The Witch's Trail Ch. 02

The Witch - Week 2

He left at dawn to seek his prey in the wild places, in the woods that wrapped the village's vineyards tightly and the shadowed valleys between them. He startled swans and fish as he tromped through streams, panicked rabbits and baffled charcoal burners when he burst into clearings. Each step took him further from hearths and walls of stone, sturdy Tonerre loyally shadowing his steps. He reached the marker stones which marked the edges of the demesne near nightfall on the first night and slept the night wrapped in his cloak with his back against the engraved boulder.

The second day he walked the edges, finding the feel of the woods until his footfalls no longer snapped every twig and rustled every leaf. By morning of the third day he no longer needed watch every step, his feet guiding him past roots and tangling brush. And it was on the afternoon of the third day, lost in thought of potential signs of evil magic leaking into the world, that he walked into the old stag.

It reared up, sudden and huge and terrifying, and the young knight fell back before flailing hooves that looked larger than his head. Yet even as he dodged backwards and worked to put a tree between himself and the stag, he saw how he had snuck up on it: one eye was milky blind, and with even a few yards' distance and a second's time he could see signs of age in its belly and coat.

Old the stag may have been but done it was not. As soon as its hooves touched back down on the turf it lowered its antlers and rushed madly forward. Luc hurtled off to its blind side and threw himself behind the thickest tree he could see, and an instant later the tree shook with the impact of his pursuer.

Hazarding a look around his tree, Luc saw that the fight was already over. Stunned by the unexpected impact, spent by its threat display and charge, the stag had collapsed to the ground. Foam at the edges of its mouth and the speed of its breath made clear at once that it was in its final moments. The young man drew out his hunting knife, said a brief prayer for the spirit of the fierce old beast and eased its passing.

The third afternoon and evening he took to draw the stag up into the trees to keep it safe from scavengers and drain the meat. There he left it on the fourth day as he resumed his hunt, seeking sign of the witch always. A brooding cave, perhaps, hidden in the woods, marked by dire monoliths? Perhaps, like the Russian tales, she dwelt in a cottage with chicken legs that hid from him?

His wandering took him far, far enough that when sunset came he was still some ways from the camp where he had left his bedroll. Yet in the setting sun, in a clearing bursting with daisies in a hundred shades, urgency was impossible. A moss-grown stump made a comfortable enough seat on which to work out the burrs in his sword from particularly stubborn vines earlier that day and the birdsong celebrating the dusk drifted over him soothingly.

When the bird song ended abruptly its absence was loud in his ears. He rose alert, sword ready. Uncertain of the potential foe, he moved to the edge of the clearing and pressed his back to where a tree's heavy shadow concealed him in the gathering dusk. He held his unsheathed sword at the back of his leg where its gleam would not reveal him but it would be readier than were it sheathed.

Almost immediately an argument preceded the arrival of the trespassers. "...worth it if we all do the last dance for it, and our souls condemned in the bargain." That voice was custom-made for wheedles and whines, penetrating as a stone drill.

"Bugger that," replied another, this one harsher. More certain. "If god thinks a deer of his own is more important than a woman with child I would rather be damned." In his shadow, Luc nodded unconsciously.

"But our families! We risk for them, too! Do we not deserve some reward?" No surprise that the owner of that voice would give ground and try to sneak around his fellow's argument, the knight reflected. A third voice of a higher register spoke up as the footfalls came closer to Luc's clearing.

"By the Virgin, Claude, would you shut up? Neither hair nor balls in my pants and I'm still more a man than you. The only reason we'll get caught is if they hear you whining."

The first of the figures entered the clearing and immediately identified himself as an amateur by stepping into one of the setting sun's last beams and perfectly presenting himself as a target. This, Luc decided, was Grim Voice, a lean man with dark hair and beard both short-cut and singed. He vaguely recalled seeing the weathered face in the crowd at his arrival above a leather apron, which together were enough to identify him as the village blacksmith.

It was unlikely that either of the other two could be so easily identified from the earlier crowd, but as one was a man with the posture of a weasel hunting eggs who moved in a series of paranoid twitches and the other was a girl of no more than twelve, it was easy enough to identify whose voice was whose. Each of the trio carried cheap shortbows of gut and local wood and wore the tunics and roughspun pants of peasants.

Grim Voice scanned around the clearing, looking past the young knight's hiding place without any hint of notice and gestured his companions forward. Luc winced as each of them took the opportunity to highlight their numbers and ruin their dark vision by stepping right into the same sunbeam. They cut directly across the clearing and continued on, passing less than a dozen paces from Luc none the wiser to his presence, and passed back into the woods on the other side.

Just as Luc was pushing himself away from his tree, a shout in the distance froze him in place. Rushing footfalls came up the path and the trio he'd spied earlier came hurrying back the way they'd come, sprinting across the clearing and throwing themselves into the brush on the other side. The lack of further rustling indicated that they had gone to ground and new voices came from the woods they had fled.

"Nah, I swear I saw one, looked like a girl. If I'm right, she's mine, got that?" The leer in the voice was enough. Luc walked out of his shadow and to the center of the clearing, where the sun would silhouette him from behind. He heard a gasp and a soft curse from one of the bushes at his appearance. Standing beside the stump, he planted the tip of his blade in the soil and rested his hands on its pommel.

Luc's immediate assessment was that there was simply no way to know which of the four men who entered the clearing had spoken on their way in. There was little enough to distinguish between them; a matched set of thickset men with something of the bulldog in their lineage, thick bellies and thick necks to go with noses broken and red-veined. The clubs they carried looked as though they had grown in those swollen-knuckled fists.

The quartet paused in a clump at the sight of him and a few hearteats passed before one could summon up the wit to ask "Who in Hell are you?" Luc inclined his head fractionally.

"Ser Luc DuLac, sworn to the service of His holy church. I am on a quest to rid the village of the foul Witchhazel. And you are?" The thug who had spoken looked to his comrades. They shrugged.

"Piss off. We've poachers to take. Where did they go?"

"They ran. On whose authority do you follow?"

"Father Joc," the thug said, clearly on firmer ground. "These are the church's lands. Which way did they go?"

"The details of running peasants are unworthy of my notice. And how does the church come to own the lands around these vineyards?" A thug to the left of the previous speaker, clearly feeling that he had not contributed enough to the conversation, saw an opportunity to interject something he knew.

"The bastard, no? These lands belonged to the Vidame, Jean Le Batard. He died with no bastards of his own, the church holds these lands in trust until another lord is in place. So you saw the poachers? You can point 'em out?"

"They were peasants. I saw no reason to trouble myself to pay sufficient attention as to distinguish one peasant from another. So... it is for Father Joc that you hunt these poachers?"

"And he doesn't much care for the condition they come back in," Said the first thug with a leering twist to his mouth.

"And the witch? What can you tell me of her?"

"I f we knew shit all we would have taken care of the little bitch ourselves. Now piss off before we decide that you're a poacher, too." Luc stood very still for a moment, then raised his sword to point at the heart of the speaker.

"Your speech offends my honor as a knight. You will leave this place I have claimed as my camp and return the way you came or take issue with me." The four men stared for a moment as they parsed the threat. The talker's eyes bulged. Luc rolled his neck and limbered up his shoulders before bringing his blade to a ready position.

"You're thinking to fight us?"

"Certainly not," Luc said. "The Chivalric code is quite clear on this matter. I am a knight; I fight fellow knights. You, I will butcher like hogs."

"There are four of us!" said the talker, and though his voice did not crack, the effort to prevent it doing so was audible.

"And soon there will be none of you, and honor satisfied," The young knight said, and his eyes and voice were both very flat. "I would ask your last words but they are also unworthy of my notice." He walked forward, blade held casually in front of him, his other hand left loose, utter confidence in his every movement.

It was enough. Snarling and muttering threats just loud enough to be inaudible, the thugs backed from the clearing the way they had come, casting back venomous glances.

When their footfalls had faded, Luc did not sheath his sword, but returned and sat back down on the stump. He began to work at the blade with his whetstone once more. There he waited as his heart slowed, as the shaky strengthlessness faded from his legs, as the urge to throw up faded. When he at last felt ready to speak, he turned his head to address the clearing as a whole.

"You may come out now. Those bushes cannot be comfortable."

Sheepishly the trio emerged from their hiding places and slunk toward him, darting glances and frantically mouthing words. The steady scrape of the whetstone resumed. It was in a nervous clump that the three made their way around in front of Luc and stood fidgeting.

"You heard who I am. I will have your names." Predictably, it was Grim Voice who spoke up.

"Sir Knight, I am Thibault, and my companions are Claude and Henrietta," said, gesturing to each of them without ever raising his eyes. "Thank you for what you did."

"Tell me of the woman with child you had spoken of." This time it was the girl who spoke, pushing forward with a hand defensively placed in front of Thibault.

"It was my idea, Sir Knight. The widow Marade got with child by poor Pierre before the red fever carried him off two months past. They were to be married, but without him she will starve! Punish us if you will but we have done what is right." Thibault's terror, growing through the girl's speech, at last overcame him and he pulled her back behind him.

"Mercy, please, sir," he said. Claude nodded furiously, adam's apple bobbing and eyes wet. "We meant no harm." Luc nodded once.

"An hour's walk to the south of this place, you will find my camp. There you will find a stag, cleaned and ready. Take it for the widow, neither I nor God would see her starve." Eyes wide, the mouths of the trio opened but before they could express their gratitude the young knight's blade snapped up to put its tip a fingersbreadth from Claude's eyes.

"But if I learn that a single scrap of that stag has been sold in the market, you will learn that to betray my trust is a very foolish thing indeed, and I will reclaim each ounce of flesh with interest. Am I understood?" A moment to overcome their shock and all three backed away, gabbling their thanks and swearing their obedience to his order. He nodded once more and let them fade into the gathering dark of the woods.

In the silence of their departure, silence fell again, and Luc at last allowed himself a heavy sigh. As though this was a signal the chorus of birds resumed around him and he walked to the center of the clearing, to where the flowers grew thickest. The birdsong soothed his nerves and he lowered himself down, pulling off his ringmail shirt and tunic to act as a pillow and laying himself down on the carpet of flowers.

The cloudless starlight was crystalline above him and he had just let his eyes drift shut when a voice rich with amusement spoke, as though the speaker lay beside him: "Well done, Sir Knight."

Luc bolted upright, hand reaching for the swordbelt beside him- to find himself alone in the clearing still. He scanned the darkness around him, lit by the dance of fireflies and the light of the waning crescent moon, and at the edge of the clearing stood a figure, no more than a silhouette but unmistakably feminine.

Armor and swordbelt forgotten, the young knight rose, eyes locked on the figure. Yet though his gaze never wavered and he would have sworn that he never blinked, she beckoned him with a curled finger and was gone as though she had never been. Luc ran at a reckless sprint into the woods after her and just barely stopped himself plunging into a stream from which he had earlier drunk. The sounds of footfalls splashing drew him upstream, and he paused to pull off and toss aside his own boots to better follow in the cool water.

The streambed twisted and turned and over and again around corners he would glimpse a flash of ankle or the hint of hip or shoulder, ever just beyond him. On he ran, heedless of where he was, until he came to the sharp escarpment that here marked the edge of Mont Clare. The stream originated in a small waterfall that fell thrice a man's height but was scarcely two paces wide, and here the trail ended, leaving Luc standing in the narrow cleft in the stone that the waterfall had carved over millennia. He stood in the moon's light, head turning from side to side in a slow scan when small, strong hands pushed squarely between his shoulder blades. He stumbled forward into the waterfall's spray, bracing his hands on the rock behind it.

Before he could turn, warmth pressed up against his back, hands reaching around to stroke his stomach and sides. The softness of breasts pressing through thin wet cloth shifted upward, standing on unseen toes to put unseen lips close.

"You have hunted nobly," the now-familiar voice said, "And have earned a reward." Deft fingers unlaced his breeches and dipped within, the pressure of the waterfall and his unseen partner keep him where she was as she drew out his already-stiff manhood. The chill of the spray and the warmth of her body and hands drew all the strength from his legs and pulled rough gasps from his lips.

His breathing sped up as he grew close and her hands slipped away and rose up to take his shoulders. He gave no resistance when she spun him around to press his shoulders against the worn-smooth rock of the falls. She sank down and the warmth of her mouth as she wrapped around him was his dream of heaven fulfilled, fire and ecstasy and the rush of water in his ears drowning out his cry of ecstacy.

White teeth glinted a smile in her silhouette when she rose back up close to him to whisper: "But you have not caught me yet."

Some focus returned to Luc's eyes even as the witch faded away from his every sense. His strengthless hand reached out to where she had been. "At least tell me where next I might seek you!" he cried out to the dark.

"You will find the truth when you read the seventh volume of the Chronicles of Saint Cuthbert, in the cathedral's library. Return whence you came and return to me once more, Sir Knight," came the voice from all around him and nowhere. Drained and shivering, Luc emerged from the waterfall and stumbled back toward the clearing, there to sleep and prepare for further travel on the following morning.

End of Chapter 2

Thanks once more, you who have made it all the way through. Next up, we have Luc's trip to the Cathedral, where he will learn a great deal more than what is in a dusty tome (though he will learn much from that tome, too), and finally, his return to Mont Clare and the conclusion of his hunt.

Filthy dreams,

SLH