The Lioness

“A few years ago.” Ander sat up. “Not to the sea, not past the mountains, but almost to them. My father was from Lindalenost, a little town near that lake. It’s called Linden Lake because it’s all edged with linden trees. They look like mist, the trunks are so gray. When he was murdered.. well, we went there with his body so his family could lay him to rest among his kin.”

Kerian considered this. Then she said, “We’ve heard there are Knights deployed in the south and draconians with them.”

Ander nodded.

“We’ve heard they pretty much own the roads,” Jeratt said, his voice hard with suspicion. “What do you know, boy?”

“Not much, except I heard about the Knights and draconians.” He twisted a wry grin. “But that I heard from a traveler at the mill.”

“Could we go there for a time?” Kerian asked.

Again, Ander shook his head. “The village is right on the Qualinost Road. We’d be seen by Knights and draconians, but we could go into the forest, deep. They have small settlements here and there, sometimes just a few houses gathered around a tavern and a river ford. The Knights won’t go far into the forest—”

Jeratt rose. “Because of that weird slipping of your senses.” He scuffed away the map. “Shouldn’t be a problem that far down there, or did your kinfolk say it is?”

Ander looked from Kerian to the half-elf. “I told you, I haven’t heard from them since my father’s funeral.”

Jeratt looked up at the sky again. Kerian followed his glance and saw the stars fading before the gray light of dawn. “Okay, let’s go. Deeper into the forest.”

The three companions ranged far from territory any of them knew. Kerian felt the excitement of strange places when she turned her face to the winds coming down from the northern arm of the Elfstream, there known as the White-Rage, the border between Qualinesti and haunted Darken Wood in Abanasinia. Through the pale winter days, gray with threat and white with snow, Ander ran beside them, an eager boy who sometimes looked back. He had not in all his life been so far from home; he had never tasted water from the Elfstream or hunted fat quail so far north as this watery border between the kingdom of the elves and the lands of the humans. These far reaches of the kingdom overflowed with wonder for him. The young elf shone brighter the farther they traveled.

“I don’t think he had a very good life back home,” Kerian said to Jeratt, one night when they two sat watch.

Jeratt didn’t answer at once. He’d become reconciled to the idea that Kerian had dropped this village lad into their hands, but only grudgingly. He stubbornly didn’t trust the boy, who stubbornly did not trust him. Mostly, and this he’d made clear to her, he didn’t like it that Kerian had brought Ander to their rendezvous at King’s Haunting. He didn’t like being forced into a choice he would not have made.

Jeratt spat into the fire, making the embers hiss. “Thinkin’ about stepfathers and old nursery stories, are you? Don’t be a fool, Kerianseray.”

She considered asking him what senseless thing she’d done or said this time to have earned the name of fool. She did not Kerian was growing weary of Jeratt’s scorn.

When she said nothing, he looked at her sourly. “Have y’not considered that the boy’s a little in love?”

Kerian laughed, genuinely surprised. “No. I’ve considered that he lived among people who would beat him and kill his dog.” Her voice growing lower, she said, “I’ve considered that you must be a hard and unwelcoming sort in his eyes.”

They said little more, and for a long while the subject didn’t come up again.

They hunted and they trapped. Ander didn’t have much skill at hunting large game, or even small, but he was a good hand at the preservation of what Kerian and Jeratt brought down. He knew how to smoke even fish so they were palatable days later. Their wallets were never empty of food, even when the territory they roamed might be.

Like wolves, they stayed long enough in good hunting territory to rest and eat and left when signs showed that game was moving or that elves or even Knights were near.

The latter didn’t happen often. They kept to the deep woods and all through the rest of winter saw only a few lone elves hunting, and once, chanced to see two dark-armored Knights meeting at a fording place. Kerian had been all for staying, concealed, to listen. Jeratt had slipped a callused palm over her mouth to quell protest, glared lightning at Ander, silently commanding that he follow, and hustled her away.

Later, his eyes ablaze, he’d grabbed her, a hand on each side of her head and said, “What in the name of all gone gods do you care what Thagol’s vermin has to say?” He’d gripped hard. “You want to keep this pretty head on your shoulders, Kerianseray, all you care about is how to stay out of their sight.”

Wide-eyed, Ander watched the two quarrel, and that night, when he thought her sleeping, he ventured a question of the half-elf.