The Lioness

Some among them did not agree, and they were always the youngest, the farm lads, the girls who must hold themselves still under the leering eyes of a Knight. These, in the privacy of their hearts or souls, didn’t consider the killing of one of the occupation force a murder.

On the morning of the first true day of autumn, four Knights of Takhisis sat their tall battle steeds in front of the place where the trouble began. Armed as for war, encased in mail and plate, faceless in their casques, each held a flaring torch. The light of their fire ran on the shining steel blades. It slid down the arcs of breastplates, on knee guards, glinted from bridles and bits and shone like blood in the fierce eyes of war-horses. The four ranged around a fifth, the Knight known among his fellows as Headsman Chance. Sir Chance sat the tallest of the steeds, and all the Knights stood darkly behind him against the gold and red of the falling season glowing warmly in the forest beyond the edges of the road.

From out of the morning mist came muffled cries, emanating from nearby, the village proper. Hearing those cries, Bueren Rose glanced at her father, thinking Jale looked like a ghost standing in the dooryard of his beloved tavern, his Hare and Hound. A small breeze wandered by, tugging at her red-gold hair. The sign above the tavern door swung wearily, bolts creaking. Beside her, her father Jale looked terrified. She thought—a stray thought, like a stray curling of mist—that her father had run this tavern all his life. When he was only a child, he’d started out as a potboy in the tavern, his duties no more than those of young Firthing who held that job now, a scrubber of pots and dishes, emptier of slops from the guest chambers. In time he became the cook’s boy, learning how to prepare dishes he’d become known for along road from Sliathnost to Qualinost. He’d been taught to cook by his mother. From his father, an old Forest Keeper retired from service after too many wounds, Jale had learned how to tend bar and toss out troublemakers. Since before the coming of green Beryl with her fangs and her Knights, there had been the Hare and Hound. Since before the Chaos War, this tavern had stood.

The breath of Sir Chance’s horse steamed in the cold morning air. Bridle and bit jingling, the battle-beast tossed his head. Bueren thought the horse’s eyes looked wild, red and eager. Worse, though, his rider’s eyes shone winter-gray and cold.

Shivering, she slipped her hand into the crook of her father’s arm. Upon the road, emerging from the mist, figures came walking toward them, men, women, and children herded to the tavern by two more of Chance Headsman’s Knights. With rough laughter, the Knights urged the villagers to speed by the pricking of swords, the bruising nudges of lances. A child cried out and fell. Her father grabbed her up swiftly and held her in his arms, away from the iron-shod hooves of a charger. One or two of the younger elves showed the marks of resistance, blackened eyes, bloody heads, a broken wrist swelling.

Chance Headsman threw back his visor, his glance alighting on each elf as the Knights drove them to stand in the tavern yard, a huddle of frightened women, angry men, sobbing children. Not one of them had a weapon, not even the small belt knife every villager carried as part of his daily gear. The Headsman looked at all those gathered, men, women, and little children clinging, as though he knew something about each of them. Last his eyes touched Jale. Bueren Rose held her father’s arm tighter.

Shouting, as though on a battleground raging with screaming and war cries, the Headsman cried, “It is commanded!”

At their mothers’ skirts, children stirred and whimpered. In her father’s arms, the girl who had fallen buried her face in his shoulder. Overhead, a crow called.

“By order of my lord Sir Eamutt Thagol,” bawled the Headsman, “he of Neraka and lately of the Monastery Bone, for crimes of murder and insurrection, the woman Kerianseray, a Kagonesti servant late of the household of Senator Rashas of Qualinost, is declared outside the law.

“By Sir Eamutt’s order, such decree renders her a person deprived of any consideration under the laws of her king. Neither will she receive the grace nor benefit of the laws of green Beryl, the dragon who rules here.

“All who see this woman are commanded to refuse her succor, denying her aid of food or weapon or shelter. All who see her are ordered to capture her by any means necessary and to bring her alive to Lord Thagol in Qualinost. There, she will he beheaded, her head piked upon the eastern bridge. This sentence shall be executed within the sight of the citizenry of the city.

“All who are so foolish as to aid her will share in her crime and so in her sentence. It is commanded!”