(Originally written 6/25/20, and chronologically precedes One Man and A Handkerchief.)
The storm was unlike anything seen by the folk of Bree in many a year. Farmers’ wives stood under their house-eaves and clucked their tongues about seedling crops being ruined. Elder men and women who had lived long enough to recall such dreadful weather in their youths, tutted at their younger relatives to keep an eye out for overflowing riverbanks. The rain was coming down in straight, heavy sheets. “No wind,” muttered a hoary-haired man who had taken hasty shelter in a shop along Bree’s market lane. “Means it won’t be goin’ away anytime soon.”
There was little refuge to be found in the fields and forests beyond the village’s hedge-wall. Cows huddled under what trees might be scattered about their pastures, or clomped back to their barns to shake their dripping ears in disapproval. Wild foxes gave up the pursuit of mice and voles as both predator and prey scurried into their respective burrows.
The copper-headed huntress, however, did not flee from the deluge. Her pert, freckled nose had smelled the rain before the first drop fell, and the heavy, still air whispered of a tension that could only be broken by a wild unleashing of the clouds. She was crossing one of the broad, sloping fields east of the Chetwood, nestled into a wide valley between the midge-filled marshes and the empty Weather Hills. When she felt a cool prick of moisture on her cheek, she looked up at the lowering, ash-hued sky. The brooding clouds shimmered coolly in her turquoise eyes.
“Oh, well,” she murmured, and walked on, passing north. The forest was on the horizon, a dark green line that she would not reach for another quarter of an hour.
The sky cracked open long before she reached the treeline. It fell like a curtain let loose from its bindings, straight-down and heavy, with a rush of a million whispered voices. The woman did not flinch nor recoil from its tepid assault, but only squinted her eyes to see through the silvery veil. Almost as soon as her skin felt the moisture seeping through her clothing, the fabric was already saturated, and her tied-back hair became auburn as it plastered to her scalp.
She paused for a moment, and tipped her chin skyward, closing her eyes. Fat raindrops fell between parted lips and wetted her tongue. A flicker of light danced behind her eyelids, and the air trembled with thunder. She smiled.
Behind the cacophony of the storm, a sound filtered through the rain. A voice shouting. Lowering her face, she blinked through the shower that pelted her skin, and listened. There was a pause, long enough for her to begin to doubt her senses. But the shout came again, and her eyes snapped to the trees ahead. Faint though it was, the call was one of alarm, of panic. She began to walk forward again, and then to trot.
Thunder obscured her hearing with frequent, irritable peals overhead, but the cries came still, closer together now, as if reaching a crescendo. Her boots hurried more swiftly, passing lightly over the tussocked earth. She was strangely thankful that this particular field had been left to rest for a season, and the soil was not loose, soft, and muddy.
She passed the first of the outlying trees, and was plunged into a soft, green darkness under the forest canopy. The rain fell scattered here, hindered by branch and leaf. A crack of thunder shook the earth, and a hind startled from behind a thicket, making her yell out in alarm. Her feet stumbled briefly, but she did not fall.
There was more than one voice on the air now. Voices of men raised in great agitation. She ran facilely over rock and root, the smell of damp earth, moss, and fungi filling her nostrils. There. Ahead, through the rain-blackened trunks. A group of bodies, tussling and hollering. Keeping carefully out of sight, she clambered to the edge of a small rise that overlooked the scene.
The forest road had been blocked by a makeshift barrier of lumber scraps and old wagon wheels. A handful of raggedly-dressed brigands surrounded a man who must have been trying to pass, unaware of the danger. The man was enormously tall and broad, and she realized it was his cry that had risen above the others and met her far across the field. Her stomach tightened at the sight, and she recognized the brutish garments that betrayed the brigands as Blackwold men. The size of the traveler alone must have been the reason he was still on his feet, while the thieves circled him widely, wiping their faces in consideration of how to take him down. At his feet was a large sack, now soaked with rain and covered in mud as he stood protectively over it.
The woman’s hands twitched reflexively towards her hip and over her shoulder. But, finding nothing there, she cursed in frustration. The half-gloved fingers of her right hand flew to her belt, and she jerked a gleaming dagger free of its sheath. Before her, two Blackwolds rushed at the man from the front, forcing him to face them and defend himself, while the third crept in from behind, wielding a large plank of lumber like a bat.
“Oi!” she bellowed, leaping from her hiding place. The effect was only semi-successful. The two Blackwolds coming in from the front were distracted, and the traveler leveled them both with a swift arc of his fists. But the blaggard at the back swept the plank forward without hesitating, and she saw it connect with the man’s skull on the side facing her. Even above the rain, the sickening sound pierced her bones, and she saw him crumple like a reed into the mud.
“Lay off him!” cried the huntress, charging on, eyeing the one man now standing, and the board in his grip. His reach was far greater than hers, with her small blade.
The lone Blackwold looked up in surprise, and it was that startled widening of his eyes that emboldened her to take advantage of it. His two companions were laid flat on the ground, and now a shining dagger was rushing at him out of nowhere. She bared her teeth and charged forward, bracing herself for a blow from the plank that could just as easily knock her senseless as it had the large man.
To her delight, fortune decided to favor the bold that day. The brigand stumbled backward, unprepared for the appearance of a wild woman with a knife. He glanced at his fallen companions, at the prostrate traveler, at the sack of goods in the mud, and turned and fled. The woman felt a boiling in her blood, a thrill that incensed her to pursue him, to run him down like a wolf and cut his throat. Without thought, her feet pounded after him, her eyes pinned to his fleeing back, and she felt a keen, giddy pleasure that she had not known for far too long.
The man flung aside his weapon and ran in a blind panic. Swift though she was, his legs were longer, and his terror greater than her bloodlust. And little by little, his shape became blurred with the falling rain and the green-grey mist. And she thought of the traveler, lying face down in the mud on the road. Two Blackwolds would wake up beside him, and they would not be merciful.
Her feet gradually slowed, and came to a halt. She braced her hand against the trunk of a tree, panting heavily. Was it age that dared labor her breath? Surely not. She simply had not been on a proper hunt in many months.
Another crack of thunder rattled the trees and made the ground quiver under her feet. She turned and began to jog back the way she had come, retracing her frenzied steps until the path was in view again.
Rivulets of muddy water rushed along the pebbled ground, and her boots sloshed through them as she approached the fallen traveler. The two Blackwolds lay there still, several feet away. Keeping her knife in her grip, she knelt over the man and laid her free hand on his shoulder. “Oi,” she said, in a voice raised enough to carry over the storm.
A flurry of movement. Not even enough time to gasp. The man’s hand flew up and seized her throat. He turned, raised himself, dragging her along as he struggled to his knees. His features were black with mud, caked into his hair and beard, making his eyes stand out like a demons’, wild and pale. Her breath was cut off as the man snarled in her face, growling and bellowing. But he was not speaking words. His mouth and tongue and lips moved, but there was no speech coming forth, only a garble of unintelligible rage.
Grunting, she lifted the dagger and poised it against the side of his neck. Her heart thundered behind her ribs, her lungs screamed for air. She begged him with her eyes, in whatever seconds remained before she lost consciousness. I’m not with them. I don’t want to hurt you.
Whether the message was conveyed through her desperate gaze, or whether the traveler realized that she was not a Blackwold, his grip loosened all at once. The fury fell from his eyes and he released her. She stumbled onto her backside, reaching to her throat, gasping and gagging for air. The man fell as well, staring blankly at her while blood began to mingle with the mud on his cheek, flowing down into his beard.
Once her chest was bellowing again with breath, she looked over at the man. “So,” she called through the rain. “What’s in the bag?”
