Nightblade: A Book of Underrealm (The Nightblade Epic 1) Page 2

  Her heart sank. Their absence meant they would be in the house where she needed to go.

  She flitted from tree to tree like a bird, keenly aware of the passing minutes. It took longer than she wanted to reach the village’s east end where her house sat far from all others.

  There Loren saw something she did not expect: two strangers in brown and red garb. Chet stood by them, along with Bo, another young man from the village. Chet’s eyes were hooded and his brows close, but an animated Bo spoke loudly with gestures. The strangers listened patiently, only occasionally offering comment or a prompting question.

  The constables, thought Loren. They had to be. It would be too great a coincidence for any other strangers to arrive today. She had to fetch her supplies and be off quickly. She did not think anyone else in the village had seen Xain, but the constables might yet find his trail leading southwest.

  Although . . .

  She thought hard for a moment, reached a decision, and emerged from the trees. Chet’s face brightened when he saw her.

  “Loren!” said Bo. “These men are constables. I’ve never seen a constable in the village before, have you?”

  “Not once.” Loren dusted her hands as though she’d come from the axe and offered a palm to the men. “Well met, strangers. What brings you so far from any building of stone?”

  One of the constables stood tall and thin but muscular as any village man. The other was at least two hands shorter, but his chest was barrel-wide and muscle bulged beneath his clothes. Both had boiled leather pauldrons and breastplates dyed a dull red and worn over long, simple tunics of brown. The taller one stared at Loren’s outstretched hand, but his companion reached across and took her wrist in a firm grip.

  “Well met,” he said. “I am Corin, and my dour companion is Bern. We seek a man traveling through these lands. He was headed this way when last we saw him, and we wondered if he had come to your village.”

  Loren’s eyes widened. “A man in a blue coat?”

  Surprise lit every face.

  “You have seen him?” growled Bern, the taller constable.

  “In the woods, yes.” Loren nodded, speaking fast. “As I foraged for herbs, I saw him amid the trees. He fled when he saw me, and I could not keep pace. I soon lost sight of him.”

  From the corner of her eye, Loren saw Chet’s face grow stony. He knew no foreign man could escape her in these woods but was not such a fool as to counter her before the constables.

  “When was this?” said Corin. “My lady, this man must be brought to his justice. Tell me, when and where did he run?”

  Loren laughed, with the perfect measure of giggle. “Oh, you are too kind, constable. You know well I am no lady.” She made a great show of thinking hard upon his question. “It could not have been more than a quarter hour since I saw him. As for where, he fled that way, though his path swung wildly about.”

  She thrust a finger to the north and east, directly away from the birch copse where Xain awaited her.

  Corin and Bern traded glances. Corin gave her an earnest half bow. “You have provided our lord a great service. If indeed we should find the wizard, we will return with a purse of his gratitude.”

  “A wizard?” repeated Loren, her eyes wide. “Truly?”

  “A purse?” said Bo.

  Bern scowled at his shorter companion. “My friend speaks with a looser tongue than he might. Our lord would prefer that the lot of you forget his words.”

  “Of course. I will say nothing. Nor will the boys, lest they catch my ready hand.” Loren stepped forward to hold a stern fist beneath Bo’s nose. He winced. Chet needed no such encouragement.

  The constables ran off with a final hasty thank you. Bo wandered toward the dance preparations, leaving Chet to fix Loren with a knowing look.

  “The man outran you?” Chet’s tone betrayed nothing.

  “Well, I did not give him full chase.” Loren shrugged. “How was I to know the man was worth a purse? I gave in when I tired, for why should I continue?”

  Chet’s arms folded, and his eyes eased. To further his mind down the proper path, she smiled and set a warm hand on his arm before making for the village. He did not follow, and she was grateful. Loren had no desire to lie more than she must, and time grew ever shorter.

  “Loren!”

  Her stomach fell to her boots. Her bruises flared with pain. Her father stood there, his unkind face twisted in fury.

  “Your logs lie idle, and your axe with them.”

  She tried to talk, but her throat was desert sand. She tried again. “Constables, father,” she said, gesturing vaguely. “Two constables came in search of a man.”

  “What worth are two constables and their man?” His eyes did not waver. “Will they chop your logs if they find him?”

  “They offered a purse.”

  He stepped toward her. Loren could barely stay rooted. She wanted to flee, to vanish into the woods and beg Xain to take her even without supplies. Instead, she stayed, refusing to run. Her father got close, the way he liked, and she craned her neck to see him.

  “I will return to the logs, Father.” Loren could not keep the quaver from her words. If she could only make him let her go, Loren could take what she needed and slip away, never to fear his meaty arms or rank breath again.

  “You will go to the house,” he said in a growling whisper. “That is twice you have tried to leave me your job, and twice too many. You will go to the house, and I will give you a lesson. Next time, your feet will stay planted, and your arms will swing.”

  “I do not need a lesson, Father—”

  His fist met her gut. Loren’s nose crashed into his shoulder as her body tried to double over in reflex. It was not his hardest blow. He would save that for the house.

  “You are far too free with your tongue when speaking back to your elders. To the house. Now.”

  She heard Chet’s footsteps and looked up to see the young man approaching, his face a mask of fury. She met his eyes, silently pleading for him to turn back around. He ignored her.

  Then Loren heard a voice she was seldom relieved to hear: her mother, shrilling in the forest air. “Loren, where is your dress, you witless child?”

  Loren fell a step back. Her father turned. “She’s still chopping for me.” He thrust a meaty finger in her face. “She will need to go all night to account for her lazy hands.”

  “You know we need her to attend the dance. How you think we will get her wed, I will never know. Not when you never let her try her luck with a man.”

  “The men can come to her. Let them watch her chop. A man needs a strong woman who can work.”

  With her father distracted, Loren risked another look at Chet. He had stopped his advance but stood with folded arms and anger clear in his features. He would not leave so long as her father stood by.

  “A man does, and a man knows it, but a man does a different sort of knowing when he chooses a wife.” Her mother strode up to Loren’s father and shoved her face into his, full of the anger Loren could never summon. Her sharp-nailed fingers seized Loren’s bicep, pinching into her skin. “We will never get the dowry without some boy who can afford her seeing some skin. Loren, you get in the house and put on that dress. Tear it, and I will lock you in the house for an hour with your father and blow a horn to cover the noise.”

  Loren gulped and glanced at her father.

  “What are you looking at him for?” she screeched. “Go!”

  Loren remembered Xain and retreated. Her parents’ conversation dissolved to bitter, hate-filled argument behind her. She didn’t know if Chet still stood guard, but she dared not look back to see.

  The moment she passed through her front door, anger reclaimed her gut. She should have struck back. Her father’s wrath would have burned like flame, but Chet would have stepped in. Together, they could have beaten her father to within an inch of his life, and mayhap beyond. And Chet would not be a kinslayer if he did.

  But such thoughts would not
help, not when Xain waited and nearly half her hour had passed.

  Loren threw the ridiculous green gown from her bed. Its arms, like those of her tunic, hung long to bury her bruises. She threw it to the floor, ground dirt into it with her boot heel, and spit on the pretty cloth for good measure. Then she went to gather what she needed.

  She took her father’s reeking cloak of dark green. She donned her own, throwing the cowl back to let her black hair spill down her back. A cupboard sat in her parents’ room, and Loren took her father’s travel sack from atop it. She stuffed his cloak into the sack, forming a soft lining around the interior. Two skins of water sat near the front door. She added them into the sack. Food came next, salted meats and several loaves of good hard bread, still fragrant from Miss Aisley’s oven.

  Loren thought of Miss Aisley with a pang of regret, and her thoughts turned to those in the village that she would miss. Dear, foolish Chet, of course, and old Kris, who was decent to her when she did not wish to go home. But the names she would miss weighed less than the others—those who heard and saw what her parents did to her and never raised a finger or frown.

  She would be well quit of the Birchwood Forest. It would not miss her.

  Loren hesitated before her final acquisition. It sat tucked in an old chest atop a kitchen shelf. The chest held useless knickknacks in the main, but one item she might use. A long and curved dagger, its sheath made of cracked leather. As a young girl, she had drawn it for only a moment, and then hidden it away before her mother could know. The blade bore strange, twisting marks engraved in black. It was a weapon, not a tool for hunting or cooking, as any fool could see.

  The night she drew the dagger was the first night Loren lay on her straw pallet and imagined herself in a black cloak. It was the night she first whispered the word, “Nightblade.”

  But now, she feared to lift it. Could she really take it? Loren knew little of such things and yet would have wagered the dagger cost more than their hovel. Then again, her parents might never notice it gone. Loren had never seen them bring it forth from the chest nor lower the chest from its shelf.

  Her hand closed around the dagger’s hilt. She almost threw it in the sack, but then paused. She untied her simple rope belt and ran it through the sheath’s loop.

  With the dagger at her waist, Loren felt like a different person. Now, truly and forever, she was Nightblade.

  But she had wasted too much time. She needed only one thing more before going to Xain. The wizard could hunt with his fire, yes. But Loren would not let herself fall under his care. What if the wizard left her upon reaching Cabrus? Or died on the road? No. She must be able to forage for herself.

  She needed a bow, and knew where to get one.

  Loren dropped her brown cloak over the dagger and slipped out the door, making for the trees once again.

  four

  Loren hoped to find Chet away from home, but that hope crumbled when she found him out back fletching an arrow with a knife and gutstring. She could not hope to avoid him. But she still had her tongue, and it had served her once already. She stepped from the trees.

  Chet’s stern face softened. His close-cropped hair glowed golden in the sun, bare arms glistening with the sweat of his work.

  Upon past years, Loren had thought to take Chet for a husband, dowry or no. They would find a way to pay it, or run away together. But that dream had dimmed with passing years and guttered out entirely when his mother fell ill. Now, two years later, she was as close and far to death as ever. A huntsman could never muster Loren’s dowry, and Chet would never leave his home to run away—not then, and not now with Loren and Xain.

  All these thoughts filled her head before she shook them away and dressed her face as she must: unconcerned and gently happy to see him.

  “Should you be dressing for the dance?”

  “Should you? That cloak is not the dress your mother chose, I think.”

  Loren shrugged. “I must wash before donning it. I make for the river to bathe before making myself a fair young flower.”

  Chet lowered his arrow and stood. “I’ll come. This is dull work, and does little to calm my anger.”

  Chet’s temper burned bright and long, though it sometimes took ages to stoke. Loren had often wondered what would happen if her father sparked it true, but now she would never know.

  Loren cocked her head and narrowed her eyes. “I think you presume much. A woman’s bathing is no time or place for a young, fair-haired man who holds her in no bond of marriage.”

  That had the required effect: Chet’s face turned red as a beet. “I meant . . . I would wait behind the bank, of course.”

  “Don’t fret so.” Loren laughed lightly. “Will you dance with me tonight?”

  “And will you, with me?” He stepped closer.

  “I would not have asked if I meant to cruelly refuse. But my parents might object. They require such a great dowry, and may refuse to let me dance with one who cannot offer it.”

  Chet glowered. “Even they could not deny me so simple a thing as a dance.”

  Loren both loved and bemoaned how easily she could sway his mood; a symptom of young love, she supposed. She had long known she could but rarely had the need. But it would not do to have him too angry.

  “Fetch me your own dowry. Weave it of dandelions and lilacs, and place it upon my head. Then I will give you your dance, and you can give me mine.”

  He flushed again, gentler this time. “A crown of pretty flowers for a pretty flower of a girl? This I can do, and gladly. But no dandelions and lilacs lie near the river.”

  “Then I am astute in my planning.”

  “Very well.” Chet chuckled. “I’ll see you at the dance. Denying myself the sight of your dress will sweeten the pleasure of its revelation. Ready your hair for my dowry.”

  “I will.” She touched his arm as she had before—for the final time. Her fingers lingered.

  He wandered off to the southeast. Loren watched him go, catching a spring in his step that had not been there before. She kept a gentle smile in case he turned around, but inside she quailed. Chet, her only true friend in the world. Chet, foolishly and incurably in love with her. She would miss him more than all the rest, more than the forest itself.

  As soon as he had gone, Loren slipped in the back door of his house. His mother’s room lay quiet and still. She chanced a look through the door and found the woman asleep. That was fortunate. A sudden scream would unravel her plan.

  Loren went to the wall rack and pulled down one of Chet’s hunting bows. She took the one of poorest make—it would serve for rabbits and squirrels, and she needed nothing grander. Loren strung it quickly. She slung it on her back and stooped to a low shelf where a pair of quivers waited with arrows. One she took, but she left the other. She had no wish to leave Chet a pauper, unable to hunt.

  Nightblade must always have such honor.

  It was time to go. Loren had what she needed and would not be beholden to the wizard for her hunting. Her throat grew dry as she realized this was goodbye forever; she was leaving home to fend for herself among the nine lands. How could this be, when only that morning her greatest aspiration had been to find a way out of chopping logs?

  She made for the back door, and disaster struck.

  The door swung open, and Chet’s father, Liam, stepped across the frame. Old and stooped, he was a genial man but never seemed to notice Loren’s existence. That was not the case now. He froze on the spot, his watery eyes growing ever wider while gawking at Loren. He opened his mouth to cry out.

  She had the bow in her hands. Before she could think, Loren leapt forward and slammed the wood into his temple. His eyes fluttered and closed as he fell to the dirt floor, an angry red welt blooming to life on his forehead.

  She stifled a cry with the back of her hand and dropped to one knee. She placed a palm on his chest and felt a strong heartbeat.

  Her eyes went to his heavy red welt. Chet. He could have forgiven Loren for fleeing the
village without telling him. But he could never forgive this. Could he?

  It matters not.

  Soon, she would be in the forest, never to return.

  Loren shot to her feet and ran out the door.

  She made it to the trees and almost kept going. But at the final moment, she paused, realizing she couldn’t leave without a final look. She stopped beneath the low branches of an oak and turned to her home one last time. Her eyes roved across the simple houses, the smoke from the smithy, the pile of wood outside her house, her father.

  Her father.

  He stood by the chopping block, Loren’s axe in his hand. And as her eyes found him, he saw her.

  He stood dumbstruck for a moment. He took in her cloak, the sack hanging from her shoulders, the bow slung across her back.

  His face warped with fury.

  Loren turned and ran into the woods.

  Once the village fell from her sight, terror turned to rage, far too late to do any good.

  five

  Loren pounded through the woods, wasting no seconds to cover her trail or silence her footfalls. She could hide her trail from most, but Father called the forest home as well. He had spent many more years under its boughs than Loren, and she knew he could easily track her. She would have to rely on speed and hope that his age would lend her advantage.

  Every odd noise sent a trickle of terror through her. But then she would recognize the sound as a bird taking flight or a doe fleeing from her footsteps. Even in her terror and haste, Loren’s instincts sensed what her mind could not.

  It seemed an eternity before she saw the white bark of the birch copse far ahead. Summer sun beat down through the leaves, and sweat soaked her every inch. She weaved among them, her travel sack repeatedly snagging on branches. She slung it off her back to carry at her side. In a few breathless minutes, she emerged from the copse to find the forest empty.