The Lady, The Witch, And The Knight

His gaze moved over her mud-stained cloak, her empty hands, and the satchel pressed against her ribs. “You know my name.”

“Your king’s men told us you guarded Blackfen.”

“Your king’s men tell many things. Most of them are lies.” He descended the rough steps from the tower, boots striking wet wood. “Come back to the bank.”

“I cannot.”

“Then the ford has already taken your wits.”

Alys looked toward the trees. The witch’s refuge lay somewhere beyond them, hidden along an old woodland road. “My family is under a curse. I must reach the woman beyond the fen.”

Beran stopped at the edge of the water. “There is no woman beyond the fen.”

“There is.”

“There are drowned shepherds, fever huts, and three miles of ground that will swallow a man to the waist. No witch.”

“Then you have not looked far enough.”

For a moment, only the flood spoke between them. It battered the stones with a deep, ceaseless roar.

Beran’s eyes narrowed. “Who sent you?”

“No one.”

“Why leave Avenholt alone?”

“Because everyone else was too frightened to leave.”

The answer struck him silent, though not with pity. He glanced past her toward the road she had taken. The rain had erased her tracks. Somewhere behind that gray curtain, the castle waited with its shuttered windows and chapel bell that rang without a hand to pull it.

Alys took another step. The current rose to her knees.

Beran swore and moved along the bank. “The crossing is washed out.”

“I can see that.”

“Then listen. Three stones have shifted since dawn. The fourth drops into a trench. If you lose your footing, the fen will take you under the causeway.”

“I have no choice.”

“Everyone has a choice. Some are merely uglier than others.”

He planted the butt of his spear in the mud. “Leave the satchel. I’ll carry it across.”

Alys’s fingers tightened around the leather. “No.”

“Then your sword.”

“I have no sword.”

His gaze dropped to the small knife at her belt. “That, then.”

“It is mine.”

“It is a knife.”

“It belonged to my mother.”

Beran’s expression did not change, but something in his face hardened. “The ford is under my charge. No weapon crosses without my leave.”

“I am not an enemy soldier.”

“Neither was the last man who tried to stab me.”

“You expect me to surrender the only blade I have before crossing a flooded marsh?”

“I expect you to decide whether the blade matters more than your life.”

Alys felt the weight of the knife against her hip. Her mother had given it to her on the morning of her first hunt, though Alys had never used it to kill anything larger than a hare. Its bone handle was worn smooth from years of her hand.

Behind her, Avenholt’s curse worsened with every hour. She saw her brother’s face as he had looked at dawn, pale beneath the black tracery at his throat.

She drew the knife.

Beran’s spear lifted slightly.

Alys held the blade by its handle and extended it toward him. “If you lose this, I will have your head.”

“Get across alive, and you may try.”

He took the knife, wrapped it in a strip of oilskin, and tucked it into his belt. Then he stepped into the water ahead of her.

“Follow my feet,” he said. “Not the stones. My feet.”

Alys wanted to hate him for the command in his voice. It was easier than trusting him. She followed.

The flood struck her legs with enough force to turn her sideways. Beran reached back without looking and caught her wrist. His grip was firm, his glove soaked through. He guided her toward a line of stones hidden beneath the churning water.

“Left,” he said. “Now right.”

Alys placed her boot where his had been. The stone shifted beneath her weight.

She cried out. Water surged to her waist.

Beran seized the front of her cloak and hauled her against him. The current tore at her skirts, pulling her toward the gap between the causeway stones. For one terrible instant, her feet found nothing.

“Let go of the cloak,” he shouted.

“It is fastened!”

“Then cut it.”

“My knife - ”

“Use your hands!”

Alys clawed at the silver clasp beneath her throat. It would not yield. Beran drove his spear into the stones and leaned his weight against it. His arm shook with the strain.

The clasp snapped.

Her cloak tore free and vanished into the flood. Alys dropped hard against the causeway, striking her knee. Beran dragged her upright by the arm.

The water fell to her thighs.

“Can you stand?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Do not lie.”

“I can stand.”

He studied her for half a breath, then turned toward the far bank. “Move.”

They went on.

At the middle of the ford, a dead alder came rushing downstream. It struck Beran’s shoulder and spun him against Alys. His spear disappeared beneath the water.

Alys caught the back of his belt.

He looked at her sharply.

“Your feet,” she said. “Not the stones.”

For the first time, his mouth almost curved. “You were listening.”

“I am not entirely witless.”

Together they staggered onward. The flood tore at their legs, but the stones rose beneath them. Beran found the final step and pulled Alys up onto the far bank.

She fell to her hands in the mud.

For several breaths she heard nothing but water pouring from her clothes. Her knee throbbed. Her fingers had gone numb. Beran climbed after her and retrieved his spear from a tangle of reeds.

Alys pushed herself upright. The woods stood before them, black trunks shining with rain. Somewhere among them waited the witch’s refuge, and with it the only hope she had left.

Beran bent to lift a fallen branch from the path. “You will not find the hut alone.”

“I have crossed the ford.”

“That was the easy part.”

She looked back at the rushing water. Her cloak was gone. So was her mother’s knife. The price of passage sat heavily in her chest.

“You said no weapon crosses without your leave,” she said. “I have none now.”

“Your signet.”

Alys went still.

Beran’s gaze had fixed on the chain at her throat. The ancestral ring rested beneath her soaked tunic, hidden but not hidden enough.

“No,” she said.

“Then we are finished.”

“You took my knife.”

“I took what you offered.”

“You demanded it.”

“And you crossed.”

Alys stepped toward him. “That ring is not a weapon.”

“No. It is worth more.”

The rain ticked against the leaves. Beran’s face remained unreadable, but his hand had settled near the empty place where his sword hung.

“Why do you want it?” she asked.

“As surety.”

“For what?”

“For guiding you through the fen.”

“I did not agree to that.”

“You agreed when you followed me into the water.”

“I agreed to cross the ford.”

“And now you are on the far bank with no cloak, no blade, and no knowledge of the paths ahead. The fen is worse beyond this point. There are pools beneath the reeds deep enough to drown a horse. If you walk alone, you will be dead before nightfall.”

Alys looked toward the trees. The path divided almost at once, one branch pale with standing water, the other vanishing beneath low-hanging alder limbs.

“Take silver,” she said.

“I have enough silver.”

“Take the horse I left at the old mill.”

“If it has not bolted.”

“Take my cloak when it is found.”

“I do not bargain for cloth.”

“Then name your price.”

Beran’s eyes held hers. “The ring.”

Alys touched the signet through her tunic. The metal was warm from her skin despite the cold. It bore the falcon of Avenholt, wings spread over a cracked shield. Her father had pressed it into her palm when he sent her from the castle.

Bring help, he had said.

Not surrender the house.

“If I give you this,” she said, “you could claim Avenholt’s lands.”

“If I wanted your lands, I would have left you in the water.”

“Men have killed for less than a ring.”

“Men have died for less than a promise.”

She hated that he spoke plainly. Lies would have made refusal easier.

A bell sounded from the woods.

One note. Low. Distant.

Alys turned toward it.

Beran’s hand closed around her arm. “Do not move.”

The bell sounded again. This time, something answered from the fen behind them - a thin metallic ringing beneath the rush of water.

Alys felt the signet grow cold against her chest.

“What was that?” she whispered.

“Nothing good.”

A third bell note drifted through the trees. Between the trunks, a pale light appeared, no larger than a candle flame. It moved without wind, gliding along the path toward them.

Beran drew his sword.

Alys stared at the light. “Is that the witch?”

“No.”

The pale glow stopped at the edge of the trees. Beneath it, a shape crouched in the reeds. Too low to be a man. Too tall to be any animal Alys knew.

Beran shifted in front of her. “We go now.”

“Without the ring?”

“With it.”

Alys looked at his sword, then at the thing waiting beyond the path. The blade trembled in his hand - not from fear, she thought, but from the cold that had seized them both.

“You will take me to the witch’s refuge?” she asked.

“I will take you as far as her door.”

“And guard me there?”

“Until she answers your plea.”

“In return for the signet?”

“Until you return it.”

“If she cannot help me?”

“Then you will still owe me.”

The pale light began to move again.

Alys drew the chain from beneath her tunic. The signet came free with a soft scrape against the fabric. She placed it in Beran’s open palm.

His fingers closed around it.

“Swear you will not sell it,” she said.

“I swear.”

“Nor wear it.”

“I have no use for your crest.”

“Nor let any man of Avenholt know you possess it.”

Beran looked at her. “You think your men would take it from me?”

“I think desperate men take whatever they can.”

“Then walk quickly.”

She stepped onto the woodland path. Mud sucked at her boots, and cold water seeped through the torn hem of her dress. Behind her, the flood roared over Blackfen Ford, sealing the road back to Avenholt.

Beran followed with his sword drawn.

The pale light slipped between the trees ahead, leading them deeper into the fen. Alys kept her eyes on it and tried not to think of the ring resting against the knight’s palm, or of the oath that now bound them together.

At the first bend, a woman’s voice rose from the darkness.

“Bring me the lady,” it called. “And bring the knight who has stolen her name.”

End of chapter one. 4 more chapters and about 11,051 words in the full book.