Feald — Part 2
It wasn’t until we crested the hill of the copse that we heard crashing sounds and smelled the beginnings of the smoke.
“Up that tree!” I commanded Elda in a hoarse whisper. “Up, now! Stay hidden!”
I dropped the basket of apples to give her a boost, and they scattered with muted thumps into the old, decaying leaves around the base of the tree. Then I gathered my skirts in both hands and tried to quietly peer through the trees at the town to see what was happening. Something large passed through the brush a few yards to my right, probably a horse, but more shouting and shrieking from ahead of me obscured its trajectory. I could see the back of the smithy, but nothing more, so I crept along the outside of the fence until I reached the corner and had a straight line of sight to the center of the town.
People were scrambling out of their houses, holding children and hastily packed bags and baskets. I heard one of the men shouting, and then a soldier wearing a boiled leather shirt and greaves came into the view on a straining chestnut horse. The animal was foaming at the mouth, eyes rolling wildly, and the soldier was slapping him on the rump with the flat of his sword, spear still standing upright in its place to one side. He headed directly for the inn, the tallest building in Vocsin. People scattered in all directions away from him, behind their houses and over the fence, running into the forest.
The inn was just east of the smithy, and I ducked as he came nearer my hiding spot, heart thumping wildly, gasps coming from my mouth. I crawled backwards a few steps, then, once again behind the relative shelter of the smithy, came to my feet breathlessly. My mother stumbled into the trees, coming from the other side of the smithy, where our house stood. She was holding the baby close to her side with one arm and dragging Drake’s struggling and shrieking form. She had a basket of fresh bread and potatoes uncovered and barely gripped by her hand at the end of the arm holding the baby.
“Feald!” she hissed, seeing me. “Take him!”
I grabbed Drake and put my hand over his mouth. He tried to bite me, but I only held him tighter. “Shut up,” I told him through gritted teeth. My mother rearranged her arms to get a better grip on the basket. Her eyes were tight, no emotion saving determination on her face. The baby was staring at me, wide-eyed and confused. If we could keep Drake from screaming, the baby might still stay quiet.
“I’m going to the caves,” my mother told me, her voice hoarse and her hair escaping her shawl. “Find Elda and bring her. The boys and your father will come if they can.”
“Yes, mother,” I said. Drake went suddenly limp, and I let go, fearing I had hurt him, but Mother simply scooped him up in her other arm. He sobbed quietly into her shoulder. “He’ll be fine,” she said. “Now go!”
She walked deeper into the forest and was gone.
Elda’s tree was only a few steps away, but she wasn’t in view. “Elda!” I whispered as loudly as I dared. No response. The suddenly rising volume of shouts from behind me told me that the rest of the soldier’s troop had arrived and was engaged in battle with my father and the other men from the village.
We had known that Rylan was sending raiding parties towards Aram to test our border defenses, but no one had seriously anticipated an attack this far north. For them to penetrate this far meant that three other villages to our south had either been bypassed or destroyed. My father had convinced some of the younger men to stand sentry on the road to warn us of any approaching soldiers, but now I could only surmise they had been caught off guard or the enemy had been hard on their heels when they arrived in town.
There was a long established emergency plan for the women and children to flee to the hidden caves in the event of raiders or enemy soldiers attacking the town. Voscin had been attacked many times in my father’s life, although this was the first I remembered. I felt my stomach churning and my throat drying out, my muscles shivering and stiffening unexpectedly. All I could do to help was follow my mother’s instructions. Except Elda was still not descending from the tree.
“Soul Eater,” I swore under my breath. I peered up at the branches, but I still couldn’t see her. I glanced around at the other trees, wondering whether I had the right one. Then I heard a cry, cut off abruptly, coming from the wrong side. Not the village, but the forest. It could have been a child like Drake, too young to realize what was going on, forcibly silenced with a hand. But my throat closed as I considered that Elda had been taken captive and was being dragged away.
I rushed to the source of the cry, and found broken branches and horse tracks, in the damp forest soil just past the copse. A jagged strip of dirty cloth hung from a broken tree branch. I reached out to touch it, and a long, blonde hair fell from it and floated to the ground. The horsetracks were in a jumble, but they showed that they had come and gone towards the mountain. I couldn’t hear anything ahead of me anymore. The sounds of the fight behind me were drowning out anything softer than overt shrieking. I wavered. Had someone really kidnapped Elda? And how could I keep up with someone on horseback? She wasn’t where I had left her, and she wouldn’t have left without a family member. Only my mother and I had come this way, and my mother had known I was looking for her. But if she was taken, no one else could follow right now. If I waited until the battle was over, the trail would grow cold and be obscured. Night was coming, and the chill was already descending on my bare arms, making them prickle with more than terror.
I could not abandon Elda. I set off at a jog along the tracery of depressions from the horse’s hoofs. I couldn’t hope to catch up, but I followed the trail as it wound around the side of Voscin, completely avoiding the village, and turned up the side of Mount Grommedar. It made no sense for a Rylan to carry her this direction. But if Rylan was not responsible for her abduction, who could it be? There was no one living on the mountain at this season except trappers and woodsmen, and they didn’t come down as far as Vocsin, preferring to go the other direction to the larger Hantown for supplies and other needs.
Night fell quickly, in a forest suddenly populated by unrecognizable sounds and shadows. The darkness obscured the path, and rather than lose it I marked my place and direction with a line of pebbles and snapped twigs. I curled in the fallen leaves at the base of a sycamore, covering myself as best I could with debris and shivering violently. I didn’t dare light a fire, for fear of whom it would attract. My mother must be worried sick about me. I hoped father and Kinnel were all right. Surely they would have driven off the Rylans by now, and sent word back to the capital of the incursion. There were twenty fighting men in our village, if I included the youths who had been in training for the border patrol and old Gali, the cobbler, who might not be able to lift a sword but would definitely go down swinging.
If only I hadn’t taken Elda on that picnic. If we were in town when the warning was sounded, we would have been with Mother even now, and we could have helped her carry extra food and the babies.
I fully intended to spend the night in recriminations and regret, but as the leaves helped me retain warmth I finally fell into a fitful, exhausted sleep, broken by frequent wakings as kessal shrieks and roult howls disturbed me.
