A smoldering shard of tree branch in each hand threw the welcome scent of the rich wood into the mix but failed to overcome the metallic edge of blood that hung in the thick fog around her. In the shifting shadows and mist, she heard nothing but her own heartbeat.
Those hands, worn and colored with age, still clutching to the makeshift torches that Thegel, the village baker, must have grasped in desperation, seeking to fend off those that had come for him.
Vedara didn’t feel her own fingers as they grasped a ringlet of her long, copper-red hair to wedge it into the corner of her mouth. The hand remained there, pressed hard against her lips.
With eyes as blue as ice, and opened as wide as ever they could be, she simply stared at the broken and twisted body of the weaver, as it lay in a crimson pool slowly oozing writhing tentacles along the ruts in the road. The hiss as one creeping line of blood reaching dwindling embers drew her gaze away from his frozen, terrified face. She realized for the first time that the hand which grasped that make-shift torch belonged to an arm that had been torn free from the rest of him.
The rasping sound of her own breath broke the trance threatening to keep her, and she saw the hazy shapes of others, all around her.
Throats torn. Skin shredded. Limbs twisted and broken.
Her village, dead.
How had she not heard anything?
How had she not known?
Fear and despair washed over her, and she found herself on her knees, breath stolen, arms falling to her sides until the tips of her fingers met the warm, wet earth and the metallic scent of blood in her nostrils won its struggle against the dwindling smoke.
The sudden sense of weight against her chest drew one hand from the ground, just as her tears finally broke free, having found their chance to join with the foggy, shrouded world around her. The hand that strayed to the front of her tunic came to the bulge of the leather pouch her mother had given to her just as guttural sounds pushed through the heavy air to her ears.
The powerful, feral snarls, driving through the fog behind her on the left and right, brought her consciousness flashing back, her legs immediately heeding the call to drive up and forward with all her might. Not looking to see how close they had drawn but knowing that they were rounding the sod-covered home of her mother, she launched herself toward the roaring call of the river that connected her village with the sea.
Her mother, the thought passed through her mind for a moment, she knew was not left behind in her home, although Vedara did not understand how she knew this.
A moment later, she drove into the embrace of the forest, her memories and the sound of that river her only guides in the darkness of the fog.
The branches tore at her skin and clothes as she half ran, half stumbled through the deepening woods.
The sting of her streaming tears sought to draw her attention to the fresh and bleeding wounds upon her cheeks, chin, and lips with each step.
If only she had a moment to feel the pain.
Scraped and bloodied hands held before her, their edges leading the way, she shielded her eyes as she veered left or right, around bushes and the rough trunks of tall pines.
As she sprinted near the old path, the bodies of two more of her fellow villagers almost registering in her frantic mind. The glint of silver remained in her thoughts more than the men, the coins spread across the dirt, where they had fallen when those carrying them had been taken.
Vedara glanced ahead on the beaten trail, but veered back away from it, as her brother had taught her.
“Arrows and axes fly straight,” his faintly recalled voice whispered in her ears, “and so you must not, lest they find you.”
Again, the tears came.
Where was her brother?
Where was her father?
Why did she hear no sounds of fighting or the shouts or cries of her kin?
Her mouth tensed against allowing more than her tears, her teeth gritting as she passed over the beaten path once again.
A faint glow caught her eye, through the swirling mist and the branches of the trees. One ray of sunlight, skimming the top of the cloud that filled the valley around her. One streak of golden, beckoning warmth above her.
The flash of color called to memory the copper-red hair of her mother and her legs drove harder against the firm ground, driving her forward with more purpose.
Bursting out of the brush for a moment, one hand dropped to grasp the bulge of the pouch, its drawstrings tied together and looped about her neck, before returning to guard her eyes as she plunged into the next twist in her route.
Still there. Still safe.
She knew that the old bridge must be near, for these woods were the playground of her youth and the call of the river, where it struck the old, mossy stones at the bend before the crossing, filtered into her senses. Drawing near to the path, she glanced over as it made the twist to the right before making the arcing leap across sixty feet of icy, raging waters.
Bodies.
Her steps faltered, almost driving her to the ground.
Verrid, son of Faeolyn, lay there. The man who had once sought her hand. The young and proud warrior first-born of the old chieftain lay with eyes wide, mouth agape, before the collected bodies of a dozen others.
She knew, in an instant, that they had chosen to make a stand at the bridge.
Chosen to face an enemy that had come into their lands to deal in the cold stillness of death, the younger warriors thinking themselves strong enough to prevail. For an instant, fear gripped her. The voice of it whispering to her that more enemies may still await her if she pursued her course.
She discarded the thought, for she had no better path than that which lay before her. She knew for certain only that death waited for her in the village.
The thick arms of thorny bushes beyond the path grabbed at her for an instant. Enough to bite into her flesh mercilessly but also enough to keep her from tumbling to the ground as trembling fear tried, again, to take hold.
An animalistic grunt escaped her lips for an instant. The only outward sign that she registered the fresh wounds, at all. The bite of the thorns pulled the images of the dead from her vision, the bridge left behind as she picked up speed again.
At the next, brief clearing, her hand quickly patted at her chest, again.
Still there. Still safe.
Before she met the next wall of brush and twisted branches, she caught that which she hoped had been left behind.
The sounds of movement echoed, muted by the fog. Some well away to her sides, and others more closely behind her. Even as her legs kicked all the harder, her senses filled with flickering reminders of what lay behind and the memories drove her on.
The pursuers seemed to keep pace easily, despite Vedara having grown up amongst these woods and knowing, without looking, where to reach for a longer step to avoid old logs or root holes or where the ground gave way to a rivulet winding toward the rushing waters that remained in the distance to her side.
As she drove herself on, tears streaked the accumulating blood and dirt on her cheeks, almost leaving stripes of cleaner flesh in their passing.
Her breath starting to come harder with both the strain of her flight and the mounting pain of her memories, she charged toward yet thicker brush, hoping to put her pursuers even just a moment farther behind before she reached the distant churned and crashing sound that began to seep into her consciousness.
Another streaming line of morning light drew a skyward glance from her, lifting her spirits for an instant, before being engulfed in the fog that roiled against it. In its passing, the dark images lost their hold. In its momentary touch on the fringe of her world, in that moment, she felt the rush of her own pace increase, despite the resistance of the route she now followed.
Her heart beat hard but steady. Her breath perhaps leveling off. Beyond that, her tense grimace gave way to a crooked sneer as her fear started that inevitable shift into anger which comes from surviving the first brush with death, even as its source remains intent upon you.
Behind her, the sounds of movement lost ground, but were drawing together as the sheer walls of the river canyon closed in. Each minute of her flight narrowed the space around the deep and powerful river.
Finally, she burst through the last wall of brush and onto the great slab of stone that marked the narrowed end of the long canyon in which her village had stood for generations. The stone shelf upon which the river rushed reached into the open air at the top of the long valley, the timeless passage of that flow having carved a deep rut in the slab, through which the turbulent waters charged with blind fury, then launched into nothingness and fell with a roar.
Vedara came to a stuttering stop there, her leather boots just within the swirling edge of the river’s flow, her eyes drawn to the sight before her. She had known it since her father first brought her this way, those many years before, but the beauty of it seemed new and alive in this moment.
The long valley fell away from the narrow gap where her beloved river passed, with thick forests lining the steep slopes on both sides and the long run of the lower river glinting in the sunlight as it passed well below her toward the open sea – framing the opposite end of the vast, green rift that lay before her. On all sides, the morning mists of those forests were being driven up the slope, like great, searching arms of giants climbing out of the valley floor, collecting at the open gap around her and flowing in an ever-thickening fog into the canyon from which she had just emerged.
Beyond the valley, at the shores where she knew smooth, black stones collected to form the beach, the sun met her gaze with its golden glow and enveloping warmth. It seemed low on the horizon, almost within the rolling waves, themselves, but its touch filled her with hope.
And courage.
Glancing to her right, beyond the forty feet of churning waters, her gaze drifted briefly to the stone steps her people used to pass from the path down to the valley floor. She shook her head, as she saw them for what they would be, a delay ending in death, even if she could find a way to them, and instead she stepped forward to the end of the stone sheet that carried the waters out into the open expanse beyond.
When she turned, the soles of her boots now fully in the flow at the edge of the river and her heels resting on nothing, they were there, standing still and patient in a line along the edge of the thick woods.
The eyes snatched and held her attention, immediately, her legs almost giving way as her heart clenched in her chest. Feral, flared wide, and terrifyingly primeval they bored into her. The skin of her neck and arms crawled as their gaze roamed over her, the hunger felt as surely as if the snarling teeth that accompanied them were sinking into her already broken flesh.
Her left hand went to her chest. To the pouch that remained there, snugly in the folds of her clothing. The right fell to the hilt of her sword.
As one, the snarling mouths seemed to draw into cruel, hateful smiles, and the massive wolves each took a step toward her.
From her lips, her father’s words slipped out.
“More important than the skill to wield the blade is the wisdom to know when it should be drawn forth, at all.”
With that, a sneer, and a slight tip of her head to one side, she stepped backward as the creatures before her lunged.
(Go to Part 2 HERE)
(Copyrighted, of course)