Chapter Three

Janice had no patience for dreaming at the moment. Or sleep of any kind. She rode through the night, keeping a medium pace so as not to tire the horse. She still had a full day’s journey to her father’s house and didn’t need a collapsed ride due to exhaustion.

She gently patted the horse’s neck and whispered a brief word of encouragement into its ear. She hoped the constant travel would prove a distraction. To lift her mind from such thoughts as to what she’d lost. And whether her current path was truly the right one.

It was true, her and her father’s relationship had been strained of late. He’d been distant. Detached from the trappings of family life. And if his devotion was not present, his wife ensured she spoke for him and made Janice unwelcome at the manor. Icy stares, dismissive words, all the tools at a passive aggressive villain’s disposal.

Janice had no doubt that life with her father would subject her to the full wrath of what an evil stepmother could unleash. But she’d not given her actions much thought before riding out in his direction. She didn’t have the time.

Indeed, even if she wished to change direction and head out for eleswhere, her sister’s home perhaps, where a far more warm receiving was no doubt awaiting her, she had already lost too much time traveling in the wrong direction.

All she wanted was to see her father, collapse into the loving embrace he once gifted so often when she was young, but had been rather stingy with in the last few years. She wanted someone she loved to tell her everything was going to be alright. She wanted to cry.

Janice didn’t understand why the tears had not come. The seizing of her chest did. The pit in her stomach, threatening to envelope her entire being, dragged every essence of her spirit to the dirt. But she did not cry.

Even the fact she had not slept for almost a full day, had barely eaten, did not seem to deter her current resolve to press forward.

With her mind still a flurry of such thoughts and considerations, she did not see the campfire in the distance through the trees until she was almost upon it. A single figure sat beside it, its back to Janice.

She immediately pulled her sword and lept from her horse with a grace and ease that caught her so offguard given the circumstances that she staggered forward upon landing.

“Steel yourself,” she announced. “I mean you no harm, but I will have your identity known.”

The figure turned to face her and pulled the hood from their head revealing the familiar face of Lawrence.

“What? How?” Janice said incredulously.

“I rode hard to get ahead of you,” he said. “Unfortunately, my horse is dead-beat and needs rest. But then, I figure so do you.”

Janice strode forward and placed the tip of her sword threateningly on his shoulder.

“I don’t need rest, and I don’t need your help. I didn’t trust you before, and I’m supposed to trust you now that you’re following me?”

For the first time since their meeting, Lawrence moved with suddenness and purpose, rising quickly from his seated position and turning to face Janice. She kept the blade tip steady and pointed in his direction. Ready for anything. Almost hoping for a chance to kill.

The sharp edge rubbed precipitously close to his exposed neck. A sudden move from either threatened to draw blood.

But Lawrence took a step back, an annoyed scowl on his face.

“I know you don’t remember me, but you and your family were very important to me once. You still are. Your mother…...”

“I don’t care.” The tears finally came. Janice shook her head sending the few drops free from her cheek.

Lawrence took a careful step forward, placing a hand around the middle of the blade bringing the tip again to his shoulder. He ever so slightly flinched as the cool steel again touched his neck.

“I’m not letting you face what’s out there alone. I won’t do it.”

“You’re drunk.”

“I’m….. sobering.”

Janice lowered the sword at last and looked beyond Lawrence to the campfire, noting the bottle near where he sat.

“Doing what you can to change that?”

Lawrence followed her gaze and sheepishly rubbed the back of his head.

“I uhhhh was waiting awhile,” he mumbled. He turned back toward the fire and sat down, placing a hesitant hand on the bottle before pushing it aside. “Let’s get some rest and leave first thing in the morning.”

“Nope,” Janice said, sheathing her sword and returning to her mount. “I’ll allow you to follow, but I have no intention to stop tonight.”

Lawrence turned and scrambled to his feet. “But my horse…..”

“Follow on foot,” she said. “Or stumble along, if that’s all you can do.”

The two traveled in silence for several hours. Janice didn’t speak. Not because she had nothing to say. She had almost too much to say. But the words swirled in a tempest about her mind until only one word came through. Like a beacon through the noise. Nothing mattered except the one word.

And so after what seemed an eternity of feeling the breath of the labored horse beneath her, and the sludging of Lawrence’s feet like a drum through the underbrush, that one word was all Janice could focus on.

“Why?”

Lawrence looked up. Color seemed to return to his swallow face, and a renewed vigor brightened his step as he broke rhythm at last and sped up to be even with Janice.

“Why,” he repeated.

“Why did this happen?”

“I don’t know.”

“You do know,” she said with almost a whimper. “You know more than I do.”

“The first strike of a civil war. As far as I can tell.” He paused to think. “I passed by Bannonbrook on the way to you. I saw no signs of levied troops. But considering the targets I know of, it had to be widespread throughout the kingdom.”

“They attacked you too?”

“They did. It was late. They obviously meant to use the holiday as a means to catch us off guard. Drunken revelers make an easy target. You don’t need any skill or strategy then,” he said with a hint of venom from his throat.

“How did you survive?”

“I was still awake when they came. I hadn’t really drunk that night. I don’t know why. I drink most days…...” Lawrence’s gaze drifted to the ground as Janice’s drifted toward him. “I don’t have much family left, and I wanted to make this a special day for my people. And for me.”

“I wasn’t even there when it happened,” Janice said. She slumped forward, her palms pressing into the back of the horse the only thing keeping her body aloft as exhaustion seemed to overcome her at last. As though speaking aloud the truth of what happened sapped her of all remaining strength.

“I remember, my mother, she couldn’t understand when I wanted to move out. She was so sad. We were still fighting about it, and I was determined to spend the holiday alone.” Her voice cracked. “I just needed some space.”

Lawrence nodded his head and silence once again passed. Light had begun to peek through the trees as the rise of the sun gently shattered the darkness they had grown accustomed to.

For Janice, it was an unwelcome sight. She had found strength in the night. When she closed her eyes before, she heard the whispers in the wind, the rustling in the brush. The energy in the dark hummed along the surface of her skin like the gentlest caress. She was embraced.

Now the rays of light pierced through that comforting veil like a hot poker. When she looked down, Lawrence seemed to heave a sigh of relief.

“Uncomfortable in the night?” she asked.

“Normally, I would say the woods are a sanctuary for me. But ever since that night…… Unnatural winds.” He trailed off, and his eyes seemed focused on some imperceptable point in the far off brush, where the darkness still resided.

“Does it frighten you? The feeling of eyes on your back? The energy in the wind, coarsing along your lips?”

“You feel it too?”

“I always feel it. That’s the true comfort of the woods.”

“I didn’t know you were so poetic,” Lawrence said wrily with a sheepish rub of the back of his head.

“That’s because you don’t know me, Sir Lawrence.”

Janice thought about Lawrence’s words and his newfound unease in the woods. It was true she had felt an enhanced prescence about her, unlike anything she had known before, really. But that was easily excused by her lack of sleep, her heightened sense of fear, her feelings of loss. The complete destitution of all she’d known and loved. It was easy to not notice anything else.

And yet, she had not dreamed her cousin’s ghost. His pale, broken visage was real. As were the bodies of those who pursued her, taken by some unknown force. Their limbs twisted, their faces a shriek of horror. The images flashed back into her mind, and for the first time, she felt the dread whispered through the trees as Lawrence had described.

The bodies.

Before that day, she’d never seen anyone die. Only in her dreams. Now, she had seen nine. Nine lifeless forms, crumpled in a heap upon the ground. Their flesh decomposing into gruesome nothingness. Their spirits, perhaps free, perhaps trapped.

Trapped.

That is how Janice felt. And her skin crawled.

“What’s it like to kill?” she asked.

Lawrence shrugged.

“Easy, I suppose.”

“Easy?” she asked with surprise.

“You’re always told it won’t be at first. But the truth is you never even have time to think about it. There is rarely little choice in killing.”

“Is that what it was like with those men at the tavern?”

He nodded.

“I think you’re right. The energies feel…. off. Too many spirits released with no home, I think.” Janice looked to the treetop canopy as she spoke. The sun now loomed behind the leaves of the giant oaks, stifled but not forgotten. “It’s icy... bitter... angry. I felt those things too before, so I didn’t notice it. But it’s there, and it is unnatural. Do you feel it?”

Their eyes met, and Lawrence shook his head “no.”

“I feel hunted,” he said flatly.

“Perhaps I should have slept,” she murmured.

Sleep, perhaps to dream. Gain some insight into the feelings that stirred within her soul. Janice did not know what the future held. But what she could imagine frightened her.

Lawrence placed a hand on her horse’s neck and shushed it to a halt, his head piqued to the side in curiosity.

“Do you hear that?”

“There are many sounds in the…...”

“This is laughter.”

Janice paused and focused her thoughts. She let her mind flow over the myriad sounds around her. The whistle of the wind through the leaves. The scatter of lizards through the brush. The birds singing in the trees. So lost in thought, she hadn’t noticed how alive the forest had become. It was almost deafening.

But there it was. Through all the clamor, the slightest hint of a human’s voice. She couldn’t tell if it was laughter or not, but she did indeed here the voice.

“It’s directly in front of us,” she said. Lawrence nodded.

“We should go around. It’ll cost us time, but….”

“It’ll cost us time.” Janice paused to think. She’d been so single-minded in her effort to reach her father’s, things like patience and caution had hardly been a consideration. She looked upon Lawrence. The lines under his eyes had darkened, his eyes seemingly sinking further within his skull. What color had once returned, was now gone.

“We can go south for a mile.” She gave the horse a light kick taking a turn to the right.

They traveled for some time in a direction that should have taken them further from the men laughing in the woods. But their sounds did not dissipate. They, in fact, grew louder. And soon, the sounds no longer came from an easterly direction, but now from the south, once again in front.

Janice and Lawrence paused, both looking to the sun for a sense of place.

“Have we somehow not been going straight?” she asked.

Lawrence massaged his beard and scrunched his nose.

“I don’t know how.”

Soon, the laughter came from not just one direction, but all around them. Janice stared about, looking for signs of movement, sounds of rustling, anything that would tip her off to what was stalking them. But she found nothing.

The laughter now reached a high pitch, as though it came not from a man but a child. It was derisive and mocking in nature, and seemed to come from both near and far. From the rocks at their feet to the trees in the faroff canopy.

“Let’s just go,” Janice said with urgency, giving the horse the swiftest kick of the night. Ignoring the original sounds of laughter, she now turned north-east, taking a straight line in her father’s direction.

The horse quickly sped to a soft gallop with Lawrence barely keeping pace at a near sprint. But they could not escape the sounds of the forest, the laughter nipping at their heels with every step. Janice closed her eyes as though to shield the noises out. When she opened them, she saw the heavy breath raggedly escaping Lawrence’s cracked and drooping lips.

She again closed her eyes and focused inward. She thought of her home and her bed. She thought of every night she slept and floated free from her confinement. All the times she was able to escape her stale, suffocating surroundings.

“Woohhhhh,” Lawrence shouted, bringing Janice’s horse to a halt.

Her eyes fluttered open, and Janice saw a campfire. A group of men, armored and armed, sat about it. They were fifty yards away, but in their hurried flight through the forest, the sounds were more than enough to alert the men to their prescence. Janice quickly counted. Eleven. Eleven armored and armed men, who now rose and cautiously looked in their direction.

Lawrence placed a hand on the hilt of his sword and slowly pulled it a quarter free from the scabbard.

“We can take them,” he said.

“All eleven?”

“There’s eleven?!”

Janice’s eyes enlarged as she hurriedly nodded in affirmation.

“How many could you take?” Lawrence asked now studying the fingers of his free hand.

“I don’t know,” Janice said with unease. “Maybe two?”

Lawrence nodded and began to count his fingers, releasing his sword so as to make use of all ten digits at his disposal.

“That would leave eight for me.”

“NINE.”

“Right right right right.” Lawrence paused and lowered his head. He muttered between breaths. “Right right right right.”

Janice watched as the men, now brandishing their swords, began marching in her direction. Their faces were non-descript and covered in shadow. Janice never even looked. All she could see was the steel in their hands. Some weilded swords, while others weilded a mace, no different from the ones that struck down Kasper.

She took hold of that memory and imagined herself in Kasper’s shoes. She felt the clubbing blows breaking her ribs, the spikes stabbing into her flesh, piercing ever so close to her vital organs.

The sounds of the forest were now deathly quiet. The laughter was gone. The birds no longer sang. The air was stale, motionless.

“Run, Lawrence,” she said.

“But…...”

“Don’t be stupid, run!”

They made haste, looking to go around the men, rather than running in the opposite direction. Janice knew it was risky, but she needed to keep going on her journey. She couldn’t run away. She couldn’t hide. Progress had to be made in order to put an end to this nightmare.

The men scrambled and broke in multiple directions in an effort to cut off their escape. Janice gave her ride another aggressive kick but looked behind to find Lawrence losing pace. Their pursuers were close to surrounding them. She only needed to speed up, one final push to get past them and disappear into the folds of the forest. And to leave Lawrence behind.

In an instant, Janice wheeled the horse around and turned back toward Lawrence, freeing the sword from its scabbard in one smooth motion.

“We fight,” she cried.

Lawrence pulled out his sword as Janice lept from her mount and stood by his side.

“You sure you can take nine?” she asked.

“I’m suddenly feeling a little more sober,” he said. “And less certain, but uhhhh maybe?”

As the men closed around, they began to talk and argue amongst themselves. But to Janice, their words were nothing more than the snarls of a rabid dog. Her focus was on their positioning, their posture. Seeking her first target. She felt her body stiffen and muscles tighten. She felt coiled like a snake.

And then the laughter. It was quiet, almost imperceptable at first. It began in the brush and floated through the air on the wind. Janice and Lawrence looked to each other, while the men looked to the darkness about them.

“Maybe running isn’t off the table, quite yet,” Lawrence murmured.

Janice caught movement from the corner of her eye and looked down, watching leaves flutter past her feet. They didn’t seem driven blindly by a gust of wind. They marched. Slowly. As though carried by an invisible hand.

Soon a cloud of leaves hovered in the space between Janice and the men who threatened her. Everybody looked up in wonder. Time seemed to slow to a crawl, as they stared for what seemed a lifetime at this strange occurrence. Something that under normal circumstances would appear nothing more than a trick of the mind. An illusion created by the filter of light through the trees, breaking the inherent darkness of the forest.

But time could not seem frozen forever, as one of the men stepped forward. He seemed about to speak, when the cloud of leaves burst, as though shot from a cannon directly at the man’s face. He screamed as the leaves smothered him, scraping at his face as he dropped to the ground. His back arched off the dirt, the leaves coarsing through his open mouth, not even a gurgle escaped his throat as everyone watched in stunned silence.

His body stiffened, and the leaves collapsed about him. Lifeless. As was he. No one came to his aid. Instead, all were focused on what deadly force could possibly follow. And the laughter. It rang through their senses as though it had taken over their very thoughts. A few doubled over, covering their ears as though they could possibly stop the sounds, driven almost mad by the fact that they could not.

Lawrence turned to Janice.

“I’m liking your plan better and better. Shall we?”

He gave a helpful hand to boost Janice onto the horse. Before he could make haste, however, she reached down and gripped his bicep. Lawrence hesitated at first, but Janice gave a more urgent pull as she watched the branches of a nearby tree envelop one of the men, dragging him screaming off his feet and disappearing into the canopy.

Lawrence lost all need for hesitation and used her help to pull up behind her on the horse. This time, Janice needed no encouragement for the horse to take flight. As soon as her foot landed at its side with an almost accidental kick, the paint was off.

Janice feared the laughter would follow. Her chest tightened, and all the blood seemed to rush from her face. She gripped the horse’s reigns tightly and braced for whatever might threaten their escape. She almost dared not breath. The air felt caught in her throat. But she soon overcame the emotions of the moment. She listened.

She heard the horse’s hooves beating on the ground. She heard Lawrence’s haggard breath on her neck. She heard no laughter. It had gone as suddenly as it came.

Fearing injury for the horse, as it galloped through the crowded and twisted undergrowth, she eased it to a halt with a gentle coo, her hands caressing its neck. She could feel its panicked, heavy breathing, and seeked to calm it as she battled her own internal struggle to do the same.

Lawrence lept from the horse as soon as it came to a stop and looked about them for signs of unrest. Janice did the same but found nothing but calm. She looked upward to find the sun directly overhead, its light barely cracking the thickness of the trees above.

Janice and Lawrence looked to each other and nodded. They wordlessly carried on, their pace a slight tick faster than it had been at the start of the morning.

Janice had no more words in her mind. She was not calm. But she was steady. Her mind clear. She was ready for anything. The forest was no longer home.