There was a mountain, and then there was no mountain.
It had been called Cloudblade, for the way its sharp summit had once cut through the sky, and it had possessed a long and storied history. It stood at the eastern frontier of the kingdom of Skrae, tallest of the Whitewall Range. Beneath it, in centuries long gone, the dwarves had built a city they called the Place of Long Shadows. Later on, elves—the last of their kind—had moved into that hollow below the world. For eight hundred years they had hidden there, unknown to the humans above.
Then five fools from the west came along and ruined everything.
Cythera climbed up a high pile of rubble, picking her footholds carefully, testing each rock with her hands to make sure it was stable before she put her weight on it. She was sweating by the time she reached the top. There she could see the new valley that lay where Cloudblade once stood. It ran as wide as a road right through the Whitewall, and a constant chill wind coursed over the endless field of stones like a river of air. Over there to the east lay the great steppes where the barbarians ruled. Behind her, to the west, lay Skrae, the country of her birth.
“How many years did Cloudblade stand? When we first saw it, I would have thought it could last forever,” Malden said, coming up behind her.
She turned and saw the thief leaping from one rock to another as nimbly as a goat. She couldn’t help but smile at the ease with which he moved. He was a small man, and skinny as an alley cat, but he had an effortless grace that always made her gasp.
“Cloudblade stood longer than you can imagine,” Cythera said. She was the daughter of a witch and thus privy to some of the secrets of the universe. She knew if she tried to explain to Malden just how long an eon was his eyes would simply glaze over. Which was not to say he was a simpleton. He was bright enough in his own way, if reckless. “Here,” she said, and held out a hand. He took it, holding her fingers as delicately as he might a bundle of flowers. When he had climbed up beside her he kissed her fingertips, one after another.
“Don’t,” she said, though her heart wasn’t in it. She wanted to embrace him, to drag him down behind these rocks and … well. She had to be careful now, at least for a while. She took her hand back and turned to face the west. Down there below the foothills of the Whitewall she could still see the column of elves as they made their way toward a distant forest. They were on foot but they moved quickly, desperate to reach any shelter from the blue sky. They found the broad stretch of the heavens terrifying, for none of them had ever seen it before. “Do you think they’ll make it?” she asked. The forest they headed for was only the first stop on a long journey.
“Their ancestors ruled this land before we came along and took it from them,” Malden pointed out. “They’re tougher than they look. And they have Slag to guide them.”
Cythera nodded. She’d been sad to see the dwarf go, but the elfin queen wouldn’t have followed anyone else.
“Croy will ride ahead of them for a while, to make sure they aren’t spotted,” Malden added. If any human authorities saw there were elves abroad in the kingdom again it could only end in bloodshed. There was a reason the elves had hidden so long under Cloudblade. “He told me he won’t be back until tomorrow dawn.” Malden’s eyebrows lifted in what he must have thought was a suggestive leer. “It’s just the two of us left here now. I’m supposed to look after you while he’s away.”
He moved closer and reached out one hand to touch the small of her back.
For the second time she shied away, despite what she might have preferred. “We need to talk,” she said. “I’m still betrothed to Croy.” That had been the whole point of this adventure. The whole reason she’d left the Free City of Ness. Croy—Sir Croy—had made her promise to marry him. She’d demurred and evaded him as long as she could, but eventually the appointed day had come. At the last minute she had decided she needed to see some of the world first, before he took her to his castle and she had to spend the rest of her life birthing his heirs. She hadn’t expected Malden to come along—frankly, he’d been a temptation she was trying to escape. Life, it seemed, could never be simple. “I made a promise to him—a legally binding promise.”
The expression on his face shifted through a complicated series of emotions. Everything from hope to fear to deep confusion. But then his eyes narrowed and he nodded sagely. “I see.”
“You do?”
Malden dropped his hand to his side. “Down below the mountain, when you thought I was going to die—when we thought we were all going to die—you told me you loved me. Sometimes people in dangerous situations will say things that they wouldn’t, otherwise.”
“You think me so inconstant?” she asked, hurt despite her better judgment.
“I’m trying to be noble,” he told her, in that frank way he sometimes had. Another endearing quality—a man who could speak honestly to a woman was as rare, in Cythera’s experience, as a hen with teeth. “I’m trying to give you an opportunity to change your mind.”
She smiled at him. His love for her came without conditions. He would never want to take away her freedom. It was why she had come to love him back. “Croy won’t be back before dawn, you said.” She looked up and saw the sun was still well above the horizon. “We have all that time?”
Later, in the dark of a night with no moon, he kissed the sweat from her cooling body, while she simply tried to get her breath back. She knew she was playing a dangerous game but she couldn’t help herself. “Do you still think I want to change my mind?”
“You frightened me with all that talk of betrothals,” he said.
“As I meant to.”
He drew back a little. In the dark she couldn’t read his face. “Tell me you’ll break your promise to him. Tell me you love me. Please.”
“I do,” she said, and there was no part of her that disagreed. “And I will. But you know it can’t be so easy. From the moment I tell Croy about us he’ll be determined to kill you.”
“You think I’m afraid of him?”
“I think you should be.” Croy had trained all his life in the military arts. He would be one of the most dangerous men in the world if he wasn’t bound by an iron code of honor. Which in itself was the problem. “He won’t want to do it. He thinks of you as his best friend. Honor will require it, though. And you know how he is about anything that touches his honor.”
“Let him try me! I can’t stand the idea of you marrying him. Not anymore,” Malden protested.
“I’ll tell him everything. I’ll renounce the betrothal and beg his forgiveness,” Cythera said, rearing up to kiss his cheeks and chin. “I swear it. But Malden—I’ll only do it when we’re back in Ness. And when I’m sure you have a generous head start.”
CHAPTER THREE
At dawn—as promised—Croy returned, looking a little tousled after riding in the woods all night. He was all blond hair and muscles and stupid grins but Malden did his best not to hate the man. After all, Croy had already lost the game for Cythera’s heart—he just didn’t know it yet.
The three of them returned to the abandoned hill fort where they’d left their horses and their prisoner. Balint the dwarf looked angry enough to spit blood, but they’d kept her bound and gagged so she couldn’t get into mischief. They threw her over the back of Croy’s saddle and headed out, toward Helstrow. Balint was the last errand they had to run before they could finally head back to Ness.
Riding west toward the king’s fortress proved far less tedious than the voyage east had been. Back then they’d had to ford the river Strow at one of its wilder bends but now they could approach the fortress directly. The sun had not even reached its apex by the time they saw Helstrow’s towers rising above the rolling hills.
Malden was thrilled by the prospect of returning to civilization, but just outside the gates Croy called a stop. The riders stood their horses in the road so they could watch a field full of archers lift bows all at once and take aim.
Bowstrings twanged and a hundred arrows lifted into the sky, the thin shafts spinning and tumbling, some clattering together in mid-air. Others flew true and arced downward to slam into a pile of rusted armor on the far edge of the field. Their wicked points cut through the old iron as easily as through parchment and lodged in the earth below.
Watching from a safe distance atop his horse, Malden jerked back in surprise.
“What are they doing?” he asked.
“Practicing, I think,” Sir Croy replied, bringing his rounsey up level with Malden’s jennet. “There was a time when every male peasant in the kingdom was expected to know how to draw a bow and hit a target at one hundred yards. The law required them to practice for an hour every day, to keep their arms strong and their eyes true.”
The line of peasants—villein farmers, Malden judged, by their russet tunics and the close-fitting cowls they wore—each nocked another arrow and drew back on their strings. A serjeant in leather jack and a kettle helmet shouted an order, and once more the bowmen let fly.
Most of the arrows landed well short of the target. One, knocked off course in mid-air, came directly for Malden. He flinched, but its momentum was already spent and it landed twenty yards from his horse’s feet. The jennet didn’t even look up.
Cythera shielded her eyes with one hand and looked at the pile of armor. Only a handful of arrows had reached the target. “They’re … not very good.”
Croy shrugged. “The law requiring them to practice every day was repealed a long time ago. Before these men were born, in fact. Most of them have probably never seen a bow before. And no archer hits the mark on his first try.”
“Why did they stop the practice?” Cythera asked.
“No reason to keep it up. In the early days, Skrae was always at war with one enemy or another—first the elves, then with upstarts who would seize the crown. Skrae always prevailed. The Northern Kingdoms were beaten into submission, turned against each other until now they only fight amongst themselves. The barbarians were forced back across the mountains, sealed behind the two mountain passes. Now there are no enemies left to fight. Skrae hasn’t gone to war in a hundred years. There’s been no more than a border skirmish in the last ten,” Croy explained. “The king’s grandfather saw no need to keep a cadre of trained bowmen around. The peasantry were better used by spending that extra hour a day in the fields, feeding a growing populace.”
Malden frowned. All that was probably true, but he could guess another reason. He’d seen what the longbows did to the armor when they actually struck home. No knight in shiny coat of plate would ever really be safe with such weapons arrayed against him, not if the aim of the archer was skillful. He imagined the king had been more afraid of an insurrection of highly trained peasants than a foreign invader.
So why was the practice being resumed? This wasn’t some bit of makework to keep idle peasants from getting into trouble—the training was in deadly earnest. When they’d shot a dozen arrows each, the hundred men standing on the field were replaced by a fresh hundred, with more waiting to take their turn. Clearly every villein in the environs of Helstrow was to be given a chance to learn this skill.
Something was up.
As the three riders headed up the perfectly straight road toward the fortress of the king, they passed through the village where the prospective bowmen had their houses. The three on horseback drew more than the usual stares. Women leaned out of the doors of their cottages, distaffs and kitchen knives still in their hands, to get a good look at the riders. A reeve carrying the white wooden baton of his station leaned on the signpost of a tavern and watched them with wide eyes. Children dashed out of the street as they approached.
These people were afraid, Malden saw. Afraid someone was going to come along at any moment and take away the pittance they had, the tiny scrap of safety and wealth they’d managed to accumulate. Even the village blacksmith closed the shutters of his shop as they drew near, though the heat inside his forge made the autumn air shimmer.
What had them so scared?
Of course, they might just have been surprised to see Balint roped and secured atop Croy’s palfrey. It wasn’t every day you saw a dwarf trussed up like a bird in a roasting pan.
