Several hours after leaving the estate, the carriage was rolling along a forest road still well inside Ferrers territory.
Afternoon sunlight filtered down through the tall trees and fell across the road in broken patches. The mounted soldiers rode around the carriage, and the supply wagon followed behind. The wheels clattered steadily over the road, hooves thudded against the packed earth, and now and then one soldier called something to another along the line.
Hugh had handed his horse over to the escort at their midday stop and joined Owen and Agnes inside the carriage. Owen sat by the window, watching the scenery go by.
It was nothing like the airship. From up there, everything had been small and far away. Down here, he could actually see the land. Roadside clearings opened up and closed again, narrow trails branched off into the forest, and every so often some animal bolted into the trees as the convoy came near.
"How much farther before we stop for the night?" he asked.
"We’re making good time, Young Master," Hugh said. "If the road stays clear, we’ll reach the place we planned to stop."
"Would you like something to eat?" Agnes asked. "There’s bread and cold meat in the basket."
"Maybe in a while." Owen looked back out of the window. "Are there many towns between here and the capital?"
"A fair few," Hugh said. "Most of them small. A couple of larger ones once we’re out of our territory."
"And you’ll want to stop and look at every one of them," Agnes said.
"Not every one."
"Most of them, then."
Owen didn’t argue, which seemed to be answer enough for her.
He was about to ask Hugh something else when he felt the carriage begin to slow.
The horses’ pace dropped first, and then the whole carriage rolled to a stop. Outside, the soldiers were talking among themselves, and Owen heard one man urgently call another forward.
He looked at Hugh. "Why have we stopped?"
Hugh listened for a moment. "I don’t know, Young Master. Nobody’s told me anything."
He opened the door and stepped out.
From inside, Owen heard him question one of the soldiers. There was a pause, then several hurried footsteps.
Owen wanted to know what was going on. He stepped down from the carriage, and Agnes followed him.
Ahead of the convoy, another carriage stood abandoned near the edge of the road.
One of its doors hung open, a window had been smashed, and pieces of luggage lay scattered across the ground around it. Its horses were gone.
Then Owen saw the bodies.
Several armed soldiers lay around the carriage. Blood had soaked into their uniforms and darkened the earth beneath them, and dropped weapons and broken equipment lay among them. They had clearly tried to defend the carriage before they were overwhelmed.
Owen stopped where he was.
He had seen people die in Mowbray territory, but this was different. A monster had killed that soldier in the forest. These men had been guarding travellers on an ordinary road, and other people had cut them down.
His eyes went to the crest painted on the carriage door.
"Whose carriage is this?" he asked. "And who would dare attack a noble family inside our territory?"
One of the Ferrers soldiers stepped forward. "That’s the Ashcombe crest, Young Master. Viscount Ashcombe’s house."
Owen knew the name. House Ashcombe was one of the noble families under House Ferrers, a viscountcy, though far wealthier than most houses of its rank thanks to its merchant caravans and trading businesses. He had heard the name come up at home more than once, but he had never met the Viscount or anyone in his family.
"The Viscount has twin daughters," Hugh said quietly. "Neither of them awakened. I heard they were travelling to the capital for the Princess’s ball."
Owen looked back at the broken carriage. If the twins had been travelling on this road, they might have been inside it.
"Check whether anyone’s still in there," he said.
Hugh approached the carriage carefully while the other soldiers secured the road around them. He looked in through the open doorway, then leaned into the passenger compartment. The cushions had been torn about, luggage had been opened, and personal belongings were scattered across the floor.
"Empty," Hugh said, turning back. "Nobody—"
A woman’s scream came from somewhere deep in the forest.
"Aaaah!"
Everyone turned toward the sound.
For a moment, Owen heard nothing else. Then came the crack of snapping branches, and someone crashing through the undergrowth in a hurry.
It could be one of the passengers.
Owen ran for the trees.
"Young Master!" Hugh shouted after him. "We don’t know who’s out there!"
Owen heard him, but he didn’t stop. If someone was in danger right now, standing around to organize a search might cost them the time they needed.
Behind him, he heard Hugh giving orders: keep the convoy secure, keep examining the bodies, watch the forest for anyone coming out of it. Then two sets of footsteps came after him.
The road disappeared behind the trees almost at once. The ground turned uneven, with roots twisting across it and thick patches of undergrowth everywhere. Owen pushed past low branches, listening for movement ahead.
He didn’t have to go far before he heard hurried footsteps coming toward him.
A young woman burst through the bushes and nearly ran straight into him.
She was about Owen’s age, wearing an expensive travelling dress that had been torn at the sleeves and the hem. Her hair had come loose, there was dirt all over her clothes, and shallow scratches ran along her arms. She was gasping for breath, and she kept glancing over her shoulder.
When she saw Owen in her path, she flinched back in terror and tried to retreat.
She thought he was one of them.
Owen raised his hands and kept them where she could see them. "I’m not going to hurt you. Are you injured? What happened?"
She couldn’t answer at first. Her breathing was too ragged, and her eyes kept going back to the forest behind her.
Owen gave her a moment. "Did you come from the carriage on the road?"
She nodded quickly.
"We were going to the capital," she managed. "My sister and I, and our maid, and the soldiers. They came out of the trees and attacked us. Our soldiers tried to fight them, but they—" She stopped. "They killed them. All of them. They took everything."
"And then?"
"They dragged us into the forest. My sister and our maid and me." She swallowed hard. "I got away when they weren’t watching. But my sister’s still there. They’ve still got both of them."
"Do you know where they’re being kept?"
She shook her head, and her eyes filled. "I don’t know. I was so scared I just ran. I wasn’t looking where I was going. I don’t know which way I came."
Before Owen could decide what to do next, Hugh and Agnes came through the trees behind him.
The girl stumbled backward at once, frightened by two more strangers appearing out of nowhere.
"It’s all right," Owen said quickly. "They’re with me. They’re here to help."
Agnes approached slowly, keeping her hands open. "Can you still walk? Or do you need help?"
"I can manage," the girl said, though her voice was shaking.
Hugh came up beside Owen. "What have you found out?"
"She came from the carriage," Owen said quietly. "Her sister and their maid are still being held somewhere out here."
Hugh’s whole manner sharpened at that. "Then the people who did this are still close." He glanced at the forest. "We need to find out where the captives are before anyone rushes into another fight, Young Master."
The girl had been looking from one of them to the other while they spoke. Now her eyes settled on the crest embroidered on Owen’s clothes, and her expression changed.
She recognized it. Owen could see her realize which house he belonged to, the Grand Ducal family that ruled her own family’s lands, and something like relief flickered across her face through the fear.
"You’re—" she began, more formally now. "My lord, you’re of House—"
Voices came through the trees, and she stopped.
Owen turned toward them.
Three men were picking their way through the forest, clearly searching for someone. Their clothes were worn and mismatched, with bits of leather protection here and there and weapons hanging at their sides. They moved carelessly, crashing through the undergrowth and talking loudly enough for every word to carry.
"The boss is going to be furious if we come back without her," one of them grumbled.
"That’s your fault," said another. "I told you to tie her properly. You let her walk right out."
The third man laughed. "Relax. The boss can keep the other sister. That one’s mine. Once we find her, I’m going to make her regret running."
The other two laughed with him and kept searching.
Beside Agnes, the girl went rigid. She knew those voices. She shrank closer to Agnes without seeming to realize she was doing it.
Owen saw it.
He looked at the three men coming through the trees, and he thought of the dead soldiers lying around that carriage, and of everything the girl had just told him. These men had been part of it, and they were talking about what they meant to do to her and her sister as though it were nothing at all.
Disgust settled cold in his chest.
He summoned his longsword.
Hugh saw the blade appear. "Young Master, wait. We don’t know what they can do yet, or where the others—"
Owen had already decided.
The bandits stepped out into a patch of thinner forest, and Owen moved. Fire spread along his longsword as he closed the short distance, heat rising off the blade.
The man who had made that remark saw him coming, but far too late.
Owen cut horizontally with the burning sword.
Shhk!
The blade went clean through the man’s neck.
His head dropped to the ground and rolled across the fallen leaves, coming to rest near the feet of the other two. The face still wore the startled look it had when he realized he was being attacked.
A moment later, his headless body collapsed.
Thud.
For several seconds, nobody said a word.
The two surviving bandits stared down at their companion’s head, then at his body, then up at Owen. Their confusion slowly turned into disbelief.
Hugh was staring at him too. Owen could see that his aide understood exactly what kind of men these were, and also that he hadn’t wanted Owen to strike before they had a plan. With the captives still somewhere out of sight and the girl standing a few paces behind them, Owen had just made the whole situation more dangerous.
Agnes had moved the instant the blade fell. She stepped in front of the girl, putting herself squarely between the survivor and the two remaining men, and stood ready to summon her own sword.
The two surviving bandits finally found their voices.
"Who the hell are you?" one of them snarled. "What do you think you’re doing?"
The other one didn’t say anything. He was looking from his dead companion to the burning longsword in Owen’s hand, as though he still couldn’t work out how it had happened so fast.
Owen barely heard the question.
He looked down at the body for a moment. A line came back to him from a book he had read in his old life, on Earth, a long time ago. After what these men had done, it seemed to fit.
"For man is the cruellest animal," he said quietly.
The first bandit stared at him. "What are you talking about?"
Owen didn’t answer.
He let the flames along his longsword die down. Then he took a handkerchief from his coat and began wiping the blood from the blade, keeping both men in sight the whole time.
That seemed to infuriate them more than anything else he could have done.
The first bandit summoned a spear. It appeared in his hands, and he gripped the shaft tightly in both of them. The second summoned a sword and stepped out a little to his companion’s side.
Both of them were awakened.
Hugh saw it at the same moment Owen did. He summoned his own sword and moved up, close enough to step in if he needed to, watching the space between Owen and the two men.
Behind them, Agnes kept the girl at her back, making sure she had somewhere to run if the fight came their way.
The spearman leveled his weapon at Owen. "I asked you a question. Who are you?"
Owen kept cleaning the blade.
"He’s laughing at us," the swordsman spat. "Kill him!"
The spearman came first, his spear driving toward Owen’s upper body. The swordsman came in from a different angle, trying to make sure Owen couldn’t give the longer weapon all of his attention.
Owen finished wiping his sword and looked up.
Both of them were already charging.