8 
THE BANDIT
The trees came fast at Drest as she ran. She whipped between them, darkness shrouding everything before her. Twigs scraped her arms and roots tripped her feet, yet she kept her balance with her speed and her fear, which, like a torch, led her on through the endless pattern of branches and trunks.
Then a moss-covered tree on the forest floor seemed to reach up. Drest leaped, but badly. The old wood caught her ankle, pulling her down into an embrace of branches soft with decay.
Drest lay still, her heartbeat thumping in her ears like footsteps, her breath burning in her chest. She closed her eyes and tried to force her body to calm, just as she had when Uwen was chasing her and she needed to hide without making a sound. She thought of the sea and how it breathed: slowly in, slowly out, over and over.
When Drest opened her eyes, she heard real waves slapping against the shore. The sea was nearby.
She rose and started toward that sound. The presence at the edge of the woods had been but a nightmare, a trick of her exhaustion. There was no bandit, only the woods, only the night and the sea.
Fallen branches slippery with moss littered her path. Shells glowed white among them. The scent of the muddy brine was pungent.
As the watery sound became louder, Wulfric’s voice flashed through Drest’s mind:
Careful.
Drest stopped. She was standing on a grassy bank with the sea just beyond. She was about to turn back, but her eye caught a movement in the trees.
On the bank’s other side, in the shadows, stood a man.
The sea sent a rush of waves toward the shore, its sound nearly swallowing a voice: soft and slippery like a fish’s belly.
“Are you alone, girl?”
The figure disappeared into the trees.
Drest drew her sword, her heart pounding anew.
Don’t try it. Gobin’s voice was urgent. Remember what we said before? What can you do best? Run. So run like a hare!
Drest sheathed her sword and broke into a sprint.
A crash sounded behind her, followed by cracking twigs. The bandit wasn’t as fast as she was, but the noise of his pursuit was coming closer. There was no doubt now that he was real.
Drest ran with new strength. Twice she had to grab trees when she lost her footing, but she kept on her feet.
She wanted to imagine she was running with Uwen. They had often made up stories of being hunted by cruel foes to urge each other to run ever faster.
Drest swallowed a sob. If only Uwen were there! Together, they would have taken but seconds to devise a plan to trap the bandit. Or Gobin and Nutkin, who would have circled him and then gone in. Or Thorkill, who would have stood with her, and let loose an arrow. Or Wulfric, who would have marched into the woods and felled the bandit with one blow.
Or Grimbol, who would have torn that bandit to pieces.
Drest slowed to duck under a low branch, then changed her mind and scrambled over it, Borawyn’s scabbard slapping against her leg. The bandit’s panting came from behind. He’d had less trouble on Drest’s path than she, which could only mean that he knew these woods well.
“Wait, girl,” the slippery voice called from behind.
Drest did not stop running.
“Are you alone, I asked. I don’t think your brothers are here. Only you and me. Don’t you want to talk to another lonely soul?”
Sticks crashed behind her. The bandit was drawing close again.
Drest veered between trees, launching in a new direction. She flew through branches and over thick moss, ducking and weaving.
And then a different voice called in the distance, not very far away: “Drest? Drest, where are you?”
She broke into the tiny clearing where the fire was almost out. In the dark, she could barely see Emerick, leaning against a tree.
“There’s a bandit. He’s on my heels. We’ve got to hide.”
Drest put her shoulder under the wounded man’s arm and drew him into the woods, away from the sea, on the faint trail she had followed when hunting the hare, then beyond. Behind her, the slippery voice swore, then was quiet.
“Here,” Drest whispered, lowering Emerick into a clutch of ferns. She curled up against him. “Don’t move.”
Emerick stifled a groan as he leaned back. “I wish I had my sword.”
“Stop talking. And shut your eyes so the whites don’t show.”
Drest shut her own eyes, and tensed.
A foot stepped over a branch near her head. Drest, whose games with Uwen had trained her to listen, heard the faint rustle that the bandit made as he drifted into the woods, and heard when he was gone.
But his soft, slippery voice spoke again, even closer. “Where are you, girl? I’ve seen you grow up, but I don’t know your name.”
Drest lay as if frozen.
The bandit drifted near several times. Once he almost stepped on Emerick’s wounded shoulder.
Drest huddled close to the young knight and tried to slow her pounding heart. Everything was strange: the shadowy woods, the man who was not her brother sleeping beside her, and hiding like that, not being out in the open, not being free. She readied herself for a night of wakefulness, yet her exhaustion and terror were so great that she sank into a dreamless sleep instead.