It took a long time to clear even a small path and he despaired as sweat fell from his face. His muscles, not used to such work, ached. He paused for a moment and tried to find the sun again. Wondered at what his father would think of him getting tired after only a few hours’ hard work.

He looked at the axe in his hand. How many years it had been since he used it. Twenty? It had once been a trusted tool used almost every day in a variety of situations. Back when a single crown was a lot of money. It now seemed inadequate to the task at hand, but Heden knew the power of persistence. And he never had much of a sense of time. Hours would pass and he wouldn’t notice. He enjoyed tasks like this. For which the only solution was hard work, and hours of it. He was his father’s son.

The horse didn’t appear to mind the passage of time with little progress. It seemed perfectly happy to stand there, no one on its back, and nibble at the leaves on the vines and ferns. Sometimes it would take a turn and prune an entire bush. Sometimes it would gently mouth a leaf from a bush and leave it. Probably poisonous. How does it know? Heden wondered. Mysterious horsey senses men did not wot of, probably.

He set back to work. Part of him knew it was unrealistic to expect that he’d be able to chop his way wherever he was going, but he was stubborn. There had been a path, it was now gone, and Heden’s toiling was his way of telling whatever powers whisked it away that they could go fuck a pig before he’d give up. He remembered Renaldo. This was Heden’s performance.

He exposed a large root curling above and below the ground, on which had been anchored a great deal of vegetation. Unable to get a good angle of attack via any other method, he climbed atop the twisting root and stood there looking down. As he prepared to hack at it, it snapped under his weight and though he tried to catch himself, all he managed to do was flip head over heels and land on his back, his cloak over his head.

He heard the horse whinny in amusement. Stupid horse, he thought.

He pulled his cloak from off his face and froze. There was a man standing before him. Just at his feet. He held a longsword pointed at Heden’s throat, its blade catching the sunlight that streamed through the leaves hundreds of feet above. The horse wasn’t commenting on Heden’s athleticism, it was trying to alert Heden to the presence of the stranger.

He was a knight without a helm. He wore plate, but it was plate for the working day. None of the frippery Heden saw the White Hart sport back in Celkirk, all ornament for show. This was smooth. Worn smooth by many blows and repairs. Not gleaming silver, but dull grey. There seemed to be a pattern etched into it, but it was spotty and Heden couldn’t make it out. The man’s sword looked just as well-used. Heden thought he sensed some sorcery on the blade, but didn’t think it mattered. He was guessing any knight alone in the Wode who could get the drop on him wouldn’t need a sorcerous blade to be a threat to him. Not at this distance. Not with Heden on his ass.

Without moving the sword at Heden’s throat, and without making a noise, the knight looked around. Checking to see if there was anyone else around.

“I’m alone,” Heden volunteered.

The knight took one more survey of the area, and then a step back. But did not lower the sword or in any other way change his posture. Heden sat up a little, but made no other attempt to rise.

“Yeah,” the knight said. “I can see that.” He turned full around, checking for something, and then back to Heden.

“You’re alone alright.” There was sarcasm in his voice, some kind of judgment.

“I have a horse,” Heden said in his own defense.

The knight looked at the horse, happily ignoring both of them, deforesting the wode, thinking horsey thoughts.

“That’s debatable,” the knight said. He hadn’t put the sword down.

A moment passed. Neither man spoke.

“We just going to sit here like this?” Heden asked.

“You’re going to sit there like that,” the knight said.

“Ok,” Heden said, giving up.

The knight made his way to the horse. He moved like a wolf. When he reached the horse, he rifled through Heden’s gear. Threw open the flap of Heden’s pack and pushed his arm in. Heden watched the knight’s eyes go wide, he pulled back and looked at the pack, and then thrust his arm in up to the shoulder. The small pack swallowed his arm.

He pulled his arm out, closed the flap, and took the pack. He rounded the horse, continuing his inspection. Then he made his way back to Heden.

Heden relaxed and laid his head against the root, looked up at the canopy of leaves, and ignored the knight.

The knight stood over Heden for a few moments more, and then sheathed his sword. He leaned down and extended his hand.

“Come on,” he said. Heden took his hand and pulled himself up, grateful for the help.

“What are you doing here?” the knight asked.

“I think I’m looking for you,” Heden said, brushing the dirt and dead leaves off his ass.

“Me?” the knight took a step back and gave him a doubtful appraisal. He had a round head, his copper hair cut so short Heden wondered what the point was. He was a little bigger than Heden, but seemed thinner. Heden considered his own judgment of men to be keen, and he saw in this knight a kindred spirit.

“I’m looking for the Green Order,” Heden said.

The stranger shook his head. “Not me,” he said. “I can take you to them, though.” He jerked his thumb to his left. “They’re in the wode.”

“In the wode?” Heden asked. “This isn’t the wode?”

“Well, I suppose to some,” the knight said. “Not by my reckoning, though. Far as I see it, the wode proper don’t start until you hit the brocc.”

Heden nodded, he understood. The closer, the more intimate your relationship with the forest, the nicer you became with where the wode started and stopped.

“Who are you?” he asked. “What do you do up here?”

The knight shrugged and extended his hand a little bit behind him. Responding to no obvious command, Heden’s horse wandered over until the knight was able to grab the horse’s reins. “There’s a living to be made here, like any other,” he said. “Come on.”

He started off, leading Heden’s horse, and Heden noticed the footpath had come back.

“Where’d this come from?” he asked.

“Eh?”

“This path. We followed it in,” he said, promoting his horse to a companion, “but it disappeared.”

The knight smiled. “It happens,” he said. “Path this small, you wander off for only a moment, suddenly you can’t see it for all the brush. You spend enough time in here,” he said, “you learn where they are.”

Maybe this wasn’t a knight, Heden thought. He seemed more like a woodsman. Spoke like any man from Durham Keep.

“You know Durham Keep?” Heden asked.

The man scowled liked Heden had insulted him, “’Course I do,” he said. “Durham Keep and Gravesford. Villane, Hoddenhill. Tane and Sealton Heath. ‘Course I know them, what kind of question is that? Where are you from?”

The knight, or whatever he was, led Heden’s horse, and Heden walked along with.

“South,” Heden said. “I’ve come a long way to talk to these knights.”

“Well,” the knight said. “They’re not going to want to talk to you.”

Heden sighed as the two men and the horse walked at a leisurely pace through the woods. With company, the place seemed far less threatening. Mundane. Even beautiful.

“How come?” he asked, and realized he’d slipped back into the northern dialect. ‘How come’ instead of ‘why?’

“They don’t like people,” the man said.

“That’s a…” Heden cleared his throat and tried to master his own manner of speech. “That covers a lot.”

The knight shrugged. “It’s how they are.”

Heden let a moment pass in silence.

“How are they?”

“Pretty high-handed,” the knight said wearily. Heden concluded this man had dealt with the Green often, and they did not come off favorably in his estimation. “Rarely leave the forest, so they don’t spend much time around men. They’re rude. Full of themselves. Don’t seem to get along much with each other, neither. Each one,” he said, and stretched his arm across half the forest around them, “covers leagues on his own. Alone for months. I think maybe they’re a little mad,” he said.

“Covers the forest doing what?” Heden asked.

The knight shrugged. “Keep the beasties in line. The urq, the thyrs mostly. The elgenwights. Stop them from raiding the towns.”

“You get elgenwights this far south?” Heden interrupted.

“Oh sure,” the knight said throwing a glance at Heden. “Them and the brocc, always at it. The brocc are mostly on our side,” he said. Heden nodded, he knew that.

“The fae, too,” the knight said. “Kids from the towns come into the forest on a dare, and the fae snatch them up. Don’t mean nothing by it, they don’t know any better. But still,” the knight said.

“But still,” Heden echoed, knowing the fae as he did. “How far are they?” he asked.

“Few miles,” the knight said. “They have a chapel they all gather at,” Heden presumed he meant the priory the bishop spoke of. “But it’ll take the better part of a day. We’ll skirt the brocc territory. They’re devils when they’re riled up. I have a hard enough time dealing with them alone. I try and bring a stranger through, there’ll be trouble no matter what.”

Heden realized why he found the knight so easy to talk to. He’s a campaigner, Heden thought.

“Where’s your company?” Heden took a chance.

“My company?” the knight said, his lip curling at the strangeness of the question.

“Man like you,” Heden said, looking down at his feet eating up the distance. Passing the time. “All alone up here. You know the order, you know the brocc. Doesn’t figure. I’m guessing you’re a campaigner.” Like I was.

“Not me,” he said. “Not a ratcatcher. I was a squire,” the knight said with some wistful bitterness. “Prenticed to a knight. But he…he’s dead. Just me now.”

Heden and the knight and the horse walked through the forest. Heden didn’t say anything.

“Well, these knights sound like complete shits,” he said, changing the subject.

The knight with him smiled. “Aye,” he said. “So what brings you to meet them?”

Heden sighed. “I don’t know,” he said.

“You’ve come a long way for ‘I don’t know.’”

“Yeah,” Heden agreed. “There’s some kind of crisis in this order and someone at the high city,” he said, not mentioning the bishop, “decided I should come up here and look into it.”

He was being vague, but only because the details confused him. Death, possibly murder, of a man he hadn’t met, by something or someone he didn’t know, and the forest conspiring to keep people out. A conspiracy he seemed to have thwarted.

“Why you?” the knight asked.

“Shit,” Heden said. “I have no idea.”

“Seems strange,” the knight said.

“What?”

“Just seems strange to send a man all the way up here without telling him much of why. You some kind of expert on knights?”

Heden barked a laugh. “I hate knights.”

“Really?”

“They’re insufferable pricks. Present company excluded.”

The knight hung his head. “I never earned my spurs,” he said. “My master died before the ceremony.” That left the squire in a perpetual loophole, but usually another knight in the order would finish his training. Probably the other knights all had squires.

“You up here all alone, dealing with the elgenwights, the thyrs. Any man would say you were a knight,” Heden said. Aware that for most squires, the opinions of those outside the order were meaningless.

The knight looked at him and smiled. “Thanks,” he said.

“What order are you with?” Heden asked.

“It don’t seem strange to you,” the knight asked, ignoring Heden, “they send someone up here who hates knights? They don’t tell him anything about what’s going on?”

“I hadn’t really thought about it.”

“You come all the way up from the high city and you didn’t think about it?”

“I…,” Heden started. He shook his head. “They wanted someone who could deal with the knights on special terms,” he didn’t tell the knight his real station. His relationship with the bishop. “Probably they thought sending their own knights up might get people in trouble. They wanted someone to solve the problem, not make it worse.”

“How you going to solve the problem?” the squire asked.

“I don’t know,” Heden admitted. “I’m not sure I care anymore,” he remembered the inn. His heart clenched at the idea that he might suffer another attack here in the wode, and he wanted to go home. “I just want to do my job and go home.”

The knight stopped, the horse stopped. Heden took another few steps and then realized the knight was no longer leading them, and he turned around.

“Your job?” the knight asked, tilting his head a little to one side, weighing Heden’s statement.

Heden was confused. “Yeah,” he said. “Deal with their crisis and get out of here. That’s my job.”

“How workmanlike you make it sound,” the knight’s voice had changed a little. His accent was different. “Like a carpenter hired to set a beam.”

Heden shrugged, no defense. “Sorry,” he said. He realized he sounded like a mercenary. He wondered what the knight’s interest in all of this was.

Then he noticed the path had disappeared again.

“We’re off the path,” he said.

“You will not find the Order,” the knight said.

“What?”

“If was a mistake for them to send you.” The knight seemed bitter, almost angry.

Heden looked around. Was this the exact same spot they’d started off in, after walking for a full turn?

He looked at the knight anew. Pointed at him rudely.

“You never told me your name.”

“Dolt,” the knight shot back. “Everything that’s happened and of course they send you. A hundred children in a dozen towns could tell you who I am.”

Heden got goosebumps. “What order are you with?” he asked again, remembering now that the knight had not answered again.

“It matters not,” the knight said. “You will not gain the green chapel.”

“I will not…” Heden repeated. “Who are you to say? What business is it of yours?”

The knight grew visibly wroth and drew his sword. “What business of mine?! No business, clod. Thou dunce. Thou oafish ass. What business of yours?”

Heden stepped back at the drawn sword. Was this a knight of the green order? Was he being tested?

He held his hands up, showing he meant no harm. “I’m just here to….” The knight stepped forward, closing the gap, interrupting him.

“’Just?’” he quoted back. “Just indeed. Just and merely. Merely and barely. Barely here, barely a man. Thou shalt not gain the green chapel, dolt.”

“Well,” Heden said, trying not to let things get away from him. “Then we’re at an impasse, because it’s the only reason I’m here. You said you’d lead me there. Will you?”

“You are here,” the knight sneered, “for no reason of your own.”

Heden took this as a ‘no.’ “Ok,” he said, and turned to continue in the direction he remembered the knight indicated.

The knight leaped forward effortlessly, until he was blocking Heden’s way again.

“Turn around,” the knight said, and pointed his sword at Heden.

“I won’t,” Heden said. “You’re going to have to deal with me here, or let me pass, one or the other.” He took another step forward.

The knight took a step forward as well, until the two men were only two paces apart. He pointed his sword at Heden.

“Quit the field,” the knight pronounced, and in Heden’s eyes he’d changed since they’d met. He seemed physically larger, his armor brighter. The fine detail in it now recognizable as a vine with blooming flowers. “Or I will strike thee down.”

“What are you doing, man?”

“I say thee,” the knight spoke slowly, he pressed the tip of his sword into Heden’s breastplate. “Turn around, and get thee hence from this place, or I shall run ye through and no mistake.”

Heden locked eyes with the knight and covertly dug one booted foot into the dead leaves and dirt. “You think I’m going to turn around now? Because of you?” He leaned a little into the sword point, his plate and mail more than enough to prevent harm. This forced the knight to press back to hold his ground. “You can go stick your prick in a pig’s ass.”

The knight bared his teeth. “Then it be battle between us,” he said.

But at the word ‘battle,’ Heden was already in action. He kicked the dirt and leaves into the face of the knight as he twisted away from the sword. The knight shouted with disorientation as he simultaneously tried to clear his eyes, and stumbled forward as Heden pulled away from the pressing sword point, causing the knight to lose his balance.

In the time it took the knight to recover, Heden drew his own sword, clumsily as he wasn’t used to sword fighting now, but in enough time to clear the scabbard and then hammer the knight in the back of the neck with the pommel as he stumbled past. He could have struck with the edge of the blade, but didn’t know how far the knight would take this.

“Knave!” the knight shouted, and wheeled, swinging his sword around. He was an expert. Better than Heden, even in Heden’s youth, and soon the two men were dancing and scrabbling through the fallen leaves and branches on the floor of the forest. Heden retreating all the while.

Heden spoke a prayer and warded himself. The knight’s eyes went wide with surprise, but he smiled as well, relishing the power of his foe and pressed the attack. As though Heden’s prayers had given him permission to let loose.

It was difficult, maybe impossible, for Heden to fight back while losing ground and think of another prayer at the same time. Too many options. Too many prayers learned and forgotten, and three years in the inn, shut in, alone.

The knight got through his guard, slashed his once across his right arm and when Heden winced, he struck again, stabbing into Heden’s left shoulder.

The pain brought clarity. Prayer wasn’t necessary. Anger would suffice.

And Heden was very angry.

He fought back with new ferocity, and now was pushing the knight back. The more Heden fought, the more ground he gained, the more the knight seemed to enjoy it. The more he smiled. This only angered Heden more.

Sloppy, fighting more with fury than skill, Heden left many openings and though the knight was forced back by Heden’s wild attacks, he countered once, and then struck through Heden’s flailing, thuggish offense. The tip of the knight’s sword sliced at Heden’s neck, cutting a thin line that quickly oozed red.

The knight seemed pleased with himself and dropped his guard, smiling, as though offering Heden a chance to yield.

But Heden couldn’t see the knight’s attitude, his eyes saw only red, and he did not consider yielding.

He slashed out. The blade of his father’s father, not magical, merely very, very sharp, swung around and sliced through the knight’s neck.

He intended to trade sharp cut for sharp cut, and was therefore amazed when his blade cut clean through the knight’s neck, through bone and muscle and sinew. The knights’ eyes went wide with alarm and his mouth opened in surprise as his head flew off his shoulders.

Heden stood gawping. Breathing like a horse having run a league. He was amazed that his blow, not intended to kill, only to scratch, had decapitated his opponent.

But he was more amazed that the knight was not dead. His body did not fall to the ground. Instead it dropped its sword, and raised its hands to where its head once was. Felt the air where once was flesh and bone.

The knights’ head lay in the brush, eyes wide, mouth forming silent words. The head seemed to be talking to the body.

The body wandered over clumsily, bent down, and picked up the head. The knight’s hands placed the head upon his shoulders. He fitted it on like one might set a stone atop a wall, balance it to prevent it from falling off. When he took his hands away, he was whole again.

“Alright, you made your point,” the knight said, scratching his neck. His speech returned to normal. Or its mode when they first met. Heden didn’t know what normal was anymore. He was lost at sea. His mind whirring, immobilizing him, as he tried to find some context, some meaning, behind the headless knight made whole again.

The knight walked forward, approaching Heden, but only reached down to pick up his sword. He looked at Heden anew. Raised his eyebrows, pursed his lips. “Maybe I was wrong. Maybe pig-headed bloody-mindedness counts for something.”

He sheathed his sword. “Might be just what you need with that lot,” he said mostly, it seemed, to himself. He looked past Heden and clucked his tongue twice. Heden’s horse walked forward.

Heden, unbelieving, watched as the knight took the horse’s reins, took Heden’s unyielding left hand, and wrapped the reins around it.

“Good luck,” he said, and walked away, around a tree and out of site. Heden’s eyes followed him but he otherwise didn’t move from the spot from which he’d cut off the knight’s head, his mouth still hanging slack.

Then he took a great gulp of air, and burst after the man, knowing what he would find.

The knight had disappeared. There was only Heden’s horse. And the empty wode.

On to Chapter Twenty-two!

chapter 21