THE RED WITCH
In the mending wing, Anna stood outside the room in which they’d placed Rider Newland in case the colonel had some need of her. The door was cracked open just enough that Anna could hear what was being said within.
“Broken ribs,” Rider-Mender Ben Simeon said. “Broken arm and smashed knee. Fractured cheekbone and broken nose. All the fingers of his left hand have been smashed.”
Anna winced as Ben worked his way down the list. Colonel Mapstone and Captain Connly remained silent.
“Master Vanlynn has given me permission to heal the breaks that would otherwise result in crippling his ability to use his limbs properly. His knees, for instance. I won’t be doing a full healing, but enough to get the process under way.”
Ben’s Rider ability was as a true healer. He could magically heal a wound or illness, but it took a great toll on him. Anna knew Master Vanlynn, the chief of all the menders, forbade him to use his abilities except in dire emergencies, for he was to remain ready in case something went awry with the queen’s pregnancy.
“Is his head injured?” the colonel asked. “I mean, in addition to his facial injuries?”
“A concussion,” Ben replied. “I’ve already given him a touch of healing and that should be all right. In fact, he seems to be waking up.”
Anna gazed both ways down the quiet corridor, and when she saw no one was about, crept to the door and peered through the crack. She could see the foot of the bed, but nothing really of Rider Newland, just the lumps of his body beneath his blankets. Ben leaned over him on one side, and the colonel and captain on the other.
“Ty?” the colonel said. “Are you with us?”
“Captain. Must speak to captain.” Rider Newland’s words were dull and slightly slurred.
“I’m here,” Captain Connly said.
“I think he means me,” the colonel said. “He’s been gone long enough that he can’t have heard of our promotions. Ty, I am right here. You are safe now. Can you tell us what happened to you?”
“Darrow Raiders . . . caught me when I went through the pass.”
“Eagle’s?” the colonel asked.
Anna had looked up the Eagle’s Pass in Master Foley’s atlas after hearing the king speak of it. It was the easiest passage, she had learned, from one side of the Wing Song Mountains to the other. There was also an ancient keep there embedded into the side of Stormcroft Mountain to guard the pass—the one General Washburn had claimed was impenetrable. She’d sought to do further research in the castle library, but most texts on that area, and about the keep, were signed out. The one or two books that remained had very little to say about the Eagle’s Pass, but she’d found an intriguing reference to a great plaza that had been constructed across the pass from the keep atop a cliff on Snowborne Mountain, called Eagle’s Landing. In the old days, the book claimed, the great gray eagles would alight there to parley with the Sacor Clans. When she asked Master Foley about it, he scoffed at the idea of birds parleying, and that the landing must have had a defensive purpose for the sentinels at the keep. Anna didn’t brush it off so easily, as she’d heard that Sir Karigan had once conversed with a great gray eagle.
Rider Newland must have indicated that he’d indeed been caught at the Eagle’s Pass because the colonel then asked, “About where?”
“Forest to the west. Large encampment, I think. Somehow shielded. Didn’t see it until I was upon it and rode right into a trap. Then . . .” He struggled for a breath. “Then they brought me to just outside of Sacor City. With magic. I—I have message from the one called Torq.”
The three leaning over the bed went so silent and still that it was like Anna looked upon a tableau of wax figures at the Sacor City War Museum. The colonel paled, which made her look particularly like a wax figure.
“Go on,” the colonel said.
“Torq has three of our Riders.”
“Which ones?”
“Fergal, Megan, Karigan.”
“Megan, too?” Captain Connly said in dismay. “She was not due back for a while so we wouldn’t have known. But I guess the mystery of our other missing Riders is solved.”
“He also has . . .” Rider Newland paused to swallow.
“Yes?” the colonel urged.
“He has Melry.”
That was the colonel’s daughter, Anna thought. The colonel did not move, did not make a sound.
“Are they all right?” Captain Connly asked.
“Yes. When I saw them, but Torq, he says he will take them apart one piece at a time if the Red Witch does not give herself over to him on the next full moon.”
“Red Witch?” Ben asked. “Who or what is that?”
The colonel straightened. Her expression was flat. In a soft voice, she replied, “I am the Red Witch. It is what the Darrow Raiders called me. Now they wish to repay me for all I did to them so many years ago.”
Rider Newland had grown quiet. “He’s asleep,” Ben said. “He needs his rest.”
“Send a runner for us when he awakens again,” the colonel said. “He may have more information for us.”
“Yes, Colonel,” Ben replied.
When the colonel and captain moved to leave, Anna scrambled from the door to her proper waiting place. When the two emerged, Captain Connly looked more worried than the colonel. Aside from her pallor and a certain stiffness, the colonel hid her concern for her daughter and Riders.
“What now?” Captain Connly asked the colonel.
“I go to the king. He will want to know that Ty can back up the scouts’ reports about an encampment this side of the Eagle’s Pass.”
“Do you want me to go with you?”
“No. I want you to be available when Ty wakes up again.”
“What are we going to do about our people?”
Colonel Mapstone gazed down the corridor and took a deep breath. “The Riders know the dangers of their calling. We all do. We all have uncertain futures as king’s messengers.” She turned back to Ty, her expression set. “It is not the realm’s policy to be extorted by criminals. But I will tell you one thing, Connly, I will see the Darrow Raiders destroyed.”
Connly watched after her as she strode down the corridor, his gaze thoughtful. “Her own daughter,” he murmured. Then he shook his head.
“Sir?” Anna said.
He looked at her in surprise. “I’d forgotten you were still here.”
“Is the colonel really just going to leave her daughter and our Riders in the hands of the Raiders?”
He sighed. “You heard her. It’s the realm’s policy not to give in to ransom demands. It would only encourage our enemies to take hostages. I imagine she will bring it up with the king and he will decide. He won’t want to sacrifice the colonel, and that’s for certain. Hells, none of us want to sacrifice anyone.”
Anna wondered what the king would decide when he heard that Sir Karigan was one of the captives.
“Sir?”
“Yes, Anna?”
“Why do you think the Raiders call the colonel the Red Witch?”
“I’m not sure, to be honest,” he replied. “I imagine the ‘red’ part has to do with her hair, and the ‘witch’ may refer to her using her ability against the Raiders, but she never talks about those years, and I can’t be certain. Now, don’t you have duties to take care of?”
“No, sir, except that the colonel asked that I stand by while you both went in to see Rider Newland in case she needed a runner.”
“Well, then, dismissed. I will be off to my quarters.”
The captain left her, and she paused to glance into Rider Newland’s chamber where Ben leaned over his patient, his hands emitting a soft blue glow.
Anna made her way back to the Rider wing, feeling downcast after all she had just heard. It was hard to think of her Rider friends, especially Sir Karigan whom she admired, in the hands of the Darrow Raiders, and no rescue likely. She couldn’t imagine how the colonel felt, as much as she tried to hide it, with not only her Riders being held, but her daughter, too.
She tried to remind herself that Riders were resourceful and they might rescue themselves, and that Sir Karigan had gotten herself out of many a difficult situation before and might again. Plus, Rider Newland had said they looked well when he saw them.
“Anna, have you seen Hoff?”
Anna was startled back to the present by Lieutenant Mara standing before her with her hands on her hips.
“Hoff?”
“Yes. He’s supposed to be at arms training, but you know how he loves that.”
Anna looked around herself, then pointed at the old cabinet at the end of the corridor.
“You think he’s hiding in there?” the lieutenant asked.
“Not exactly in,” Anna replied. “Do you remember a cabinet in that spot?”
The lieutenant scratched her head. “Now that you mention it . . . Ah, I think I get your meaning.”
She strode up to the cabinet and stuck her arm through it. “Rider Jay Bishoff, come out immediately.” Then a look of triumph crossed her face and she pulled. Hoff popped out of the cabinet, the lieutenant hauling him by his collar. The cabinet dissolved as if it had never existed, and in fact, it was never more than an illusion. Hoff, whose special ability was to create illusions, was very good at it, an artist really.
“You are going to arms training whether you want to or not,” Lieutenant Mara told him.
Hoff liked his desserts and made frequent trips to Master Gruntler’s Sugary on payday, but otherwise disliked exerting himself.
Lieutenant Mara continued to drag him down the corridor. “You continue to do this,” she warned him, “and you’ll be on laundry duty for a month.”
Anna smiled as she watched after them, but it was fleeting when she recalled the dire things she had heard that afternoon. She continued down the corridor and turned the corner. As she passed the door to Sir Karigan’s room, she wondered what King Zachary would decide.