Aren
The arrow thunked into the broad trunk of the giant redwood, only inches from Aren's head. It had been close, so close that he could feel the sharp cut of the air around it, and hear the whistle of the feathers passing by. Aren leaned forward and dug his heels harder into the roan's flanks. The horse gave its all to forge ahead, but it had been born and raised for farming, not outrunning death.
"Come on, Tisha," he cried, eyes filled with a mixture of sweat and tears. "Please."
They pounded through the brush, trampling a new path in the dense wood, each smack of Tisha's hooves leading Aren in a new prayer that the horse wouldn't find herself stepping on a loose stone, or tripping over a fallen tree branch.
"You never should have run."
He could hear the voice in the wind, in the air around him, and in his mind. Gathering courage, he decided to chance a look back, to see if he could spot the soldiers chasing him. The glint of sunlight off a metal helm showed him their position. They were gaining.
"We could have helped you, if you hadn't run."
Aren swallowed, his throat nearly clenching from the dryness. He heard the thunk of another arrow, and saw the fletching protruding from the redwood to his right. His heart beat a rhythm of panic in his chest, and he did his best to block out the voices surrounding him.
"We could have helped you," they said. "You have the curse. We would have cared for you."
"No!" Aren shouted. He dared lift his hands from Tisha's neck to squeeze them over his head. Except the voices weren't traveling through his ears. They were everywhere, and they were nowhere, and there was no escaping them.
"You had to run. You had to defy us. It is a waste. Such a waste."
Aren jerked as Tisha bunched and leaped over a fallen log, causing him to nearly lose his grip. He dropped his hands from his ears and wrapped them tight around her neck again when she landed with a splash, her wild run taking them to a wide, shallow, stream. It was a place far afield from anywhere he had ever ventured before. A place he could die, and never be found.
He counted heartbeats while he waited to hear the echoing splash of the soldier's chargers. If his heart hadn't been beating so fast, he might not have even reached five. They were gaining.
Aren heeled into his horse once more. She had never run so hard for so long in all of her fourteen years, and yet somehow she found more energy, more speed, more power in those legs that were muscle hardened to drag a till, not to outrun his soldiers.
The water flew out behind them, hooves finding slippery purchase on the smooth stones below the surface. An arrow hissed by, further off the mark this time, landing in the water a dozen yards ahead. Aren guided Tisha to the right, a sharp hook that moved them perpendicular to the soldiers and brought them into denser brush; brush that was better protection from arrows. The soldier's heavy chargers couldn't turn as fast, and he could hear them cursing as they slowed to change direction.
"You should never have run." The voices returned, forceful in their anger, their sadness, their pity. "We could have helped you. You should never have run."
"Be quiet," Aren shouted, his words echoing in the forest, reverberating off the trees and bouncing from ancient glacial stones.
The scream startled Tisha for just an instant, her desire to please her master faltering beneath the loud tone of his words. At a full gallop through heavy foliage, a startled instant was all it took.
He felt the break before he heard it. One step and her gait was smooth, the next, and it was lost. A loud crack created a new echo, replaced again by the combined screams of horse and rider as they were both thrown forward.
Time and direction lost meaning. The world slowed, and Aren watched with fascination as it happened. He saw Tisha begin to drop below him, her newly broken front leg buckling under the weight of their bodies. He saw himself raising higher, the momentum carrying his body upward and outward. He looked upon every branch and leaf in utter detail, every crack and crevice of skin and vein. He thought of her, while he tumbled. He remembered her, and he began to cry.
Time had slowed for Aren, but there was no time for tears. Tisha vanished beneath him, crashing headlong into a moss covered stone, stopping in an instant with a sickening crunch. The stone wasn't quite wide enough to claim him, though he felt the fire in his shoulder when it struck the immovable object, twisting and twirling him, sending him heels over head. He landed roughly on his back, feeling it too ignite in fire while he gazed up into the density of the forest canopy, searching for the blue sky above.
Laying there, time regained itself. The pain was enough to make him groan, and a single tear dropped from his eye. He heard the snorting of tired horses, slowed to a careful trot in order to navigate past the obstacle that had cost his horse her life. The obstacle that would cost him his.
There was a creak of leather, and the clank of chain, the lightly armored soldiers sliding off their mounts. Two sets of footfalls, the breaking of branch and twig. They would be upon him soon.
There was nothing but cold fire, the sharp, throbbing intensity of broken bones that shouldn't have allowed Aren to rise, and yet he did. He turned on his knee to face his attackers, to face his soldiers. They were nondescript beneath their steel helms; two pairs of brown eyes, two days worth of growth on their chins, thick lips and strong builds. They wore the black chain he was expecting, covered by a black leather doublet bearing his mark, a red eye, the bottom waved and distorted so that it looked like it was crying. Crying blood.
"You shouldn't have run," the soldier on the right said. Aren decided to call him Right.
"You're a traitor," the other one said. Left.
He could have tried begging, but his pleas would have been ignored. He could have offered coin, or land, or things of a more personal nature, but there was no bribe that would convince the soldiers to let him flee. They were controlled by something more powerful than any bribe. They were driven by fear.
Aren knew it, and so he didn't beg. He had been driven by fear too. It had been that fear that had caused him to run, to try to escape from the soldiers when they had come for him. It had been that fear that had led him to the forest where he had never tread, his horse lying dead ten feet away, his own life about to end. The voices were right, he should never have run.
His body was broken, but he found the will and strength to stand, rising before Left and Right, holding his arms out wide. He offered his body to them. He offered a target for their swords to skewer. He should never have run.
Left pulled longsword from scabbard with a soft schnikt, while Right notched another arrow to his bow. He was broken and beaten, and yet they still approached with caution. Aren's eyes narrowed, and in the corner of his eye he found the sun.
He should never have run, he decided. He should have stood and fought.
Left was too slow. He didn't even see Aren's hand when it shot forward, sinking into his flesh and wrapping itself around his heart. His eyes traced Aren's wrist to the unbroken armor, and he screamed in fear and pain when the hand was removed, his life's muscle still pumping in it. Aren dropped it to the floor, but Left hit the ground first.
He turned to Right, who had found himself suddenly blinded by sunlight, despite the thick growth of the forest. He couldn't see to train his bow, and he still couldn't see when the bow was wrenched from his hands and the north end used to puncture his vulnerable throat. He too tumbled to the earth, blind in a sea of light.
Aren began to cough, his lungs filling with blood. A moment more, and he wouldn't have been able to speak the incantation, too softly for them to hear. He fell back to his knees. A moment more, a wish for just a slice of time; time to see her big bright eyes, time to see her toothless smile. Time to tell her he loved her, and he was sorry. He reached into a pocket, searching for the ring, but it was gone. He knew he must have lost it when he was thrown from the horse.
He never should have run, but he had been afraid. Afraid of what would happen to her, if they had known that she was his. Afraid that she would become his, if her luck was as poor as his own. They had discovered one of his secrets, but there were two more that he would take to his grave.
"You never should have run." The voice was there now, focused on a singular spot, a spot where a man now stood. He wasn't a soldier, but that didn't mean he wasn't a threat. Aren's eyes were growing dim, but he was able to see well enough to make out the bleeding red crystal eye that clasped the man's nightmare black cloak at his throat.
"You never should have followed," Aren wanted to say, but all that came out were gurgles, and so he spat the mouthful of blood at the Mediator's feet. He knew that Right's arrow had fallen nearby, and his hand moved slowly, searching the grass for it.
The Mediator came closer, revealing his boyish face, a face too young to be so cold. "We would have cared for you," he said. "We would have treated you like a brother."
I had a brother, Aren thought. He had been cursed in sword and bow. He had taken him for his own. That was why he had chosen the wheat and the udder. Better to hide your curse.
Aren's hand found the arrow, and he carefully wrapped his fingers around it, rolling it into his palm. The Mediator came closer still, reaching to his waist and lifting a polished metal blade from a simple rope loop at his hip. He took one step closer, and then another, and then another.
Aren wasn't a violent man, and he wasn't a warrior. He was a farmer with secrets. One had been discovered, the others he was desperate to protect. With his last surge of strength, Aren threw his hand forward, intent on putting the arrow tip into the Mediator's stomach. It had only cleared the grass when it exploded into splinters that lodged themselves in his hand.
"I'm sorry," the Mediator said, drawing back his blade. His left hand was balled into a fist through which a gold light filtered.
You will be, Aren thought. Death had made him angry and cold. He tried to move, to fight, and found himself held in place by unseen bindings. The last thing he saw was the sunlight reflecting from the perfect, lustrous alloy of the sword.
The Mediator stood over the farmer, staring down at the space between the body and the head. A single tear welled from his eye; a tear the deep, rich, red of his blood.