Chapter 2 (Part 2): The Lady's Dream

The chill of the dew coming off the water was refreshing. Nuitê pawed at the ground patiently, as if the night had no owner. They had finally reached the shallow waterfall of the sleeping forest.

The blonde girl slid off Harvey's back and ran to the dark chestnut horse.

— It's really him! — She hugged him, and her tears wet his mane.

Behind her, the young hunter knelt at the water's edge and dipped his blade into the current. The blood came off in dark threads and was carried away. On the other side of the trees, the torches no longer ran. They had stopped, side by side, and the voices reached the clearing. Fox. Then, more dryly: Bear.

They had found the bodies.

Elizabel looked at her friend. His lip was trembling, as it always did when he was unsure. Now, quietly, he was counting on his fingers: one… two. He stopped, then slowly started over.

— There were three — he murmured to his reflection in the water. — I only see two lights. One ran away, but when?

— We should go. — She was already clinging to the saddle. — Why are you still washing that sword?

— The waters coming from the ruins above the riverbed wash the sins of the living, using the goodwill of those who are gone.

He said it like someone reciting, without looking at her. He dried the blade on his sleeve and went to Nuitê, but not to mount. Elizabel watched him do things too small for someone in a hurry. He tightened the saddle girth one more notch, shortened the stirrups to the length of her legs, not his, and fastened the longbow and quiver to the saddle bow, where the hand of whoever rode would reach them without effort. Everything was on her side. Nothing for himself.

She had already seen someone say goodbye that very night. This time she noticed in time. — Harvey. Are you coming with me?

— The horse can't carry two for long, and they have bows. — He put the reins in her hands, without meeting her eyes. — Let go, and let Nuitê choose the way to the castle. I'll hold them here and catch up with you.

— You lie badly. — She grabbed his sleeve. — Your lip always trembles.

Harvey opened his mouth to answer, and across the water the torches began to move again. All at once, toward the waterfall.

Suddenly, a cutting sound hissed through the air. The projectile fell like a sling stone beside Elizabel, making Nuitê neigh loudly.

The young man's eyes went wide, and he reached out his hand.

Not for the sword. For her. Harvey's fingers closed around her arm and pulled her away from the horse, and only then did Elizabel look down. The arrow was stuck in the earth, a hand's breadth from her boot. So close that the feather of the shaft had brushed her dress.

It had not missed. She understood this with a horrible clarity: “Lucky for you, he asked for you alive.”

— Heron! — someone shouted from the other side of the water, and it was not an angry cry. It was a dry order, almost bored. — In the leg. I already told you, the leg!

Elizabel looked up to the top of the waterfall, where the dark stones of the ruins were piled against the sky. A tall, thin silhouette stood motionless on a broken wall, so still that it seemed part of the stone. He had waited all night to be there.

— The third — whispered Harvey, and his lip trembled once.

The second whistle was shorter than the first. Elizabel heard it before she saw it: a wet crack, and Nuitê's neigh turned into something else, a high sound she had never heard from an animal. The arrow had gone into his hind leg. The chestnut took two crooked steps, then folded his legs and fell on his side, panting, his eyes rolling white under the moon.

Alive. But he would not run anymore.

The reins Harvey had given her slipped from her hand. His plan, the tightened straps, the shortened stirrups, the “let go and let Nuitê choose,” all of it collapsed onto the grass with the horse.

Harvey did not look back. He stood between her and the lights, his broad back to her, the sword still damp from the water of the ruins. Elizabel saw his shoulders rise and fall once, slowly, like someone swallowing something.

— There's no way out now — he said, without turning his face. — Stay down.

Her hand, digging in the dirt for support, found a leather strap. The longbow and quiver had slipped off the saddle in the fall, and the arrows had scattered in the river. Only one was still within reach, its shaft slightly crooked.

She closed her hand around the wood.

The bow was heavier than her training bow. Taller, too, almost her height, with a string that cut the skin of her fingers on the first attempt to draw it. But her hands remembered before her head did: the back foot had to be firm, the shoulder low, the elbow high.

“Don't look at the arrow, little one. Look at the place where it will be.”

The voice was deep and patient, the voice of a man who taught secrets to a noble girl at the back of a barn, pretending it was play. She had never told anyone. Not even Harvey.

But her leg throbbed where the mercenary had stepped on it, and the silhouette at the top of the waterfall was too small, too far, hidden behind a broken wall. If she shot now, she would miss. And Heron would not miss twice.

— Harvey, I need him to shoot again.

It was a surprise that she asked for such a thing.

— On my signal. Don't you dare miss.

Harvey stepped out of Nuitê's shadow with his sword low, deliberately exposed against the light of the dew. A clear target, standing on the bank. Up in the ruins, the silhouette moved. Elizabel saw the arm rise and saw the bow curve.

The arrow passed so close to Harvey's shoulder that it tore his sleeve. That was the signal.

Just one shot. Heron had shown himself for an instant, just long enough to fire, his thin figure drawn against the moon. Elizabel let out her breath slowly and let the string go.

The arrow crossed the water without a sound. For a moment, nothing happened, and she thought she had missed. Then the silhouette folded in half, like a puppet whose strings had been cut, and fell from the wall. The sound of the body on the wet stones came an instant later.

Elizabel lowered the bow. Her fingers were bleeding. She felt nothing. “I did it.”

— Good shot — said Harvey, without looking at the girl. She was so focused that she had not noticed her surroundings.

The two torches had crossed the shallows of the waterfall while the two of them were looking up. — This one's mine, Crow! — shouted the first man, and fell upon Harvey.

He had turned in time, but Fox's sword was too heavy and too long, and his swing came out a hand's breadth earlier than it should have.

It was enough. The bandit crouched beneath it, slashed his tunic from side to side, and drew out a sound Elizabel had never heard, not in the forest and not on the road: the air leaving Harvey's chest all at once.

Still, he killed the man. Elizabel saw the second blow, clumsy, the opponent's body falling sideways into the water.

After Harvey's knees gave way slowly, he leaned on the sword.

Crow crossed the shallows with slow steps, the torch pointed at the ground, with the weary face of a wolf who had seen this many times. He stopped three steps from Harvey and looked at the wound, at the boy, at the girl with the empty bow, at the horse on the ground.

— I told Bear it wasn't a good idea to go alone. — His voice was calm, almost gentle. — But nobody listens. Hand over the girl, and I'll make this quick. It's the most merciful thing I can do.

Elizabel gripped the bow. No arrows in her hand, no legs to run. Everything she had was only enough for one shot.

— No… — said Harvey. His lip was trembling. He was bleeding from the corner of his mouth, but he was smiling a little, crooked, and she did not understand why.

It was then that Nuitê raised his head.

The fallen chestnut, with his wounded leg, panting, pricked his ears toward the forest. A hoarse neigh, different from all the earlier ones, came from his chest. Far away, very far, a neigh came back, deeper, full of an old rage.

The sound of hooves rose through the woods, heavy, steady, unhurried.

Crow turned his face.

Between the trees, cutting through the dark depths of the sleeping forest, a shadow blacker than the night advanced at a gallop, mounted on a horse as big as its son, who lay there on the ground. The cape swayed like wings. In the rider's hand was a steel blade that Elizabel had seen only once in her life, in a barn, when the master thought no one was looking.

— Ah, so it was true — said Crow, very softly, already turning to flee toward the woods. — Lucky you.

Harvey looked at the shadow for a long moment. His smile widened, tired, almost childlike. — You took your time. — And he fell sideways into the water, before Elizabel could reach him.