The Forest at the Edge of the World (49 page)

Six more.

They could be anywhere, within miles of his position. The longer he walked the more helpless he felt. They were gone, maybe even snuck past Neeks and Karna and the ninety soldiers patrolling between here and his home. All it would take was one determined, fierce man.

Mahrree better have put those iron bars back up in the windows. He’d have some angry words with Hycymum in the morning if—

Sure.

If a Guarder made it through, and the window and door rei
nforcements weren’t in place, and his family were dead, yelling at his mother-in-law would be the first thing he’d do.

He shook that off, along with the thought that he should have run home and checked the windows and doors himself. All he could do now was watch, listen, pray, and hope that—

He blinked, and blinked again.

Two more men in black, running parallel to h
is position, were about to skirt the trees below him. He didn’t wait for the moment, but released the arrow. A shout of agony told him he hit his target, but only wounded him.

“Go, go!” shouted the downed man, and Perrin quickly grabbed another arrow.

He let that one fly blindly, and it sailed without striking anything. Scanning the area for the unseen companion, he snagged another arrow out of his quiver.

A sound behind him spun him around. It was the other man in black running erratically, as if unsure whether to pursue his partner’s attacker or head towards the village. Perrin ended his wondering with an arrow to his belly. A second arrow quickly followed to put him out of his misery.

“Eight!” Perrin whispered in momentary triumph, then looked back up to the man he had injured. Seeing no more movement, he jogged over to the site and noticed the man was obviously dead. Perrin stepped closer and saw where the arrow penetrated his body. Oddly, it was protruding out of his thigh—not a life-threatening hit.

Baffled, Perrin pushed over the man with his boot. When he saw his chest, he jumped back.

The man in black was lying in a fresh pool of blood, stemming from a chest wound.

He’d been stabbed.

-
--

Grandpy Neeks was right on top of the black shadow as he bolted from the forest. Quite
literally
on top of him. His horse had been acting skittish, and when the two figures in black broke in a dead run from the trees, Grandpy’s mare reared and threw the master sergeant right on to the Guarder, sending them both sprawling into the snowy field.

Neeks acted as quickly as the startled Guarder. He had his long knife out from his boot slightly faster than the Guarder pulled his jagged dagger. Although Grandpy earned a nicked cheek and a gash in his arm, half a minute later the man in black was bleeding from an incurable throat injury.

Tracking down his partner took a bit longer.

Not that the soldiers were unprepared—six of them converged on his position, riding horses that had grown stiff with the cold. But the Guarder was shifty and elusive, darting and dodging then diving under a horse and through the line of six in a remarkable escape a
ttempt.

That’s why there was another line of eight soldiers waiting in the shadows of the fort wall. The foot chase would have been com
ical in any other circumstance, Neeks considered later, but as he held his bleeding arm shouting instructions at the soldiers that slipped left and right trying to catch the infiltrator, there was nothing amusing about their attempts.

But in the end they succeeded, three soldiers piling on top of the Guarder when he slid on a patch of ice, and each one of the corporals plunging their long knives into him.

It wasn’t until Neeks got the word that the Guarder was dead that he finally sat down in the snow and allowed a surgeon’s assistant to wrap his arm with a bandage.

“We’ve got three so far tonight, Captain,” he cringed as the dressing was wrapped tightly to staunch the bleeding. “How many do you have?”

-
--

How did he get stabbed? Perrin wondered as he jogged towards the east again. That’s where they came from, which means they must have gone
past
him, but were now coming back. But why? Why not just head to the village?

Perrin wished he’d looked around the ground for an explanation for the chest wound. Perhaps the Guarder had his dagger drawn and fell on it. Maybe there was a sharp tree branch that he was impaled upon. Maybe—

But Perrin hadn’t seen any evidence, in the short shocked moments he stared in disbelief, of a weapon or bloodied branch. The snow underneath the man was wide and unbroken by anything except the pool of blood.

Someone had stabbed the Guarder.

Was it his companion, knowing he wouldn’t be able to escape? Perrin couldn’t remember seeing anything near the dead man, but perhaps his companion was sneaky.

Or maybe it was something—or
someone
—else
.

---

“He doesn’t know how many are left,” one of the men in mottled white and gray whispered to his three companions as they jogged a safe distance behind the large man in white.

“He’s not quitting, not yet.”

“But someone
has
to get to—”

“Don’t worry, they are.”

“I just hope we brought enough,” another man whispered.

“Don’t worry,” one of the men repeated. “
We
know how to count to fourteen. That’s all that matters.”

---

Four more, Perrin thought to himself. Four more. Maybe a pair or two had made it out beyond the forest, or all of them were already accounted for, and he was wasting his time.

That’s why he was making his way to the edge, hoping to find good news. And the other quiver full of arrows he had Karna hide
for him in a cavity of rock right inside the trees. He reached it in about five minutes, traded his empty quiver—most of the arrows had fallen out when he was wrestling the Guarder—and reminded himself that he still had four long knives. More than enough for four men.

At the border of the forest he whistled again, a short-four pa
ttern. A moment later a sergeant came riding up to him, his eyes wide in surprise.

“You didn’t see me like this,” Captain Shin told him.

The sergeant nodded that he understood, then shook his head.

“Report!”

“We have three Guarders, sir. One that Karna brought down, another that wrestled with Neeks until he killed him—”

“Who killed who?!” Perrin demanded.

“Neeks killed the Guarder,” the sergeant clarified, still staring at the captain in white with red splatters on his rabbit fur that for some odd reason reminded the sergeant of butterflies. “He was injured, but will be fine. Caught the third man just outside the fort. He’s dead, sir.”

Perrin sighed. Two more, still out there. “Report to Karna. Tell him there are still two more, but I don’t know where.
Two more!
”

“Sir, how do you know there are two—”

But the captain had already vanished back into the trees.

---

“Are you sure he said two more?” Karna asked the sergeant.

“Positive, sir. Captain Shin was very specific.”

“Remember, sergeant: you didn’t see him.”

“But sir, I did! I saw—”

Lieutenant Karna’s groan told the sergeant that he couldn’t believe his eyes on a night like this.

“Ah. Sorry, sir. I already told the captain—that I
didn’t
see—that I did not see him.”

“That’s right,” Karna nodded. He looked up at the forest and rubbed his gloved hands together. “Two more. They could be an
ywhere. But at least we know where they’re headed.”

“There are ten around the house, sir. Do we need more?”

Karna shook his head. “We don’t need Mrs. Shin waking up and seeing her home surrounded. Ten will be noisy enough. The more men we keep here, the fewer the chances they’ll get near the village.
Two
more . . .”

---

In his heart Perrin was praying for guidance, but it felt wrong.

First, he wasn’t on his knees with his head bowed—he was walking with his bow strung and his arrow searching for a new ta
rget.

Second, he struggled with the wording. Initially he prayed to find the last two men to
kill
, but those seemed to be entirely the wrong words to utter in a prayer.

Then he tried asking for guidance to
stop
the men, but the Creator certainly knew what Perrin meant by “stop.”

He felt as if he travelled with a cloud following him, the horr
ible realization that so far ten men had died that night, seven by his hand. At some point the cloud would descend upon him, and he feared with what paralyzing power it might overtake him. He had to be successful before then. If there was any other way he could find and flush out the last two men without having to kill them, then maybe he could go home with a less heavy heart.

She could never know about tonight. He’d have to go home with a smile on his face and tell her cheerfully that the night training was over and she had back her husband. But he suspected he wasn’t that good an actor.

As he crept through the forest he felt a presence as if another cloud, larger and lighter, was coming to absorb the one that hung heavily over him. It was as if this cloud could cleanse his horror, allowing him to do what no one else in the village—or even the world—would dare to do.

In some way he felt his actions that night were good, even
sanctioned,
because he was preserving the innocent. It wasn’t his choice to be out there taking lives; he was forced into it by others who were out to destroy his family. He was expected—required—to do this. And while the deaths tonight would remain in his memory forever, their heaviness would be nothing compared to the oppressive weight that the death of his wife, daughter, and unborn child would have caused.

He didn’t choose his steps, but let his boots go in whatever d
irection they led him, in a northeasterly direction, past the fort to the south, and towards some end.

---

Hogal couldn’t sleep because of the cold steel next to his hip, he decided about three hours after he had lay down on the small sofa made up into a bed for him by Mahrree. Exactly
how
did Perrin walk around all day with something this cold, sharp, and threatening against his hip?

Hogal shifted the long knife frequently, trying to find a more comfortable position.

For a time he tried lying on his back with the long knife in his fist resting on his chest, but he couldn’t decide which way the tip should be pointing.

Up towards his face seemed most ominous, especially if he should fall asleep, awake with a sneeze, and forget what was clenched his hands.

Pointing it downwards also seemed quite dangerous, for reasons his mind chose not to entertain for long.

Facing it towards the sofa felt rude—what if he accidentally cut the cloth?

And lying with the tip towards the door, and ready for anyone who may somehow barge through it, was simply too violent for the rector to consider.

Eventually he sat up, turning the knife over and over in his hands, wondering if this one had ever been used.

It was happening tonight, the 56
th
Day of Raining Season. That impression had come to him forcefully that evening, and just one look told his wife what he’d be doing that night and why. She answered nothing, but retrieved his coat and gave him her scarf, along with a kiss.

Exactly what was he doing at the Shin home? What could he accomplish that one hundred soldiers and his brawny nephew couldn’t? He put the bars up on the windows and secured the doors. Maybe that was enough. Maybe he wasn’t there so much for Mahrree as he was for himself, to know that she and the next gener
ation would survive the night.

Hogal eventually got up from the sofa and walked quietly to one of the front windows. He peered out the thick wavy glass hoping to see something, and hoping
not
to as well. After a few moments of his breath fogging up the glass, he noticed a dark smudge moving stealthily across the road.

He wiped the wavy glass and firmed his grip on the long knife.

The smudge paused in front of the house, looked towards it, and continued on again. Hogal noticed a glint of dim moons’ light coming from the smudge’s side. A sword. It was a soldier, patrolling the road. Another joined him, coming from a different direction.

Hogal exhaled so heavily that the entire window was nearly e
ncased in his breath. The house was being watched, by men younger than him and with much larger pieces of sharpened metal.