Khai squatted by the stream and submerged his leather water jug into the current. “Good thing you’ve not been recruited for the Kingsguard. You’d make a pathetic soldier.”
Vrell ignored him and washed the dusty grime from her skin. She spotted leafy green sorrel growing along the bank. She dug in her satchel for her tiny knife and cut some. Mother’s cook, Jespa, made a divine salad with sorrel, walnuts, and strawberries, when they were in season. Vrell washed the leaves in the stream and ate some. It tasted fresh and juicy and welcome after days of dry food. Vrell cut more and wrapped them in the largest leaf for later. She also cut some white clover. If she could somehow dry it, it would make a hearty tea.
Jax knelt to fill his jug, He pulled off his head scarf and rinsed his face and hair. His gaze met Vrell’s as he tied the red scarf back over his head. “I like your thinking, Vrell.” He pulled a knife from his belt and cut strips of river cane as long as Vrell’s arm. He tied them into torches with hemp twine and tucked them in his pack. “Ready to go?”
“Yes, sir.” Vrell filled her jug and clipped it to her satchel.
They mounted and rode into the forest.
Never had Vrell seen such trees. Redpines and cedars stretched to the heavens, their trunks wider than four grown men. Branches intertwined overhead like a green, red, and brown canopy that let in shafts of light but blocked the merciless heat of the sun. Thick yellow moss carpeted the ground. Leathery orange ferns and tiny white flowers grew from it in a lush garden array. Even the dusty brown path they’d been riding on had now changed to red clay.
Such beauty distracted Vrell from her weariness, her plight, and her task of acting a boy. The next few hours passed pleasantly. She hummed softly with the rustling trees and chirping birds. Chunks of shell mushroom clung to the side of an oak tree. She reined Nickel and slid off his side.
Vrell stepped off the path, and her foot sank deep in the spongy moss. Maybe the worst of the journey was over. If they camped in the forest tonight, she wouldn’t mind sleeping on such soft ground. She longed to snip some white flowers and thread them in her hair, but dared not pick one without an herbal excuse. She withdrew her knife and reached up to cut the mushroom.
“Boy!” Khai yelled. “We’ve no time for gardening.”
Vrell wheeled around to see that Khai and Jax had turned their horses sideways on the road. “I only wish to cut some mushroom,” she said. “It’s quite good.”
“Quickly, Vrell, then no more stops,” Jax said.
She sliced off wedges of mushroom until her satchel bulged. A mentha plant waved in the breeze only two paces away. She glanced at the men. They were engaged in conversation with each other. She crouched to cut as much mentha as she could.
Khai suddenly cried out.
Vrell looked up to see him scrambling into her side of the forest on foot, his horse galloping away. Jax dismounted, slapped his horse’s rear, and crouched in the middle of the road. His horse ran on ahead. Jax yanked two axes from his leg sheaths, one in each hand. Vrell’s eyes widened.
A song-like cry warbled in the distance. It sent a tremor to her heart. Something whooshed past her arm and thunked into a nearby redpine trunk. She stepped toward it to get a closer look. It was an arrow with a crude, black, obsidian head and—
“Vrell!” Jax yelled. “Look out!”
Vrell darted behind the redpine just as another arrow pierced the trunk.
“Wee ahlawa men teeah!”
Vrell peeked around the tree to see a man as tall as Jax, but pale as a lily. His long blond hair hung around his face like a curtain. Animal skins were draped over one shoulder, across his white chest, and down around his hips like a skirt. He clutched a spear in one hand and a curved axe in the other. Both weapons were chiseled out of obsidian and lashed to wooden handles with leather.
He stood on the road facing Jax.
Jax bowed to the giant. “We seek passage through NaharForest.”
The giant pointed down the road, back toward Walden’s Watch. “Wee ahlawa men teeah!”
Jax shook his head. “We will not go back. We must take this road to Xulon.”
The pale giant tipped his head back and bellowed a trilling cry into the treetops.
A chorus of voices returned the cry from all sides. Vrell’s horse turned and trotted back toward the peninsula. Vrell scowled and whipped around, her back pressed against the redpine trunk.
Two more pale giants approached where Khai stood in the forest. Another three walked up the road and stood behind the leader. Jax stood motionless before the four giants, clutching his axes, waiting.
Scraping metal on wood turned Vrell’s gaze back to Khai. The knight had drawn his monstrously long sword. He held it at the two giants who faced him, waving it back and forth to keep them at bay.
Vrell bounded over the soft ground to an oak tree with low branches and scurried up. Climbing trees had always been something she enjoyed, as much as it vexed her mother. She had barely settled on a thick branch halfway up when the clash of weapons sent her spinning around.
The two giants had attacked Khai. One swung an ax and another stabbed with a long spear. Khai chopped the tip off the spear, parried the axe, sliced its wielder’s leg, and spun back to lop off the hand of the giant holding the remainder of the spear.
Vrell gasped. The little weasel could actually use that weapon. She tore her gaze away to look at Jax.
The four pale ones rained blows upon him with club and spear. His red scarf shone bright against their bleached skin and hair. She had never seen men fight with anything but swords. Jax swung his axes in a blur and blocked his opponents’ attacks with the iron cuffs on his forearms. So that was what they were for.
Khai vaulted over the mossy ground and onto the road, barging into Jax’s fight. Vrell climbed to a higher branch to get a better view. She glanced back to where Khai had first fought and found his first two attackers slain. Their pallid bodies lay on the yellow moss as if they were asleep.
A heavy tear fell down her cheek. She squeezed her eyes shut and fought the bile rising in her throat. She must not panic or weep like a girl. These giants had attacked without cause. Jax and Khai had killed in self-defense. Had they not, the pale giants would have killed them.
She choked back her tears. A sudden silence caused her to look back to the road. The battle was over. Khai had left two dead in the forest. And now four more ashy giants lay dead on the road. Blood oozed from their skin and seeped into the red clay road like red rivers converging. Khai and Jax appeared unharmed. Khai crouched and wiped his blade on the moss.
Jax peered through the trees then spun around. “Vrell?”
She croaked, “I am here.”
Jax’s long legs carried him to the oak in four long strides. He lifted a blood-spattered hand to her. She hesitated, then gripped it and jumped down into the spongy moss.
“Who were they?” she asked, wiping her hand off on her tunic.
“Ebens.”
Vrell nodded and followed Jax to the road.
Jax squatted and cleaned his axes on clumps of moss before pushing them back into their sheaths. “Khai, we must retrieve the horses and keep moving.”
“Aye.” Khai jogged down the road, farther into NaharForest.
“Why did you dismount?” Vrell asked.
“They might have slain the horses otherwise.” Jax stepped past her and strode back toward the peninsula, studying the ground as he went. “There will be more, Vrell. We must find your horse quickly.”
More ebens? Vrell’s toes curled in her boots as she fought to conceal her fear. Jax didn’t stop, so she hurried after him. “Why did they attack?”