Read Online The Very Best of Kate Elliott by Kate Elliott - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Kate Elliott
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taking ten men.”
“If the Forlangers walk the road, ten men will attract their attention. Give me your brother as escort, and we’ll go through the forest. He knows the woods as well as I do. No Forlanger will see us.”
“But alone, Mistress? My brother is no help in a skirmish. He will just run away and hide, but hiding did not save him then and will not now.”
“He is braver than you think. Anyway, we cannot fight the Forlangers with swords and spears. If we have our wits, then that is our weapon against them.”
The cool autumn night air did not bite, but summer was irrevocably gone. Because it had rained the day before, the leaves slipped instead of crackled underfoot, making it a quiet passage. With a clear sky and the moon’s merciful light a bounty laid over the world, they did not bother with a lantern. Both she and young Uwe knew the nearby animal trails well enough that the full moon gave them all the light they needed to follow familiar ground. She kept her eye open for night-blooming woundheal, at its strongest here at the end of the year and especially under a full moon, but saw none of its pale blossoms.
Uwe slipped in and out of shadow ahead of her. The young man was light on his feet and very shy. He glanced back now and again to make sure she was on the right track, for there were places in the wood where a person might fall into harm’s way and never know until it was too late to climb out.
That was the way of the world: usually the worst was already on you before you knew your throat had been opened and you were bleeding out. So her husband’s death had come, its end determined before she had even known he was injured.
Ahead, Uwe halted, a hand raised in warning. Anna stopped, careful with her feet as she felt a branch bend beneath her shoe, shifting carefully so as to make no noise.
Men’s voices shattered the silence with shouts and a ringing clash of weapons. Sound carried oddly at night, seeming both near at hand and yet impossibly distant. Uwe merely shrugged and began walking again. This trail swung away from the main road and around the back of Witch’s Hill to the back pastures of West Hall’s cultivated lands. No one liked to go this way. As they neared the haunted clearing that sheltered Dead Man’s Oak, Anna listened for the hooves of the Hanging Woman. All she heard were the last dying shrieks of a skirmish away north, then nothing at all except for the wind rattling branches and the chirp of a night-sparrow in a nearby tree.
Maybe the Hanging Woman walked elsewhere this night.
As they entered the big clearing with the oak, Uwe slowed his steps until he was walking beside her, keeping her between him and the ancient tree. An old reddened scar like a ring around his neck marked him as one of the few who had survived an encounter with the Hanging Woman. The meeting had changed him, for no one could meet the Hanging Woman and not be changed.
Uwe grabbed Anna’s arm, fingers a vise.
A body lay propped against the oak’s gnarled trunk.
Uwe shrank back into the brush, but Anna knew better. You never retreated from what could not be changed. What was the point? If the Hanging Woman came, you could not hide from her.
Anyway, a sword rested on the ground at the body’s feet, and the Hanging Woman always took weapons for she was a scavenger of lives. As Anna moved into the clearing, she crumbled a bit of dried lavender in her outstretched hand, letting its dust sweeten her steps, taking no more than three steps at a time, pausing between to whisper the prayer that the old woman of the wood had taught her. “Moonlight make a shade of me, daylight make me whole.”
So she came to the oak untouched. Its trunk was as wide as her cottage, and its bark wrinkled and knobby. The huge branches of the oak draped like arms waiting to crush her if she did one wrong thing.
The body was that of a soldier. He was alive, unconscious and bleeding, and at first glance, seeing an
“If the Forlangers walk the road, ten men will attract their attention. Give me your brother as escort, and we’ll go through the forest. He knows the woods as well as I do. No Forlanger will see us.”
“But alone, Mistress? My brother is no help in a skirmish. He will just run away and hide, but hiding did not save him then and will not now.”
“He is braver than you think. Anyway, we cannot fight the Forlangers with swords and spears. If we have our wits, then that is our weapon against them.”
The cool autumn night air did not bite, but summer was irrevocably gone. Because it had rained the day before, the leaves slipped instead of crackled underfoot, making it a quiet passage. With a clear sky and the moon’s merciful light a bounty laid over the world, they did not bother with a lantern. Both she and young Uwe knew the nearby animal trails well enough that the full moon gave them all the light they needed to follow familiar ground. She kept her eye open for night-blooming woundheal, at its strongest here at the end of the year and especially under a full moon, but saw none of its pale blossoms.
Uwe slipped in and out of shadow ahead of her. The young man was light on his feet and very shy. He glanced back now and again to make sure she was on the right track, for there were places in the wood where a person might fall into harm’s way and never know until it was too late to climb out.
That was the way of the world: usually the worst was already on you before you knew your throat had been opened and you were bleeding out. So her husband’s death had come, its end determined before she had even known he was injured.
Ahead, Uwe halted, a hand raised in warning. Anna stopped, careful with her feet as she felt a branch bend beneath her shoe, shifting carefully so as to make no noise.
Men’s voices shattered the silence with shouts and a ringing clash of weapons. Sound carried oddly at night, seeming both near at hand and yet impossibly distant. Uwe merely shrugged and began walking again. This trail swung away from the main road and around the back of Witch’s Hill to the back pastures of West Hall’s cultivated lands. No one liked to go this way. As they neared the haunted clearing that sheltered Dead Man’s Oak, Anna listened for the hooves of the Hanging Woman. All she heard were the last dying shrieks of a skirmish away north, then nothing at all except for the wind rattling branches and the chirp of a night-sparrow in a nearby tree.
Maybe the Hanging Woman walked elsewhere this night.
As they entered the big clearing with the oak, Uwe slowed his steps until he was walking beside her, keeping her between him and the ancient tree. An old reddened scar like a ring around his neck marked him as one of the few who had survived an encounter with the Hanging Woman. The meeting had changed him, for no one could meet the Hanging Woman and not be changed.
Uwe grabbed Anna’s arm, fingers a vise.
A body lay propped against the oak’s gnarled trunk.
Uwe shrank back into the brush, but Anna knew better. You never retreated from what could not be changed. What was the point? If the Hanging Woman came, you could not hide from her.
Anyway, a sword rested on the ground at the body’s feet, and the Hanging Woman always took weapons for she was a scavenger of lives. As Anna moved into the clearing, she crumbled a bit of dried lavender in her outstretched hand, letting its dust sweeten her steps, taking no more than three steps at a time, pausing between to whisper the prayer that the old woman of the wood had taught her. “Moonlight make a shade of me, daylight make me whole.”
So she came to the oak untouched. Its trunk was as wide as her cottage, and its bark wrinkled and knobby. The huge branches of the oak draped like arms waiting to crush her if she did one wrong thing.
The body was that of a soldier. He was alive, unconscious and bleeding, and at first glance, seeing an
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