Sera gasped. "You hurt an innocent animal." Her purple eyes moved from the blood on K's coat to M's burning red eye and back again. She shook her head slowly in anger. "You hurt an innocent animal…"
Cael ignored her then glanced at Leo. "Or maybe… Maybe I kill this squire of yours right now."
Leo looked like he was paralyzed, his breath hitching. No I can't die yet, not yet.
M had gone deathly still, he wasn't even listening to Cael now. His eyes locked on his trembling horse.
"Cael—" Rowe said quietly.
"Quiet!" Cael barked. The poor horse was shaking now, the rope straining. "Will you shout like that again?"
"No." M snarled. It came out wrong. His voice was deep and unsteady, something feral had snapped loose inside him.
K shifted weakly where he was tied to. His ears flicked back and forth in discomfort, nostrils flaring.
Cael smiled again. He withdrew the knife from the horse's flank. He then walked back to the campfire and sat down.
"See?" he said pleasantly to the others. "Everyone finds their manners eventually."
Edric greedily snatched M's sword up from the dirt, making sure to also grab his black-and-white scabbard from Pike. He then tried reaching for M's coin pouch too, which was also in Pike's hand, but Pike shot him a deadly glare. Edric huffed like a spoiled child then walked towards the campfire. Pike's solid hands surprisingly tossed the coin pouch to Cael, who caught it, swept every coin into his own pouch, and sent M's leather pouch tumbling, like a feather, to the ground.
They all drifted back to the fire one by one. All sat around the campfire which was situated in front of the captors tree. Edric sat down and put M's sword and scabbard beside the campfire. Bram stared at the flames. Wilas sheathed his own sword slowly. All five were huddled around the campfire looking at the tree where all three were tied, but they could only see the faces and bodies of Sera, M and Leo. What was behind the tree, their hands and the rope, remained blocked. Pike drifted behind the captives tree to resume his watch, because that was what Pike did.
Rowe sat and looked at the ground, silently contemplating.
The fire crackled. For a moment, the sparks seemed to hang in the air longer than they should.
Wilas glanced over at M, his hood was down, revealing his face. "Look at the brown bastard," he sneered. "Twat should've stayed in Sorhara where he came from." He spat into the dirt. "King's letting every colour under the sun wander into our lands now. Fenwell's crawling with them. I can't stand it." Wilas scoffed. "A brown dog serving as a guard. What's Kalrevon come to?"
"Who gives a fuck," Bram muttered. "Once the coin's in our hands, he can rot for all I care."
"We could sell this for a fortune," Edric muttered, his eyes greedily tracking the hilt of M's sword, already forgetting the screams of the sword's owner.
"It's so shiny…" Bram said, leaning in close. "We could sell this sword for… Five gold."
"Forget about the sword. This blade is a toy compared to what we got. " Cael gestured sharply toward the tree where the three captives sat. "We have a princess, her personal guard and his squire." He chuckled dryly, a rasping sound came out of his chest.
"So how do we play it?" Bram asked, his voice dropping low as he leaned in. "We can't just… Walk up to the castle gates and ask for a bag of gold. Can we…?"
"'Course not, you idiot!" Wilas spat. He looked at Cael expectantly, waiting for a plan.
"They're probably already searching for her now. We gotta do this fast." Cael said, eyes fixated on the beautiful princess. "Rowe, you know how to write, yeah?"
"I do." Rowe said plainly.
"Good. You'll go Castle Marlite tonight. Write a letter and find a way to pass it over to a guard, hire a boy or something. We'll cut a bit of the princesses hair and gown, all you'll do is attach it to the letter. Write it clear: four hundred gold coins, we'll split… Sixty five each. We want one man, and only one, unarmed to be dispatched, who is going to bring us a chest under the Crowsbridge Crossing at dawn. If we see a single scout, a single glint of armour… We kill all three of them. But if we get what we want, we'll hand them over. Simple."
"Four hundred?" Bram breathed. "Will they— Will they actually pay that much?"
"This is the king's daughter we're talking about, the second child that prick has. 'Course he'll give us four hundred." Cael said pleasantly.
"What a 'fuckin idiot she is. Even a kid knows that royal gown of hers means she's someone important. And she just decided to have a stroll about without no protection. I still can't get over it. She thought she was being so sly. Storming into Fenwell secretly then leaving her white mare back in the mews. Avoided the main gate entirely to avoid being seen." Wilas laughed.
Edric glanced at Cael with genuine respect. "I gotta say, Cael, your patience was something else. I would've grabbed her the second she hit the alley behind the tanneries."
Cael didn't look up from the fire. He poked at a glowing coal with a stick, his voice low and steady. "You don't hunt a deer in the middle of a village, do you? If we'd taken her in Fenwell, how would we have gotten her out? Yeah, if she wasn't gonna walk out of Fenwell then we would've taken her there and then, lucky she did though."
Bram shook his head, looking at Sera like she was some kind of dog. "So she rode into Fenwell, stabled her horse in the mews, then decided to… walk back out again? Why couldn't she have just tied her horse in this fucking forest if she was gonna come back anyway?"
"These rich fucks care more for their own horses than a crying, motherless, starving peasant." Edric snorted. "Probably so her horse could have hay to eat for breakfast or shit like that. Who even cares, it was good she did walk out again."
Bram shook his head, bewildered. "Still though, what the hell was she thinking? Walking alone? In this fuckin' forest? Has she never heard of Mossdault?"
"Mossdault?" Wilas said in confusion. "The fucks that?"
Rowe looked up from the fire. Something in his face made the others go quiet before he even opened his mouth.
"His name was… Caerwyn Dault. They say he was a brave man once. A kings sword, a hundred and twenty years ago. Had an affair with the king's cousin…" He paused, looking at the other four. "I'll say that again…A. Kings. Sword. The most honourable rank a man can carry in Kalrevon. No one before him or since, has ever broken the oath. Only him. He fled into Blackvein forest when they came for him. Guards tried hunting him down for weeks, found nothing." Rowe's voice was eerily flat. "But he stayed in that exact forest for months, he tried leaving, but the forest didn't let him. Folk say the forest had heard what he did and decided his punishment. So it took his face first, slowly turned it dark green. Then the vines and moss came. They didn't just wrap around him; they grew into his whole body, stitching his muscles shut."
Rowe continued, all four of them leaning in to listen.
"They say he's eight feet tall now, thin as a winter branch. He doesn't have a face, not anymore. Instead it's all just thick, dark emerald moss, held to his skull by thorns that go straight into his skull. Rumours say when he transformed… the forest paid for it. The soil turned pale and dry. Trees stopped growing as a result. Animals abandoned the place entirely. Mossdault isn't just in Blackvein forest. He moves. Forest to forest. When he kills you, he makes sure not to spill a drop of blood. Where his hands used to be there are thorns now, long ones, sharp enough to open skin in seconds. They go inside the victim's mouth. Forcing your jaw to open wide. Then they slowly slither down through the throat and into the stomach, and start grinding and shredding your insides until all organs are no more. If you see a figure like that through the leaves… run—"
"Hahaha!" Wilas cackled. "Rowe believing in children stories? Never thought I'd see the day." Though Wilas shifted his weight, eyes slyly darting around to the leaves around him.
Bram scratched his hair, frowning. "But it's true! Martha told me as well."
"Your wife needs to put down the ghost stories and focus in the kitchen." Wilas shook his head.
"Speaking of which," Edric said, "that chicken stew she made at little jenny's birthday was delicious."
All five nodded their heads in unison. Bram's face lit up. Martha was indeed a wonderful cook.
"A hundred years ago I would've believed what Rowe said. But there ain't creatures like that no more, magic's fuckin' gone—" Wilas muttered, somewhat relieved.
"Who said?" Rowe gawked into Wilas' eyes.
"Well—" Wilas stumbled on his own words.
"You heard that one scream, didn't you?" Rowe's eyes moved to M who was still staring at his trembling horse. "That wasn't just screaming… That was something more."
They all looked at each other, then at M.
"Boys, I don't get one thing," Bram kicked at the dirt. "A hundred years ago, back when magic wasn't dead. They could've done so much with it… Become rich, enchant a thousand whores to love them, but instead—"
"Because, magic was unpredictable and had consequences after being used." Rowe cut Bram off. His voice deathly quiet and heavy.
All four directed their attention to Rowe once again.
The firelight flickered in Rowe's sunken eyes as he gave a mirthless chuckle. "You wanted gold? Fine. But magic could not create or kill things out of thin air, at least, not according to anything I've ever found. It would instead rip the coins from a merchant's purse miles away or steal it from your neighbour's strongbox. But then the consequences occur. After every use of magic, there would always be a random consequence which befalls the user. For instance, it might have increased the literal emotion of greed in you."
Rowe looked around and continued.
"When you did it again, you might have lost your sanity even more. Ending up sitting on a mountain of gold, starving to death because you'd forgotten how to eat anything except the sight of your own wealth. Or perhaps," he leaned forward, his voice dropping to a whisper, "the magic would simply sip some blood from inside your veins. You wouldn't even feel anything. It didn't always rot the mind. The consequences were always random, sometimes it paid out in a dull headache, other times a total flaying of the caster's literal skin. You never knew the price…"
"So… after every use of magic you'd be gambling with your mind and body?" Cael questioned.
Rowe nodded slowly.
"Enchant a thousand whores to love you, Bram?" Rowe's tired gaze pinned Bram down. "Where would the thousand whores come from? Magic couldn't conjure living things. But, say you enchanted thirty whores in a brothel… Then the consequence would hit right after, you might lose the emotion to love anything, or anyone at all. You'd be surrounded by thirty beauties and feel nothing, like a hollow tree trunk. The more they used it, the more they went mad, some physically, some mentally… And besides even back then not everyone had the power to use magic."
Cael leaned in, his eyes sharp as always. "So if someone used magic, could something good happen, or were the consequences always unpleasant?" He cleverly asked.
Rowe looked at him, almost impressed by the question. "Yes… Magic wasn't just a word." Rowe looked around him. "It was intelligent, an entity. It favoured some while disgracing others."
"Why couldn't the old fucks just use magic again and again, fuck the consequences I say." Bram said angrily.
"They could have… But even the madmen knew better. If they used it too many times in quick succession… It would always give those who did, monstrous consequences in return."
"Where you get all this information from?" Wilas was absolutely dumbfounded by Rowe's knowledge on the matter.
"Books. Old People." Rowe said.
"How'd magic die then?" Edric finally spoke.
"No one knows. Everyone's been telling us a thousand different lies to help us sleep at night," Rowe said, looking disappointed by the very air he breathed. "Maybe… It didn't leave, maybe it's just grown cautious. Now, no child is born with magic… But why…? Why…?"
The silence that followed was heavy, pressing in on them. Bram shifted uncomfortably, the firelight catching the nervous dart of his eyes. He couldn't stand the weight of it, the way Rowe spoke.
"Alright enough of this," Bram snapped, he jerked his chin to where Pike stood. "Why doesn't Pike talk to us?" Pike, as usual was looking out into the trees.
"Don't know… Maybe he's mute?" Edric said. "You think he knows how to talk to a woman?"
"Course not—" Wilas shrugged.
"Enough." Cael quickly rose to his feet. "Rowe, get ready. Sun's about to go down." He drew his dagger and walked towards Sera.
Rowe pushed himself up from the campfire and walked over to Edric.
"Give me it," he said, pointing to Edric's pocket.
"What?" Edric tried the same clueless look again.
"The ring. You took off that guard." Rowe signalled to M.
Edric rolled his eyes. If Rowe wanted something, he'd get it one way or another and Edric knew it. With a sigh, Edric pulled the silver ring from his pocket and tossed it over. Rowe caught it and turned it between his fingers, studying it for a moment.
Cael quickly walked back to Rowe, he had already cut a small strand of Sera's hair and sliced a thin strip from the lower hem of her gown.
He handed both to Rowe, who now stood beside his massive brown horse.
"Do exactly what we discussed," Cael said. "Once you know the guards have the letter, come back. Then we'll prepare for the exchange."
Rowe gave a slow nod, mounted his horse, and rode off towards Castle Marlite to deliver the ransom terms.
Cael strolled back to the campfire and sat down.
Edric smiled at Sera then he giggled, "After we do this ransom… I'll finally be able to get my boy his first dagger." His voice softened without him noticing, the greed briefly replaced by something almost tender. "He's been practising with a stick for months. Carries it everywhere, even to bed." A laugh escaped him. "Sleeps with the damn thing tucked under his pillow like it's made of gold." He shook his head happily. "Say Cael…" He glanced over, "why don't you talk about your family no more?"
"Just don't." Cael's jaw tightened, something moved behind his eyes that he buried quickly before anyone could notice.
Nobody pushed him on it.
"And I'll buy my Martha a proper house!" Bram said excitedly. "She thinks she might be with child."
The mood shifted instantly. Wilas laughed and shoved Bram's shoulder. Edric's face lit up. Even Cael looked up, something softening at the corner of his mouth before he could stop it. They leaned in, all of them, patting Bram on the back, talking over each other about names, whether it would be a boy or a girl, whether it had Bram's awful nose.
The wound Cael had left on K was small but cruel. Dark blood had soaked into the black fur of his flank spreading slowly with every frightened tremor. Tied too tightly to the tree, the horse could only stand there and shake.
All the while, M sat helplessly with his hands tied to the tree, staring at his trembling horse. The rage in him wasn't just rising, it was overflowing, cold and terrifying.
Sera had not appreciated Cael cutting a tiny strand of her hair and a piece from her gown. You'll pay for this, she thought to herself, smiling.
Suddenly, something pressed against the back of M's hand, something thin, cool, and sharp.
Sera was watching the campfire, her purple eyes forward, her expression showing nothing except a faint grin. But her soft hands, the skin of them impossibly delicate, pressed something against M's fingers.
A knife. Barely two inches of blade, the handle carved bone, the edge still sharp. Hidden in her hand, she had been waiting for exactly the right moment to use it. But she knew it would be best to hand it to him.
Their fingers met as she passed it. Her skin soft as silk against his now rugged hands.
"Kill them all," she breathed so quietly in his left ear. "That's an order. Hurting an innocent animal should not go unpunished." She whispered the words into his ear like a devil perched on his shoulder.
"Oi, they're whispering something to each other." Bram mumbled, narrowing his eyes at the captives.
Cael quickly glanced over once, unimpressed. "Good. Maybe she's telling him to behave." How wrong he was.
M closed his hand around the blade. Immediately twisting his wrists, the ropes biting deeper into his skin, he slowly began to saw at the bonds behind his back. The angle was awful and confining. He couldn't see what he was doing, only feel the blade quietly scraping against the rough hemp. The sharp edge bit into his own fingers more than once, but the pain a distant, irrelevant thing compared to the sight of his trembling horse.
He looked across the camp. Cael by the fire, lean, sharp-faced and satisfied, the knife that had been in K's body back in his belt. Then at K, still tied to the tree, trembling rapidly, the small wound bleeding against his black coat.
M stared at Cael. His mismatched eyes fixated on the cruel horse torturer with a murderous stare.
He had told Leo no killing. BUT NO. He thought about his horse's trembling body. The knife in him.
The forest had gone quiet all around the camp.
Only the fire and the four kidnappers around the campfire spoke now. Smoke curled upward into the dark branches above, turning the air thick and dark.
M could see every tremor running through his horse's body.
K. You shouldn't be the one bleeding for my life. M had raised that horse from a trembling foal no larger than a dog into a strong and beautiful creature. M always believed that he wasn't the one who saved K in that burning stable five years ago. It was the opposite. If K hadn't been there, M would have stayed inside that fire until the roof came down, burnt to a crisp.
Somewhere deeper in the trees a raven croaked once, then it suddenly fell silent, as if even it knew better than to interrupt what was about to unfold…
"I'm going to kill them," M said very quietly.
Leo turned, his eyes widening.
"All of them," M hissed. The small knife was already working at the rope behind his back. "Every last one."
"But… they have children," Leo stammered.
"He put a blade in my horse." His red eye pulsing rapidly with fury, "Their families will learn what that costs…" M's lips twitched into something wicked.
A wicked, broken chuckle bubbled out from his mouth. He looked up at the sky then laughed brokenly for a second. This was not M, this was something else entirely. His eyes were wide open, too wide, blazing red and glowing brightly as if the red one was bleeding, "I'm going to turn their children fatherless," he said crazily. "Their wives into widows. Their parents, mourners." M looked completely and utterly insane.
Sera's mouth hung open, a flicker of dark awe crossing her face. She had seen many of her father's subjects angry, but she had never seen a man like this. Leo looked at the trembling horse, then back at M, his face now carried the same expression as M's, anger and hatred. They hurt his horse. They deserve it, he told himself.
The last strand of rope gave, M's hands were free.
Pike watched the treeline, his back to M's hands as the rope slowly gave way.
None of them noticed.