Triand had sworn the forest path was a short-cut after consulting her tattered map. It looked well-travelled, but they didn’t meet anyone all morning. To Iwy, it seemed a sort of control exercise; trying to summon fire in the middle of a thoroughly burnable landscape would require that of a mage. Instead, her hands barely grew warm. Triand didn’t comment on this, just shoved her pipe from one end of her mouth to the other while looking at Iwy like she was an annoying puzzle.

  Iwy began to review Banohagan the Batty’s Seven New Ways of Fire Conjuring. Nothing in that scroll made sense, which was why Triand believed it might work.

  “Well, we don’t have almond oil, beaver livers or a rusty spring,” Iwy said. “So number four is right out.” She looked up and found herself alone among the trees. “Not funny, where are you?”

  “Here!” Triand emerged from the undergrowth beside her, stuffing leaves into her bundle.

  “If you’re trying to make a salad like it says here in step six, that’s the wrong ...”

  “Just stocking up on Mother’s Wort. Keep reading. There’s gotta be something in there.”

  “Mother’s what?” Iwy caught a glimpse at the six-pointed leaf before it vanished. This must be her witch side coming out. At any rate, it seemed far more useful than vanishing grass stalks or lifting coins or whatever the rightfully named Banohagan the Batty was doing.

  “Wort. It’s for pain relief. You take three handfuls to half a litre of boiling water, let it steep for an hour. It’s enough to get a woman through childbirth. Thought we might need some. Not for childbirth, just in general, also good in healing potions. Unless you ...”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Very.” Iwy buried her face in the scroll again and walked on.

  Without warning, Triand pushed her down into the bushes and put her finger on her lips. Iwy followed her gaze through the leaves.

  A cart parked on the road a few yards ahead of them, and by the looks of it not willingly. Three men in tall hats were walking up and down around it, shouting now and again.

  Six people sat on the cart, shackled to the sides. They looked too ordinary for this; a girl her age, two women old enough to be grandmothers, and elderly man, a man and a woman who clutched each other, possibly siblings, maybe a couple. They were quiet while the witch hunters argued over the broken wheel.

  Even if they could get past them without being seen, Iwy wasn’t about to leave those people here. They likely hadn’t done anything to warrant their arrests.

  “How do we get them out?” Iwy whispered.

  Triand took her bundle off her back carefully. “Do you know how to act like a woodcutter or something?”

  “No. Why would I need to know?”

  “Well, who else could you meet in the forest by pure random happenstance? Distract them for a few minutes. I’ll get the people off the cart.”

  Iwy felt the illusion tossed over her like a thin veil. She walked out into the road, hoping she really looked like a woodcutter or something. She imagined herself in trousers and with a moustache instead of in an increasingly dusty dress and a braid.

  The hunters noticed her immediately, but they didn’t raise their weapons. “Good day,” Iwy tried to make her voice sound deep, not sure if the spell took that into account. “Looks like you lads got a spot of bother, eh?” She also didn’t know what age she was supposed to look like. No one her age said ‘lads’. Did anyone older? What if there was a local accent she wasn’t getting right? She hoped Triand would hurry.

  “Axle broken?” she asked, trying to sound conversational as well as appropriately concerned. She walked around the cart trying to summon the facial expression of a semi-expert so the hunters would have to turn their backs to the captives. It was in rather bad shape. Bits of what might have been two empty barrels were strewn around the forest path.

  “Just the wheel,” one of the hunters said. “Wouldn’t be able to fix this, good man, would you?”

  Iwy sucked air through her teeth and shook her head. “Not much I can do, guv. See here ...” She leaned down, beckoning the three hunters to follow. Out of the corner of her eyes she noticed Triand creeping to the back of the wagon. “Got a branch right through the wheel spoke. That’s what broke it. You need a whole new one.”

  “It was probably one of them ...” The witch hunter scowled at the people in the cart.

  Iwy patted his shoulder hastily. “Ah, ah! Look, this looks a bit like rabbit fur. Did you hit anything? Swerved, maybe?”

  “No! Look, if you can’t help us ...”

  “Ah, I could run down to the village and send for someone, but ...” What would Triand do? Except make up some elaborate nonsense?

  They were beginning to look at her suspiciously. Elaborate nonsense it was. “But seeing as it’s the, uh ... festival of the Deer Ransom no one’s gonna have much time so you might have to wait a while ...”

  She thought she heard the click of shackles being opened. The cart creaked slightly as someone moved on it, but she didn’t dare look.

  The eyebrows on one hunter narrowed and the others followed suit. “Festival of the Deer Ransom? What kind of nonsense is that?”

  “Local feast. Very traditional. They hold a deer for ransom and the young lads have to free it in memory of our lord and saviour the god, uh, Lodon, lord of the bargain hunt ...”

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  “I grew up down here in Bramwich and I never heard about this in my life!” The witch hunter jabbed a finger at her. “Come to think of it, you don’t look familiar. What did you say your name was?”

  “Uh ... Jendrick. Jendrick the travelling woodcutter. Business and travel. Very lucrative. You lads should try it.”

  “I’m starting to think this is some sort of tri...”

  There was a loud crash of someone falling onto dry leaves.

  For two seconds, no one moved. The witch hunters stared at Triand. Triand stared at the prisoners, standing stock still behind the cart. Iwy stared at the witch hunters and wished she did have an axe.

  The movement returned suddenly and Iwy was another second away from being at the wrong end of a sword. She caught the nearest hunter around the middle and threw her weight into it, knocking him down. It would have been a great time to set someone on fire, which of course wasn’t happening, but she got one good punch in. Crossbows clicked behind her.

  They weren’t aiming at her. Triand dodged an arrow only just as she lifted the man Iwy had thrown down with a sweep of her arm and launched him screaming into the other two. They collapsed in a heap of weapons and boot buckles.

  “Got a strike, mark it down.” She jumped down from the cart onto the path, touching the nearest trees as she went. Branches reached down and rolled towards the hunters, who had barely gotten back on their feet only to see them entangled in wood. With a gesture, they were lifted up into the treetops.

  Iwy’s gaze followed them. This must have been another of Triand’s druid tricks. “How long are you going to leave them?”

  Triand shrugged. “As long as it takes for someone to cut them down.” She turned. “Is everyone al... oh.”

  Only one person was left, the elderly man who had tripped off the cart. He was very obviously a wizard. His embroidered robes were dishevelled, the hem torn in places, and his staff was missing, but a wizard nonetheless; or at least it was highly unlikely that someone owned a bathrobe full of stars, moons, and mystical symbols. He was probably the only actual magic user the hunters had caught in that group.

  “Where’s the others?”

  “They fled down the path first chance they got,” he said sourly. He didn’t look at them while he brushed off his robes indignantly. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I know someone in Bramwich who has definitely earned himself a curse or two ...” He stopped. His eyes grew wide, then narrowed as he looked at the mage as if she was a ghost. “Here, I know you.”

  Triand seemed genuinely puzzled. “Have we met?”

  “You came through here once before, with him.”

  She kept her face straight. “That was a long time ago.”

  “You were part of his little group. His Circle.”

  “Used to be. Not right now I’m not. Left a while ago. They wear masks now. It got weird.”

  “You think I’m going to believe your old friend and you ...”

  “He’s not my friend any more than yours.”

  It was strange, Iwy thought, that almost every wizard apparently knew about this Acarald character. The regular folks didn’t. Or at least no one in the Midlands had ... had they? The dealings of wizards seemed to happen on an entirely different level, one nobody else saw until the earth was smoking.

  “You, girl,” the wizard turned to Iwy. “You’re young, there’s still hope for you, I’m sure, if you stop running around with this one. You won’t end well if you don’t, you mark my words.”

  Triand didn’t leave him out of her sight as she said: “Iwy, unharness the horses, will you?”

  The girl did as she was told; there was a look in Triand’s eye she hadn’t seen before. She hoped the wizard wouldn’t be stupid enough to attack her now.

  The horses were well-behaved and entirely unbothered by the loss of their masters. One nudged Iwy gently to check if she had anything edible on her.

  “Take the horse,” Triand said to the wizard. “You’ll get down quicker.”

  He harrumphed at her but didn’t argue; he was on the saddleless back of the animal and gone within seconds.

  “I guess we’re taking the second one,” Iwy said. Now that the excitement had died down, she noticed she no longer felt the illusion spell on her skin.

  Triand went to get their bags. “You know how to ride? Even without saddle?”

  “Sure. Just hold on. We should stop in the next village and get her fed and watered. Right, girl? Who’s a good girl?”

  Triand nodded non-committally as she climbed on the horse behind her apprentice with all the elegance of a directionally challenged duck. “You ever wonder where they’re taking them?”

  “I thought to jail in the next big town.”

  “Hm.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re planning a breakout. I’m not even a convincing woodcutter, we’re lost if I have to play a guard.”

  The joke fell flat, as the mage stared off into space. She seemed to be preoccupied with something else.

  “Well, we’re lost,” the young wizard said to the world in general and pushed his spectacles up his nose.

  Follow the strange mage, Archmage Ambeus had said. This would be so much easier if he’d had any idea where she could have gone. The robed group was standing in the middle of a forest.

  “D-d-d-dragon!”

  “Yes, Mical, we know, there was a dragon,” the wizard said patiently while consulting a map that bore the logo of the sanctum of Riestra.

  “You can’t blame him,” the third wizard of the group said. “It gave all of us a fright.”

  “Dragon!”, Mical said sulkily.

  “What sort of barbarians let a dragon heat their forges, anyway?”

  “The further north you get, the stranger the people get, my granny used to say.”

  “Dragon,” agreed Mical. Above him, the trees moved and he ducked screaming behind another wizard.

  “Excuse me!” the trees said.

  The one with the map wasn’t about to let his concentration slip over Mical’s minor panics. They were on a mission, their first mission abroad. Well, outside the sanctum, at least. This could be a springboard for his career if he managed to impress the stern Archmage. “Now, if you were a strange mage who just escaped the sanctum, where would you go?”

  “Excuse me!”

  The less dragon-afflicted colleague shrugged. “I’d use any sort of teleportation spell and be halfway across the country by now.”

  “You’re not helping.”

  “Excuse me!”

  “Who keeps saying that?” The bespectacled wizard finally looked up. A friendly and frantic face looked down on him. “Oh, hello. Have you seen a mage? Tall, red hair?”

  “Yes, yes, we did!” the witch hunter said. “Would you help us down?”

  “Where did she go?”

  “Somewhere in this direction, now can you please get us ...”

  “What is in that direction?” The wizard went back to the map.

  “Grass. More grass,” his colleague said. “Looks like grass to me.”

  “Maybe she’s headed to a city. I say we should keep going north.”

  “Dragon.”

  “Well, that’s settled.” He rolled up the map and looked up at the witch hunters. “Thank you!”

  “Hey, wait! Help us down!”

  “Always nice to meet helpful people,” the third wizard said as the small group walked on.

  “Dragon,” Mical nodded.

  “Yes, I don’t understand the buckles either. Must be a new fashion.”