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Brian McClellan

Forsworn

The forest filled with the dry bone sound of fallen leaves swirling in the wind as Erika drew back on her bow. She pulled until the feather tickled her cheek, sighting down the shaft, then let out a breath as she released, accomplishing the entire act in one swift motion.

The arrow glanced off a tree root forty feet away and careened into the underbrush. The squirrel she’d been aiming at raced up the tree, chattering angrily at her. She pulled an arrow from her quiver, set it to the string, drew back and fired again.

The second shot thumped into the branch just below the squirrel’s bushy tail. Erika reached for another arrow, but the rodent had already retreated to the safety of its nest.

“Your form is fantastic,” a stern voice commented. “Your speed is admirable and your movements precise. Only one thing lacking; you missed. ”

Erika glared over her shoulder at the Leora family mistress-at-arms. Santiole was a sharp-eyed woman in her late forties with weather-worn skin and more than a few gray strands in her brown hair. She was roughly the same height as Erika, but her stiff posture made her seem far taller. She had a way of looking down her pinched nose that might seem genuinely imposing to anyone else. Erika just found it annoying. Fifteen years as Erika’s tutor had done little to sweeten Santiole’s sour humor and she always knew exactly what to say to get under Erika’s skin.

“I might have hit it,” Erika said, “if you weren’t sitting back there creaking in your saddle, scaring off my targets. ”

Santiole’s horse tossed its head impatiently and the mistress-at-arms shifted her weight on the roan’s back, eliciting yet another loud creak.

Erika’s eyes rested first on the flintlock musket laid across Santiole’s saddle horn and then on the pistol tucked into the mistress-at-arm’s belt. Her fingers itched to go hunting with one of those. In all her nineteen years she’d never been allowed to do so. Handling a black powder weapon, even an unloaded one, was forbidden to her.

After all, that would be illegal.

“Go fetch your arrows,” Santiole said. “We should head back soon. ”

They were an hour’s ride from the Leora manor and would be back in time to wash up for dinner if they hurried. Erika slung her bow over one shoulder and set off into the trees.

She rooted around in the brambles to find the first arrow, tearing a hole in her hunting doublet that would doubtlessly be noticed by grandmother, before returning to the offending tree and working her way fifteen feet in the air to dislodge the second arrow from its home in a thick branch.

Mother would have a fit if she saw me here, Erika reflected as she shimmied her way out to the arrow. Mother would lecture Santiole, and Santiole would weather the tirade only to tell her a Kez duchess needs to learn to fend for herself. And then father would interfere, telling mother to leave the poor old mistress-at-arms alone and….

Erika’s train of thought was interrupted as her eyes focused on something further in the forest: a subtle movement amongst the reds and browns of fallen autumn leaves.