Disclaimer: This is not the final version as it will be available from the usual e-book sellers and eventually, bookstores. Rather, it should be seen as an (almost) final draft. If you are interested in becoming a beta reader, or you have any comments, suggestions or thoughts that you feel I should consider before publishing please drop me a line using the contact form.
Escape
She ran all the way to the farm of Harald Petersson, which was on the edge of the village, about two miles from the town hall. He had always bred her favourite horses. She had known him since the day she had been in her first real fight. One member of their patrol had fallen that day. That man had been Harald’s father. After the skirmish, Ala had ridden with Bernard to tell Harald’s mother that his father had been killed in the skirmish. Ever since then Bernard and by extension Ala had taken a special interest in the family. Bernard had made sure Harald was employed in the horse trade from a young age.
Harald had proven enterprising, with a good eye for horses and a talent for training them. As a boy, Bernard had arranged for his apprenticeship at Hank’s Farm, one of the most well known horse breeders of Thetwick. When he became eligible for Journeyman rank in the Guild of Horse Breeders Bernard had lent him the money to buy two good mares and have them covered by some of the most desirable stallions in Thetwick. He’d also rented him the land to get started on his own. Harald had been successful and Ala had always helped him training the horses when she could. The horse breeder had spotted her hurrying down the track towards his steading in the twilight and he came out of his home to meet her as she approached. He’d clearly been expecting her arrival. He waved her over, he was already already heading for the stables where they would conduct their business.
“Well met, Ala.”
“Harald, I’m glad to see you.”
“I take it this means you’ve decided? You’re leaving?”
“Aye. Things at the reading did not go well. I expect there will be some of the Constable’s men looking for me. Possibly all of them, in fact. They’ll probably check here sooner or later.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” he said, his expression pained. “I won’t mention I saw you, of course.”
“Thank you. If you would, perhaps sow a little confusion?”
“In what way?”
“You might mention I intended to hide in the woods to the south. If they waste manpower looking for me there, they can’t employ it somewhere else.”
“Bernard taught you well.”
“He did.”
“This business is a blemish on Bernard’s memory. It angers me that the dying wishes of such a fine man could be… corrupted by those bastards. I wish I had some way to help you, to make a difference.”
She trusted Harald and had discussed purchasing one of his stallions from him as one of the things to do on a whole list of precautions she had taken. When Bernard passed she had visited to let him know that she might need to leave quickly.
“You are helping by selling me Fulgor,” she sighed, “I suppose this outcome was to be expected. It wouldn’t be wise for me to stay, not anymore… I may also have hurt the men who tried to disarm me, possibly killed one, perhaps even two. I’m all but certain of it. It will cause more problems yet.”
Harald frowned, “Bernard was right, it seems. Not surprising, but I don’t have to like it. The Marchmains have been scum for generations.”
“I suppose that’s true.”
“No one would know better than you,” he said smiling, “you were actually here to experience all of it. Bernard once said that you scarred Travis’ great grandfather? When you were a child?”
“I’m afraid I did. Not my finest moment.”
“It’s hard to imagine he didn’t deserve it, the Marchmains have not produced much offspring that has helped to redeem them.”
“He did, but scarring him for the rest of his life might have been… a little excessive.”
“I won’t lose any sleep over a Marchmain, Ala, really I won’t. Anyway, best get you moving. Fulgor is ready, as we agreed.”
Ala paid him most of the money she possessed, which was a substantial bag of silver and gold. She was buying Fulgor, a mighty breeding stallion as well as a good saddle, a bit and bridle and saddlebags with some supplies and things she’d need. She could have bought a cheaper horse from Harald, but she always felt like she had a special bond with Fulgor. Harald obviously felt for her, or he would never have let a breeding stallion like Fulgor go. The money wasn’t just what she had saved up, that was only a small part of it. The bulk of it was most of the coin Bernard had had available. A warhorse was very expensive indeed, more than a good sized stone house and fields at Thetwick prices. Still, she had decided it was a good way to spend the money as she didn’t really expect to be returning. She could always put Fulgor out to stud, if it came to that.
The whole arrangement had been agreed upon earlier, of course. It was the result of one of the contingency plans that she and Bernard had decided on. She whispered to the great beast named Fulgor. She had ridden him many times on patrol. She calmed him as she mounted.
“Thank you, Harald, for all this. I will not forget it. I hope I will be able to make it up to you some day.”
“Be careful, Alagariel. The road can be perilous. May the gods smile on you and I hope we will meet again.”
She nodded her acknowledgement with a smile as she turned Fulgor and cantered away, heading around Thetwick and then southeast to parallel the road that led towards Ford Inn.
She rode carefully, quite a distance from the road. It had take time to go to Harald’s and sort Fulgor out so she thought it was likely that the Constable would have mounted a search for her by now. It didn’t take long before she spotted some men on the road in the distance. She decided she was thankful that the Constable wasn’t an old hand at militia work. A well hidden ambush would have been the better choice. It would have been harder for her to spot and if she’d been travelling on the road, much more dangerous. As it was, it looked like the militiamen, none of whom looked to be men that she’d ridden regular patrols with, had simply put up a roadblock as Bernard had trained them to. They looked bored and weren’t even paying proper attention to their surroundings. At least one or two would be men actively loyal to the Marchmains, she though. She wondered if the Constable would have instantly promoted everyone in the militia he thought he could trust. It seemed like the sort of thing he would do. Bernard had found it very important to promote on merit, so it was unlikely that the quality of the militia would improve by shuffling things around like that. It didn’t matter of course as she led Fulgor in a wide arc around their position. She had to pick up her cache, which was hidden at the base of a fallen tree a few hundred yards from the road. She scanned the area carefully, deciding after a while that there was no one nearby. She tied off Fulgor even further from the road and then went to retrieve her belongings, which included her beloved and rather massive Fechtbuch.
As she continued along her path, keeping well clear of the road, she wondered what might happen if faced with militiamen. She knew Travis would never send any of the cavalrymen, which conveniently meant that he couldn’t employ the best equipped men and mounts to chase her. Of the rest of the militia, she’d worked with the archers from time to time and the infantry only rarely. The infantrymen had only been raised once or twice in the past few years, when Bernard wanted to try to cut off retreat routes for the Oakharrowers. It hadn’t been successful, the Westmarch was simply too big and too easily navigated off road in the north and they’d given up on it quickly. The archers had been helpful a few times, but even they she didn’t have enough of a relationship with that she thought they’d choose her over the Constables authority.
She eventually mounted Fulgor staying away from the road as much as she could, though the south of the March was thickly forested in some places. There were parts of the route where going through the undergrowth was so slow that she elected to use the road for a while, all the while keeping a careful watch out ahead and behind. If the Constable had immediately gathered some mounted men to look for her, they would likely already be ahead of her. It was a good reason to be extra careful.
She rode as fast as she dared, choosing a shorter route to the Inn that went over some steep hills. Her route wasn’t suitable for wagons, which was why the road took a more circuitous route. A powerful horse and a practised rider could cut quite a distance off the journey by riding across a steep ridge not far from Brightfield that the road had to avoid. There were a few more points where, mounted on a single horse, as she was, it was possible to take a short cut. She’d scouted the route in the past, it had seemed a sensible thing to do since she had occasionally been tasked with taking messages for the Duke to the Ford Inn. She didn’t think anyone else in Thetwick had ever bothered to scout and mark the shortest route. She didn’t see any signs anyone had passed the same way recently, which was comforting.
The short cuts compensated for her lack of speed in the dark and also helped make up some of the time she’d spent walking Fulgor. Her route also led her around Brightfield, the caravan stop. It really wasn’t much more than a rocky field on a slight rise without permanent residents. Owing to its position not far from a stream it tended to stay quite dry, had drinking water and wasn’t susceptible to bad weather. During the busiest part of the season, enterprising traders sometimes set up stalls there. Brightfield straddled the road roughly half the way to the Inn. She wanted to avoid it since she thought it better if no one could report having seen a female rider on an expensive warhorse. It was another precaution as she didn’t think anyone would be putting up stalls or anything this early in the year.
The Ford Inn itself stood on a low rise next to the only place where you could ford the Iceflow river. The first time Ala had heard of the Inn, more than a century before, it was already described as being ancient. It made sense that the site had been in use for centuries, as it was the only access to the eastern bank of the river and the rest of Taladaria for miles and miles in either direction.
The next proper crossing point, an actual stone bridge, was a long way north at Verbridge. That city bordered Oakharrow and she’d have to cross two rivers to get to the bridge. That wasn’t even considering the fact that it was likely that there was a bounty on her in that county. She was unlikely to be popular in Oakharrow, she knew she was responsible for the death of a great number to the poor witless bastards who had been sent into the Westmarch to do their Count’s bidding. While she’d never liked having to fight them, they would certainly take revenge for their neighbours if given the chance.
Before you got to Verbridge, most of the eastern bank of the Iceflow was marsh. There was a seasonal town called landing and there was a chance she might be able to hail a ferry, but it probably wouldn’t be possible to safely get Fulgor to the other side. In the other direction, you had to travel into the Orck Mountains there was almost certainly a way to cross there, somewhere, but she didn’t have any reliable intelligence on where it might be. She’d tried to find out once, thinking it would be useful for the militia to know the location but it had been impossible to get a coherent first hand account from anyone. It was always a grandfather, a hunter or miner or someone else who had used it. She’d given up actively trying to find it years before because she simply had more important things to do.
She hoped she would be able to get to the Inn before anyone that the Constable might have sent out to intercept her. Both Travis and Cristofor, the old scribe’s son had a clear interest in stopping her presenting her case before the Duke. Exposing their forgery could conceivably put them on the gallows. As she rode, Ala worried about what the Constable might do now that he had free reign in the town. The townspeople would not be getting an easy time of it, she expected. Perhaps the Constable had overplayed his hand by pushing her into petitioning the Duke’s court. It served him right, she thought. It would take weeks though, before the Duke would be able to send men to restore order, assuming she managed to convince him to. She had to push the thought from her mind when she found herself thinking about how much the villagers might suffer in the meantime.
As she rode through the darkness, she thought of Bernard. She’d miss him terribly, even if he had not been the energetic man she known for most of the last four decades recently. His mind had still been keen, though his body had been slowly giving up on him. His passing was inevitable but she somehow felt better equipped to deal with it than with Palady and Aubree. She was satisfied that he’d had a rich and full life, even though the world felt very empty without him. Her mind was even able to wander beyond him, she soon found herself wondering if she would get to Peyrepertuse safely. She’d never travelled so far before, at least not that she could remember. She had travelled from somewhere around Seraphim to Thetwick when she had been very young, but she couldn’t remember the journey. Somehow, she must have also gotten to Seraphim. Where from or where the journey had been intended to go, she also didn’t remember. From what she’d been able to piece together she thought she’d been something around forty years old at the time. That gave her only marginally more interest in anything beyond the immediate surroundings than what a human child a tenth of the age might have. She didn’t have much more than images and impressions from that time. She did remember some figures, people with a familiarity to them, but she wasn’t really sure which of them might have been her mother and father or maybe other family members.
She dismounted a rested Fulgor for an hour, whispering to him in elvish as she fed him some oats and watered him In order to get to Peyrepertuse quickly she had to travel by the shortest possible route. The bottleneck was the ford itself. It was normally around two days solid riding from Thetwick town by oxcart. The Constable or his allies could easily have gotten ahead of her. They would have had to leave ahead of her for that. If they had simply ridden their mounts into exhaustion, they could be there. She wouldn’t put it past them. What would they do if they missed her, she wondered? If she was the Constable, she’d send more men. Then some could continue the search for her all the way to Peyrepertuse and the road would be checked twice. She knew she needed to be more diligent about checking the road in both directions, even if some of the Constables henchmen were already ahead of her. Working on that assumption, she also had to consider the Inn itself hostile. She had a friend there, Alissa, who was the niece of the proprietor, but she was treated poorly by the bigoted bastard and wouldn’t be able to help her in case of trouble. Depending on what the men looking for her would have told people at the inn, she might even have to fight her way out. Aside from not being certain she could manage that, she really didn’t want to kill anyone who’s only crime was believing the wrong people. She was already feeling bad enough about the two men who had almost certainly died in the town hall. She had no idea what her sword had done to the first one, but it hadn’t looked good. She was quite certain she had crushed the other man’s windpipe, a fatal injury. She decided it would be best to avoid the Inn entirely. She would try to slip by it, instead.
She knew of a low rise that overlooked the Ford Inn and the buildings around it from the south, perhaps a mile away from it. The Inn wasn’t quite big enough to constitute a proper hamlet. There were only a few families in permanent residence. It was to that bluff that she was headed. She was hoping to be able to see from there if there was anything out of the ordinary going on at the crossing. She arrived at the low hill with a little daylight to spare on the second day. She was damp though she wasn’t particularly feeling the cold. She always managed to keep warm. She thought it might have something to do with her gift with fire. It wasn’t that she didn’t feel that it was cold, it just never seemed uncomfortable. It had been raining for most of the journey. She’d avoided the road almost all the way. There were a few points where her route had intersected the road and she’d had followed it for a short distance. Whenever she saw anyone on the road in the distance, she had taken a wide detour through the forest or waited in a hiding spot for them to pass. She hadn’t seen anyone that looked like they might be looking for her.
Now, she’d dismounted and was lying among the bushes on top of the bluff observing the ford. She’d tied Fulgor behind the hill, out of sight of the Inn where he could drink from the river if he wanted to. The Inn itself was a dark square with a stout stone main building and wooden barns and stables inside a surrounding wall. It stood on the side north of the road next to the river. The tallest building, the Inn itself, stood three storeys high. The top floor was a wooden extension and it stood inside the wall in the south east corner nearest both the river and the road. The other buildings were also built against or near the outer walls and there was a large cobbled courtyard between them. Close to the biggest building, there was a large gate, big enough for a covered wagon. The area outside the gate, South of the road was busy for the time of year with wagons, animals, people and campfires. There weren’t any buildings outside the Inn walls because it was built on the highest ground in the area, protecting it from the high water levels that the Iceflow river tended to have at least once every spring. That yearly flood was about due, she guessed. The ground to the south of the enclosure was flat and if it was busy and the river low enough, caravans frequently made camp there.
The flat ground outside the wall on the south side was sometimes occupied by temporary structures either belonging to the traders or catering to them. From her vantage point on top of the bluff, she could just see there were four lathered and obviously exhausted horses tied up outside the inn wall. Had they been left there so they would be available quickly? She could see from where she was that they ought to have been taken straight to the stables. It looked like they hadn’t been there long. She knew most of the horses in Thetwick and she was sure two of these were owned by the town militia. The animals were quartered on one of the horse farms. Between exercising the breeders’ horses and keeping tabs on mounts suitable for militia use she was certain she knew almost all of Thetwick’s horses by sight. She was also quite sure the other two animals were owned by the Constable himself. Recognising the horses, she felt confident that the animals must not have been changed on the way, so they would be exhausted and were in far worse shape than Fulgor was. They would have had to travel quite a lot further than she had, following the road the entire way. In any event she was certain the Constables men had gotten to the Inn ahead of her.
Aside from the horses she could see wagons, oxen, mules and other livestock, both in the courtyard and on the flat ground outside it in temporary corrals. Taken together, she decided that at least one good sized caravan was visiting the Inn. It would probably be busy there tonight. She would have liked to go inside to talk to Alissa, but there was no way to do that. Someone would recognise her even if she dreamt up a way to evade the men the Constable had sent. She’d been there too often, bringing messages to send on to the Duke. If Travis’ men had dreamt up some reason she should be apprehended, she was sure Helmut, the Innkeep, who had inherited his father’s prejudice would be the first to point her out. She had no illusions how people might react to an elf being accused of a crime by four Thetwick men who, more than likely were in possession of some sort of mandate from the Constable. Briefly reconsidering her decision to cross at the Ford, she again reached the conclusion that neither heading for Verbridge or into the mountains was a better course. So, she would attempt to cross the ford.
She settled down to wait until the sun had fully set. It gave her time to study the comings and goings of the people outside the Inn. A cloaked man attracted her attention. It looked like he was making rounds around the inn every now and again. He would stop and peer up the road towards Thetwick every so often. She recognised the man after studying him for a time, he was one of the Constable’s son’s enforcers, by the name of Norbert. She wondered if he was waiting to see her riding up the road or whether they had established some sort of hidden watch post and he was looking to see if they were signalling anything to him. If there was such a place it was well hidden, she hadn’t noticed anything when she approached the Inn and there was certainly nothing she could see from where she was on the bluff.
As she waited she had time to reflect on her life in Thetwick. Her life was going to change, as she had always know it would. Bernard had been right, she’d been waiting for him to die so she could leave Thetwick. She’d seen countless humans die in the century and a half she’d lived in Thetwick. Aside from the many tragedies she’d seen there had been people who had lived out perfectly long and reasonably happy lives. She was tired of that though and hoped she would meet someone where she didn’t immediately consider how long they had to live. There was also a big empty place in her heart where Bernard should have been, but despite that, she found herself wondering about all the things she might experience and discover beyond the Westmarch. Her mind wandered from there to the various practicalities of the adventure she was about to embark on.
She did have a problem with the right to bear arms. Strictly speaking she should be allowed to be armed by virtue of the document Bernard had written her so long ago, but if it came to a discussion she didn’t necessarily see it ending well for her. She’d experienced a little too much prejudice to be confident of Bernard’s written order. She did also have a second document, also signed by Bernard, that she and whatever men she had with her were allowed to bear arms as patrol leader in the first Thetwick Militia Company, but it was obvious that she didn’t have a patrol with her, nor would she be in Thetwick for long, so that wasn’t going to help her much either. She had become used to riding around as a warrior, but the truth of the matter was, she wasn’t a noble. At least, she had no idea what her heritage was other than that whoever had been with her had wielded a very special sword indeed. Someone who had travelled with her as a child must have had such a right, however, she realised as she felt her sword’s hilt.
She knew that in Selinus and Iurrak at least, impersonating a noble was a crime of the very gravest category, warranting you to be hanged, drawn and quartered. It was a brutally unpleasant and slow way to die. She wasn’t even entirely sure that the mere act of being without an armsright meant you were automatically impersonating a noble, but she had no intention of finding out. She hoped to be able to hire on as an unpaid caravan guard at the Ford Inn, but that wasn’t going to happen unless she fought the four men who had ridden there to intercept her as well as whoever else decided to take their side. Her best chance was to try and make it illegally to the first caravan stop in Taladaria. It was a place called Hightower, which was around twenty-five miles towards Peyrepertuse. Hopefully, she would be able to find word as a caravan guard there, even if she had to pay for the privilege it was better than risking being stripped of her sword or even worse arrested and charged for impersonating a noble.
When it was fully dark, she led Fulgor down towards the riverbank. It wasn’t the stealthiest approach she had ever embarked on, but she didn’t fancy her chances on the rest of the two weeks’ journey to Peyrepertuse if she didn’t keep the horse close. She stopped for a few minutes when she was a few hundred yards from the ford, taking another few minutes to observe everything. She could see clearly see lights and she could now hear soft laughter and music from the inn, carried in her direction by a soft wind. Occasionally there was a sound, probably made by one of the oxen that were corralled near the inn. Backing it all was the gentle and constant sound of the Iceflow river. She couldn’t see anyone looking in her direction. She assumed the inn must have night watchmen even though she hadn’t seen any. With some luck the guard would be guarding the customer’s wagons and not looking at her. She looked across the river. It widened to around a hundred yards where it was fordable. There was a small wooden building on the opposite bank, she wasn’t certain what its purpose was as it hadn’t been there on her last visit. She then noticed a different man pacing around the inn’s entrance archway, wich was large enough that you could ride a wagon through it. He looked up the road towards Thetwick nervously. It wasn’t Norbert, he must have been relieved in the meantime.
She crept a little closer. Eventually she decided that strying to sneak any closer wasn’t a good idea. The chance she would be spotted kept increasing and then she would be at a disadvantage. She pulled herself up of Fulgor’s back, dropped her hood so she could see the rocks in the river better and whispered to Fulgor, who perked up at once. She asked him to run like the wind. He whinnied and leapt forward. The man who had been looking up the road was startled by the sound and looked in her direction, she could see his eyes widening as she looked over her shoulder.
“It’s her,” he yelled, “Norbert, the elf is making a run for it! She’s crossing the river!”
She recognised the man now, it was an older, thin man named Abe. She knew him in passing from Thetwick but had never known him to be amongst the Constable’s henchmen. Fulgor galloped hard and fast, fairly flying over the river, in a huge wash of spray, soaking her. She saw there were men on the far bank, looking what the consternation was. For them to be awake and on their feet so quickly, she knew they must have been watching the crossing. She really hoped they weren’t more of the Constable’s enforcers. There were only two, but she saw a silver flash on each of their shoulders. She belatedly realised they must be Royal Customs Officers. Not good, but better than if they had been the Constable’s men.
She had little experience with Customs Officers, they only rarely visited Thetwick. She was obligated to stop for them, even noblemen had to defer to Customs Officers. They hadn’t said anything yet. They must have been looking for smugglers, and here she was, charging the river at breakneck speed in the dark. They certainly didn’t know about Bernard’s death, and wouldn’t even have cared if they had. Fulgor was doing the galloping, so she could look back at the inn as Norbert came running out of the inn, tucking in his shirt, cursing at Abe. He was followed by two more men whose features Ala couldn’t make out. At least their horses would be exhausted. She decided not to avoid the customs officers and simply charged towards them.
“Whoa, whoa, lad! What’s the rush? You could seriously injure your horse charging over a ford in the dark like that!”
One of them yelled at her. She decided she had maybe a minute before Norbert and his friends would be crossing the ford.
“Sorry sir! It’s a long story,” she said, immediately asking Fulgor to stop in Elven.
“Check your eyes Ned. It’s not a lad, it’s an elf-maid,” said the second customs man, looking at her approvingly.
“Well elf-maid,” said Ned, “care to explain why you’re galloping out of the Westmarch in the dark of night? Also, I’d like to know who I’m speaking to.”
“They call me Alagariel…half elven. Perhaps you’ve heard my name? I’m with the Thetwick militia?”
“I’ve heard your name,” said Ned’s companion.
“I’m just trying to reach Peyrepertuse, to petition the Duke’s court. Those four men who are rushing to saddle their horses, are after me. They don’t like what I’m going to tell the Duke about the Constable of Thetwick when I get to Peyrepertuse. Please, please let me pass before they catch up? Otherwise I’ll be forced to fight them.”
Ned looked beyond her at the men frantically rushing to saddle their horses. He looked at her, “quite a story. I have heard your name too, even from men who I trust not to exaggerate too much…”
He looked over her saddlebags and the bedroll tied across the back of her saddle.
“You obviously don’t have the contraband we’re looking for tucked into your shirt. I don’t much care, one way or the other, about the Duke’s business. It’s not the King’s business. Go ahead, pass. We’ll even stop and question those four fellows for you.”
Ned was obviously the senior of the two customs men. She bowed her head in acknowledgement.
“Thank you, officers.”
Then she softly touched Fulgor’s sides whispering something in elvish, and he took off again. She could just hear hooves splashing into the water at the far bank of the river. Behind her, she could just hear Ned order them to hold for Royal Customs.
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