The Prince's Thief

18. Branches

It had been three months since I parted ways with my former comrades, and longer still since I had seen Damian. Under King Isdemus of Calber, and an alliance recently struck with King Alveron of the neighbouring kingdom of Sunder, a renewed vengeance on those with magic had reignited a terrible, bloody hunt, and in the wake of the King's bloodlust, many innocent and unknowing friends were punished. I couldn't have lived with myself if Damian or Ashen had come to harm because of me, and so I had been living alone in the woods for some time now.

With each passing day, I grew angrier, colder, and less human. My half-existence largely took place somewhere near the border between the two allied Kings lands, and as a result, I frequently encountered patrols from both Kingdoms, but there were only so many good places to make home in the woods. I had a small cave near a waterfall, that kept the wind and rain from my back, and gave me a place to drink and bathe, with enough firewood to be found, and game to catch. I was wandering down to the waterfall to bathe when I saw a flash of yellow amidst the trees, and sighed.

"I can see you, behind those trees. It's hard to miss the yellow uniforms of Sunder's soldiers," I called out, my tone bored.

"By order of the King, you will surrender yourself and be brought to Sunder for questioning, for the suspicion of witchcraft and sorcery!" A middle aged soldier who seemed determined to keep a stern face shouted.

"Sorcery and witchcraft? Nonsense," I replied, "I was only stopping to bathe on my way to my friends home, she's just had a baby."

The soldiers stood still, their expressions unchanging. I could tell the soldiers didn't believe me, and why should they? After all, I was a young woman living alone in the woods. If that didn't strike the thick-headed soldiers as obscure, well, they were even less intelligent than they seemed. Two soldiers rushed towards me to attempt to apprehend me, and I sighed before allowing the familiar tingle to fill my eyes, as I'm sure they flashed, and the two soldiers were thrown a great distance through the air. The third soldier shot an arrow at me, which I ducked, and returned a dagger into his chest, knowing I had another strapped to my other leg if needed. He fell to the ground with a great thud, and the conscious of the two thrown soldiers coughed as he sat up.

"You're of the devil," He hissed, and I walked over to him slowly, throwing back my head in laughter, twiddling the second small dagger in my hand.

"Oh, no, I wasn't really. I was a just young girl, and loyal to my King, to my Prince, to Calber, and to its people. It was you, and your kind, who made me this way...and oh, how you will regret that..."

His eyes widened in fear, and a few seconds later, the life left his body with a horrible gurgling sound, blood spilling from his throat. It was a curious thing, one I had never really cared to watch before. I hadn't needed to kill him having already disarmed him, I suppose, but then I felt he deserved it. After all, I and everyone like me were being hunted like mange-ridden vermin...wasn't it right he die like the pig he had shown himself to be? I did leave the unconscious soldier alone, he could do me no harm in his state, and besides, any story he told his King could be no worse than those the King had surely made up himself. The death of his companions was satisfactory enough, for now.

I was too close to my cave when the patrol had come across me, so I gathered the things worth taking that I could carry, which wasn't much really-a sword, a bow and quiver of handmade arrows, a small leather pouch with various herbs, a water skin, and a few odd bits of furs and cloths, and a few trinkets, all rolled into a pack.

I wandered the woods for a good while, and eventually found myself no longer in the thick of the wood, but in a small clearing just before the base of a large cliff. I followed the cliff wall up with my gaze, and then back down to the center of the clearing, where neatly tucked against the base of the cliff, stood the shambles of an old stone building of some sort. It might once have been a farmhouse, though it was somehow too grand for that, and yet too plain to have been anything more. Curiously enough, a well had been dug in the center of the main room. While it was not a particularly inconspicuous house, it was well located and could only really be approached from the front. It would do for a few days, at least. I was too tired to search any further.

As soon as I had lit a small fire, I laid in front of it, and fell into a deep sleep. In fact, I was so thoroughly asleep, that I did not even notice the sound of footsteps drawing near.

Sleep is a strange thing, you see. You spend a lot of your time doing it, and even a good deal of time thinking about doing it, but you are not aware of it happening and when you wake from it, its as though you blinked and were suddenly missing a fair chunk of time from your memory. Depending on who you are as a person, and how deeply you sleep, you might wake to the lightest sound or movement, or sleep through the earth quaking and quivering below you, and even through the sounds of a battle raging on. Normally, I sleep on the lighter side. I wouldn't be woken by very small things, but nor would I have slept through the sound of approaching footsteps. Unfortunately, I seemed to have pushed myself well past a reasonable state of sleep deprivation, a side effect of which was evidently a deeper slumber than I had anticipated, and I did not wake until I was made uncomfortable by the weight of a boot-wearing foot pressing down upon my throat.