Raven's Strike

From somewhere on the side of the trail came Jes’s too-loud boisterous laugh. Branches rustled and shook, and He

She marched up to Seraph and shook her finger at her. “You tell that boy of yours that he is too young for me. I don’t take babes fresh from their mother’s milk.”

“She likes me, Mother,” said Jes, following He

“I can see that,” said Tier. “But take it from me, son. It’s time to let her settle her feathers.”

He

Seraph had never heard of a Guardian stable enough to contemplate a romantic entanglement. There were any number of problems. Even simple touching was difficult—when the Guardian slept, its Order Bearer, who was always an empath, was too raw to allow anyone to touch him. When the Guardian was in control, the nameless dread that accompanied his presence was more than enough to cool the ardor of the most heated lover.

But He

It gave Seraph hope.

As Tier and He

Before she could ask what was wrong, Lehr emerged from the forest on their left with Gura. “Papa, Mother, something—”

He was interrupted by the shrill scream of a stallion. Skew answered, half-rearing.

“Easy,” soothed Tier, and Skew, his warning given, allowed himself to be gentled. “What’s wrong?”

The storm chose that moment to turn from a gentle rain into a downpour; Seraph ducked her head involuntarily. When she looked up, there was a horse facing them in the middle of the path.

It was pale as death—a dirty off-white that darkened to yellow on the ends of his ragged tail. It looked cadaverous, with a full fingerspace between each rib and great hollows behind its sunken eyes.

“What’s wrong?” said Jes, and at first Seraph thought he was just repeating Tier.

But then the horse spoke in a voice as rough and terrible as the storm.

“Come,” it said, then dashed into the trees.

Both boys and the dog disappeared behind it. Skew took a bounce forward before Tier stopped him and looked at Seraph and He

“It’s the forest king,” said Seraph as soon as she realized it herself. “Go ahead. He

He didn’t wait for her to say it twice.

“That’s Jes’s forest king?” asked He

“He seldom is,” agreed Seraph absently as she tried to pick a quick way through the undergrowth near the trail.

“Do we need to track them, or do you know where we’re going?”

“Can’t you feel it?” asked Seraph. “I wasn’t paying attention until it worsened—but this storm is called.”

“Ri

“Unless there’s another Cormorant in the area. Something is very wrong.”

They fell silent then, Seraph turning all her energies to climbing. The shortest path home was steep, forcing them to slow before they were halfway there.

“I’m going to the farm,” she told He

He

Seraph stopped at the ridgetop. The farm lay below, but she couldn’t see it for the trees and the darkening skies. She had more than vision to call upon, though.

The first thing Seraph had done when she and Tier had moved to the farm was to walk a warding that surrounded it. The farm was too close to the old battlefield, Shadow’s Fall, to be entirely safe without protection from the kinds of creatures attracted to shadow. Several times a year for twenty years she’d added to its potency.

Her warding traced along the crest just here.

Seraph knelt in the pine needles and touched the threads of her spelling. Power swept through her in a heady rush—something shadow-touched was trying to cross it at that very moment. Like a spider at her web, she waited, letting her breathing slow, while she waited for the warding to tell her more.

It settled back down after a moment, though she could tell that whatever shadowed thing had touched it was still near. There were some weak areas in the warding, she noticed, as if it had been much longer than the six months or so when she’d last reworked it: something or a number of somethings had been trying the warding while she’d been gone.

Thunder cracked almost instantaneously with the bright flash of lightning, and it was followed by a second strike and a third before the wind picked up into a howling force.

With evidence of Ri

She came to her feet and started down the slope toward home.

“What did you learn?” asked He

“Not much, something shad—” Seraph’s voice was broken by a torturous howl that rose above the wind.

“Troll,” said He

Heart in her throat, Seraph started ru

They came out of the trees still somewhat above the farm, but it didn’t look as it had when Seraph left it. Instead of a half-plowed field and an empty house, there was a field of tents and her house was illuminated from within and without by dozens of lanterns. For courage, she thought, because it wasn’t yet dark enough to require lanterns for sight, though with the rain it wouldn’t be long before darkness had hold here.

Among the changes wrought since she’d been home last was a crowd of people that looked to be composed of the whole village, all confronting a troll that straddled the path leading to Redern.

Seraph pushed her way through the first group of people, mostly women and children, and into the clear space in front of them, where she paused to take in the enormity of her task.

It was a forest troll, moss-green and larger than its more numerous cousin, the mountain troll. By the earlobes which hung so long they brushed its stooped shoulders, it was older than any Seraph had ever seen.

That trolls had two arms and two legs had given rise to the rumor that the thing was related to humans. Anyone who thought so, in Seraph’s opinion, had never seen a troll. Small red eyes were set deep and close on a head as wide as Skew was long above a nose that was merely two slits in the bumpy textured skin. Tusks curled out of its jaw and pulled the lower lip down to reveal fist-sized, serrated teeth that could snap a cow’s skull open.

Seraph’s long-ago teacher had speculated that they were hobgoblins or some other small creature morphed by the Shadowed King. He’d told her the first mentions of trolls in books and stories came after the Fall of the Shadowed.

However they came into being, Seraph could wish this one a long way away instead of pacing back and forth at the trail-head to Redern, with its head topping the nearest trees.

As far as Seraph could tell, almost every able-bodied man of Redern had gathered along the edge of the warding that had so far kept the troll from coming closer, almost as if they could tell where it was. Born and bred in the Ragged Mountain as these folks had been, it wouldn’t surprise Seraph if they could sense her ward—though it could just be experience had taught them how far the troll could come. Some of them had bows or swords, but most of them held whatever implement had come to hand. She saw Bandor, Tier’s sister’s husband, with one of the big knives they used to cut bread.