"Come out yer highness!" The man's voice was deep and cruel. “We’ve been tracking ye ever since ye came into our forest.” She closed her eyes tight against the fear rising in her throat at his nearness, burning like bile.
"Ye know I'll find ye. I promise if ye make it easy, I'll be kind."
Liz thought perhaps she could stay there, buried in the earth, all night if she had to. Eventually he would search somewhere else. He would leave. She just had to wait him out, bide her time. Even if it meant freezing, starving, lying in filth. She’d only just won her freedom; Liz was not prepared to give it away again so soon.
"Fine." His voice boomed around her like thunder, rumbling all the way to her marrow. "If ye will not come out on yer own, my men and I will search ye out. But not before we have some fun with that little friend of yers."
At his words, Liz's frantic thoughts ceased. They shocked her back into reality. Of course they'd captured Tia. Of course, there was more than one man after her. Her hand dropped from her mouth. She would have to acquiesce to him. There was rustling and muffled speech. The bottom of Tia's dress and three more pairs of boots came into her field of vision.
"She’s a looker alright. It’ll be a shame to scar up that pretty face o’ hers." One of them grumbled and Liz heard the unsheathing of a blade.
"No!" She scrambled out of her hiding place, curls freed from her plait and falling into her eyes, dirt smeared over what seemed every inch of her. Tia was crying. A dirty, gap-toothed ruffian held her fast with a dagger to her throat.
"Do not touch her! You filthy mongrel, I’ll have your hands cut off and your eyes gouged for even thinking about it." Liz spat at the man’s feet, daring him to defy the authority in her tone. The man had a knotted scar over one eye that was dead, white, and unseeing.
He smiled at her, a cruel twist of his lips, reaching forward to grip her by her poorly masked red braid. He pulled slowly, forcing her to look on his hideous face as he snapped and one of the other men came forward with a dirty rope. Fear trickled down her spine as her hands were forcefully bound tightly enough that moving them caused her pain, but not moving them made them go numb.
"Willing or not highness, to the Dragon ye'll go."
Chapter Six
Wharton Cove was two days' travel by horse. Two days. It was the closest Mat would ever be, and yet the looming phantom of Gareth’s presence anchored him in the mud. In the last few weeks, he’d tried to gain Gareth’s trust, to ingratiate him among the men he’d brought along enough to lure him into letting his guard down.
Nothing. Worked.
Gareth slept apart, ate apart, trained in the mornings before the sun came up, and hunted alongside Mat when he ventured too far from the lodge. After a fortnight, he’d only said a handful of words to anyone else. When he spoke, it was direct and commanding, no sentimentality or frivolity leaking into the conversation. There’d been no hope of gleaning more information about the crates he’d seen, or slipping out from under his constant supervision to investigate them himself. To describe the man as practical would be putting it lightly.
Mat had been planning to steal away from this excursion and race down to Wharton Cove, returning in a few days’ time and claiming he’d been lured too deep into the wood by the tree spirits. There were enough songs and stories about them in the old tales to convince the more superstitious men in their party. The goddess of luck and love didn't favor him this time, however, as Gareth volunteered to come with him. Now, he found himself setting snares and mumbling incoherent prayers that they would soon return.
He kicked the mud off his boots and stood, stretching his back. Though he would never admit it, the country was beautiful this far south. Everything thrummed with life. Soft moss covered the ground. The river rushed past him, and the tree foliage burst in a kaleidoscope of autumn colors as though the harsh winter months rarely touched this place.
Everything here erupted with inexplicable brightness. The chatter of squirrels in the trees and the gleeful tweeting of songbirds wafted on the rustling breeze. Though he didn't want to be in this wood, he would rather be here than at home pining for Mara. He knew he’d made the right decision, though that was hard to remember at night when he missed the feel of her fingers in his hair and her warm curves beneath his hands.
"I know you're up to something," Gareth said, startling Mat out of his musings.
"I don't know what you mean.” Mat snorted, shoving past the other man perhaps a little harder than he intended.
Gareth’s observation was too close to the truth. His piercing stare unsettled Mat enough to force him into changing tactics. “You seem to be the one keeping secrets. I saw how Lord Callum looked to you in the keep before sending us here. He wanted you out of Fangorn. That’s why we’re really here. Care to explain why?”
Gareth’s silence never bothered Mat before, but he could feel his hatred simmering in the air between them. He narrowed his eyes in Mat's direction.
"Yes, well, it's my business. Bastard," he sneered at Mat but dropped the subject nonetheless, not digging too deeply into Mat's own deceit.
"Your business. Got it." Mat gave a mock salute and pulled more wire from one of the saddlebags for another snare. Gareth sneered again, but took the other side of the ridge to set his own snares, both of them glad of the opportunity to distance themselves from each other.
Mat didn't know what to expect should he actually manage to find his father. The uncertainty made it harder to stomach the thought of his friends knowing about his search. What if when he found his father, he was rejected. Or worse, blatantly ignored.
Mat's mother never gave him any indication of who he might be, or why he was no longer in their lives. Anytime he asked her about him, she would change the subject. When he grew older and became more insistent, she showed Mat his signet ring, offering only that it once belonged to the man. As a hotheaded teenager, ready to leave the sleepy hamlet nestled in a quiet mountain town just outside of Fangorn Keep, he insisted she tell him his father’s identity or he would leave home and sever himself from her forever. She wept and begged, but wouldn't relent.
So he’d stolen the ring and left that night.
When Mat was very small, he imagined that his father would come home one day as if he’d always belonged there. Little Mat would stare out the windows toward the road, expecting his father to suddenly appear around the bend. Later he imagined his father was a very important man, someone a great lord or nobleman kept bound in service because he was indispensable to the household.
Now, he wondered if his father knew about Mat at all.
Whoever he was, Mat was not of proper enough birth to afford many rights. Not enough to justify ruining Mara's chances of finding a suitable match. He pulled the wire tight to rid himself of the vision of Mara’s wide doe eyes in the face of a small child, perhaps her child with a husband who could provide for them. She would do well in a nice townhome, her wild spirit let loose in a city bigger than Fangorn. Mat had run away with his thoughts when Gareth came tumbling over the ridge in a hurry and pulled him down. He struggled for a moment, but the sight of Gareth’s wide eyes were a clear warning.