The Blade

The metallic song of swords charged the air as Sloane approached. What could have been a perfectly ordinary night, exploring and destroying animal traps laid by villagers, had sadly been replaced with an unwanted menagerie of men. Their uniforms were rife with huge rips, dirt and blood. Judging from the mediocre combat skills, Sloane guessed they’d been plucked from fields or small towns and deployed at once without proper training. Casualties, Sloane mused. The real killers come later. Others sat propped up against trunks and swung their blades in the dark, despite grave wounds.

            Sloane had no interest in bloodshed. From atop branches and inside hollow oaks, she’d watched the same scene play itself out. Always, the same meaningless ending. Sloane’s only concern was to make sure what she did care about remained intact. This, and collecting new tools.

            The first body she reached was still breathing, barely. Shallow gasps escaped the cracked lips as she surveyed the uniform. Teal, silver and white meant allegiance to the king of the west, Llinos, the mad king. For a brief time, while Sloane had lived on the border between west and south, she hadn’t escaped whispers of the death of his queen, and how it had warped his mind. The stories told of cruel and ridiculous laws enforced daily upon his people, who suffered under fear of execution. ‘Fairytales and nonsense,’ the gossips had laughed nervously.

His weapons are real enough, Sloane noted, eying the soldier’s bejewelled weapons disdainfully. His sword lay against his chest; Sloane suspected the weight of the gem-encrusted hilt was suffocating him. Yet, even as the light was leaving his eyes, he gripped it tighter. Sloane jumped when it dropped from his fingers and landed heavily by her feet.

On closer inspection, she found the dagger at his belt useless, the stones too large to allow a comfortable hold. Besides this, gems held magic, which, if not handled by an experienced sorcerer, might be released suddenly, without warning. This lesson was one Sloane had learned from infancy, when witches were still common advisors to certain families, and she and Iola were banned from touching their mother’s jewellery. This hadn’t stopped Iola from starting an "accidental" fire, Sloane remembered with a sigh and moved on from the body.

The bodies piled up quickly. Sloane put out abandoned torches while rummaging the corpses for anything useful. Several times, she was interrupted by soldiers, who mistook her for an enemy in the darkness and attacked, but the trees were courteous enough to swipe them well away.

Unfortunately for Sloane, the eastern soldiers, adorned in wine-red, black and gold, fought with greater skill. Unfair advantage, Sloane mourned, watching from the shadows with growing dislike. The easterners have the Montague.

Their battle served as a painful reminder that both west and east had been pagan lands till recently. Yet both kings had turned against their own people and each other to wipe out the lands’ magic keepers when they decided magic was no longer fashionable.

Swallowing her irritation, Sloane drew closer to the fighters, ignoring the stares as she passed by the bodies, living and dead. No one paid her much attention - hallucinations were not rare to those new to the woods. Every citizen of Ethryn knew these woods were wild.

Finally, she discovered a fallen eastern soldier. He lay between the enormous roots of two trees, clutching a torch. The roots had interlaced over time and provided a perfect deterrent against enemies, but not Sloane. He noticed her as she neared and pulled himself further away, until his back met trunk. His angelic mass of blond curls did nothing to conceal the venom in his words. ‘Y-you’re the w-witch of the wood,’ he hissed. ‘B-burn in hell.’ He waved the torch at her as the roots parted, granting her access to the man.

Her nine-year-old self longed to cry out in outrage, but this Sloane kept silent. She waited till he drew his dagger with the spare hand, as she expected, then let the roots bind his wrists before he had a chance to attack. It was a superior weapon to the western dagger: dark silver, unmarked, with a thin, fine blade. She tested it on the cuff of her sleeve - it passed clean and soundless through the fabric. Oh, before I forgot, Sloane reminded herself and put out the man’s torch with the end of her coat.

A sigh of relief passed through the wood, alarming the eastern soldier as the roots eased back into place. Her eyes stung as she tossed the burnt wood away, then knelt and gained the dagger, which the man relinquished instantly. He was perhaps five years younger than her. Nineteen, at least, she judged. And all ready to die.

The man braced himself for a blow, then clutched at her coat as she stood and made to leave. ‘S-s-save me,’ he demanded. ‘U-use y-y-your magic.’

A surge of fury overcame her. Sloane slipped the dagger into an inner pocket, then grabbed the man by the collar and stared straight into his frightened blue eyes. ‘All the magic in the world, and I still couldn’t save you!’ she snapped, then realised his condition and released him, sighing. God, please don’t let me have done this idiot more harm. His wound wasn’t fatal; she could tell from the mild scent of blood on his uniform. He was simply cowardly, which was forgivable. But if she spent another minute near anymore of these royals puppets, she worried she'd soon need forgiving.

Sloane retraced her steps back to where she’d passed the eastern horses, tied together near the river - a novice choice. Eastern waters were notorious for untimely visits from mermaids, who snatched up anything to lead men to their deaths. Sloane had narrowly escaped dying on many occasions, but who knew if the horses would? She’d tried freeing them earlier, but for all the soldiers’ ineptitude, knot-tying wasn’t one of them. She rubbed her neck, reminded of the past, then pulled the blade from her coat and commenced work.

They were calm as she sliced through leather, chewing grass in contented silence as the battle raged. The trees lent her aid, startling the horses away from the fighting once the bindings had been cut away.

Where are the western ones? Sloane asked her friends. The trees waved her towards them, urging her to run. Any second, she knew, an envoy might fly back to the mad king, eliminating her chances of freeing one more beast. If they’d heard the stories about her from the inn keepers, the supposed witch of the woods, then they knew any enslaved animal used in war was not to be left untended. Is this why they learned to tie better knots? Sloane wondered in amusement.

The trees were not the best of guides and crowded overhead, obscuring the stars. By the time she’d found the westerners’ horses, she’d lost a shoe somewhere and the dagger cut straight through the bottom of the pocket. The image she knew she must paint, a madwoman, running through the woods at night and wielding a blade, made her want to laugh. The addition of laughter painted a more frightening image. When she finally found the horses, snorting and pawing the ground much closer to the fighting, she held the top of one hand to her mouth and ordered herself to focus.

The horses reared, not in fear, but in impatience for battle. A lump rose in Sloane’s throat: these horses were beyond her help. In the wild, they would kill other horses and stomp out smaller creatures. Bred for blood. The words sent a chill down her spine. Her father’s voice had uttered them once.

Sloane rubbed her arms, feeling everything all at once: the sting of burnt wood and blood and ice in the wind, which picked up speed and swept through the leaves above her. As if in response, the wood let out a collective howl.

Night travellers might easily mistake it for a warning; Sloane knew it to be a sign of news. The trees of other woods, of other worlds, were the biggest telltales she knew, and when something big was coming, they let each other know. This howl meant something bigger than the usual rainstorms and monsters Sloane was used to. Something worse than fire. This howl spelled danger.

Reviews

[fwvalidus]

Very intriguing chapter, I am interested immediately in this world that you have created. I feel I know Sloane already, and I am sure you have included further character development in other chapters (or plan to). Most of the writing is solid, in places it could be improved to smoothen the flow of things. I feel that smooth flow is important for this character to bring the reader into the story. Therefore I challenge you to revisit this chapter in an attempt to polish a few parts. Good job! I invite you to take a look at some of my writing as well :)