“There were a lot of stories told about the Foldwood, this belt of tangled forestry that divides the tribelands of Arifold and Frekifold, when I was a lad,” Fergus said. “A lot of tales that started in the light and travelled on into the darkness and stayed there.”

“A lot of horseshit, I imagine,” Fia said. “It’s just a wood. A dangerous wood, no doubt, but just shadows and trees, wolves and bandits.”

“It might be just a wood, Miss McCrae,” Darach Lees said, doing his best to run a bone comb through his moustache as he rode, now that the rain had stopped. “Might just be trees and shadows, but how d’you account for the stories of creatures in there that can strip all the flesh off a man? Or whole parties of merchants being plucked from the road without a trace, eh?”

Fia’s eyes were itching with tiredness. She could feel the shakes moving from her hands, up through the rest of her body. She needed a drink. Or sleep. She took off her hat and ran her fingers through her damp hair. Rubbed her eyes and stared into blue distance where the vague line of the Foldwood was resolving into a jagged corrugation of mixed fir trees.

“You ever seen what a bear sow will do to a traveller that unintentionally gets in between her and her young, Lees?” she snapped. “As for merchants disappearing without trace, why not ask Gunn here how easy it is to make that happen?”

Gunn raised an eyebrow, but said nothing.

“Those stories you heard growing up, that you and your ridiculous little soldier buddies told one another around your campfires of an evening, that circulate so prevalently amongst commoners in taverns and gin-shops all over Fallaros, they’re all full of shit.”

“You talk like you ain’t just like us, McCrae,” Hunter called from near the back of the line. “You talk like you weren’t raised on the same tales and on the same land as we all were. What makes you so sure there ain’t no such thing as the beasts and monsters that are said to abide in that cursed place?”

Fia snorted in derision and then shook her head tiredly.

“Hell, monsters might exist,” she said. “Who can say for certain they don’t? But if they do, I’m betting that there’s nowhere near enough of ‘em to cause anything approaching as much bedlam or misery as the common man does––those people who are willing to do, say or believe anything without question for a sniff of silver, or to stay ahead of whatever they’re running from.”

“You’re talking about longriders?” Gil Allaway said.

“I’m talking about people,” said Fia. “Just people. My point is that you’ve got nothing to fear from those trees. The only monsters around here are the ones half a day behind us on horseback.”

Cleric Vass spoke loudly in his deep, sanguine voice.

“That might not be as true as you believe, Miss McCrae. Streams of rumours are converging, joining, flowing up from the south, forming rivers of truth. People talk of Vansgriman soldiers that can’t be killed, of a faceless leader known only as the Imperator. This entity has no motive for its marching––that I have heard––other than the destruction of any who are not its kind. The Vansgriman soldiers are said to fear this figure and worship it in equal measure. Burning cities and sinking islands, maiming, slaying and enslaving. If that doesn’t sound like a tale fit for monsters to walk in under the light of day, then I don’t know what does.”

Fia jerked the rein she was leading Gunn’s horse by.

“Let’s dispose of one problem before we start worrying ourselves about a bigger, more ominous one, eh, Cleric?” she said with a lightness she did not feel all the way through.

There was nothing overtly fiendish or inauspicious about the part of the Foldwood that they camped in that evening. Wolves didn’t prowl on the edge of the firelight. There was no lonesome howling or groaning during the darkest watches of the night. There was only the occasional crack of a twig as some hunting thing went about its business, the soft breeze moving through the huge, old pine boughs, and the pervasive, wholesome smell of decaying wood and damp soil to stir the senses.

Out in the dark, Lorna Forbes and Fergus Allaway took the first turns at sentry duty. They were followed by Gil and Lees, then Cleric Vass and Lenix. They had dug a depression out of the rich, yielding soil and risked a fire, making a rough stew from their dried meat, wild garlic and some foraged mushrooms that Lenix had found.

“These better not be like those bloody toadstools that you slipped into my beans that time, Lenix,” Fergus had warned, when the rangy red-headed twin had handed the mushrooms to his massive bearded brother. “I wasn’t right for fucking days. Spent most of my time talking to the gods.”

“What did they say?” Cleric Vass had asked.

Fergus showed off a mouth full of teeth like ivory dominoes.

“Fuck all that I could understand, cleric,” he said. “Ain’t that just like them?”

Fia sat and let her thoughts wash over her, even as she kept one eye on Gunn. The outlaw was sitting against a tree gazing into the heart of the crackling fire, staring at nothing. The glowing embers pricked his grey eyes with light. His hand was at the opening of his shirt, touching at something lying against his chest.

“What was it?” Fia asked quietly.

Gunn stirred, but didn’t look at her.

“Just a trinket.”

“A trinket worth more than Faith’s life?”

Gunn let out a mirthless snort. “I would have killed that cunt for free. Call me what you like, but she’d it comin’ to her and you know it. She knew it.”

Fia didn’t deny it. She wasn’t in the business of lying. The last one that had passed her lips still burned there like bile. She’d pledged never to tell another. She glanced about at the hoary tree trunks, remembering the first––and last–– time that she had set foot under the branches of the Foldwood. She ran her fingers unconsciously along the shaved sides of her scalp, tracing the swirling Kynnish tattoos.

The orange and yellow tongues of the campfire fluttered skywards. A bit of green wood popped softly, sizzled and settled. Somewhere out in the night, Cleric Vass and Lenix Allaway lurked. On the edge of her quick hearing, Fia heard the rush of a great horned owl’s wings, off to find something to kill. Fergus was already asleep, his great bulk illuminated by the orange glow of the fire. As Fia’s eyes ran over the shiny bald head and bushy beard, the big man let out a rumbling snore. Gil leaned over and jabbed him with a finger. The big man snuffled and rolled over.

“I’ll not have him calling the hogs home all night long,” Gil said, his sharp features a collection of harsh shadows and orange plains in the ruddy glow. “Not tonight. Not with Gunn’s dogs hunting us.”

The night drew down deeper around them.

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“You think we’ll ever see ‘em again some day?” Gunn asked, just as Fia was on the point of falling into an uneasy doze.

“Who?”

“Those we’ve seen die. Those we’ve killed.”

“I thought you said I was no killer.”

“I know better now, don’t I.”

Fia frowned into the fire.

“I don’t think we’ll ever see any of those that we knew, or hurt, or did worse to ever again, not even those we most cared about.”

“No?”

“No. That ain’t the point though. There are some––the good ones––that you might have known and seen for years, and they saw and knew you. To my mind, to know a good person at all in all this,” and she waved her hand at the fire and the trees and the stars that burned up in the sky, “is pretty exceptional and wonderful in of itself.”

Gunn looked sideways at her. A calculating look on his face.

“You weren’t raised in the wilds, even though you might look it,” the longrider said.

Fia’s face went blank. Weren’t nothing to be gained in letting a condemned man go down this road of questioning with her, even if there was something about him that intrigued Fia more than it probably rightly should. Better to shut the talk down.

“Who’d it belong to, then?” Fia asked, pointing at whatever it was that Gunn was fiddling with at his neck.

Gunn said nothing. He just turned his eyes from her, as she thought he might, and looked out into the trees.

* * *

In one of the more elegant sitting rooms in the fastness of Castle Dreymark, Redmond Marr sat with one leg crossed, the ankle resting on the opposite knee, and tried not to let his fear or his anger show on his face. The night was deep and pressed against the windows, but was held at bay by the oil lamps and the grand chandelier filled with beeswax candles that hung above.

Redmond was pristinely turned out, as befitted a viscount, and was wearing enough understated jewellery to keep a peasant family fed and housed for a decade. His hair was oiled, parted precisely down one side, and subtly perfumed. His barber had shaved him that morning after he’d come in from his two-hour sparring session with sword and spear. He was bathed, refreshed and sitting in his family home––the seat of Frekifold, which currently held the most power out of all the six tribelands thanks to his mother being the elected Warden of the High Seat.

And so it irked him to no end that he felt like the adjutant in the room.

Regardless of the fact that he was meeting with a woman who was no more than a messenger, Marr felt compelled to be on his best behaviour. The Imperator, even being hundreds of miles south, over the seas, somehow commanded deference nonetheless.

“Are you sure I can’t have my servants bring you anything to refresh yourself with, Miss…?” he said civilly.

“No, thank you, my Lord,” the emissary said. “My master requests the answers to his questions immediately.”

“Come, come, you’ve ridden far and fast, surely the least I can do is get you a cup of wine.”

“I myself am the last link in a long chain, my Lord,” the messenger said. “The communication might come all the way from the rear of the Vansgriman lines, but I’m fine, I assure you.”

Marr licked his lips.

“Very well,” he said, trying to keep the biting nervousness he felt in his guts from entering his voice. “What is your communication?”

“The Imperator wishes to know how you’re progressing apprehending the renegade, Torsten Gunn, my Lord.”

Marr tried for a smile, but his mouth was taut with anger and pride at being asked to report like some common messenger, and he only managed a sneer.

“You can tell the Imperator that it is progressing well. I should have Gunn under lock and key and awaiting the most public of executions within a few days.”

The emissary’s face remained carefully blank.

“The Imperator requested me to remind you that the renegade’s capture is key in crushing a simmering rebellion that would most probably severely retard his, and Vansgrima’s, occupation of Fallaros,” she said.

“I am quite aware of the Imperator’s concerns on that score,” Marr replied, his jaw aching it was clenched so hard. “He has my assurance that Torsten Gunn will be used as a most memorable lesson to crush any thoughts of an uprising that he’s sown in the feeble minds of the villagers and yeomen that follow him.”

The emissary nodded.

“That is the reply that the Imperator hoped to hear, my Lord.”

“How glad I am that I’m able to give it, then.”

“The Imperator knows you are aware of the special talents that his magic and the cunning of his artificers have imbued our soldiers with, Viscount Marr,” the messenger said.

“Yes,” Marr said, licking his lips again and cursing himself for doing so. “I am aware. I have seen.”

“The Imperator would like to offer you another demonstration of his power, my Lord. A reminder, and a warning, that from the very distant land that he comes from there are skilled craftsmen and weapons that could all too easily wipe every last man, woman and child from Fallaros. Yourself included.”

Marr almost rose to his feet and stabbed the bitch there and then, before recalling that she would only be reciting the words of the Imperator himself, like a clever bird. His one guard, clearly watching Marr’s face, shifted a little against the wall.

“And this warning is?” Marr asked.

“I have it here.”

The emissary reached into the small leather satchel that she had slung at her shoulder. From it, she withdrew a gleaming silver object.

“Is that a… pistol?” Marr asked, his eyes running over the wooden handle of the weapon.

“It is, my Lord, but unlike any you will have ever seen.”

Without so much as a flicker of hesitation, the emissary raised the strange-looking pistol and aimed it at the guard standing against the wall.

Six shots exploded through the large sitting room, one after the other, in such rapid succession that the reverberations melded into one long roar in Marr’s stunned ears.

The viscount threw himself back in his chair, toppling out of it. His guard was punched backwards into the elegantly papered wall, his mouth agape, as his blood splashed out, and the plaster was reduced to powder behind him.

Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the noise died.

The guard slumped lifeless to the floor, leaving thick red smears and little pieces of flesh and cloth embedded in the pulverised wall.

The door to the lounge crashed open and four guardsmen, swords drawn, bowled their way in. Before they could cut down the Vansgriman emissary and cause a problem impossible to rectify, Marr raised his hand and cried, “Out! Out! Get out!”

“But, my Lord––”

“Out, I said! I’m unscathed!”

The guards looked apprehensively at their dead colleague and backed slowly from the room.

Marr was astounded. His mouth worked as he looked in horrified fascination at the smoking weapon in the emissary’s hand. As he watched, the woman deftly snapped the pistol open and turned it upside down so that half a dozen little brass canisters fell to the carpet.

“How – how...,” Marr stammered.

“The Imperator thinks of you as an intelligent man, my Lord. A forward thinker,” the emissary said, snapping the pistol shut and stowing it back in her bag. “He says that you are a man who is wise enough to know that if he cannot understand something, then he should either fear it or worship it. If your inability to crush the potential rebel uprising in any way hinders his plans for expansion, to rule this part of the world, he asks you to imagine what one of these weapons in the hands of each one of his soldiers might do to warriors armed with swords, bows and flintlocks.”

Without another word, the emissary got to her feet, leaving Marr in the company of a cooling corpse, six little brass shells, and the ever-deepening shadow of the future.