Chapter Three
Wait of Survival

Poleen rested for the night in a cabin owned by a hunter she remembered by a single name: Ôlêum. It was little more than a thatched roof and stick walls to keep out the rain and wind as he migrated around the countryside, but it was all she needed for a few candles of sleep before dawn. The hunter would be far to the north this time of year if the man’s tales told around the village green were true.

Or at least true to her impressions. Wisps of memory presented a man who wandered into town every year shaggy and dirty before a shave and bath, and after, celebrated his arrival with wine in Fountain Square. By then he’d transformed, his hair greased tight to his scalp and his soiled gear replaced by silks colored by vibrant and expensive dyes. He spun tales of his exploits in the north with flourishes that grew greater the drunker he got. Happy memories that made her sad as she faded into slumber.

She awoke hungry but alert at the first dim glow of morning through the canopy of woods and set out due east. Within a candle, she passed from woodlands into a rolling pastoral paradise with orchards filled with apple, cherry, olive, and peach-speckled trees, golden fields of wheat and oats swaying with every gust of breeze, and on some distant hills, prim rows of grapevines. The roads were dirt and the bridges uncovered stone. Dogs barked at her from farms and pastures, cattle, horses, goats and sheep stared as she passed, and she caught the eye of more than a few locals. Several waved, but if she knew any of them, memory failed her. Still, she raised her hand and smiled even as she picked up the pace to skirt unanswerable questions. A candle after high sun, she reached a playground of her childhood, Castle Hill, a romanticized name for the ruins of a small tower. Tall grasses surrounded remnants of tower low enough she could peer over them, the perfect vantage of home. 

Nindi’vilu stood as a collection of forty or so buildings nestled next to a large pond on its eastern border. Its familiarity teased Poleen’s conscious mind with details. Sobôlum’s mill dammed the stream to form Stonethrow Pond, and its flour supplied the town and many surrounding farms, including Norvilê’s Bakery. Her stomach grumbled with the memory of moonbiscuits spread with herbed cream cheese, and her mouth watered. A vision of a smiling woman laughing as she rolled dough flitted between the blinks of Poleen’s eyes and her face scrunched. She blotted the baker from her mind and refocused.

Smoke rose beside a monstrous willow tree; Mutôle’s smithy on Little Sun Road. Mutôlê was a good man with a reputation as strong as his shoulders. Eyes followed the winding cobbles to the village green and Stone’s Throw Road across the way. In a blink, her eyes fell on a small stone building. The townsfolk named it Juvikis’ Bloom, but mother always called it the family shop or the garden for all the plants growing out back.

Mother. Ezeldu Juvukis.

A tiny memory, and such an important one, but the shadow of a man astride a horse froze any pleasant recollections. He turned onto Stone’s Throw from Nôlelêum Avenue. Her heart raced, then calmed. A single man. What she feared more was two, and from this distance, she had no way of knowing who this rider was nor his intent. He continued past mother’s shop, turned, and disappeared behind a building. She waited for him to reappear, but when he didn’t, her moment of relief grew into concern. Uncertain thoughts danced in her mind, and fingers picked at centuries-old mortar.

Suspicions and tensions rose with every passing wick until her feet could no longer stand still. She resisted the urge to run; with bare legs and a man’s coat the only thing covering her, except for boots and a sash. She would draw every eye in town. She should sneak. No, caught skulking bush to bush might be worse. Worse than bold strides to Fountain Square?

High grasses tickled her legs as she skirted the tower’s base, leaves and seeds unrelenting until she reached the bare ground of Heledin Avenue and the Arch of Saint Bolumê, one of five saints honoring the village and one of the four who founded the township. How do I remember such trivial things? Or perhaps it wasn’t so trivial.

She passed several homes, and a woman’s face rose over a fenced hedge. “G’day, Poleen.” The matron’s smile and wide eyes faded as her brows furrowed into a curious stare.

Poleen managed a smile and gave a curt wave. “A beautiful day, Sebenu Lorîtu.” She stumbled over her own feet at the blurted name that came to her tongue from nowhere and prayed she got it right.

“Are you well, my dear? Your clothes…”

“I had a little incident. Not to worry, I promise.”

The woman nodded with an insincere smile but disappeared behind her fence and hedges a flicker later, and Poleen breathed free. A friendly face was at once welcome but disconcerting. Four people stepped onto the road ahead, townsfolk she concluded, and they headed her way.

She veered, and when hidden by a shrub, she trotted a dozen strides onto Little Sun Road. Within flickers, she caught the scent of coal fire from Mutôlê’s smithy, and she wandered to the stone-ringed well sitting nearby. A bucket sat on its edge, the water cool and fresh as she dipped to cup a drink. The voice came after her first slurp. “Poleen?”

A big man in a heavy leather apron scarred by a hundred burns stood hand to hip, his face clean-shaven as it had been since his beard once caught fire. “Mutôlê! Yes, yes, it’s me.”

The man strolled her way with a pail in hand. “Saints be, child, where’re your clothes? Your mother—“

“My mother indeed!“ She trotted away, shaking drops of water from her hands, looking back with an attempt at a smile. ”So sorry, I must go to her. Don’t fret my clothes. Little incident.” She turned and dropped from her trot, hoping to draw less attention as she drew close to Fountain Square.

She slipped close to buildings and hugged a tree. The square was grass-covered and surrounded by stone-paved roads. In its center sat a round fountain where a statue of Saint Sedôñu stood in a ring of dancing dolphins spitting water into a pool. A dozen children ran and played with hoops and sticks, and a young couple sat on the edge of the fountain holding hands. Serene and idyllic under a sunny blue sky until the clop of shod hooves caught her ear. She peered west from behind her tree and spotted two horsemen at a bend in Nôlelêum Avenue, flickers later a wagon.

She hid her face for an instant, then darted to squat behind a bush for better cover. The rhythm of hooves on stone passed, followed by the rickety creaks of a wagon, and she braved a glance. Âvorê sat in the wagon’s seat, hunched and healthy as she’d left him. The bastard Mostulê betrayed me after all. I should’ve gutted him on the road. 

They veered north at the square, and it was no surprise they turned next onto Stone’s Throw Road in the direction of her mother’s shop. She stuffed her mystery box into the hedge, and her hand strayed to the dagger hidden in her coat. I follow them. I kill them. She rose to a crouch, eyes trained on their backs.

A hand clutched her shoulder, and she spun, driving a man stumbling through a hedge until she pinned him against a house’s wall with the dagger at his throat. His voice was gruff, more angry than fearful. “What the hell are you doing?”

A graying mustache draped over his lips, and intense blue eyes stared into hers. The man from her memory, riding with her and Benê, and a name flashed into her mind. “Gibelê?”

“Yes, girl, who else? How are you alive?”

She pressed the blade tight to his throat. “Why’d you expect me dead?”

His gaze was hard as stone, of a man who’d faced worse than dying, but confusion fluttered his words. “The Notoholis Aprelêu had you. I was there.”

“You were there and did nothing?”

He cocked his head and pulled back hair. The back of his neck and head were black and blue, and right ear swollen. “Nothing! They knocked me senseless, strung me to my horse, and whipped her into flight. I thought for sure you were dead. And you have that cursed box… how?”

Trust would be hard-earned, but something in his words rang more true than not. It didn’t matter. Her mother was in danger. “By not dying.” She eased the blade from his throat.

“Those men ride to take Ezeldu, don’t they?”

“Which is why I’m going to kill them. Stay out of my way.” She turned and a hand clasped her shoulder a second time.

“Three armored men with a dagger.”

“And an ax.” She huffed, heart pounding, fingers tingling with wanting to put the dagger’s tip through his eye. “Hands off me.”

“Four other riders made their way toward Stonethrow today, not a one unarmed. The men of Aprelêu don’t take chances.”

Deep breaths. “And you didn’t warn her?”

He slouched, moustache drooping. “I meant to. I… hesitated this morning, to tell the woman her daughter and son. I hesitated. I shouldn’t have, then the riders came. Those men see my face again, Saints for sure I’m dead, and not in a kind way. I wager the same for you.”

She snorted. “They thought me dead once.”

“Then why give them a chance to get it right the second time?” He spun her by the shoulders with a powerful grip, then shoved her into a crouch; she’d almost missed the clopping of more hooves. They sat silent until the men passed. “Whatever this is about, they’re serious. You won’t stop them.”

“I killed four already; I’ll murder a dozen more if I have to.”

The man’s grip eased, eyes mystified, sad, or both. “I don’t know what happened to you out there—“

“They hanged and tried to rape me. Let me go.”

“I don’t know how you might’ve come to kill four men, but I wager it was surprise. Either way, most of them men on the road weren’t in armor, these are, even if they hide it beneath robes. Even if you managed to kill one, you won’t kill them all. And escape to what? You think this town can protect you from the Notoholis?”

His words made infuriating sense, but every fiber of her soul ached to deny his rationale. “What will they do with her?”

“There’s a wise girl. Take a breath.” He grinned. “They won’t kill her outright in the middle of Nindi-vilu. Constable Ulmup will make certain it’s legal. They’ll take her to Vitolêô, the prisons there, then to Aprelêu after.”

“By ship?”

“Yes.”

“I can free her somewhere between.”

“Or fight this in the courts of Vitolêô. It depends on the charges, but no matter, showing your face now is death.”

“You’re certain?” She loosened the grip on her dagger with his nod. “And you’ll help me?”

“I’ll get you clothes, a horse… something better than that dagger. And I’ll impart what advice I may, but as I said the other day, I’ve a history with the Notoholis. If a one of those men recognized me that night they caught you, I’d be dead already.”

“I understand.” Or at least she understood enough. She stashed her blade in her belt. “What is this box? Why did I have it?”

“You don’t remember?” She shook her head and he sighed. “That’s a story more for a table than hiding in bushes.”

She nodded and turned to stare through leaves, back at the road to await the inevitable. To see if Gibelê was right or wrong. They sat huddled in the bush, her legs, feet, and toes tingling asleep as time crawled. She fidgeted with the box to relieve tension.

Gibelê said, “A dozen of the finest cigars I’ve ever seen in that box.”

“How do you know?”

“You have the key, or at least you did.”

She grimaced and gave the case a hard look. “They wouldn’t kill for cigars, would they?”

“No. Now hush.”

She looked back to Stone’s Throw and the square where shadows of horsemen stretched across the cobbles. They rode by with the wagon strides behind them, Âvorê at the reins, and in its back sat a woman with mouth gagged and hands tied behind her back, but she was alive as promised.

Muscles twitched with the urge to leap to the road, to cut her mother free of her bonds, but instead, she gritted her teeth and watched rider after armed rider saunter past. Within wicks, they disappeared down the road, and they both stood.

“I told you. Alive”

She gazed into his blue eyes and smiled. “You did.”

“They’ve set fire to the shop.” Smoke rose to the north and she gasped. 

Gibelê rubbed her shoulders. “The Notoholus Aprelêu likes to send messages that’re hard to misinterpret.”

She rolled her shoulders to free herself from his grip, no matter how well-intended. “If they hurt her, I’ll write mine in their blood.”