Flight to the forest
The last half mile to the forest was always the most treacherous. Mary urged her horse on, picking up speed as she clung to the saddle with her thighs. The reigns in her hands were wet with perspiration as she gripped them tightly, but not too tight, as Silver, her grey stallion might feel her tension and slow his pace. The sound of arrows ripping past her ears acted as incentive for Mary to ignore the hot rasping of air as it tore at her lungs, burning her throat with each breath. The protective shelter of the Marginelle Forest was just seconds away now, yet the arrows fired by her pursuers grew closer too, as if they were gaining on her. She just had to reach the forest canopy and she would be safe. The bandits would not follow her into the dark green wall of trees, too fearful and superstitious of the rumored darker forces lurking within.
“Let’s go Silver” she called out, urging the powerful stallion onward. “Give it everything, we can do this.” Mary kept her head low and close to Silver’s mane as they moved as one unit, like a locomotive puffing and steaming with hot moist vapour under the full pressure of maximum effort. She could smell the dank sweat of Silver’s coat as he pushed ahead at a sprint for the last few yards towards the dark green wall of vegetation that made up the start of the Marginelle Forest. Safety lay just beyond those trees, yet the arrows kept whistling by from her pursuers as they chased her, determined to make here their prey. These were wild times and this stretch of road was the wildest, at least on this side of the Marginelle Forest.
There was no room for failure on her mission this time and Mary knew it. The fate of the nation depended on her success. The message she carried was just too crucial. She may be one of the only female messengers on horseback in the entire realm, but she was also one of the fastest. That’s why she had been chosen for this deadly – perhaps suicidal – task. Add to that the fact that most of the male riders had already been killed in the ongoing war. She was all that was left between the sovereignty of the kingdom and total chaos. Her message was the crucial link in the destiny of human life on earth, and that thought overrode any fear of death that now tried to creep into her conscious mind and paralyse her with the overdose of adrenalin it brought.
That’s when Mary felt the dull thud of an arrow piercing her leg. There was no pain as such. There was no room for pain amongst the overwhelming drive to escape her pursuers at this point. Her body did not release those chemicals. All she could see was the quickly approaching green wall of safety provided by the forest with its mass of ancient trees, blurred now in her vision by the perspiration that poured down her forehead and into her eyes. She felt her grip on Silver’s back weaken as her right leg began to go lame from the arrow that now pierced it. If she could just make it this last few yards... Arrows whizzed overhead. The sound of her wildly shrieking pursuers flooded her ears. Mary saw the wall of trees arrive not a moment too soon, swallowing her up like a protective blanket. Silver slid through the green and brown tree line and bolted along the narrow dirt track into the dark twilight zone of the Marginelle Forest as the enraged curses of the highway bandits receded into the background.
The war that ravaged the entire land had just concluded its first year and another full year of battle was expected at this rate. So many good soldiers had already died on both sides of the feuding kingdoms, spilt now down the middle as the opposing forces raged and railed against each other. Good men had died and bad men had risen to lead small bands of opportunistic thieves and highwaymen, raping and pillaging their way through now unguarded villages or lying in wait along the solitary roads that connected the emptying villages throughout the vulnerable land. Mary knew they would be here along this route of her journey, yet she had to run the gauntlet in order to get the message delivered. And she had made it – though not without injury, as she looked down at her leg and saw the red stain of blood widening like an ever expanding full moon around the arrow shaft that stuck up out of her thigh.
Under the darkened interior of the forest canopy Mary slowed Silver to a walk as she slumped her body over his neck while the exhaustion flooded through her veins and into her brain. The bandits were too afraid of the Marginelle Forest to follow her in. Many rumors abounded about the magicians that lived there and the curses they could deliver. An unsuspecting rider could easily get lost and never make it out of the forest at all. Strange tales of bizarre visions had accompanied those who had eventually emerged after many days lost in the forest and thus few riders dared enter it at all. Most took the much longer and tiring mountain pass that skirted around the forest in the valley. Yet even there bandits lay in wait. Mary wasn’t like most riders though. She let her mind wander to her past as she felt her last bit of strength sapping away. Silver knew to follow the trail, so all she could do was hang onto him and continue a little while longer into the darkening woods before stopping.
Memories of her youth at the mounted archery training school swam into her consciousness. In the sport of horseback riding and archery, gender wasn’t an advantage either way. She may have been of slighter build than most of the other male students, but she made up for that in speed and accuracy with her own bow. And being lighter was actually an advantage for a horse rider. Fortunately she had also started her training very young. This made her a veteran of sorts, despite being only 19. What a way to enter adulthood – enrolled into military service as the world went to war and global superpowers threw their best citizens into the meat grinder, while simultaneously testing their newest arsenals against each other.
Now as the older men and trained soldiers all died month after month, all that were left in the towns were either retired pensioners over sixty years old, or teenagers. And so as the mad king Zollen, of this most insignificant little country called Ursa Minor, continued to send his last men into battle, backed by the seemingly unlimited support in weapons and funding from the Western lands, girls like Mary had been sped into adulthood and also conscripted into the fight. If you could ride a horse and string a bow, then you were eligible to be a soldier. It was as simple as that. Her older brother had already been slain in the earlier battles for the eastern borderlands. The wicked king of the west had aligned all his pawns, sycophants and vassal states, forcing them to commit troops and weapons to his personal global agenda against the organic and free eastern nations. Free, that is, to continue practising the old ways of the mystics and wise healers of ancient times. Such spiritual traditions had already been banned under the reign of the king of kings, as he had dubbed himself - the maniacal King Brandon and his entourage of advisers like the mad scientist Dr Grates, the evil General Shrub and the other eugenecists who wanted to cull the planet of half its population. And that meant the eastern half by the look of it. The frail and easily bought King of the north and west – old Brandon - advised by his ministers, had pushed Mary’s little central nation of Ursa Minor into a full scale war with their eastern neighbor Ursa Major, who were basically the bastion of the old ways of organic simple living and mystical thinking. And as the puppet King Zoller, who ran Mary’s country like a dictatorship, continued to send the last remaining pensioners and teenagers to the front line of battle with only a month’s training, girls like Mary quickly became women and joined the resistance.
(image pixabay)
Wow! Gripping stuff!
😀