Chapter Text
The Shirewood slept, frozen but thawing, gray but greening, on the cusp of a thaw. The last breaths of winter blew through the crook-branched oaks, and all the secret living things that slept, insensate, under their blanket of snow would soon awake. For now, though, a layer of snow still clung, grainy and stubborn, between the trees and in the shadowed stretches of the forest trails.
On this damply cold morning, Nova Hawk the Bone Witch strode through the outskirts of the Shirewood, her bow slung over one shoulder. To a visitor, the forest was a maze of twisty little paths, all alike, but she had been walking these trails for months, and she moved with confidence; her feet crunched decisively through the crust of snow. When she finally left the forest behind, she would shed her skull-mask and her responsibilities as the leader of the outlaws there (known, to her dismay, as the Merry Miscreants). Once freed of that burden, she would have to take on a different and more hateful set of responsibilities as Harrowhark Nonagesimus, Lady of Drearburh. Her footprints made a line of stitches that connected one part of her life to another, both equally secretive. But she had taken pains to go up through the trees for part of her journey from the Winter Camp, to hide her trail, break the link, and keep the two halves of her life carefully separate. Maintaining two lives and two identities in this way was a ridiculous amount of trouble, but she had seen it in a vision, and like most of the things the visions led her to do, it had worked out much better than she had any right to expect. She trusted the visions, even if she trusted nothing else in her worm-ridden brain. She had benefited from this guidance for nearly ten years, until just six months ago, when her mind cracked open and a wave of fearful nonsense poured in. But she was better now—was supposed to be better—had been feeling better, with Sextus’ treatments.
The trail dipped a little here to approach a rippling brook. The broad stream was knee-deep with fresh snowmelt, with a pine log as the only bridge. A hooded figure was approaching the other end of the log. She squinted suspiciously. If it was a phantasm, it was a painfully mundane one. She quickened her steps so as to reach the bridge first and avoid any awkward waiting. To her displeasure, the stranger also moved hastily, and in the end both arrived at the log-bridge simultaneously.
In no mood for patience, Harrow drew her bow and nocked an arrow with the speed of long practice. “Stand aside for your better,” she called, “and you may cross after me!”
“Your better?” replied the stranger, her voice smoky with amusement. She cocked her hip and put one foot on the end of the log. “How did you measure that?” Her face was wrapped up to the nose in a cowl and scarf against the cold. With her hood up, her expression was unreadable, but Harrow sensed that the stranger was laughing at her.
“I need no measurement but this: a yard of pine through your heart if you do not step away!” Harrow pulled back the bowstring until her arms sang with tension and the arrow’s goose-feather fletching tickled her cheek.
The stranger paused, but her stance betrayed no fear. “That doesn’t prove you my better though. It just makes you a coward and a twat. There you are at ten yards with an arrow nocked, and here I am with my bow unstrung, and just an ash-wood staff in my hands!”
Harrow huffed in irritation. “Defend yourself with a staff then!” she said. She put her bow down then stepped onto the log.
“What?” the stranger said. “You don’t come up to my chin! I might sit on you by accident, or get confused and mistake you for a footstool.”
“Size doesn’t matter.”
The stranger snickered. “Thus quoth the maiden!” She took two bold steps onto the log then continued, “Look, short-arse, I don't want to fight. Just hop off the bridge already and let me go on my way.”
“I'm not a short-arse, I'm Nova Hawk the Bone Witch!”
“Oh, come off it! First: you are definitely a short-arse. You’d need a ladder to have a staring contest with a newt. Second: I already knew you were the Bone Witch on account of your fucking skull mask and the badly-embroidered bones on your surcoat.”
Before she could stop herself, Harrow looked down at her surcoat of black wool, painstakingly embroidered with clavicle, ribcage, spine and pelvis. Then she redirected her gaze to glare at the buffoon who was blocking her way across the bridge.
“Not a great talent with the needle? I understand. I prefer larger weapons myself.”
“If I lack skill with a needle,” Harrow said through gritted teeth, “it is because I have devoted my life to mastering the arts of archery, necromancy, and staff-fighting!”
The stranger rolled her eyes. “Sure. If you say so. Still not seeing any staff in your hands though.”
With a triumphant flourish, Harrow pulled a doe’s rib-bone out of a sheath at her belt.
“That’s…still not a quarterstaff. That’s not even a quarter of a quarterstaff.”
Harrow felt a smile pull at her lips. “Oh yes, but…in my hands, it grows.”
“Thus quoth the maiden.”
“Yes?” said Harrow, confused. “I said in my hands it—” She felt her face heat, doubtless all too visible below the jawless bottom of her mask. “You—you are puerile!”
“That’s a very fancy way to say that I’m funnier than you.”
Harrow didn’t dignify that with a response. Instead, she held the rib up with both hands, murmuring the spells she needed under her breath. The bone unbent, then thickened until it was as big around as a child’s wrist, then lengthened until it was taller than herself–almost as tall as the stranger. With her long arms, the stranger would still have the advantage of reach, but Harrow resolved to thrash her nonetheless. She would just have to be faster and more clever.
The stranger leaned forward eagerly, like a cat ready to pounce. “That’s a pretty good trick. Are you ready to fight?”
Harrow paused to assess her reserves. She didn’t usually indulge in such extravagant bonework, and she was starting to feel hollow and scraped-out like an old cheese rind. It would be humiliating to get a nosebleed during the fight. Her opponent, for all her rudeness, had a touch of gallantry about her. She was all too likely to call a halt to the duel, maybe even default in Harrow’s favor, depriving her of the challenge she craved. Still, she thought she had enough energy left for one more tweak. She lengthened the bones of her feet just a bit and coaxed a bit more mobility out of the joints of her tarsus to better grip the log. Her soft leather shoes would accommodate the change well enough. She took two steps forward experimentally. She felt quite stable even on the narrow footing, albeit at the cost of a hint of future pain from the muscles working much harder than usual. But her legs were strong and steady, her arms swift and sure. She rotated her shoulders a bit to test them. It would do.
The stranger strode forward confidently on the narrow bridge, spinning her staff in front of her so swiftly it could have deflected an arrow mid-flight. She stopped at the middle, planted one end against the log bridge, and waited, her head tilted insolently. Harrow studied her carefully. She was broad in the shoulders and hips, and her tunic was tight around her muscular arms, leaving a good handsbreadth of forearm exposed besides. While her clothes had once been dyed with blue woad and yellow weld, they were now faded and patched. A smith’s apprentice, perhaps, wearing the cast-off clothing of a much wealthier person. Maybe even a particularly down-at-heel squire. The ill-fitting tunic might slow her down a bit, but Harrow knew better than to count on it.
Feigning trepidation, Harrow stepped forward to meet the taller woman, holding her staff in a neutral position, with her hands dividing its length into thirds. She swung the right end of her staff experimentally. The stranger parried while still holding her staff vertically, base planted, shifting her weight and tilting the staff just enough to block Harrow’s blow. Harrow struck again from the left, only to get the same response, mirror-image. Harrow narrowed her eyes. She was being toyed with. She looked up and met the stranger’s eyes. Up close, the color resolved into the amber-brown of strong ale, bubbling with smug amusement. She winked. A surge of rage filled Harrow’s ribcage; slowly, she exhaled. So the stranger underestimated her—she could use that to her advantage. Harrow schooled her expression, trusting her mask to help keep her secrets. She made two more weak strikes from the right, but on her third blow, just as the stranger was moving to block, she slid her grip to the end of the staff and thrust forward with her suddenly-lengthened reach, tip first at the stranger’s face. The stranger huffed in surprise, swapping her own grip in the space of a blink. She swung her staff just enough to deflect Harrow’s strike, which passed close enough to brush the edge of her hood. They both stepped back to recover, and the stranger laughed, loud and brassy. Then they lunged for each other eagerly, eyes alight, staves whirling.
They danced back and forth on the bridge, matching each other with strike and counterstrike, as if they had been training together for years. Harrow discovered that her dueling partner was not just strong, but fast as well. Harrow made the most of her low center of balance where she could, and she pulled every bit of trickery she could think of, but the stranger had an almost supernatural instinct for escaping a trap at the last possible moment. Then she would laugh again, as though delighted to have nearly lost. It was infuriating.
As they advanced and retreated over the bridge, Harrow felt the rhythm of the fight begin to change. Each time she drove the stranger back, she didn’t go quite as far as before, and every time she was forced to retreat, she knew her heels were landing just a little closer to her end of the log. She was balanced on the cusp of defeat, but she poured her remaining energy into a series of quick thrusts and forced the taller woman to give ground. Pride began to bloom in her heart, to hold such a fight against such a foe. She couldn't quite restrain a smile, and it seemed for a long moment as though she might win. Her staff, however, did not match her ambitions. As she turned a blow aside, she felt the tiny shiver of a fracture beginning near her hand. She stepped back to recover, murmuring spells under her breath to repair the damage. But the stranger pounced on her lapse of focus with a crushing overhead blow strong enough to break a skull. Harrow flung both hands up with her staff between. There was a terrifying crunch of shattering bone. The ash-wood staff struck her scalp hard enough to smart, but leaving her with life and wits intact. She found herself holding two short pieces of bone, splintered ends quivering as her spell sought to reconnect them across an unbridgeable distance. She raised her gaze from the stranger's heaving chest to her wide eyes, feeling fragments of bone fall out of her hair. Later she would wonder whether her staff had absorbed the worst of the blow or if the other woman had pulled her strike. In the moment, however, she was fighting to control her half-finished spellwork. With three quick spell-words, she directed the seeking ends of bone to curve around, hooking them over the stranger's wrists. The bone continued growing; in moments she would have her opponent held firmly in cuffs.
The stranger held her staff one-handed and brought her hands in close then rotated out, around, and down. A quick flex and the hooks snapped. Harrow dropped the sad fragments into the water. It was over. She avoided the stranger’s gaze, scouring her brain for a dignified exit speech. The bits of bone spiraled down beneath the water, disappearing among the rocks.
The stranger spoke first. “I thought you would—I mean, you did block, but—wait a moment!” She strode back off her end of the bridge to where a coppiced tree-trunk was growing into a thick bunch of vertical staves. Pulling a hatchet from her belt, she swiftly cut one down, trimmed the end and removed the worst of the twigs and branches. Harrow forced down her irritation. She would have to accept this inferior weapon: a springy greenwood staff was better than no staff at all. The stranger returned, almost bouncing, and shoved her own seasoned ash-wood staff at Harrow. “Here!”
Harrow stared. “But…that’s the better staff!”
“Yea. But it’s fair because now you won’t have anything to bone me with!” The stranger paused expectantly.
Harrow took the quarterstaff and glared. She didn’t want the condescension of this stranger, no matter how talented. She wanted to snatch that ridiculous scarf off her face and–she didn’t know what. They were too close to spar now, and the energy of the fight had drained away. The brown-eyed woman was upsettingly tall, her bosom so close to eye level that at this distance it was a struggle to look at anything else. Harrow forced her eyes upward. The stranger’s hooded head was framed by a backdrop of mist and twisting branches. The weak winter sun fell slantwise between the trees, breaking into long spears of light. The whole effect was so otherworldly that she wondered for a moment if she had lost the thread of reality again. The stranger was almost completely covered, save her eyes, brown and inebriating. She leaned toward Harrow, lifting her right hand as though to pull down her scarf and—Harrow suddenly realized—she had only one hand on her staff.
Harrow took a smooth half-step forward, locking gazes with the stranger, as she slid the lower end of her staff inside the other’s guard. One quick flick was all it would take to get behind her forward knee and in front of the other then send her ass over teakettle. But just as she started the move, the stranger leapt like a startled cat and landed a half-step away on the log, her hands already whipping the greenwood staff around in a blur. It smacked into Harrow’s unprotected side with a thwack, and then she was flying. She curled over and hit the shallow water with shoulder and back, head tucked. She rolled; the cold stabbed her more painfully than the impact. She came up on her hands and knees, every inch of her soaked, so shockingly cold that for a terrifying moment she couldn’t move or breathe. She heard laughter, brassy and uninhibited, from somewhere above.
“I admit,” said the stranger, hopping off the log then stepping into the shallows up to her ankles. “I was hoping you'd last a little longer for round two.” She held out a long-fingered hand.
“Your gloating is churlish,” Harrow said, “But Saints and Martyrs! You fight like a lion with that staff!”
The stranger made an indistinct sound and sloshed forward a little deeper, still holding out her hand. Harrow clasped it reluctantly.
“Oh fuck, you’re so wet!” said the other woman, pulling Harrow to her feet gallantly—or she tried to—but just as the idiot was making some kind of ridiculous swooping bow, a sudden bout of shivering hit Harrow like a spasm. She bent over reflexively, and the stranger, refusing to let go, fell to her knees in the icy stream. “Hell’s Teeth! That’s fucking cold!” she struggled back to her feet, pulling Harrow up alongside. “All right, mighty Bone Witch, let’s get out of here.” They sloshed back to the shore, this time without any flourishes. “Do you have shelter nearby?”
“Yes.” Harrow replied, thinking of Drearburh. She had a set of dry clothes (without bone heraldry) stashed just out of sight of the palisade.
“I’d better go with you.” the stranger said. “Make sure you get safely back to the Cunning Cutpurses—”
“Merry Miscreants.”
“Of course. I hit you harder than I meant to and it’s colder than a witch’s tit—”
“I. Am. Fine!” Harrow bit out.
“And, as I was saying, you are completely soaked.”
“You’re the one who knocked me into the water!”
“It was a spur-of-the-moment decision! You caught me off-guard. It’s not every day that a beautiful woman tries to get between my legs.”
Harrow stared in consternation. “I’m wearing a mask, you absolute reprobate!”
“Apologies,” the stranger said, unapologetically. “It’s not every day that a hideous Bone Witch tries to get between my legs.”
Harrow spun on her heel and marched up the stream bank to the path, taking satisfaction from the fact that they were now on the far side of the stream, meaning that she had been the first to cross the bridge after all. Ahead of her, the path led out of the forest and off toward Drearburh Castle, and eventually, Novenham Town. It was only a five-minute walk from here to Drearburh, even on her aching feet, which were beginning to suffer for her musculoskeletal manipulations. But as the large stranger clambered up behind her, she realized that she couldn’t afford to go near Drearburh, let alone permit the stranger to see her cache of clothing. Crude though the woman was, she could doubtless put two and two together when presented with such an obvious clue to Harrow’s identity. They would have to go back to the camp under the Grand Oak instead. Suppressing a shiver, she turned back to the bridge, crossed, and began retracing her steps. The stranger shadowed her with annoying persistence, barely half a step behind.
The forest embraced them both, cold and wet. Harrow shivered, but hid the motion from her companion by gripping her own elbows as she trudged forward. The ground was still frozen in places, the ice crystals in the mud a perplexing mix of knifelike shards and feathery needles. Where the sun touched weakly, a soupy mire was developing, and where her footsteps had punched through the insulating crust of snow, each print was melting into a black puddle, a trail that even an idiot could follow. Mercifully, the idiot behind her chose not to comment.
Her somersault into the streambed may have saved her from a cracked skull, but she was now soaked through every layer. Her wool tunic and surcoat had absorbed an astonishing amount of water and were now abominably heavy; underneath, her linen shirt and braies clung to her skin in icy folds. She quickened her pace, then she slowed again when her feet protested as though stabbed with needle-sharp icicles. It was just as well that her skin was going numb. With any luck, her feet would too. She trudged on, doing her best to hide her limping steps and increasingly violent shivers from the stranger. Behind her, she heard the soft crunch of footsteps. If this woman persisted in following her all the way to the winter campsite, the Merry Miscreants would be forced to move. There was no question of letting this stranger know their location when she could bring the sheriff’s Swords to their doorstep. But camps could be moved and castles could not. Maybe Camilla would put an arrow through the interloper’s heart and spare them all the trouble.
“You're not what I expected,” the voice behind her said.
“And what, pray tell, were you expecting?”
“For one thing, you're awfully humorless for someone who leads a band called the Whimsical Wastrels.”
“It’s the Merry Miscreants.”
“Right,” said the stranger, “Not very merry, are you?”
“I'm not here to entertain you,” Harrow huffed. “And I didn’t choose the name.”
“I should have guessed. You'd probably have picked something like Outlaw Group X-99.”
Harrow snorted. “Don’t be ridiculous.” (Ninety-nine was much too large a number.)
“It’s a shame. I had all my best jokes practiced, in case I got to meet the famous Bone Witch of Shirewood—”
“Those were your best jokes?”
“No, that was all spur-of-the-moment. I hadn’t anticipated a need to work a stupendously thrilling narrow-bridge staff fight into my jesting routine. Would you like to hear my best jokes?”
“Please spare me.”
The stranger fell into a slightly miffed silence, leaving Harrow to her thoughts.
She was so cold. Not just cold—she felt quite ill, her thoughts sluggish and strange, her extremities numb and a strange tingling at her temples. The tingling behind her eyes was particularly strange—she’d not felt like that since the last time she had a vision, over a year ago.
Oh no, she thought. Not now. Her visions were occasionally useful, but to have one right now, half-chilled and in the presence of an untrustworthy stranger, could well get her killed. Perhaps it wasn’t a vision, only a chill from the cold water? It was ridiculous to hope to be dying instead of prophesying.
The problem was, dying or prophesying, she couldn’t really be sure of anything anymore. Reality, visions, phantasms, dreams. She was confident that she knew the difference. But she had been confident of many things that weren’t true, at one point, and Sextus had warned her that she might have relapses.
The stranger said something; she ignored it. It was hard to keep her mind focused on one thought. The cold. Harrow knew she should probably be worried about the numb chill that was creeping over her, but then again, what choice did she have? Lighting a fire in these conditions would be almost impossible. With a shaking hand, Harrow fished the tinderbox out of her sodden belt pouch, her heart sinking as it dribbled incontinently before she even got the lid open. She dumped the sodden tinder on the ground. Useless. She permitted herself to lean against a nearby tree, just for a moment. Green buds were shyly swelling on a twig near her nose; a wild plum perhaps? She should remember the location and return in the summer to check for fruit.
The stranger was saying something. She gently laid two fingers against Harrow’s chin then jerked back in startlement. “Oh no no no oh fuck. You’re way too cold. Oh, Hell’s Teeth! We’re both idiots!” She grabbed Harrow by the shoulders. There was no way to hide her shivering now—it ripped through her in wild jerking spasms. She felt as though she had been running for miles. So tired! The sun had slipped low through the foggy plum branches behind the stranger’s head, throwing her hooded face into shadow. Harrow thought she might be getting a headache, except she wasn’t sure of any sensation at all: her body was tingling from scalp to toes. Within the darkness of the hood, the stranger’s eyes lit as bright as a fire’s heart, gold and glowing. Above her head a crown of heavy gold set with citrines and pearls hovered, spinning lazily, emitting its own golden glow. In this wild light, the plum buds swelled on their branches as though persuaded of a sudden spring.
Oh, she thought. A prophecy. At least she wasn’t freezing to death.
“Oh damn,” said the gold-eyed shadow. “I have to get your clothes off.” The plum tree burst into flower, a cloud of white, an impossible profusion of blossoms.
“Ha!” said Harrow, shuddering. “Quoth the m-m-maiden!”
“Well, that proves it,” the stranger said, “Something’s wrong.” But Harrow was shivering too violently to reply.