Be Thou My Good: Chapter 13 (Patreon)

Chapter 13: Just Luck

“Well, to be fair, your boss basically threatened my life.” I purposely didn’t call Black her ‘father’, because I wanted some plausible deniability when I pulled that card out later.

Catherine folded her arms. “What, so just because Black clears you, you think you can go riding off into the sunset while I’m in the middle of a campaign?”

I smiled, pulling myself onto the horse I’d be riding off with in a few minutes. “You don’t need me to read signs and portents for you, Catherine. There’s only one battle left, and you already know where it lies.”

“Liesse,” she muttered, turning her eyes westward. Out there, beyond the walls of Marcheford yet to be rebuilt, lay the rebel stronghold. The so-called Duke of Liesse was little more than a political pawn of the powers beyond the western mountains, but he was here right now, in the kingdom of Callow. It was her job to end his uprising.

It was a hard thing, asking a Callowan girl to put down her own nation’s revolt, but Black struck me as a hard man.

“The Lone Swordsman will be there too,” Catherine tried. “I…am going to have to deal with him.”

“The threads bind you tightly.” She jerked at my words. “But the last time I gave someone advice to fight against another Named, he went and got himself killed.”

She muttered. “Just cause he ignored you.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Catherine, we both know that you don’t trust me anymore.”

She looked away, but she didn’t contradict me.

There had been a point, during the battle of Marcheford, where everything had clicked. We’d rallied together, slain the demon, and saved the day.

Then the Black Knight rode into the scene on his black horse, and she remembered herself.

“So I think I should take a little sabbatical.” I rubbed my mare’s neck, and she whickered gently. “Besides, Named like Archer and I? We’ll be more useful to you in the wind.”

“Stories like that only work for Heroes.”

I rolled my eyes. “And what are you, a young woman fighting to save her homeland, if not a hero?”

She hunched into herself. “It doesn’t work like that.”

“Doesn’t it?” I tilted my head. “Or do you just not want it to?”

“I tried once.” She shook her head. “Weeping Heavens, why am I even telling you this?”

“You’re confusing heroism with a blessing from the Gods Above,” I said. “There are different types of stories, Catherine. That much should be obvious by now.”

“Yeah, when you’re fighting Demons.” She took a deep breath, shaking her head roughly. “Forget about it. Just get out of here already.”

I sighed. “Just keep it in mind. I know you can barely stand me, but Hakram might be my favorite person in the whole Dread Empire.”

“Not Archer or Apprentice?” She cocked her brow.

“Tell me when Ranger joins Praes.” I wheeled my horse. “And tell Masego I’ll forgive him when he realizes what he did wrong.”

Cat raised her voice over the clack of hooves against the cobblestones. “You’re gonna have to explain it yourself!”

I just waved over my shoulder and focused on getting out of Marcheford  without pitching over my harness. I’d ridden a horse all of once in my entire life, so even that was an accomplishment.

Archer was at the gate, laying on the ground with her back against the rough-hewn outer wall. She’d tied Hunter’s legs beneath her own horse’s stomach as she whittled. He didn’t look much enthused by the arrangement.

“There you are.” She kipped up to her feet, tucking a the chunk of wood into her cloak. “Thought you were going to make me wait all day.”

My lips twitched. “Hunter.” I nodded to the young man. “Archer, are we ready then?”

“God, when’d you get so boring?” She grabbed her horse’s reins. He was a dappled stallion to go with my calm grey mare. I admitted to being a bit biased, but my new horse was much more beautiful, and now that I had both arms again, I’d be able to take care of her.

“I’m saving my sass for the next plot-relevant moment,” I said. “We’re not even the focus of the story right now, that’s Catherine.” I cocked my thumb over my shoulder.

“Pshaw.” She waved for the gate to be open, and we started out of the city. “I’m always the main character of my story; Squire can jump off a bridge.”

I glanced back at the town as we crested the first hill. “Do you think there are any bridges in Liesse? Knowing her, she just might.”

“Nah. Used to be a bunch of fancy chapels with flyin’ buttresses out here, but most of ‘em got torn down during the war.” Archer started into a half-jog as we turned from the main road. I flicked my reins once to keep pace. “Now just the squat, sturdy-lookin’ ones are left.”

I hummed. “You’d think that the second sons and daughters of Praes would be quick to turn them into summer palaces.”

Archer laughed again. “Why do you think so many of ‘em got torn down?”

I glanced over at the silent Hunter. “I don’t imagine you care much for churches.”

He grunted, bells in his hair jingling in time with the horse’s steps. “No.”

I waited patiently as Archer started humming tunelessly. I could feel that normally, Hunter would have retreated behind his silence like a shield, but he’d been a prisoner of Catherine’s 15th Legion for nearly a week now, so I imagined the silence was starting to wear thin.

A minute later, he glanced over, not quite at me, but putting me in the corner of his eye. “The beauty of nature far outstrips—”

“Oh, not this shit again.” Archer flicked the reins.

Hunter, of course, adjusted flawlessly to the stallion’s canter. He shot a glare at the woman while she ignored him with aplomb.

“Easy to say, when I’m down an arm.”

“For you.” I could hear the eye-roll in her voice. “If you weren’t already a cripple, I’d lay you out and cart you back to Sanctuary like a sack of flour.”

Hunter glowered at the back of her head, and were he not missing an arm, no doubt he would have thrown himself out of the saddle and spent the rest of his trip trussed up just as Archer described.

Then Archer turned, smirking over her shoulder. “Get it? Cause your daddy’s a baker?”

He lunged, lone arm swiping through the place where Archer had just been. She danced away, laughing as Hunter started to slide off the saddle. I pinched my nose with my new prosthetic. Archer really did remind me far too much of Imp, and I felt a lingering temptation to treat her the same way.

Unfortunately, she had a clear tendency to punch anyone who tried to place themselves above her, and unlike the Undersiders, I wasn’t the nerdy bug girl with a crush on her older brother. To be honest, that would probably make things worse.

The horses, unbothered, plodded along.

I saw Archer peeking at me out of the corner of my eye. Unsatisfied with my response to her antics, she drifted back and poked Hunter in the side.

He glowered, turning as far as he could in the other direction.

She opened her mouth again.

“Why the bells?” I asked.

My words made both Named pause. Archer snickered, and I saw the muscles in Hunter’s back tense. I held back a sigh.

“I can see how much they mean to you, but they seem like an odd choice for a Hunter.” If my words were stilted, it was only because I sucked at small talk, and heading off Archer’s bullying was a full-time job.

“For the challenge,” Hunter said.

Archer snorted.

This time I did sigh. “Archer.”

“What?” She waved a hand. “Hunter could wear a church bell around his neck and his Name would still pick up the slack. Am I supposed to be impressed?”

“The Villains impressed you easily enough,” Hunter replied.

This time Archer cut me off with a laugh. “Like you did with that little Daoine girl from Summerholm?” She tilted her head, a smirk drawn wide across her face. “She thought you’d grown up in the woods, maybe crafted those little bells you’re so proud of with a rock and a pair of twigs, instead of buying them from the smithy.”

She shrugged, turning her gaze back forward. “Now I don’t know about you, but that sounds pretty Villainous to me.”

Hunter growled. “I told no lie. But you—”

“Saved a town full of innocent women and children?” Archer went for the kill. “Were you hoping some fair maiden would fall into bed with you for your ‘heroism’?”

“You’ve found one.” His eyes flicked to me. “So worried I’ll snare her from you—”

Archer turned, hand snaking around Hunter’s collar. “Go on, finish that thought.” She leaned closer. “You won’t. You couldn’t even tell the poor girl you were leading on that your name was fucking John, you little playacting—”

His hand snapped around her wrist. “You want to go there, Indrani?” Hunter dropped his ponderous way of speaking, voice rising in pitch to something more natural. “Don’t think I don’t see what you’re doing, punching down like you always do.”

“Just cause your face is so punchable.”

“You’d know, stuck-up bitch.” He turned to look at me. “Drani might be buttering you up now, but put out and she’ll dump you in a ditch before we’re back to—”

Archer socked him in the mouth. “So you did want to finish.”

“Go on.” John spat on her boots. “Beat on the cripple.”

“Don’t think I won’t.” She yanked, knife flashing out.

I sighed as she cut the ropes and bodily threw Hunter from the horse. We were barely out of sight of the walls.

Hunter staggered to his feet and Archer tossed her knife at him.

He snatched it from the air with an ease that spoke of many live steel ‘spars’ just like this one. Before, I’d been tangentially involved, but I felt the weave slip from me to wrap tightly around the two before me.

The weight of unresolved tension.

Hunter glowered as he flipped the knife in his grip. “Always knew you were looking for an excuse to gut me.”

“Me?” Archer placed a hand on her leather cuirass. “Why, I would never.” Instead of drawing her other knife, she stretched her arms up and folded them behind her head.

If anything, Hunter’s glare only deepened. He could see that she was baiting him. I could tell that from the set of his shoulders.

He was going to take the bait anyway.

With a roar, Hunter lunged. The long knife flashed once, twice.

Archer skipped back, hooking her leg behind John’s. With a twist, she doubled over backwards, kicking. She rolled out from under Hunter’s falling form.

A last, desperate, slash found the dirt beneath Indrani’s boots.

“Come on, then.” She folded her hands behind her head again. “Up and at ‘em, John. Maybe your bonnie Daoine girl will take you back even though you can’t draw a bow.”

Hunter pushed himself upright. “You made sure I’d never touch a bow years ago.” He spat. “Today I’ll return the favor.”

I tensed at the weight of that promise.

His hand still clenched the dagger’s hilt so tight I could see the outline of his bones. I could see the rage written in the line of every muscle on his arms, in the tendons standing out from his neck. But his face was blank.

“Look!” I threw my arm towards the woods.

Two pairs of eyes snapped to me.

“An encounter, to force we noble heroes to overcome our differences?”

A finch fluttered out of the branches of the nearest aspen, soaring silently over my head.

Indrani turned back to look at me. “Performance issues?” She smirked. “Have you tried Vi—”

A hulking behemoth of a bear slammed into her from behind, splintered trunks scattering over the road.

She went flying, and my horse reared.

I fell from the saddle.