'Timoth, stop!' I screamed, standing in his path to the nymph. One of my hands was raised to my temple, rubbing it as if to purge the harp music from my brain.

He didn’t even look at me. I was cast aside with a powerful sweep of his arms, landing harshly in the dirt. I shook my head back into alertness, knowing that I had no time to recover from the impact, and took to my feet.

'He doesn't want you here,' the blue-haired nymph said to me. She outstretched her hand, and Timoth grasped it and held it against his breast. I feared that she was sucking the life from his heart, as was told in many of the stories, and I immediately sprinted to his side.

My first thought was to barrel into them to break the contact, but I was suddenly afraid of the nymph. Her fingernails were sharpened to points, and blackened with dye or ash. One slash from those would certainly draw blood, and I chose a different course.

I stopped beside Timoth and instead unbuckled his scabbard. It had an awkward catch and I feared the intervention of the nymph or my brother on her behalf, but I'm not certain she knew what I was doing. Perhaps living her life bereft of clothing had left her blind to its uses.

I drew Timoth’s short sword and brandished it unsteadily, using both hands to point its sharp tip at the nymph's throat. Timoth immediately broke his eye contact with the nymph and turned to me as he had not since our first sighting of them. His eyes bespoke a hollow anger, but he risked no further movement.

He was truly in her thrall.

'Let us go!' I demanded through gritted teeth. The other nymphs were still occupied with Wargwa and Father's soldiers, and paid me no heed. 'Tell Timoth to walk back to Daegwin right now, or I cut your throat.'

I hoped she couldn't see how the sword shook terribly in my nervous grasp. I’d never been trained in the art of combat: it was not my place as a woman, particularly one of noble birth.

Still, using the pointed end of a sword seemed fairly straightforward. I just had to make sure this standoff concluded before my muscles fatigued. Timoth's sword was heavy, despite its short reach. Its handle was of wood, connected to the blade by a central tang, and the blade was single-edged. Thankfully, the sharp side was that which faced the nymph's bare throat.

'You are ferocious,' the nymph said. She mouthed the word slowly, as if it had a double meaning I was not aware of. Her pronunciation made me uncomfortable, and this feeling was reinforced when she stretched a nail-tipped hand towards my wrist.

She ran her smooth, uncallused fingers down my forearm, giving me goosebumps with her slow progress up my arm.

When she touched my elbow, I told her to stop, that I would cut her throat if she went any further, but I was struck from the other side. Timoth had cast me aside once more, this time with a forceful shoulder charge that sent the sword flying from my grasp and left me breathless.

I watched powerlessly from the dirt as the blue-haired nymph led Timoth by the hand. She took him to the wet sand at the shores of the lake where the other nymphs were enjoying the kissing of their hands and feet by Father's soldiers.

'Perhaps we should seek help!' Daegwin called from her position on the road.

I barely heard her. A vein near my temple throbbed in time with the beat of the harp, and I rubbed it harshly as if to silence the harp by stopping the blood flow.

I had no intention of giving up so easily. That blue-haired nymph had my brother, the only person who had ever truly looked out for me, and I wasn't going to let her suck his soul, or rend his flesh, or whatever else it was that these nymphs did to men in their thrall.

I regathered the sword, this time holding it with its blade pointed downwards like an oversized knife, and I charged at the blue-haired nymph that lay further down the lake. Her sense of danger was absent and she didn’t even look up until my first thrust stabbed deep into her ribcage, spraying blood all over Timoth's shirt.

She screeched an abhorrent, inhuman soprano screech, and my hands flew to my ears before I could strike her again. The harp music stopped, and when her breath ran out, I stabbed her as close to the heart as I could. She was sprawled in a pool of her own blood, and my second blow stilled her.

The spell was broken. The other nymphs no longer enchanted my companions, who shook their heads as if recovering from a head knock. Timoth was the first to recover, perhaps because it had been his possessor who had perished, and he snatched his sword from my grasp. I resisted at first, but he looked into my eyes and I knew he was himself again.

He immediately set after the other nymphs and I was suddenly useless. I allowed myself to slump where I stood. Timoth had gutted the yellow-haired nymph by the time I inhaled, and the red-haired one fled into the woods, screeching as she fled.

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

'Shall we pursue her?' asked one of the soldiers, but Timoth shook his head.

'Who knows what else lives in the depths of these woods,' he said, motioning us back to our steeds. He wiped his sword on the dirt and slid it back within his scabbard in a practised manoeuvre.

We took to our steeds and steered the caravan onto the road, where Daegwin was waiting. The men did not speak, but I felt compelled to discuss the incident. Who knew how much longer the Dreadwood Forest stretched on for? We might face such a scenario again. And I was still hungry, only now I was also thirsty, and had a headache.

I sipped from my canteen and said to Timoth, 'we should have taken the main road.'

'I didn't believe the tales,' Timoth began, but stopped himself. He knew he was wrong, that having to exchange pleasantries with well-meaning nobles would have been worth the safe passage.

'Where will we sleep tonight? How can we sleep, knowing those creatures are around?' I asked. I put my canteen away and rummaged through my saddlebag for some food, finding only stale bread. He still had no answer for me, so I got to the point. 'If we turn back now, we can be out of the forest before we have to make camp tonight.'

Behind him, the men listened eagerly for the outcome of our conversation. I felt they feared these trees as much as I, but Timoth would not make his decision so easily.

'Gentleman Wargwa,' he began, and the elderly man approached us on his horse. 'How long do you think it would take us to reach the far side of this forest?'

'My lord, I am not sure if we will ever reach the far side.' Wargwa began. He was obviously shaken by the experience, but Timoth cut him off.

'How long?'

Wargwa sighed, and stroked his chin briefly. 'Another two days of travel I think. Maybe tomorrow evening if we ride hard.'

'So we'd only have to spend one night in this forest?' Timoth asked, for the benefit of his captive audience, and Wargwa nodded. 'It seems to me that if we turn back now, we'd arrive back at Trackford well after dusk, humiliated and minus two days of travelling. Two days, because tomorrow we'd have to spend making up for the ground we could have covered today. Or else, we can push on.'

'I won’t be able to get even a single minute of sleep knowing the sort of beasts that could be watching us,' I said. Why would he not listen to reason?

'You’re just afraid,' he said, belittling not only my feelings but also the danger of the situation with the nymphs.

What if I’d been like Daegwin, and watched helplessly? If I hadn’t taken Timoth's sword, all of the men would probably be dead. I wondered if the nymphs would have turned on Daegwin and I once they were done with the rest of the party.

Timoth continued, 'we’ll set a watch. Two men, if necessary, to ensure your comfort.'

'It’s not my comfort that I fear for - it’s our lives! If I’d been asleep just now, we might all be dead!' I exclaimed.

'Please, Saemara,' Timoth said, his voice suddenly quiet. 'You dishearten the men.'

My mind was boggled that he could not see what a fool he was being, and also that he considered the emotions of the sword-wielding peasants with whom we travelled of greater importance than my own. He reminded me of Khad for a brief moment, and I was unable to restrain an outburst. 'The men?! We may all be disheartened by a nymph's claw if we don’t turn back now!'

'Saemara!' Timoth interrupted me with a shout.

I’d never heard him shout before, not in anger. Certainly not at me. Sure, we had fought as infants, but this was different. We were away from Mother and Father, and his tone and his volume were intended to make it clear to me that he was taking charge. 'The decision is made. We lost a day already to the storm. We will not lose two more to your fears. Father gave us this escort for precisely that reason – to escort us. We will set a watch, and we will continue through the Dreadwood Forest until we reach the other side.'

I ground my teeth and felt tears of rage sting my eyes. How dare he talk to me that way. Yet I wasn’t about to start a shouting war mere metres from where we’d already been assailed. I wanted to have my way, but there was no one willing to fight on my behalf.

I let it go, allowing anger to fuel my thoughts as Timoth set our horses moving once more. I knew that the rest of the party sided with me, based simply on the fear in their eyes and the reluctance with which they set out, but Timoth was in charge. Warga in particular seemed withdrawn and introspective.

The road darkened quickly under the blanket of treetops, but Timoth kept us riding until every vestige of light had been exhausted. I knew it couldn't have been easy for him to press on, having been so close to losing control – and possibly quite a bit more – but he knew that we needed to cover as much ground as possible today so that we might leave the forest without having to spend a second night within its boundaries.

This time, we didn’t seek a clearing. We travelled until the dark put our horses at risk of injury and Timoth simply called us to a halt. One of the men began to cut a faggot of wood for a fire, being strangely unable to find much dead wood, but Timoth bade him stop.

'It would only serve to attact those who do not wish us well.'

'It's cold, Timoth,' I complained, but he’d have none of it.

'It was you who most feared for our safety. Trust me when I say that you should seek warmth in wool and fur instead of fire.'

I sighed, and nodded. I hadn't expected our journey to Hollowhold to be run with such military efficiency and command. I’d expected it to be full of events like the fair at Trackford, and I again became angry that Timoth had chosen the Dreadwood Forest road without talking to me. I was Countess just as much as he was Count, after all.

At least the weather was fair. The pathetic moonlight that survived the forest canopy was scarcely sufficient to set up a blanket and pillow, but Daegwin and I managed. True to his word, Timoth set watches of two men, one at each end of the road. There were only six men in our party, so they were set on three hour shifts. Dinner was again comprised solely of stale bread. I wondered how many consecutive meals of bread alone it’d take before I would begin to lose muscle definition.

We set up our hoochies and blankets. As I’d expected, sleep was slow to take me that night. Every few minutes I would hear a rustle in the forest, or the howl of some distant beast, and an uneasiness would settle in my stomach.

Eventually, the day's events caught up with me and dragged me, almost unwillingly, into the realm of sleep.