Short Story: Ghost of the White Wood Signed Paperback

• A human woman.
• A female elf warrior bound to her with a life debt.
• A detachment of the brutal Kalesh army.
• A captain who thinks he’s captured the Ghost of the White Wood.

It never paid to kill Kalesh soldiers. The faceless, numberless men conscripted from every conquered people were used by the Emperor as expendable chisels to chip away at sieged cities or disposable blades to be thrown against any army that dared stand against the Empire.

But kill a single black-masked soldier somewhere else, away from the battlefield, and the Empire would repay you by sending a hundred more.

At least they once had.

The current number was dropping disappointingly close to fifteen.

Melia stood on the rock outcropping, looking across the narrow gully at the bright green leaves in a patch of aspens. She ran the numbers again. Six soldiers at the quarry, four more at the inn, and two intercepted messengers—both with imperial dispatches. Twelve Kalesh soldiers killed in all.

“Only two hundred soldiers?” she asked the woodsman who was keeping back from the edge of the outcropping. That was considerably fewer than a hundred for each soldier killed.

The man attempted something resembling military attention, even though he was breathing so heavily he looked ready to collapse. “Two hundred and fourteen camped at the crossroads, my son says. And that boy’s smart. Can count to a thousand.”

“And the carriage?”

“Just crossing the dry stream bed.” He grinned. “Has the imperial dragon on the door and looks to be riding heavy.”

She tried to keep the irritation out of her voice. “How many soldiers with it?”

“Oh. Six.”

Melia looked the short distance downhill to where the road disappeared around a curve. Six was high for a single carriage.

She drummed her fingers on the shaft of her bow. This gully between two rock outcroppings was the only narrow point along the forest road, and it was barely long enough to trap the carriage. If the six soldiers were spread out too far in front and behind it, this could be hard to contain.

“Thank you.” She nodded a dismissal, and the man hurried off.

She surveyed the area again. The sun was dropping closer to the horizon in front of her, and the fifteen men from the town of Hallen lurked in the growing shadows, invisible enough from the road to serve her purposes.

She stood alone atop the outcropping on one side of the gully, while five townsmen with hunting bows crouched on the other. The rest were spread out in the woods with bows and knives.

The air stirred behind her, a subtle, quiet sound. Like an exhale.

“How are the townsmen?” Melia asked, without turning.

“Eager,” Evay answered, stepping up next to her. The elf was taller by a hand, more slender and more fluid, but she had traded normal elven loose-fit garments for human clothes. She was dressed like Melia in thin pants, a sleeveless tunic, and a fitted vest. The only difference between the two was that Melia’s pants were thicker and her tunic long-sleeved to ward off the early spring chill. The elf’s russet hair was pulled back into a braid, thicker and coarser than Melia’s own black one.

“They won’t wait for your signal,” Evay warned.

“None of them ever do.”

“The one farthest up the hill, is he the cobbler whose wife was killed?”

Melia nodded.

Evay shook her head. “I don’t think you put him far enough away. He’ll snap first.”

“I don’t blame him.”

“Neither do I. I just thought you should know he’s already thinking about coming closer, and if he attacks the carriage before it reaches the rocks…well, you didn’t bring enough untrained, eager villagers to take on six soldiers in the open.”

Melia glanced up the road. She could see the cobbler pacing between tall pine trunks, not bothering to hide. “He seems like a good man. He’ll hold a little longer.”

“He’s a broken man,” Evay said. “I don’t think he has anything left to hold on to.”

Melia considered the distance from the pacing man to the gully. “He’ll hold.”

“Your relentless human optimism is adorable.”

They were silent for a moment. Melia ran her thumb over the smooth, pale wood of her bow and looked over the valley south of them.

“You’re brooding over the fact that the Empire only sent two hundred men, aren’t you?” Evay asked.

“It is a little insulting.”

The faint creak of a wagon wheel floated up through the trees, and Melia searched the slope below them for any sign of the carriage.

“Did you hear that just now?” Evay slung the viciously curved, elvish bow off her back and pulled an arrow from her quiver. “It must be so limiting to have ears that can’t hear things until they’re almost within your reach.”

Melia readied her own identical bow. The white wood always looked a little more at home in Evay’s long, elvish fingers, but the grip was comfortable, and Melia absently plucked the string, feeling the bow thrum. “Yes, yes, I know. You can hear a pine needle fall in the forest. Doesn’t it get annoying to have to listen to so many things that are too far away to care about?”

“Like the fact that your cobbler broke?”

Melia turned to see the man stealing through the trees toward the narrow, rock gully. He held a knife in his hand with a clumsy, awkward grip. Every line of his body blazed with reckless savagery.

She swore and glanced back downhill toward the carriage. She could hear the squeaks and groans of the wheels clearly, but it wasn’t in view yet.

Evay’s feet were planted on the rock, her bow drawn, an arrow aimed steadily at the cobbler. “He’s getting awfully close to where he shouldn’t be.”

“Wait,” Melia said, moving to the edge of the rock. “We have a moment more.”

“Barely.” She spared a glance for Melia. “That’s a long distance for you. Try not to fall down when you get there.”

“I’ll do my best. If he makes a run for it, don’t miss him and hit me by accident.”

“Miss?” Evay scoffed. “When I shoot you, it’ll be because I meant to.”

Melia stepped as close as she could to the edge of the rock. “I’m pretty sure you’re bound to not kill me.”

“No, I’m bound to keep others from killing you. I don’t think the blood debt covers me killing you.”

“I’m fairly certain it does.” Melia gauged the distance from herself to the base of the rocks. It was long.

“Your cobbler isn’t stopping,” Evay pointed out.

Melia let out an annoyed breath and stretched her fingers toward the ground on the far side of the road. She focused on a single patch of forest, on the way the last of the sunlight slanted through the trunks to land on the dusty earth. On the way the breeze tugged at the strands of moss hanging from the lowest branches. She thought of how the earth would feel under her feet and pulled that piece of the world toward herself.

She took a step.

A rush of air blew past her as she stepped onto the dirt, directly in the path of the cobbler.

The sound she made was much louder than an exhale, and the man hissed in surprise, flinching back.

Melia braced for the wave of dizziness that followed, setting one hand on the nearest tree and keeping her eyes focused on the man in front of her.

His surprise only lasted a moment, and his rage returned faster than Melia’s balance. Which was a bad sign. People were usually more stunned when she appeared out of nowhere in front of them.

He lifted the knife. “Don’t try to stop me.”

“I’m not,” Melia said. “I’m just asking you to wait.”

The man’s chest rose in fast, furious breaths. “Do you know what they did to her?”

“I do,” she answered. “And if you wait—just a moment—we will pin them in the gully and make them pay.”

He started to shake his head.

“But if you attack them in the open forest before they reach the rocks,” Melia said, “they will kill you and your friends. They will leave your body behind the way they left your wife. And they will never think of you again.”

The man’s hand shook, and tears filled his eyes.

She didn’t know his name. She didn’t know what his wife’s name had been. Once, she’d learned the names of all these people the Empire had broken. But this endless fight had grown so heavy, and at some point, she’d stopped wanting to add the weight of their names too.

“Just another few moments,” Melia said, trying to keep a little distance from his raw pain. “Please.”

The cobbler’s jaw clenched, but he nodded once, and Melia set her hand on his shoulder. “Thank you.”

She looked across the road, up to where Evay stood on the rocks. The elf lowered her bow and made a few quick hand motions.

“The carriage is at the turn,” Melia said quietly. She considered, briefly, moving back up next to Evay, but there wasn’t time to cross the road and climb the rocks, and stepping up there so soon after stepping down would leave her too dizzy to shoot.

“Hide,” she said to the cobbler. “Just another moment. Wait for me to shoot.”

The approaching carriage was hidden by the rocks, and Melia nocked an arrow, moving to the edge of the road, listening to it trundle closer. She could hear the tromp of the soldiers’ boots and the steady gait of the horses.

A hunting bow twanged from up above her, and she heard an arrow thunk off the wooden wall of the carriage.

Melia swore. They never waited.

“The ghost!” one of the Kalesh soldiers yelled. “He’s here! Protect the carriage!”

The other soldiers took up the cry.

A grim smile spread across Melia’s lips as she stepped out into the road. The men from Hallen let out their own shout, and arrows rained down on the soldiers, killing two.

The driver snapped his whip at the pair of horses, urging them fast through the gully. Melia sighted down the arrow to the thin strap of leather connecting the nearest horse’s collar to the carriage shaft.

The carriage driver saw her and shouted, and a soldier sitting next to him pointed a crossbow toward Melia.

Before he could aim, he toppled from the carriage with one of Evay’s arrows in his neck.

Melia ignored the growing chaos and held her breath, feeling the tension coiled in the bow. When she released, the arrow flashed in the sunlight and sliced through the thin strap where it connected to the horse’s padded leather collar. The tip of the arrow sank into the collar, deep enough to jab into the horse’s shoulder.

The animal reared back. The broken harness twisted loose, and the carriage shaft dropped, crashing against the horse’s legs and driving him sideways into the other steed.

One of the three remaining soldiers charged at Melia. He was dressed in the full black uniform of the Kalesh troops, his tall boots wrapped with leather straps, the bottom of his face covered with a black mask.

She started to raise her bow but caught motion at the edge of the woods. The cobbler burst from the trees with a heart-rending scream, slamming into the soldier, sinking his knife deep into the Kalesh man’s chest.

The horses whinnied and reared, the carriage twisted, and the terrified face of some minor lordling pressed against the window. Trapped in the gully, the last Kalesh soldiers fell beneath the onslaught of the townsmen.

Melia slung her bow over her back and stepped around them to the carriage door. She pulled it open to find a wide-eyed, heavyset nobleman crouched in the corner, blubbering. Reaching in, she grabbed his arm, pulling him out until he fell heavily on the ground. He started to scramble away, but she grabbed his collar, and he curled up in a wide, shaking ball, whimpering about the Ghost of the White Wood. His long, Kalesh robe was crumpled, the red silk smudged with dirt.

One of the men from Hallen leaned into the open carriage door and let out a whoop. “Gold! There’s gold in here!”

Melia dragged the nobleman farther out of the way as the other townsmen rushed the carriage. They pulled out a chest filled with gold and silver pieces, a crate of the nobleman’s extravagant clothes, and a bundle of papers.

The cobbler stood away from the others, his knife bloody, his face still savage. His eyes locked on the nobleman, and he stalked toward the quivering lord.

Melia stepped in front of the nobleman. “Not this one.”

“Move,” the cobbler said.

“No. He lives.”

The other men quieted, their eyes watching the cobbler warily.

“He deserves to die,” the cobbler hissed.

“Maybe,” Melia answered. “But I want him to live.”

He shifted forward, and an arrow lodged in the ground at the front of his boot.

“Let this go,” Melia said. “Her next shot will not be a warning.”

A hint of madness crept into the cobbler’s eyes, and Melia braced herself for the last foolish move the man would make.

An older man took a step toward them. “It won’t bring her back, Tom.”

Melia watched the cobbler’s resolve crack at the words. The anger drained away, leaving just the raw, hollow pain. Tom dropped the knife, and it thudded to the ground.

“I’m sorry,” Melia whispered as tears filled his eyes. Her own old, worn-in pain rose, and the next words came out ragged. “I’m sorry they took her from you.”

Tom merely stood there, tears washing lines in the blood and dirt on his face. The older man took him by the shoulder.

Melia picked up the bundle of papers from where they’d been dropped. Skirting around the back of the wagon, she headed for the outcropping where Evay waited.

A man ran after her, holding out the chest of coins.

She shook her head. “Take it and split it among the town. The horseshoes are marked with the imperial seal, so change those quickly. And dismantle the carriage in the woods before you get back to town. Don’t let it sit anywhere visible.”

“You don’t want anything besides the papers?” he asked.

She glanced back at the cowering lord. “I want you to send him back to where he came from.”

The man nodded. “We will. Thank you,” he said, earnestly.

She took in the bodies of the soldiers on the ground and the wounded townsmen.

Six more soldiers killed.

Maybe that would be enough.

• 58 pages