Page 21 of Broken Vow

I waited at the edge of the field until twilight deepened. Farmers returned from the land carrying tools, none noticing the silver gleam hidden in the tall grass. As smoke rose from the stone chimneys, a deep brass note echoed from the temple pagoda, calling the evening hour.

Using the cover of dusk, I moved toward the ridge, keeping low to the ground and utilizing the shadows of hedgerows and stone walls. I approached from the west, where the harvested fields lay quiet and empty.

My goal was to reach the outskirts, observe any posted signs, or listen for travellers who might mention the route to the capital. Once I gathered my bearings, I intended to retreat into the fields before being spotted.

A thick hedgerow ran along the border of the village. I stepped carefully through the brush, my paws moving quietly over the soil while keeping the pendant secure in my jaws. The nearest stone wall stood twenty paces ahead, with the pagoda roof outlined against the darkening sky.

I took another cautious step forward.

Without warning, a snare snapped shut around my hind leg before my paw hit the ground. Wire tightened violently against skin and bone, anchoring me to the earth. A sharp cry escaped my throat, swallowed by the heavy stone walls of the village. I lunged forward, but the wire only dug deeper, holding me fast.

I was trapped.

Chapter 10

The wire held me through the dark.

I do not know how long I lay there. The light faded behind the fields and the cold crept up from the ground. I could smell the smoke from the chimneys as the village settled into its evening routine behind me, and I heard the temple bell ring its last call of the day, telling the people it was time to stay safe from the dark of the night.

I lay in the cut stalks and tried, tentatively, to ease the tension of the wire by working one of my sharp incisors between the wire and my flesh, but the loop already sat too close to wiggle free. I tried to remain calm and think of a solution to my predicament, because sitting here and waiting for whoever set the trap to come back would surely bring my demise. The pain in my leg had become a steady thing, a fact of my leg, and I stopped fighting it, because fighting it only made it worse. I lay still, breathed into the pain the way I had learned in my meditation practice, and listened to the night and waited.

I heard the horses before I heard the men riding them. It sounded like a small cohort, guards or knights, though from my position it was hard to tell. I heard voices and laughter and the steady trot of their mounts. Somebody was asking where Taren was, and another man answered that he always liked to be rearguard, and the rest of the conversation drowned in the cicadas and frogs that had started their nightly concert. The riders passed, and then I heard another pair of hoofbeats, slow along the road that ran past the village, a single rider at a walking pace in the dark.

A sharp sound cut the night, the marking bark of a hunting dog, and I flattened myself into the stalks. The bark came again, and the sound of paws making pace across the road toward my position was unmistakable. I held still, my heart beating frantically. It was dark, and even with the hunter’s eyes of my fox body there was not enough residual light to make heads from tails, and then suddenly the underbrush was pushed violently aside and a face appeared. A tangle of merle fur and alert intelligence, bright amber eyes, a narrow muzzle, ears poised for the next command. The face of a northern herding dog. Another bark, and the animal crouched with narrowing eyes, and I felt my body take an opposing position. The fur on my back puffed up. My front went down and my back legs tensed like a bowstring, bringing me into a fighting stance.

The dog barked again. This was it. This was the end of it. I would be captured in a hedgerow, the pelt stripped from a body that was not mine, and Drystan would never know what had happened to me.

The hoofbeats stopped.

I heard the creak of leather as the rider shifted in his saddle. The dog was eyeing me, and a snarling growl began to build at the bottom of my belly. I heard the person dismount. Heavy boots came down into the field, slow, careful, crossing the cut ground toward me, and the part of me that was pure animal screamed to run, but the wire held me where I was. The dog held its position and did not break its gaze. It barked once more, and a low melodious voice, carrying the soothing undertone of a temple chant, answered it.

“What did you find this time, Briar? You can’t always run away from me. We will never get home if I have to follow you into every hedge or chase down every badger that smells interesting.”

I began to see a little of him approaching in the dark. The shape of him, broad through the shoulders, a cloak, the dull gleam of something at his hip that was a sword. He smelled of horse and leather and the road, and underneath that, faintly, of something fresh and mesmerizing, the smell of a man who had bathed in good water and worn good cloth. He stopped and clicked his tongue. The dog looked over its shoulder, back at me, as though unsure whether it was a good idea to leave me out of its sight, and then went to him, and I could not yet see his face against the faint residual light of the blue hour. The dog pressed its muzzle affectionately against his hand, and he returned the gesture with warmth, and he crouched a few paces away.

“Looks like you found yourself a new friend, Briar. Why don’t you introduce me to her?”

He did not reach for me. He stayed where he was, crouched, looking, and when he spoke his voice was low and even, pitched for a frightened animal.

“There now,” he said. “There. Don’t be afraid. I’m not here to hurt you.”

I wanted to weep, because even though I had escaped my village only days ago, it felt like an eternity since anyone had spoken to me. The lonely odyssey had left me feeling so utterly alone and abandoned by the gods that just hearing this strange man speak to me in that hypnotically soothing voice felt like fate might be ready to abandon the cruel game it had been playing with me. I could not help the quiet whimper that escaped my throat.

“Oh, poor little thing,” he said. “What happened to you?”

He moved closer. Slowly. He kept his voice going, low and steady, words I half-heard, and his hand came toward my leg where the wire held it. I snapped at him. I could not help it. The fox body snapped before the woman could stop it, my teeth closing on the air beside his hand, and he drew back without anger, without surprise, as though he had expected it.

“I know,” he said. “I know. You are very scared. But you have to let me see the wire.”

He waited and let me settle before he reached again, slower, and this time my breathing calmed the fox body enough that the woman in me took control of the fear and held it down. His fingers found the wire at my leg and followed it to the anchor, and he began, with great patience, to work it loose.

“Oh my. What a cruel thing these humans do,” he murmured, working to free me. The wire had cinched tight and bitten deep, and he worked it free a fraction at a time, pausing whenever I flinched, keeping up his low even nothings, until at last the loop slackened and came away from my leg, and I was free.

And I stayed.

The wire was off, the field was open, the dark would have taken me in a heartbeat, and still I pressed myself low to the ground and stayed. Maybe it was the hypnotic voice that radiated warmth. Maybe it was how calmly Briar had settled beside him, watching me through the whole ordeal with something like sympathy. Maybe it was the hunger and the despair and the crushing weight of having lost everything in a single night. Whatever it was, it held me there beside a man who had not grabbed me when he could have, who had not pinned me or bagged me or done any of the things a man who wanted a silver pelt would have done. He had freed me, and then he had sat back on his heels and let me decide.

In the dark I could not read his face, but I could feel him looking. I lay pressed low to the ground, my body shivering, my fur catching what little light the night was sparing and giving it back to him. My jaw had clenched tightly around the pendant, and he must have seen it.