**Part II**

  Gideon stood just as dumbstruck as before.

  “M’lady, is anything the matter?” he repeated.

  Lenora opened her eyes and relaxed her stance when she saw Gideon’s arms at his sides, his muscles slack. She took a step back and watched Gideon’s feet. He did not try to close the distance.

  Following her gaze Gideon looked down at his hand and his eyes widened when he saw the weighted strap.

  “Where’d this come from?”

  He looked around like a man who’d been woken suddenly from a deep sleep. Seeing the witch, still kneeling by Vesper’s body he took a few steps forward then a few back moving like a drunkard and mouthing half-words without making a sound.

  “Gideon?”

  Lenora reached for her dagger now and walked towards the witch, keeping an eye on Gideon in case whatever spell she’d cast set him into motion again. Pain was starting to radiate across her back from where she’d been hit.

  “Give me the book”

  The witch looked up at her, dark rings under her eyes and paler somehow. Her eyes were glassy and unfocused, as if she was looking right through Lenora.

  “Give me the book,” She stepped closer and pressed the point to the witch’s neck.

  Lenora watched the blade tremble in her hand and suddenly felt how quickly she was breathing. Crow stood up, letting the dagger dig into her skin and release a rivulet of blood. Though the air in the keep was stale and still, her black hair fluttered. She mouthed some word silently. Lenora slapped her hard with her free hand and stepped backwards ready to parry a blow. But Crow only blinked twice went weak kneed and stumbled, Lenora caught her by the collar before she hit the floor.

  “Is she hurt?” Gideon asked, having finally regained some composure.

  “No...I’m not sure,” Lenora answered, setting Crow down gently and picking up the book. She knelt for a moment, catching her breath and fighting back the waves of pain.

  “You’re hurt?” Gideon said, noticing her struggle to get up.

  He took a few steps forward, the strap still in his hand. Lenora narrowed her eyes and took a fighter’s stance. Gideon dropped the strap at once and backed away with his palms outwards.

  “You’ll hang for this, Gideon. A traitor in my father’s home,” Lenora spat at Gideon’s feet. “How much did the old spy pay you?”

  Gideon’s expression changed, Lenora saw him struggle to find words as his mouth moved and stopped, trying to say three things at once. He dropped to his knees and hung his head.

  “M’lady, strike me down if I’ve been a traitor. I’ve lived my life a loyal servant and I’d rather die here and by your hand if only you’d spare me the shame of a traitor’s death. I ask only to be granted the same mercy as all condemned. May I know the nature of my crimes?”

  Gideon raised his head and looked into Lenora’s eyes. She saw he meant the words and it softened her grip on the dagger. She sheathed the blade.

  “You almost killed me, Gideon.”

  “Is this a test? A sort of joke?” he said, getting to his feet.

  “You’d been witched, she made you do it.” Lenora tapped the witch’s body with her boot.

  Gideon went pale as a ghost.

  “Is that the witch? We’ve got to tell the Lord! Where’s the blindseer?”

  “Gideon! He’s dead. Don’t you remember?”

  “Dead?”

  “Look outside.”

  Gideon threw open the doors and flooded the foyer with light. He took a step back as though the cold winter air had pushed him.

  “The old fool’s been set on fire and trampled! Who’s work is this?”

  “You really don’t remember?”

  “Last thing I remember was getting off my horse.”

  Lenora looked at the witch and then back to Gideon.

  “You don’t remember talking to the blindseer?”

  “Talking to that old man? I don’t think he’s spoken a word to me once.”

  “I think it’s best we leave.”

  ***

  Three horses clattered single file through the forest in the dying light, it was snowing again. Big soft flakes landed gently on their coats and the gear they’d strapped hastily to the animals. The rope work was shoddy but held fast, even when the animals stopped and shook the snow free of their manes. The path was clear before them, a ribbon of pure white snow that snaked gently between trees blackened by frost. Lenora stopped by a milestone and read the inscription before looking up at the sky. The sun was dim and orange, half gone beneath the horizon. She motioned to Gideon with her left hand, and he rode up beside her leading the witch’s horse by the bridle.

  “We can make it as far as the bridge by nightfall if we double our pace, we’ve covered less ground than I hoped,” she said and looked to Gideon, who sat stone faced and silent. He’d said little since they left, his usual cheeriness was gone and it worried Lenora.

  “But that leaves us making camp in the badlands at night, and we’re nowhere near far enough to build an open fire without being seen,” she continued, but this too was met with nothing more than a nod from Gideon.

  “So then we’ll ride through the night.” Lenora said, hoping Gideon would have a better plan.

  The badlands were treacherous even in the summer, endless miles of grassy nothing with no paved paths or even markers. She’d only ever been out there with her brother, and she’d never quite learned the stars the same way he had done. Lenora grabbed her reins and was about to spur the horse onward when Crow spoke up.

  “There’s a wild house not far from here.”

  Lenora looked at the witch, almost formless under a thick fur coat with her face hidden under a big hood. Lenora circled around Gideon and brought her horse right next to the witch’s. She reached out and tossed Crow’s hood back, sending a flurry of snow to the ground.

  “What was that, witch?” She asked, anger creeping into her voice though she had not planned it.

  “My name’s Crow, please,” the girl said fumbling for her hood. Lenora slapped her hand away.

  “I’m sorry,” Crow said, and Lenora saw that she was shivering even under the big coat.

  “I want to see your eyes when you speak,” Lenora said, studying her face.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  Crows eyes were changed now, fearful and alive, darting furtively between herself and Gideon. Not like at the keep, after Lenora had taken the book. Though the witch obeyed whatever she had said and put up no fight, her eyes had been keen, cunning like a hungry dog’s, no trace of human depth behind them.

  “There’s a wild house nearby, we can spend the night,” Crow said quietly.

  “A wild house?” Lenora asked.

  “A hut, a tiny cabin in the woods. A place to overnight if you’ve spent too long on a trap line and can’t make proper camp.”

  “And you can find your way there in the dark?”

  Crow nodded and let herself down from the saddle slowly and without a rider’s practised grace, her boots catching in the stirrups.

  “The world looks strange from so high, I’m not used to it. It’s best we go on foot,” she said, pulling the hood back over her head and taking her horse by the bridle. She knew the path well, having met the trapper there many times before.

  Lenora and Gideon followed the witch off the path and into the forest, though they kept atop their horses in case she tried to run. Lenora was thankful for this as walking made the pain in her ribs almost unbearable. They watched Crow cut a trail through the woods, she walked confidently and never doubled back or faltered, stopping sometimes to watch the trees though they all seemed identical to Lenora. Gideon rode up beside her and cleared his throat.

  “If I were to apologize for a thousand years it still wouldn’t be enough,” he said. Lenora saw tears well up in his eyes.

  “It wasn’t your fault, Gideon. I don’t think any of us suspected the old spy to be anything more sinister than a cursed snake and a liar.”

  “Still, to think I’d have killed you!” his voice was breaking up. “What others things have I done!”

  “Gideon, enough! What good is talk like that? He made you do them! Is a hammer at fault for driving nails? Or does one blame the carpenter’s hand? If there was any justice he’d have been burned at the stake before setting foot in the keep. I won’t hear any more of this.”

  “What I am concerned about is the witch,” she said, lowering her voice until the sound of hooves on snow almost drowned it out. Gideon leaned in closer. “By what rights should we trust her? She’s trying to lose us in the forest, I’m certain.”

  “That poor girl doesn’t have a cruel or devious bone in her body. Whatever strangeness you’ve seen comes from that book, it was her grandmother’s you know,” he said, glancing at a saddlebag on Lenora’s horse.

  “Her mother was a witch?” Lenora asked. Gideon shook his head.

  “Her grand mother. Her mother gave up the craft entirely. It wasn’t really witching, either, come to think of it. More like an apo...apoth,” he struggled with the word.

  “Apothecary? She sold medicines?”

  “That’s the word! Sold medicines, milled grain too. Never twisted a poor man’s arm for gold, neither. Rubbed the old Lord the wrong way, that. Can’t collect taxes if you just give your wares away.”

  “Is that why they burnt the mill then?” Lenora asked, she shifted slightly in her saddle as riding so long had made each breath painful.

  “Taxes? Heavens no. Come to think of it, that awful business with the mill would have been around the same time the blindseer set up shop in your father’s house proper. Started off as an ostler, lived in the attic above the stables. Had a big mouth but no one thought anything of it. He seemed to know an awful lot, but rumours have their way of making rounds and everyone went through the stables, I suppose. Caught your father’s ear quite fiercely, though. Then the old Lord, your grandfather got sick.”

  Crow stopped and looked back towards them before moving on.

  “I think she hears us,” Lenora said.

  “Unless her hearing’s keen as a beast’s, I reckon she’s too far. We’re downwind, too...”

  “But it was no regular sickness,” Gideon continued, “It came on quick, the Lord was wasting away before our eyes. No cough or tremors, just weaker each day than the last.

  “I remember, I think, though I was too young to understand,” Lenora said.

  “Rumours started, with the blindseer at their center. It was witch magic. Now, at that time the old witch was no stranger at the keep, always came with balm or salve or tincture when someone was ill or hurt. When your mother was pregnant, the first time, a plague had come through. The old crone saved half the keep, myself included, not to mention the village.”

  “What did the Order have to say about all this?”

  “The Order Benedictus, which graced us with our very own Father?” Gideon said incredulously. “Man wouldn’t hurt a fly. Some people just don’t have the heart for their chosen profession and haven’t the sense to admit it. Even to themselves. He let things fester until they came to a head, didn’t speak a word to the Order.”

  The trees grew thicker and forced their horses apart. Lenora closed the distance to the witch and followed her closely until the trees thinned again before rejoining Gideon.

  “But I suppose magic is magic,” Gideon continued, “and memory tends to be short. No amount of good will can stop a vicious rumour, especially one that gets the heart racing when told at the fireside in the dead of night. The blindseer insisted that the old Lord had been poisoned, cursed by witch magic. Worked the town, and your father, into a frenzy.”

  “I thought the Order could test for such things? Find out if it was actually witch magic or poison or both,” Lenora said. She tried shifting more weight to her stirrups, almost lifting herself off the saddle and it made the pain recede, a little. She hoped Gideon didn’t see.

  “They could, certainly,” Gideon said with more than a hint of sarcasm. “But Father, having his workload lightened by the old witch for so many years had done little more than tend his garden and brew beer. He didn’t poke his nose into the Lord’s affairs unless pressed, and seldom anyone came by to his cabin. By the time he learned it was too late.

  By that time the Lord was on his deathbed, I remember how quickly the life had drained out of him after the rumors had started. I’m sure now the blindseer had some hand in it. The whole town was on edge, and when the bell tolled at the Lord’s death it was like a call to arms. It was a lynch mob is what it was, the entire town descended on that old woman’s house with torches and axes and clubs. Led by your father and the blindseer, which I’m sure now is no coincidence. The old priest got there just in time, rode his fat pony between the mill and the mob.”

  “I’m surprised they didn’t kill him too,” Lenora said.

  “They wanted to, I’m sure of it. But killing one of the Order Benedictus was a crime too grave for even a Lord to commit. Thankfully father has a way with words, and I believe he would have talked the townsfolk down if not for the blindseer. That snake at the Lord’s ear had a rebutal to every one of the Father’s arguments, each time the old priest would calm the crowd the Lord would rile them up again twice as hard. So the priest was forced to cut a deal, one that even the blindseer couldn’t argue with. In a way, I suppose, the old man was finally compelled to do his job on penalty of death.”

  “So they killed the witch?”

  “Burnt her right inside the mill. Didn’t have to bar the doors or windows or beat her back into the flames either, not after they’d agreed to spare the life of her children and grandchildren. But that too came with a caveat, the blindseer had to have the final word. They were never to set foot in town again. The girl’s mother, hardly more than a girl herself then, recanted right there, wept into Father’s frock and swore she’d forget everything she knew.”

  The witch led them further into the forest and they followed in silence. Gideon had packed a pipe and Lenora was thinking over what she’d just heard. The snow had stopped and the clouds had cleared, but the wind had picked up. Branches swayed and cracked around them, casting long sinister shadows across the snow in the moonlight.

  “Gideon, it’s not that I don’t believe your story,” Lenora said after some time. “You know I wouldn’t lie to you. I just cannot see how this means we can trust this witch. She tried to poison the town and started a fire when they caught her.”

  “Did you see it with your own eyes? Or did you hear it from someone?”

  “Gideon! The fire was real.”

  “Fires follow piss-ups, story as old as time. Not the first time a drunkard upturned a lantern and won’t be the last. As for the poison, have you ever noticed your furs never have marks from mending? Nowhere a trap or arrow may have torn the hide? That was one of her grandmother’s tricks.”

  Lenora thought this over and nodded.

  “Gideon, were you there, at the mill?”

  Gideon stopped his horse abruptly and pointed ahead.

  Crow stood in a small clearing, in the center was a mound of snow almost invisible from more than a few yards away so much did it blend in with the trees. If not for Crow they would have passed it without knowing. Crow brushed some of the snow off, revealing green pine underneath. She reached in and lifted out a crude sort of door, pine branches woven on a round frame of sapling cherrywood. Inside the hut was framed the same way and walled with thick layers of pine. The shelter was just big enough for all of them to lay around the stone firepit at its center.

  Gideon dismounted and led his horse over towards the witch. Lenora waited until his back was turned before she got out of the saddle, slowly and carefully, stopping to catch her breath when the pain got too great.

  She handed her horse to Gideon who saw to them without another word. She built a fire and helped Gideon water each horse with warm water, so that they did not eat snow. The witch followed them wordlessly, and helped only if they asked though they never told her to go far. They ate quickly and in silence, spent from a day’s riding before laying down to sleep.

  But Lenora found she could not rest with the throbbing pain that followed each breath in and out. She spent a restless night, waking constantly from shallow broken sleep and shifting her weight in a vain attempt to numb the pain.

  Sometime before sunrise she heard Gideon wake and she sat up, pretending that he’d woken her but he was unconvinced.

  “You haven’t slept a wink. Your ribs are cracked at best, though I suppose they’re broken. I’d bet my horse on it.”

  “I’m fine, Gideon.”

  “We’ve hardly had a day’s ride and you’ve gotten no rest. We’ve three hard days of riding yet, if things go well, and you’re in no shape for it, m’lady.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “I bet you there’s some cure in that book of yours,” Gideon said, looking towards Crow.

  Crow thought of the blank pages they’d find and said nothing.

  “We are not looking in that cursed book,” Lenora said.

  “M’lady, crossing the badlands is no small task even for those who set off with a guide.”

  “We’ve got a map, Gideon. We’re are not looking in that book and that’s final, Gideon. Saddle the horses.”

  Gideon got up, opened the door and bowed curtly before closing it behind him.