Khai squatted by the stream and submerged his leather water jug into the current. “Good thing you’ve not been recruited for the Kingsguard. You’d make a pathetic soldier.”
Vrell ignored him and washed the dusty grime from her skin. She spotted leafy green sorrel growing along the bank. She dug in her satchel for her tiny knife and cut some. Mother’s cook, Jespa, made a divine salad with sorrel, walnuts, and strawberries, when they were in season. Vrell washed the leaves in the stream and ate some. It tasted fresh and juicy and welcome after days of dry food. Vrell cut more and wrapped them in the largest leaf for later. She also cut some white clover. If she could somehow dry it, it would make a hearty tea.
Jax knelt to fill his jug, He pulled off his head scarf and rinsed his face and hair. His gaze met Vrell’s as he tied the red scarf back over his head. “I like your thinking, Vrell.” He pulled a knife from his belt and cut strips of river cane as long as Vrell’s arm. He tied them into torches with hemp twine and tucked them in his pack. “Ready to go?”
“Yes, sir.” Vrell filled her jug and clipped it to her satchel.
They mounted and rode into the forest.
Never had Vrell seen such trees. Redpines and cedars stretched to the heavens, their trunks wider than four grown men. Branches intertwined overhead like a green, red, and brown canopy that let in shafts of light but blocked the merciless heat of the sun. Thick yellow moss carpeted the ground. Leathery orange ferns and tiny white flowers grew from it in a lush garden array. Even the dusty brown path they’d been riding on had now changed to red clay.
Such beauty distracted Vrell from her weariness, her plight, and her task of acting a boy. The next few hours passed pleasantly. She hummed softly with the rustling trees and chirping birds. Chunks of shell mushroom clung to the side of an oak tree. She reined Nickel and slid off his side.
Vrell stepped off the path, and her foot sank deep in the spongy moss. Maybe the worst of the journey was over. If they camped in the forest tonight, she wouldn’t mind sleeping on such soft ground. She longed to snip some white flowers and thread them in her hair, but dared not pick one without an herbal excuse. She withdrew her knife and reached up to cut the mushroom.
“Boy!” Khai yelled. “We’ve no time for gardening.”
Vrell wheeled around to see that Khai and Jax had turned their horses sideways on the road. “I only wish to cut some mushroom,” she said. “It’s quite good.”
“Quickly, Vrell, then no more stops,” Jax said.
She sliced off wedges of mushroom until her satchel bulged. A mentha plant waved in the breeze only two paces away. She glanced at the men. They were engaged in conversation with each other. She crouched to cut as much mentha as she could.
Khai suddenly cried out.
Vrell looked up to see him scrambling into her side of the forest on foot, his horse galloping away. Jax dismounted, slapped his horse’s rear, and crouched in the middle of the road. His horse ran on ahead. Jax yanked two axes from his leg sheaths, one in each hand. Vrell’s eyes widened.
A song-like cry warbled in the distance. It sent a tremor to her heart. Something whooshed past her arm and thunked into a nearby redpine trunk. She stepped toward it to get a closer look. It was an arrow with a crude, black, obsidian head and—
“Vrell!” Jax yelled. “Look out!”
Vrell darted behind the redpine just as another arrow pierced the trunk.
“Wee ahlawa men teeah!”
Vrell peeked around the tree to see a man as tall as Jax, but pale as a lily. His long blond hair hung around his face like a curtain. Animal skins were draped over one shoulder, across his white chest, and down around his hips like a skirt. He clutched a spear in one hand and a curved axe in the other. Both weapons were chiseled out of obsidian and lashed to wooden handles with leather.
He stood on the road facing Jax.
Jax bowed to the giant. “We seek passage through NaharForest.”
The giant pointed down the road, back toward Walden’s Watch. “Wee ahlawa men teeah!”
Jax shook his head. “We will not go back. We must take this road to Xulon.”
The pale giant tipped his head back and bellowed a trilling cry into the treetops.
A chorus of voices returned the cry from all sides. Vrell’s horse turned and trotted back toward the peninsula. Vrell scowled and whipped around, her back pressed against the redpine trunk.
Two more pale giants approached where Khai stood in the forest. Another three walked up the road and stood behind the leader. Jax stood motionless before the four giants, clutching his axes, waiting.
Scraping metal on wood turned Vrell’s gaze back to Khai. The knight had drawn his monstrously long sword. He held it at the two giants who faced him, waving it back and forth to keep them at bay.
Vrell bounded over the soft ground to an oak tree with low branches and scurried up. Climbing trees had always been something she enjoyed, as much as it vexed her mother. She had barely settled on a thick branch halfway up when the clash of weapons sent her spinning around.
The two giants had attacked Khai. One swung an ax and another stabbed with a long spear. Khai chopped the tip off the spear, parried the axe, sliced its wielder’s leg, and spun back to lop off the hand of the giant holding the remainder of the spear.
Vrell gasped. The little weasel could actually use that weapon. She tore her gaze away to look at Jax.
The four pale ones rained blows upon him with club and spear. His red scarf shone bright against their bleached skin and hair. She had never seen men fight with anything but swords. Jax swung his axes in a blur and blocked his opponents’ attacks with the iron cuffs on his forearms. So that was what they were for.
Khai vaulted over the mossy ground and onto the road, barging into Jax’s fight. Vrell climbed to a higher branch to get a better view. She glanced back to where Khai had first fought and found his first two attackers slain. Their pallid bodies lay on the yellow moss as if they were asleep.
A heavy tear fell down her cheek. She squeezed her eyes shut and fought the bile rising in her throat. She must not panic or weep like a girl. These giants had attacked without cause. Jax and Khai had killed in self-defense. Had they not, the pale giants would have killed them.
She choked back her tears. A sudden silence caused her to look back to the road. The battle was over. Khai had left two dead in the forest. And now four more ashy giants lay dead on the road. Blood oozed from their skin and seeped into the red clay road like red rivers converging. Khai and Jax appeared unharmed. Khai crouched and wiped his blade on the moss.
Jax peered through the trees then spun around. “Vrell?”
She croaked, “I am here.”
Jax’s long legs carried him to the oak in four long strides. He lifted a blood-spattered hand to her. She hesitated, then gripped it and jumped down into the spongy moss.
“Who were they?” she asked, wiping her hand off on her tunic.
“Ebens.”
Vrell nodded and followed Jax to the road.
Jax squatted and cleaned his axes on clumps of moss before pushing them back into their sheaths. “Khai, we must retrieve the horses and keep moving.”
“Aye.” Khai jogged down the road, farther into NaharForest.
“Why did you dismount?” Vrell asked.
“They might have slain the horses otherwise.” Jax stepped past her and strode back toward the peninsula, studying the ground as he went. “There will be more, Vrell. We must find your horse quickly.”
More ebens? Vrell’s toes curled in her boots as she fought to conceal her fear. Jax didn’t stop, so she hurried after him. “Why did they attack?”
Jax veered off the road and around a thick oak. “When ebens come out of Darkness, it is for mercenary work. These ebens were well paid.”
Vrell traipsed over the soft moss and spotted Nickel ambling under the low branches of an oak tree. She swallowed. “You mean they were here to kill us?”
“No, boy, they were hired to kill giants. Although they would kill anyone who tried to pass through NaharForest right now.”
“But they
are
giants.”
Jax took Nickel’s reins and handed them to her, his face hardened. “They
were
giants, Vrell. Darkness changed them.” He cast his eyes to the sun, as if judging the time. “Now, no more questions. Their battle cries will have alerted their comrades. We must move quickly and quietly. Can you do that?”
“Yes, sir.” Vrell led Nickel back to the road and mounted. Khai was waiting with the other two horses. Vrell urged Nickel slowly up the road as she waited for Jax and Khai to mount. She passed the dead giants on the road and gazed down at one of the massive pale men. His glassy blue eyes stared into the canopy of branches above.
They rode for hours without encountering any more ebens. Vrell hadn’t slept in way too long, but Jax wanted to press on until he felt it was safe to stop.
When they finally did stop, Khai went off hunting on his own.
Jax sat against a tree and removed his black cape. The left arm of his white shirt was matted with blood just above the elbow.
Vrell gasped. “Jax, you are hurt.” She hurried to his side and saw a broken stick protruding from his arm.
“One of their arrows struck me. It’s not bad.”
Vrell lifted the strap of her satchel over her head. “I have been learning the healing trade. May I help?”
Jax smiled. “You may assist. I’ve likely mended more battle wounds than you.”
Vrell knelt beside him and nearly fell over in the deep moss. She settled herself and met Jax’s huge, brown eyes.
His grin warmed her cheeks. “The first thing you must know in treating an arrow wound is what kind of arrow you are dealing with. Best way is to find one and look at it.” Jax shrugged. “I know ebens well. Their arrowheads are barbed obsidian.”
“Yes. I saw one,” Vrell said.
“Barbed arrowheads are harder to remove. It’s best to use something to pry them out with. But mine is not deep. What do you have in your pack?”
Vrell laid out her assortments of herbs and jars. “I have a yarrow salve I made myself.”
Jax beckoned for the jar. She pried off the lid and handed it to him. He took a long sniff and raised his brows. “That will do fine.”
Jax removed the arrowhead easily. Vrell helped him clean the wound and added her salve. He bandaged it with strips from his spare shirt. She listened avidly to his battle tales of how healers worked on wounded soldiers. She found Jax a fountain of wisdom and questioned him on herbs and healing, until Khai wandered up with a dead rabbit.
They made a wonderful meal of the rabbit and Vrell’s mushrooms. Vrell also shared some of her sorrel lettuce with Jax. Khai refused any.
When it was time for sleep, Vrell snuggled into the deep softness of the moss. It was indeed as comfortable as she had imagined. She let her mind wander to the last time she and Bran had been together.
She had met up him at the southwestern vineyard and led him to her special corner, where she had been experimenting with cuttings of a thunbergii mountain vine, hoping to blend it with the local vinifera. Not much had grown yet, but Bran had sat beside her, listening avidly as she’d explained her hopes for the test. She had wanted to—
Vrell Sparrow.
It was her mother, calling out to her again. Vrell was still too afraid to answer. Jax and Khai were awake, murmuring to themselves a few feet away. Had they heard Mother’s call? She pushed the fears from her mind and fell asleep thinking of Bran.
* * *
The next morning, Jax shook her awake. She much preferred his gentle hand to Khai’s kick. She rose quickly and they set off on the road, heading south.
“When we come to the King’s Road, we’ll head north,” Jax said.
Vrell pictured the map of Er’Rets in her mind. The King’s Road stretched the length of the kingdom, from Tsaftown in the far north all the way down to Er’Rets Point in the far south. They still had a very long way to travel. If ebens were being paid to keep people from entering XulonForest, all roads would be guarded. This would only lengthen the time she would have to spend with the knights and increase her chances of being discovered. Vrell did not want to be a stray boy anymore.
She wanted to go home.
6
Vrell cowered under the canopy of a leathery fern. Rainwater poured over the edges, but the plant’s vastness offered a semi-dry sanctuary. It also provided camouflage, its orange and red surface blending with Vrell’s tunic. She had been covering her head with her arms for so long they had grown stiff. The patter of rain, screams, grunts, and clanking metal rang out from all sides. She dared not move.
Jax had shoved her under the ferns before lunch, when another group of ebens had attacked. The fighting had only gone on a few moments before some different giants had joined in to help the knights. Yâtsaq giants like Jax, not the pale-skinned ebens. Vrell found the battle sounds petrifying, although they had faded some. The sun sat low on the horizon, squeezing rays of orange light between the thick tree trunks. Had the fighting ended? Now that Jax and Khai had help, would it be over for good?
Something poked her in the back. Vrell jumped inside her skin, then berated herself. She should have played dead.
“Oi! I found one hidin’ in the ferns, Po!” The voice was young and girlish.
Swishing pant legs grew close, and a young boy’s voice said, “Think it’s alive?”
Something poked harder and Vrell twitched.