From a thicket, a red fox emerged.
It brushed through the emerald foliage beside a quiet stream, its eager nose sifting through soil colored of chestnut and cinnabar. Up above, a canopy of rich green shaded and cooled the humid forest grounds. Umber vines crawled up the rich mahogany trunks that dominated the woodlands. Birds with colored beaks called and flew about the heights.
The fox inched toward the water, nostrils jumping at a new scent. It brought a black paw forward, sifting through loose dirt and weeds at the streamside – and then it stopped. It stood up straight, and its ears rose. It stared. And then as soon as it started to move, an arrow pierced through its skull, and it dropped to the ground. An effective shot – one that preserved the meat.
Now Adjaash stood from the bushes on the other side of the stream, her patterned brown poncho hanging in the idle forest air. She stepped across and made her way to the game. Then she removed the arrow and bagged the fox. She’d skin it, drain it, and brine the meat later, she decided. If she didn’t brine it, it would be too rough.
Her bag was almost full. As she slung it over her shoulder alongside her bow, she glanced up at the canopy through strands of brown-silver hair. Far above, the light peeking through the leaves skewed from blue to gold. From the west, amber light began to flow into the grove, mixing with the vibrant greens and reds and enriching the canvas.
She ventured away from the stream, trudging through loose green forest grass and flowered bushes with blooms of lavender and sapphire. And soon, she found her way back to the main river.
The waters hustled along, ripples chattering and bubbling, fueled by rapids farther up the way. Adjaash followed the bank to the northeast, moccasins pressing lightly in the red silt. Her alert amber eyes glanced about as she walked. Birds chirped and sang with high-pitched staccato. Frogs croaked. The crickets were out.
The river widened as she went, and soon she found herself scaling a low but steady incline, as the rapids hummed to her right. Low waves of water traced over smoothened rocks and stones, and discarded lengths of driftwood migrated downstream.
Soon, the ground leveled out again, and Adjaash reached a bend to the left. The river was wide and deep and clear at the top of the rapids, speckled by lily pads and pink lotus plants. The bank was now overlaid by sprawling vines from the thick redwood trees. And it was here that Adjaash stopped.
She narrowed her eyes and scanned the riverbank path up ahead. Now she glanced at the ground. No footprints – but something wasn’t right. This part of the forest had gone silent.
Adjaash thought for a moment. Her hand slowly snaked up to her bow… but then it dropped. And then she smiled. She tilted her head up and opened her mouth, and she called a name.
“Aash-baaaaaa,” she cooed, her voice flowing through the trees.
Just as Adjaash called, there was rustling in the trees above her. And a child called out, exasperated. In Torwan, the child spoke.
“What?? No!” Adjaash heard the child yell. “There’s no way you saw me!”
Still smiling, Adjaash glanced up and to the left, and she saw a small girl climbing out from the cradle of a tree branch, brushing through soft green leaves. The girl leaned out and grappled the width of a redwood trunk with her arms – stretching out as far as she could with her reach – and then she slid down fifteen feet to the ground, her moccasins scuffing up red dirt as she landed.
“Careful,” Adjaash chuckled out of instinct.
“How did you see me??” the young girl demanded again, turning around.
She was over half Adjaash’s age now, and still only half her size. While Adjaash was seventeen years old, Ashbashenu had only just turned nine. She had the same soot-colored skin and rich amber eyes, but her hair was darker – a brown so dirtied that it was almost black. While Adjaash liked to braid her hair, Ashbashenu liked to cut hers, just above shoulder length. She didn’t want her hair to get in the way, she’d once said to Adjaash. She had things to do. She was such a busy child – unlike all the others. Adjaash tried to braid her hair once anyway; the mothers didn’t like it cut. But Ashbashenu would only protest and thrash. She was rambunctious. Now, Adjaash let her be. It was endearing in a way.
“You still haven’t answered,” Ashbashenu lamented to Adjaash. “I brushed away my footprints and everything! There’s no way you could have seen me!”
“It’s not all about seeing when you’re in the forest, Ashba,” Adjaash remarked with a smile.
Adjaash started to walk down the riverbank, and Ashbashenu strolled alongside her. The crickets and frogs conversed again, as the water bubbled.
“Are you going to tell me your secret?” Ashbashenu pressed. “Or are you just going to circle around it like you always do?”
“I don’t always circle around it,” Adjaash laughed.
“Yes, you do!” Ashbashenu accused. “When you know something, and someone else doesn’t, you let them feel foolish for as long as you want.”
“Well, sometimes it’s important that they feel foolish first,” Adjaash teased. “It’s part of the learning process.”
“Alright, I submit,” Ashbashenu rolled her eyes. “I am a fool. I feel foolish. Just tell me.”
Adjaash smirked at her sister, and then she stopped again. She let her feet sink in the loose crimson soil. She took Ashbashenu’s hand, and then she cast her eyes across the river.
“Look,” Adjaash said simply. “Listen.”
Ashbashenu looked on. And the sights and sounds flowed into her eyes and ears.
Golden light trickled through cracks in the canopy, blending with the emerald glow of the canvas above. Hardy redwoods and acajou trees stood in rows, in a peaceful takeover – sprawling crowns and branches sending vines of russet and brambles of juniper down to the forest floor in braids of life. From this idling picture, a symphony of songs came to Ashbashenu – the light turret of a ren guarding its nest. The throaty squawk of a toucan. The dulcet tune of a yellow songbird, high up in the leaves. The crickets and frogs down below, hiding under leaves of the water lilies, and in the shade of the eared colocasia plants – their sounds and echoes molding into an eternal hum.
For a moment, Ashbashenu stood in wonder. And then she turned and looked up at Adjaash, who smiled down at her.
“I didn’t hear any of this when you were hiding,” Adjaash told the girl.
They started to walk again, footsteps trudging along the edge of the river ripples. Far above, there was the energetic call of a flicker.
“Well… why is that?” Ashbashenu asked. “Why are they singing again?”
“For many animals, it’s a protective instinct against predators,” Adjaash explained. “They sing now because we are acting as humans do. We are walking, talking… but when you hid and went silent, you acted like a predator. And so all the birds and the crickets and the frogs close to you… they froze and went silent, too.”
Ashbashenu’s eyes danced from end to end now, as she took in the sights and colors around her. Adjaash glanced at her and smiled again.
“The forest lives and breathes,” Adjaash said. “Just like you do. If you pay attention to it, it will tell you many things.”
“You see, this is why I want to be a forager,” Ashbashenu fantasized. “I could learn so many things! I could explore and live off the land and go off on my own!”
Adjaash smiled, but there was a quiet sadness behind it. Ashbashenu would have a say in her assignment, but it wouldn’t be entirely up to her. Once she was ten years old, the mothers would assign her to a field, and have her train with the elders as she grew up. She could climb, and she could hide, and she could prepare game meat – some of the essentials of foraging work – but she was born with a deformity on her right hand. With fewer fingers, her nocking hand was weak against the pressure of a bowstring.
Adjaash knew this might work against Ashbashenu when the time came. And so she tried to let her down softly, by swaying her to other options.
“Foraging isn’t the only job in the village,” Adjaash reminded Ashbashenu as they walked. “You could be a weaver, a tailor, a harvester, a cook. You could be a healer. Or you could help with the children.”
“But I want to be a forager,” Ashbashenu persisted, a stubborn grin on her face.
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“What about gathering ingredients?” Adjaash went on. “It’s always important to have someone who can tell the edible berries from the poisonous ones. And you’d still be able to get out of the village and roam around the forest.”
“But I want to be a forager,” Ashbashenu persisted again, putting a wondrous emphasis on the title as her eyes gleamed.
Now it was Adjaash’s turn to roll her eyes. She smiled small and let her braid flow over her shoulder as she glanced toward the ground. For now, she would concede. For now, she could let Ashbashenu wonder.
“Why do you want to be a forager so badly?” Adjaash found herself asking.
Ashbashenu looked up at Adjaash and squeezed her older sister’s hand with her own.
“Because I want to be strong like you.”
Adjaash’s breath hopped, and she stopped walking. She looked down at her sister with glistening eyes. Her lip quivered, and she started to open her mouth… when her eyes rose. And far down the path, in the shade of the trees, she saw someone.
It was a young man – only a few years older than Adjaash – with ashen gray skin and loose black hair that parted in the center, strands falling over his cheeks and ears. His oval-shaped face was etched in a frown, and a pronounced brow cast a shadow over his eyes. At his side, he carried a feathered spear with a sharpened tip.
At the sight of the man, anger fumed in Adjaash’s throat. She stepped forward and tried to tug Ashbashenu with her, but she felt the weight slip from her grasp. When she glanced to her right, Ashbashenu was gone. Darkness fell over the forest. The trees went quiet and still.
Now Adjaash’s eyes shot ahead again. The man was standing in shadow. She sprinted toward him.
“Where is she??” Adjaash hissed. “Where did you take her?!”
As she neared him, the young man stepped behind a redwood trunk and disappeared. A cool, dark light enveloped the woods. Adjaash ripped her bow off her shoulder and nocked an arrow, then slowed as she reached the tree. Creeping along the riverbank with her eye down the sight, she inched around the tree trunk, arrow twitching in her grasp. Cool puffs of air spread from her mouth. Frost climbed the plant stalks…
And then a large, scaly hand clasped her wrist and pulled her in. And she woke.
She sat up straight in a rush, hair strewn over her face. The air was chilled. There was the soft pitter-patter of rain runoff to her right. The dim light of early morning washed in through the cave entrance. To her left, her mare Ashanji was still asleep, legs tucked underneath her.
It took a moment for Adjaash to collect herself. She leaned back against the smooth cave wall and took a few deep breaths, closing her eyes, and her pulse began to slow. Then she opened her eyes again. She glanced down and grabbed her wrist, feeling the brand just beneath her right hand. Her fingers snaked through the scars and indents that ran across it.
Adjaash let out another sigh and counted the months in her head again. She couldn’t believe it had been almost ten years. She’d expected to be back by now.
Long before now.
Now she shook and bowed her head. Her fingers found their way back to her shark tooth necklace. She held it softly, and then she let it fall to her chest.
“I’m not strong, Ashba,” she whispered with disgust.
Now she grabbed her bow off the rock floor and rose to her feet. She walked quietly to the cave’s entrance and peered outside.
The storms that had forced her to take shelter the previous night were gone. In their place was a silver-blue overcast, that refracted and dulled the light of the early morning sun. The smell of wet brush and dew wafted in the low mountain pass. Smooth stones underlaid patches of moss and flattened grass.
She was only a few miles away from the border wall, she surmised. That was where she’d expected Heror to go. It was either to the border or north to Pylantheum – but Adjaash doubted he’d brave the desert alone. Not without having time to prepare first. She knew he respected the sands. And she knew he had people in Ardys.
What would she do once she found him? The thought entered her mind again, pestering her. And again, she pushed it away.
She’d cross that bridge when she came to it.
She turned and went to her horse. She knelt down and rested a hand on the horse’s mane.
“Ashanji,” Adjaash whispered. “It’s time to go. While it’s still early.”
The horse blinked awake, and then she slowly stood. Adjaash gave her a pat, and then she glanced down at the horse’s hooves. A mess of dirt and twigs peeked out from the flats of the horse’s feet.
“You didn’t tell me they’d gotten so dirty,” Adjaash commented, trying to force a smile. “Wairan koro…”
The girl removed a dagger from her poncho and held it in her right hand. She positioned herself next to her horse, and with her other hand, she grabbed the horse’s fetlock, hoisting up the hoof. As Ashanji stood by patiently, Adjaash carefully carved out the muddy bedding and gravel from her horse’s collateral grooves. There were other tools for this, but she’d mastered her control with the blade over the years.
Adjaash repeated the process for all four hooves, until all four were clean. She fed her horse, and ate and drank from her pack. And then she mounted her horse and rode out into dawn.
It was quiet. Dim, icy light filtered through the trees to the east. There was a cool and steady wind, chasing the storms. As Adjaash rode, she saw rain runoff flowing down the slopes of the mountains in narrow streams. She hoped Heror hadn’t doubled back. If there was floodwater, it would make things difficult.
There was a slight downward incline as she rode, but soon, the ground leveled out again. And Adjaash found herself riding through a swampy woodland, with twisting and snarling roots. Past elder trunks and streams of moss and forgotten Ardysi helmets and swords she rode, until she came to a clearing. The wall breach was in sight.
She stopped for a moment, and then she carried on with a subtle ‘yagh’. Ashanji sped to a trot again, and Adjaash rode across the clearing. Far in the distance, she could see two Midan camps lining the wall breach. At the breach itself, there were several elinji standing guard, facing both ways. Atop the wall, djauul archers stood at the ready.
They hailed her when she grew near. She called out to them with the title ‘aktaku’. Then she asked if they’d seen a man – an elsish man on horseback, in a blue tunic. They said they had.
How long ago? In the middle of the night.
He passed the breach… and then he came back and passed through again.
Adjaash’s suspicions were correct. Heror had gone to Ardys. But why did he turn back to the north? Why did he leave Ardys so soon after?
At first, she thought to turn around and go north. The quickest way north was along the lake and the river basin, at the foot of the Mides. She didn’t have much time if she wanted to beat the floodwaters. But where was he off to now? If she retraced his steps, perhaps she’d have a better idea.
Now she commanded that they let her pass, and they did. She sped to a gallop. She rode past Midan camps stretching south from the wall until she came to a barricade, blocking off a road with the remains of battle strewn across it.
Adjaash halted for a moment, tracing the ground with her stare – until she saw hoofprints in the mud, turning to the right. In the rain, the hoofprints had lost some of their depth and definition, but they were still visible to the trained eye.
Now she followed the hoofprints. They carried on alongside the edge of the Midan camp, and then they turned south into the woods. In the low light, she followed them. Under the forest canopy, they were occluded by brush, but they were less impacted by the rain. She didn’t lose the trail. She traced it until the Ardysi camp was visible through the trees, to the distance in the south. And here, the hoofprints changed course. They drifted off again.
Adjaash tugged the reins right, and she followed the prints deeper into the woods. Eventually, she came to an area of low visibility, where alders and willows and thickets converged in the shade. Here, she found a new spoor – that of a human.
Bootprints diverted back toward the Ardysi camp – bootprints she recognized to be Heror’s. Meanwhile, the hoofprints lingered and then looped back to the east. Adjaash was puzzled, and for a moment, she tried to piece together what happened.
Heror must have left Shaadur here. And then Shaadur wandered off to find him.
The Midans at the breach told her Heror came back after passing through, so she knew he had found Shaadur again. But what happened in the time between?
Now she followed the new path east. It intersected the old path, and she continued to trail it. Eventually, it brought her to the edge of the forest, and she stopped. Ahead, she saw the remnants of battle again – dead siephalls and horses, discarded spears and swords, and the detritus of war, all beneath the wafted tang of lingering blood.
At the sight, Ashanji let out a grunt and took a step back. Adjaash frowned and looked ahead. Through the field of battle, she saw Shaadur’s fresh hoofsteps continue. Shaadur must have crossed the road to find Heror again.
Adjaash needed to cross the road. But as she glanced to the right, she saw the enemy camp not far down the way. If she crossed here, the Ardysi sentries at the barricade might see her and alert the others. She didn’t want to cause any commotion.
Thinking fast, Adjaash turned to the north, and she rode all the way back to the Midan barricade. She crossed the road there, and then she turned south into the forest, on the eastern side of the road. She rode south and followed the hoofsteps… and soon, the hoofsteps and footprints converged again.
Here, the imprint in the mud was deeper – as if Heror had dropped to his knees and sank into the dirt. Adjaash narrowed her eyes, and then she followed the footsteps farther to the south. Heror stumbled. He wandered and swayed, and swerved as he walked. She saw specks of soured burgundy on the ground, as if blood had dropped from a sword tip.
And then she emerged into a small forest clearing, and she saw it. Beneath the silver-blue light of dawn, in the shade of the trees, seven siephalls lay on the ground – still adorned in golden-bronze armor and red cloaks. Most appeared to be dead. She saw cuirasses torn open and limbs in disarray, as red smothered green on the forest ground. One siephall still moved. He was crawling toward the southern edge of the clearing, grunting as blood smeared on the grass. He did not notice her. Weakly, the siephall called for help, his voice carrying toward the camp.
Adjaash’s thoughts ran again. Heror had found no refuge here. Whatever he’d returned to do, they chased him away. He fought, and then he ran. He was an enemy here now. He had to be. He’d already run away once. Now more died at his hand.
He had been forced back out of Ardys. And he could not go back to Mide. There were many places he could go still, across the Kingdoms. But there was only one place he would go.
Her mind traveled back to the steppe. She saw him taking a cloth out of his pouch. She watched him unroll the cloth in front of his face. She saw him look down at it, longingly. The jagged cliffs and mountains. The rolling waves. The gray wolf, standing resolute on the rocks’ edge. The name. Heran.
Pylantheum.
Adjaash cursed under her breath. She should’ve known. She had known. But she wanted to be sure, and now she’d lost precious time.
With a nudge of her shins and a tug of the reins, she turned her horse to the north. Ashanji galloped through the woods, Adjaash’s hair and poncho trailing in the wind. They rushed back to the border.
She reached the wall breach, and the guards parted for her again. And then she hurried past. In the distance, above the trees, the mountains loomed.