The sun had softened away westward and the last rays of day were setting the horizon to licks of flame along the under-edges of those heavy clouds that had blown in. It was prematurely dark on the trail now. In those places where trees were thicker, the air itself was a blackness, and all that remained visible of the path was a smudge of off-white, languishing in shadow.
Fetch came out from his purse, there being no daylight to annoy him. He was soon leaping and slinking, every part of him feline and vulpine and mink-like all at once. “This way. This way. Tssch.” His voice was a little rustle upon old dead leaves.
“Are you sure?” Caewen stumbled, stubbed a toe through her boot and swore. “Can’t we just camp here?”
Her stopped, turned and looked at her. “Of course not. Far too dangerous. This way.” And he was off again. She followed, grumbling.
He paused. “Best not to make so much noise.”
“I am half-blind in this gloom. How am I supposed to–“
A flaring of blue light lit the air. Everything acquired a horrid, dead sort of pallor. Even the earth and the trees looked suddenly as if there were carved of chalk. And there were soldiers everywhere. The handful who stood nearer-at-hand looked just as surprised as Caewen felt. “Uuuuuh…” she said, mouth open, staring.
Most of the soldiers were human: these had the grey skin, long, pinched features and aquiline noses typical of Sorthemen. They were draped head to toe in chainmail of a dark silvery grey, over-covered in places by a similarly silver-black plate armour. Wherever there was a bit of cuirass, helm or shield showing, it was filigreed with ivy curls of what appeared to be gold that had been tinted crimson by some blacksmith’s art. Behind the men, a mass of boggart-folk lounged around, silver-black furred creatures with eyes the colour of rotting cherries. The men and scarles alike all looked up, blinking. There were also a few low, billowy shapes that Caewen realised were tents. She seemingly had stumbled into an encampment. Everyone stared at her. She stared at them. Clearly, they had not been expecting her.
“Feeetch?” said Caewen. “What have you–?”
One of the nearer men–who seemed to have been standing guard–held the freshly lit torch with a blue flame. His expression slid into a concentrating frown, and he spoke, voice clipped and hard-edged. “It’s a wandering maid, lone in the wilds. We’ve been told to watch out for a lone maid.” He moved the torch to shine a clearer light on her. Presumably he had lit the flame when he noticed her walking into their camp. Sorthemen see well in darkness, but not perfectly.
Another guard added his own observations: “Sword at her side, a blade of fane-steel. A shadow-thing at her beck and call. Here now–where’s that bloody horse-beast, then? It’ll be here too.”
The first man sniffed once. “Don’t smell it. Best to get her in hand, before the horse-demon turns up.”
Several of the nearer men began taking steps in her direction.
Was this a trap? Had fetch betrayed her?
She felt the creature alight gently on her right shoulder, even as the whole camp stirred to movement. The little demon leaned in close to her ear and began whispering strange words, using his tongue to flick little bits of magic into her mind. She responded without even knowing what she was doing. Quietly, Caewen raised her left hand and made a strange gesture with her fingers. Then she spoke seven words, old and strange to her, but full of the whispers of shadows and half-glooms. A power swelled in her chest and broke out, twisting and dancing among the men and boggarts. Some of them started to yell, others fell over, some screamed, some cursed.
“You bitch-daughter!” cried the nearest man “Blood and agers! Where is she?”
“I’m beggared if I know,” said another.
They were waving their arms and weapons, half-stumbling, half-tripping about. Only now could Caewen see that every last one of them had an uncanny film of darkness in their eyes. No matter how much they rubbed at their eyes, or scratched at their faces, the darkness grew only thicker.
“But night-folk can see in the dark,” said Caewen.
“Not through enchanted shadow, such as these little tatters and tatterlings. Tssch.”
There must have been a magician among the troops, because at that moment, Caewen felt another mind pressing against her own. Someone was forming a counterspell and it had a true strength behind it. “What now?”
“What now? What now?” said Fetch. “Run. That way, I suggest. We can’t go back. They’ll expect it, and there’s nowhere to hide, anyways. Tsck.”
There was a relatively clear opening among the men, leading to a way out of the clearing, northwards. It seemed better than standing around and waiting for the spell to fade. Caewen took off, sprinting and dodging the grasping hands of men and snarling, sharp-toothed maws of scarle-creatures. Caewen noticed that several of the scarle were lanky and wiry-limbed, with muzzles almost as long as a wolf’s. “They have tracking-boggarts,” she said, with a new irritation. “Running won’t help us once the spell is gone.”
“It will. Trust me. Tssch. Tsk. Run.”
She had no choice. At as quick a pace as she dared on the rough, benighted ground, she left the clearing and tore up a slope that rose beyond. At the top, several goat-tracks straggled off in different directions. Caewen was about to take one at random, but Fetch stopped her.
“No. Not that way. The middlemost path. That one. Tsch.”
There was no time to argue or be suspicious. The feeling of a charm-breaking spell was now so strong that the air felt as if it were about to rupture. Caewen could not have run more than another dozen paces along the narrow track when she felt the magic burst and split behind her. It was like a boil being lanced. The spell of the shadowy eyes was torn to pieces. Some distance behind her now, voices starting calling to one another with more purpose, but no less venom.
“Where’d she go?”–“Over there?”–“No”–Find her now!”–“We’ll be skinned and rolled in salt if we don’t find her!”