangle of her hair, the smudges of mud and blood on her skin. ‘The Sheriff’s bitch wouldn’t be some wild woman.’
The drunk staggers closer, knife point weaving, his grin wet with malice. ‘But I do like the sound of you begging.’
White-hot pain flashes across her chest as he slices through fabric and flesh alike. Not deep enough to kill – no, they want her conscious, pliant – but deep enough that a scream rips from her throat. Hot blood wells and trickles down her ribs, soaking into the linen of her borrowed tunic.
‘Saints,’ one of them moans, ‘that sound’s the sweetest thing I’ve heard in weeks.’
Marian wrenches against her captors, but her strength is no match for theirs. The wound across her chest pulses with agony until her vision blurs.
The drunk fumbles with the knot of his breeches, already licking his lips. ‘That scream of yours is going to echo through these woods. By dusk, you’ll be beggin’ for—’
A wet, gurgling squelch splits the clearing.
A spray of something hot and dark hits Marian’s cheek.
She flinches.
The man’s eyes go wide. His mouth opens in a strangled gasp, but no sound follows.
A root bursts through his throat, twisted and sharp as a spear, twining through muscle and jaw.
Another coils up through his eye socket, and more erupt through the sternum, splitting his chest with a sickening crack.
The knife clatters from the drunk’s hand before he can drop his trousers, the man collapsing in a heap.
The other two release Marian. She drops to the earth, head cracking against a stone hidden beneath the foliage. Pain fractures through her skull in bright, searing light. The world tilts, spins, then narrows.
Lox steps into the clearing. And the forest moves with him.
Bark groans, roots tear from soil, branches whip like serpents in the wind. The clearing convulses, alive with violence that isn’t hers. Vines coil around the wiry man’s ankles, then his knees, then his waist. They constrict, tightening until bone cracks, muffled by his strangled cry.
The balding one tries to flee. He makes it three steps before a sapling erupts from the ground, piercing him through the gut until the roots of the tree merge with the hila of his lungs and blood weeps down the bark.
He hangs there, skewered, kicking and gasping as the tree continues to grow, lifting him like an offering.
Lox turns toward her. Antlers wreathed in shadow, eyes burning green-gold, every line of him alive with fury he does not bother to restrain.
His hands spread wide as if conducting the slaughter as one would an orchestra.
The air reeks of sap and blood, iron and loam, all churning together in a hymn to violence.
Marian can only watch through the haze of pain.
Every heartbeat sends fire through her skull and the split skin at her chest. She should be afraid, should scramble into the brush and flee, but the sight of Lox wielding the woods as a weapon – the certainty that nothing survives which he does not allow – sends warmth surging through her body.
Slowly, he straightens and his gaze finds her.
Marian tries to sit up, but her limbs won’t listen. Her vision swims and the world tilts again.
He’s beside her before she can blink, hands gentle where they skim her arms, her jaw, the bloodied edge of her tunic. He swipes at the gore on her chin and chest, trying to determine how much of it belongs to her and not to those he eviscerated.
‘What did they do to you?’ he murmurs, but his voice sounds far away. His face swims above hers, sharp edges softened with panic.
She blinks through the blur. ‘I—’ Her throat clogs. The apology tumbles out before she can stop it. ‘I’m s-s-sorry. For . . .’ Her vision wavers. ‘For hurting you.’
He lifts her as if she weighed nothing, tucking her against his chest.
‘Don’t ever apologize for surviving.’
Her head lolls to his shoulder. ‘Stop,’ she slurs, words padded by pain and exhaustion. ‘I don’t deserve . . . your kindness.’
‘Save your strength, Mare.’ He cradles her closer. The name coils through her like warm honey.
‘My name is M-M-Marian.’ Her fingers clutch weakly at his tunic, smearing it darker with her blood. ‘If I’m to d-d-die, I want the forest to remember me true.’
‘Hush, little fox, don’t speak that way.’
For a long moment, he just looks at her, understanding the gift that she gave him by uttering her name. Green-gold flares in his eyes, dimming slowly, like fire banked but not gone. His thumb brushes her cheek.
‘Marian,’ he repeats, low as a vow. ‘I promise you’re going to be okay.’
She tries to laugh, but it comes out a wheeze. ‘Didn’t know you cared.’ Her eyelids flutter, the pain dimming behind the pull of unconsciousness. She lets herself fall.
And somewhere far below the surface, she swears she hears him whisper, ‘Neither did I.’