And then back at me: sopping wet, sitting on a muddy horse, with an arrow in my leg. They only believed me because the Axe of Stormjen did not disappear. Therefore, I spoke the truth. For good reason, they trusted the familiar magic far more than the word of a stranger.
“Open the bags,” I demanded. “Pour them all into one place,” I gestured with one arm, holding out my skirt like an apron, “Mix them all in here.” The guard balked at ruining the fine material, his doubt stronger than my command.
“Pour them now!” I cried as the first robber burst through the wall of fog and broken trees.
The guard didn’t look at the danger that came out of the storm. He followed the Axe. One at a time, he poured the five ingredients into a pile in the middle of my skirt: a black crow feather, the finely-ground flower petals, two gold gemstones, one lock of hair from a newborn child. And then, with a glance at my face, he mixed them with his hands, unafraid.
Three more robbers raced free of the grip of the wind, charging into the eye of the storm.
Murder. That was every description I could possibly give of the looks on those men’s faces. Murder: savage, cruel, blood thirsty. Like bees to a hive, they focused on the three of us, turning their horses to surround and capture their prey.
I remembered my mother’s fairytale. The words of the spell came back to me as if she read them to me herself, right that minute.
“Black as a raven,
Darker than the night,
Smoke and fog take light,
Babe shine to haven
Hide from foe craven
Save us from the fight.”
Yeah. It didn’t really flow off the tongue. And the whole rhyming thing was wrong. But the items in her lap didn’t know that.
Under the guard’s hands the ingredients mixed and swirled until quite suddenly, they caught up in smoke. Darker than the raven’s wing, a dense, inky cloud billowed out of her lap, filling the eye of the storm. Making everything impossible to see for my enemies and my allies.
I held the Axe of Stormjen in my shaking hands. The cloud of dark purple was so thick there was no possible way through.
Nudging my skittish horse forward, I rode in a tight circle through the cloaked air.
Holding the axe in front of me, I held the magic to its own truth: that which can obscure can also free.
As soon as I thought those words, the axe glowed, and the path I traced around them began to dissolve the spell. Quickly, the two stormguards and I stood cleared of the inky fog. The men looked at me, silent as the grave. Hands on hilits, determined to fight.
I, on the other hand, renewed my own vow: I am determined to live.
Holding the axe above my head, I called out to the weather, screaming at the sky. “Zephyr!” I cried.
Lightning followed the sound of my voice.
Arcing all around us, bolts of energy plunged through the thickened, obscuring fog, snapping down to earth. Incinerating everything the lightning touched until the ground hummed almost as loudly as the axe. Stormrage horses were trained in such weather, and their shod hooves were made of lead.
Thankfully, the animals danced about nervously but did not bolt.
Everything in the meadow burned. Fried by the charge of the electricity filled sky. Shocked by the power I summoned, I did not let go of the axe.
I did not dare.
Slowly, the dark purple pitch of the spelled fog began to settle. All four robbers lay in smoking clumps around we stood unharmed. None of them were left alive.
There wasn’t time to celebrate or even catch our breath.
Seven more robbers charged into the meadow, seeking the Axe of Stormjen and the idiot who held it.
Me.
Each of them pulled back on their horses’ reins, spinning in place. Aghast at the dead men burning around where I stood. Maybe not quite the stupid, serving wench they had thought?
“Stop!” I yelled at them, forbidding any of the prince’s men to come closer. “You will lay down your arms and retreat to the forest. Or. You. Will. Die!” I shouted.
“My only warning. Run!”
Several of the men, the ones who had given me a slick, untrustworthy sensation as we traveled together… those were the same kingsmen who plotted in secret. At least three of the men in the meadow knew I was a simple, uneducated, tavern maid, nothing more.
The fact I held the Axe made me more of a target, not less.
Those who knew the power the axe held over truth and the sky itself? Those men faded slowly back into the whistling winds and the ferociousness of the storm. It was safer there in the violent elements than in the calm of the eye with the Axe of Stormjen and one pissed-off sorceress.
Those three men who stayed had no fear. No caution.
Nodding to each other, they began to advance.
One of them wore the torn purple cloak.
He was not the prince though. And the thick purple fabric had a dark smear of blood across its length.
“Did you kill your master, then?” I called to them.
They did not pause. Two of them snickered. “He weren’t our master, miss. He was merely the old king’s son. We don’t serve none of them. We serve the people. We free the land from the grip of evil kings. We do a service for all folk. You should be grateful. You should.”
Their words were empty. The robbers only bought time with the sounds that vomited out of their mouths, they inched closer. Assassins, ready to kill.
“Be careful,” I whispered to the two stormguards, the only ones who stood between me and the coming hands of death.
“We will be taking that axe there. That’s what we come for,” the man on my right snarled.
“And if you hand it over real nice like, we won’t even slit your ungrateful throat,” another one called out.
Another remarked casually, “You can live, and we can use the axe as it was intended: to break open a kingdom and become kings ourselves.”
All three men chuckled at once time. It was rather like the baying of hunting hounds on the scent of the fox. They came on, lusting for blood and power.
“Where’s Marcus?” I asked them, reluctant to murder those men who would kill me without a second thought. “Did you kill him as well?”
“Marcus? The coward,” one of them chuckled dismissively, “He disappeared when you did, lass. Dead somewheres by the road side, no doubt.”
“And good riddance. Wasn’t much of a kingsman, was he? “ they all laughed at that. Some jokes were actually funny. Nothing about these men held any joy.
“You will not let us leave.” I spoke with the calm certainty of the axe’s magic. “You won’t leave any witnesses. That doesn’t suit your plans. You have turned on your masters and with pride and greed, seek for things beyond your reach. This is not your axe. The Gilded Seat is not your throne. The Stormrage See is not your ally. And you,” I said calmly and then paused, lifting the axe to the sky, holding on tight with both hands.
The axe was still an overbalanced weight, awkward and difficult. My whole body shook with the effort as I finished, “You are liars.”
I called out to the sky, “Zephyr!” just as their arrows flew, straight at my chest. Malice in every weapon. I resisted their hatred with the only weapon I had, truth.
One guard pushed me down.
The other stormguard moved in front of me, shielding my body with his own. His horse was hit in the chest. Screaming in pain, it bucked and threw him but not before I saw he was also injured, shot through the neck.
Crackling, the magic of the storm responded to my call. Without the cloaking of the purple fog, I saw every strike of lightning as the three robbers were lit with the energy of a thousand gusts of wind and sunlight. Frying their bodies from the inside out, they died still on horseback, reaching for the next arrows to notch.
They fell, open-mouthed, slack-jawed, eyes emptied, confused at their own downfall.
I didn’t take a moment to see them die.
Traitors were nothing to me.
The stormguards though, the men who protected me… I didn’t even know their names.
Unfortunately, I could not dismount. The arrow in my thigh would render me unable to walk, but I guided my horse to the fallen man’s side.
The other stormguard drew his sword and kept watch over us both.