The Witch - Week 2
He left at dawn to seek his prey in the wild places, in the woods that wrapped the village's vineyards tightly and the shadowed valleys between them. He startled swans and fish as he tromped through streams, panicked rabbits and baffled charcoal burners when he burst into clearings. Each step took him further from hearths and walls of stone, sturdy Tonerre loyally shadowing his steps. He reached the marker stones which marked the edges of the demesne near nightfall on the first night and slept the night wrapped in his cloak with his back against the engraved boulder.
The second day he walked the edges, finding the feel of the woods until his footfalls no longer snapped every twig and rustled every leaf. By morning of the third day he no longer needed watch every step, his feet guiding him past roots and tangling brush. And it was on the afternoon of the third day, lost in thought of potential signs of evil magic leaking into the world, that he walked into the old stag.
It reared up, sudden and huge and terrifying, and the young knight fell back before flailing hooves that looked larger than his head. Yet even as he dodged backwards and worked to put a tree between himself and the stag, he saw how he had snuck up on it: one eye was milky blind, and with even a few yards' distance and a second's time he could see signs of age in its belly and coat.
Old the stag may have been but done it was not. As soon as its hooves touched back down on the turf it lowered its antlers and rushed madly forward. Luc hurtled off to its blind side and threw himself behind the thickest tree he could see, and an instant later the tree shook with the impact of his pursuer.
Hazarding a look around his tree, Luc saw that the fight was already over. Stunned by the unexpected impact, spent by its threat display and charge, the stag had collapsed to the ground. Foam at the edges of its mouth and the speed of its breath made clear at once that it was in its final moments. The young man drew out his hunting knife, said a brief prayer for the spirit of the fierce old beast and eased its passing.
The third afternoon and evening he took to draw the stag up into the trees to keep it safe from scavengers and drain the meat. There he left it on the fourth day as he resumed his hunt, seeking sign of the witch always. A brooding cave, perhaps, hidden in the woods, marked by dire monoliths? Perhaps, like the Russian tales, she dwelt in a cottage with chicken legs that hid from him?
His wandering took him far, far enough that when sunset came he was still some ways from the camp where he had left his bedroll. Yet in the setting sun, in a clearing bursting with daisies in a hundred shades, urgency was impossible. A moss-grown stump made a comfortable enough seat on which to work out the burrs in his sword from particularly stubborn vines earlier that day and the birdsong celebrating the dusk drifted over him soothingly.
When the bird song ended abruptly its absence was loud in his ears. He rose alert, sword ready. Uncertain of the potential foe, he moved to the edge of the clearing and pressed his back to where a tree's heavy shadow concealed him in the gathering dusk. He held his unsheathed sword at the back of his leg where its gleam would not reveal him but it would be readier than were it sheathed.
Almost immediately an argument preceded the arrival of the trespassers. "...worth it if we all do the last dance for it, and our souls condemned in the bargain." That voice was custom-made for wheedles and whines, penetrating as a stone drill.
"Bugger that," replied another, this one harsher. More certain. "If god thinks a deer of his own is more important than a woman with child I would rather be damned." In his shadow, Luc nodded unconsciously.
"But our families! We risk for them, too! Do we not deserve some reward?" No surprise that the owner of that voice would give ground and try to sneak around his fellow's argument, the knight reflected. A third voice of a higher register spoke up as the footfalls came closer to Luc's clearing.
"By the Virgin, Claude, would you shut up? Neither hair nor balls in my pants and I'm still more a man than you. The only reason we'll get caught is if they hear you whining."
The first of the figures entered the clearing and immediately identified himself as an amateur by stepping into one of the setting sun's last beams and perfectly presenting himself as a target. This, Luc decided, was Grim Voice, a lean man with dark hair and beard both short-cut and singed. He vaguely recalled seeing the weathered face in the crowd at his arrival above a leather apron, which together were enough to identify him as the village blacksmith.
It was unlikely that either of the other two could be so easily identified from the earlier crowd, but as one was a man with the posture of a weasel hunting eggs who moved in a series of paranoid twitches and the other was a girl of no more than twelve, it was easy enough to identify whose voice was whose. Each of the trio carried cheap shortbows of gut and local wood and wore the tunics and roughspun pants of peasants.
Grim Voice scanned around the clearing, looking past the young knight's hiding place without any hint of notice and gestured his companions forward. Luc winced as each of them took the opportunity to highlight their numbers and ruin their dark vision by stepping right into the same sunbeam. They cut directly across the clearing and continued on, passing less than a dozen paces from Luc none the wiser to his presence, and passed back into the woods on the other side.
Just as Luc was pushing himself away from his tree, a shout in the distance froze him in place. Rushing footfalls came up the path and the trio he'd spied earlier came hurrying back the way they'd come, sprinting across the clearing and throwing themselves into the brush on the other side. The lack of further rustling indicated that they had gone to ground and new voices came from the woods they had fled.
"Nah, I swear I saw one, looked like a girl. If I'm right, she's mine, got that?" The leer in the voice was enough. Luc walked out of his shadow and to the center of the clearing, where the sun would silhouette him from behind. He heard a gasp and a soft curse from one of the bushes at his appearance. Standing beside the stump, he planted the tip of his blade in the soil and rested his hands on its pommel.
Luc's immediate assessment was that there was simply no way to know which of the four men who entered the clearing had spoken on their way in. There was little enough to distinguish between them; a matched set of thickset men with something of the bulldog in their lineage, thick bellies and thick necks to go with noses broken and red-veined. The clubs they carried looked as though they had grown in those swollen-knuckled fists.
The quartet paused in a clump at the sight of him and a few hearteats passed before one could summon up the wit to ask "Who in Hell are you?" Luc inclined his head fractionally.
