(A continuation of Northward - Part 1. ICly this took place several months ago, in springtime)
The man’s eyes were wide-open, so much that for a moment she thought he was still alive. A hard shudder of horror rattled through her bones. Flies had collected at the corners of his mouth. As she gazed down from the bridge above, one crawled into his nostril.
Her knuckles had whitened with the ferocity of her grip upon the reins. “He has not been dead long,” she murmured aloud. The stallion beneath her lowered his head, stretching forth his neck with ears pinned back, as if to sample the air and concur with her statement.
A measure of effort was needed to tear her eyes away from the corpse beneath the overturned wagon. But if he lay so only a matter of hours, then whoever had robbed the man of his life could not be far off. She peered about the wall of trees that surrounded the scene. The path ahead stretched into the distance, running straight for a span before curving to the west and out of sight. On all sides, everything was pale green, peaceful, and still. The stream churned cheerfully within its banks, and birds had settled again to resume twittering in the willow boughs overhead.
The woman sat for a time, regarding the narrow road on the opposite side of the little bridge. A niggling fear pricked within her breast, urging her to turn about and flee homeward. She remained unmoved, examining this fear, and kneading it through with questions.
There was no reason to believe that whoever had set upon the unfortunate driver had remained close by. She felt certain that if she were undaunted enough to climb down and examine him, she would find him without a purse or any other possessions of value. Likewise, his wagon would be emptied of anything that might fetch a good price. Thieves and murderers did not like to linger at the scenes of their misdoings, lest they be caught.
She turned to gaze back the way they had come. It was equally impossible to determine whether the road behind was any less dangerous than the road before. If the attackers moved unseen through the forest, they could just as easily have gone south as well as north. Or east, or west. She knew there was a settlement, about halfway along the road going north towards Enedwaith, but it was yet many leagues off. It didn’t seem likely that such men would retreat towards a populated village; even the Hill-men had laws about murdering their own.
Fear gripped her shoulders, shaking her in the saddle. The bend in the road ahead felt like a thick, stone wall; impenetrable and concealing the terrifying Unknown.
She drew a long, slow breath, filing her lungs until they ached. The ensuing exhalation quivered past her lips, and she adjusted her hold on the hilt of her blade. “All right, Jack,” she murmured.
Jack shook his head, flicked his tail, and pawed hesitantly at the timbers of the bridge. But the scent of the fresh corpse was in his nostrils, and he wished to be free of it. He started forward, slowly plodding across the span.
Every strike of his hooves seemed to echo alarmingly in the air around them. She felt each sound against her eardrums, and imagined them resounding through the trees, announcing their presence all through the forest. The bridge seemed neverending. Clunk, clunk, clunk. Fanciful images of raging Wild-men pouring in from all sides, spears and axes raised, voices clamoring for the blood of a foreigner, danced within her mind. She frowned and muttered lowly against them.
There was a blessed relief when Jack’s hooves settled softly into soil and moss once more. Now her ears could better attune to the wood again. Wind in the leaves, rustling, whispering. A sparrow fluttered across the path, exchanging one perch for another. The trail’s curve loomed near, but there was no rush of warriors or outlaws. Between the passing trunks, she could see that the way ahead was open, with naught to see but another stretch of road, sloping gently down and then up again. The stream followed along on her left, gurgling happily.
An hour crawled by, and there was nothing remarkable to be seen or heard. Her fingers grew stiff from their grasp of her sword-hilt. The trees seemed to become a blurry wall of brown and green and grey. What she had thought at first was only a small dell was in fact, a long, low valley between two hills that stretched northwest like two bread-loaves side by side. The verdant forest would have been a pleasant trek if it lay within the borders of the Riddermark. But here, every trunk was a hiding place for villains, and every boulder concealed the wild eyes and tangled beards of Dunlendings. Or so it was in her mind.
When the trees began to thin at last, and the light brightened about horse and rider, and the road climbed upwards, her pulse allowed itself to slow. The hand clutching her blade came free, she shook out her cramped fingers, then attended to the bothersome tendril of hair that had worked loose from her long braid and been tickling her cheek. She pressed her feet into the stirrups, adjusting herself in the saddle, only realizing then just how tensed every muscle had been.
A meadowlark sang brightly in a thicket as they passed by. A cloud scuttled in front of the sun and threw the valley into gentle shadow. At the same moment, Jack’s ears whipped back against his skull, and he lurched forward as if something had struck him from behind.
“Jack!” the woman cried in alarm, bending forward to keep her balance. “What is wrong with you!”
The stallion turned himself, and his ears pricked sharply forward. His powerful neck arched, and he dragged a forehoof through the soil while his breath snorted through his nostrils.
Standing in the road where they had passed not ten seconds before, was a man, feet planted wide, watching them. Swathed in well-tailored leathers and furs, with bared arms and russet hair tightly tied back away from his face. In one hand he held a long knife with a serrated blade, and in the other was a spear, its head made of white bone. His eyes stood out starkly, as his face was smeared with something dark across his brow and cheeks. Whether it be a mark of his people or the remnants of less savory activities, the woman dared not guess.
Her hand was already wrapped around her sword-hilt once more, and she drew it forth with a quiet ring. The sound felt cold and sharp to her heart; she did not relish the sensation. The blade gleamed and flickered in the light as Jack bellowed and stomped, his muzzle tucked low.
“Forgoil,” muttered the man, but his gaze hovered upon the massive stallion whose hide twitched and quivered, and whose hooves were large enough to split a skull in two.
The sound of that solitary word drew forth the memory of a tongue spoken long ago within the house of Éohard. All at once it arose in her mind’s eye; a vision of her father speaking long hours with another man. A man of darker hair and complexion. A man who moved between their world and the unspoken “other”. Through the nights they would talk together by candlelight, thinking the lady and daughter of the house asleep. But the curious child had stood out of sight and listened, and learned bits and pieces of the tongue of the wandering stranger. Scraps of these words came to her now, and stumbled clumsily from her lips.
“Yes,” she answered in his own tongue. “And you will let this strawhead pass.”
