Retribution

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

They woke before dawn to find cooks tending large cooking fires already warming mush and the dried fruits they’d discovered. They distributed small bundles of traveling food containing dried fruit, nuts, and grain along with a bowl of gruel. As the sky grew lighter, two hundred anxious soldiers prepared to leave.

Two guards flanked the man Hannah thought of as “Prospector.” Later in the day, he would take his place at the front of the procession, as the general had promised. Hannah was certain Prospector didn’t know of any dangers along the trail. That didn’t mean they were not there, it simply meant he didn’t know of them.

She also believed Elenore didn’t know about the third trail. They should be safe traveling that way, but privately she also knew Elenore would have ambushes and traps waiting on the other two trails. When Hannah didn’t spring them, Elenore would want to know why. She would send her best scouts up the trails to determine what was happening.

It wouldn’t take her best scouts to find where more than two hundred pairs of feet traveled down the usual trail to Wren—and then deviated. The scouts would ride hard enough to kill their horses to report their findings to Princess Elenore.

Hannah tried to think as she followed a hundred men ahead, and led the hundred behind. Each man walked a few steps behind the next, so the line looked endless in the few places where she could see any distance. Brice insisted she stay in the middle, the place he considered the safest. The subject of her thinking was Elenore. When her spies and scouts took her the news Hannah had left the trail, she would wonder for a while, then come to the conclusion Hannah had somehow found another route into Wren—and she’d be right. However, the question that stumped Hannah was, what would Elenore do then?

Hannah accepted the idea that Elenore would figure out the initial change when Hannah and her army didn’t fall into her traps. Was Elenore clever enough to anticipate Hannah would bypass them? Or, had she also prepared other ambushes and traps in Wren?

Hannah decided she had. Or she would. Elenore was not the sort to sit on the sidelines.

“You’re sure quiet,” Brice said from four steps behind her.

“We’ve come so far with no problems, but the trail narrows when we pass between those two mountains. I’m still worried.”

His voice sounded raspy in the thin air. Others also breathed hard, puffs of white floating from at their mouths with each exhaled breath. He said, “I think you were right.”

Hannah said, “Perhaps about no trap, but she will have spies watching us. They will report to her, probably by fast horses, and then we will turn off. I think a few will follow us.”

Brice didn’t stifle his snort of laughter. “Have you been talking to the general this morning? I know you haven’t because you’ve been with me, but he has the same idea. I heard him ordering a platoon to fall back and hide when we turn on to the new trail.”

“They’ll attack and stop them from following?”

“No. The general said to allow them to follow us for a full day. But none will return on the trail to report to their superiors on that trail. The platoon lagging behind will see to that.”

She snapped her fingers as if surprised. “That’s why he is a general, and I’m only a princess.”

They were quiet again as they concentrated on slippery footing, shortness of breath, and private thoughts on what lay ahead. The troops became more wary as they approached the narrow slot between the two mountains. The forward scouts killed two spies, failing to capture either of them alive. They found no sign of a third spy, but that didn’t mean much.

Still, Hannah relaxed after they passed the bottleneck shortly before mid-day. The march came to a halt as they ate a meal, then resumed. Shortly after, they turned from the main trail and entered a narrow canyon where they crossed and re-crossed the same stream five times as it wound down the center.

The stream grew larger as other creeks and streams added their water, and by mid-afternoon, it was a small river. Fortunately, they were on the north bank when they left it and followed a series of narrow valleys until they reached a ridge of sharply peaked mountains to climb. The trail became an insignificant path that made a series of switchbacks to reach the top.

Once over the crest, more switchbacks took them into a wide valley filled with small pines so thick in places they turned sideways to slip through. However, the elevation fell with each step, slowly, but when they stopped for the night, their breathing was close to normal.

Small, crisp snowflakes began drifting from the gathering clouds about the time they stopped for the evening. In the morning, a skiff of white covered the ground. It wasn’t deep enough to impede walking, but it made the ground dangerously slippery. The morale was low and men tired. The morning march was slow and the ground rough. A man ahead of Hannah slipped and hurt his ankle. He limped along with the help of another soldier.

The day dragged on and on. Hannah began thinking about it as the day that never ended. She counted steps and lost track. The terrain was not so difficult, but if she hadn’t known they were following the path marked on the map, she would have believed them lost in a pine forest covering half the world.

That night was worse. Hannah slept little, and she was restless even when asleep. The following day seemed longer than the almost endless yesterday.

A member of the platoon that had been lagging behind caught up after they made camp the third night on the path. He planned to lag behind again but reported they had prevented four scouts from returning to Princess Elenore to report the change in direction. All were in captivity, and they didn’t believe there were more scouts. Not yet. But there would be.

Hannah hadn’t seen the general since the previous day, Brice’s mood was out of sorts and didn’t want to talk, and the men were in a worse state of mind. The following morning word came down the line that the worst was over. One additional small ridge of razorback mountains to cross today, and then tomorrow they’d descend into a forest of hardwoods, rolling hills, and the farmlands of Wren.

Hannah didn’t know how all that could be determined from a map, but then she realized the general had probably sent his fastest scouts along the trail the day they made the decision to take this trail. Three or four fast men who had already reached the edge of Wren—and returned. She knew it because it’s what she would have done, and that brought a smile.

The smile widened when she thought of Elenore and the confusion she must face. All her plans defeated, and she didn’t know where Hannah was. She must be going crazy.

Hannah lifted her head and marched with pride. She would defeat her cousin, one way or another.

Brice moved closer. “You look happy.”

She smiled. “Know something? I’m really happy to know this is coming to an end.”

“Why?”

She kept walking and considered the question. “If you take away the time I lived with my mother, I’ve spent half my life running. Scared. Fearing the next mage would strike me with lightning bolts or worse. I’ve looked behind me, mistrusted people for imagined slights, and on the voyage, I killed. On this trail, I killed again. All because of one woman’s ambitions.”

She heard the anger and hate in her tone. She spat the words near the end, then said, “She had no right.”

“No, she didn’t.”

“The stupid woman could have talked to me, and I’d have agreed she would make a better queen because she had trained for that position. Instead, she sent assassins.”

“You’d have given up the crown?”

She turned her head so he could see her face. “I never wanted it, never asked for it, and would gladly have given it to her—until she killed everyone I loved and left me with nobody. I had exactly one friend in the world, a stable boy named Cleanup.”

“You’ve told us about him. Prin, I mean, Hannah, how do you see this ending?”

“With the death of a princess. That’s the only way. Don’t ask me which one.”