Kill the boy, he convinced himself, lunging as Adam had for his opponent’s grinning face. A feint. He’d seen how fast the man could move, even in all that armour, saw how he’d countered, advancing and letting the blade hit his cuirass instead. So the half-blood darted sideways, out of range of the axe, slashing low as he passed—useless against the enameled steel plate. Adnihilo’s training betrayed him. He’d never learned to fight a man in armour like this, could only rely on his instincts. So the next two exchanges played precisely the same till they came together a fourth and final time. The stranger’s grin had become a grimace by then. He was out of patience and scowling at the scratches accrued on his cuisses. In response to the half-blood’s thrust, in place of forward, the knight peddled back, dropped his own weapon, and grabbed the pastor’s blade before Adnihilo could withdraw the feint. Wrists twisted, and suddenly the sword was pointed the other way—the man smiling, David’s sword in his possession—the half-blood defeated, angry and ashamed.
Fourth Verse
Never was wind so alive as during Jael’s ride home. It whirled through her hair, whistling passed her ears like the song of a thrush—enlivening, so that even hackneyed Troy broke from his usual trot, galloping down the road like some knight’s great destrier. At least, that’s how Leonhardt imagined her steed as she abandoned the beaten road for Herbstfield’s forest valleys. They were wind between the hills and trees. It was her secret path to and from the chapel, and it halved what should have been an hour’s journey. But it wasn’t saved time driving her through brooks and branches to where the hills laid low under cover of a weeping tree.
It was Jael’s sanctuary from chastising eyes: an untended meadow below a hilltop farm, a field white with chamomile, and a rocky pond overrun by blooming moss and lichen. The ancient weeper’s arms maintained the wild garden; in its shade, the grass grew no taller than the tops of Jael’s boots. She couldn’t believe it was true the first time she saw it—that such an escape from the endless fields of wheat and barley laid just a stone’s throw from home. Now, the meadow was as familiar to her as was the chapel. Every church day morning she visited after the sermon to meet with the keeper of her secret sanctuary.
She had discovered him a year ago, stranded just off the market road, stuck in the mud between two over-grazed slopes pulling a meat-laden cart. One of its wheels had broken—cracked on a boulder jutting up through the mud—and the man was struggling to replace it on his own. Jael had reined in alongside him and slung to the ground with a happy plop.
“Come on! Put your back into it!” her younger self japed—a habit she’d picked up working the fields with her father, teasing one another to hasten the day.
The stranger did not laugh. He was holding his breath, kneeling, red-faced bearing the weight of his cart on one shoulder, a spare wheel in his opposite hand. But the iron tyre and wooden spokes were too unwieldy. As soon as he aligned the wheel with the axel, the cart would shift or he’d sink into the mud. It must have been a dozen times before he finally gave up.
“Is that all you’ve got?” she teased him again, amusing till he pressed his hands on his knees and rose to at least a full six feet. The cart vanished behind his broad chest and shoulders, as did the sun behind his head. Leonhardt had to crane her neck just to look him in the face. He was staring back at her with squinty brown eyes. His cheeks and jaw were round and naked, his sandy hair pasted to his face.
“God bless you, M’lady. Now, if you’re finished, I’d appreciate some help.”
Jael stood shocked by the softness of his voice.
The stranger touched his palm to Leonhardt’s forehead. His hand eclipsed almost half of her face. “M’lady? You’re not sick, are you? Your face is all red.”
She bat his hand away. “No, I’m not sick; and I’m not ‘M’lady’ either. My name is Jael Leonhardt.”
“You sure sound like a lady with a name like that,” he said. “I’m Zach. I herd goats. Now that we’ve been introduced, could you give me a hand?”
“I thought you’d never ask. You sure as Hell need it,” she answered, knowing full well that he already had. Zach was polite enough not to point that out, however. Instead, he shrugged and propped the wheel on its edge then rolled it over for Leonhardt to hold. Jael shook her head. Replacing a wheel was hardly a task for her. She wanted to show this stranger what she was capable of, so she knelt beside the flatbed and bore it rough edge on her shoulder. The weight was ungodly. Eyes shut to the pain, for the first few moments, she could hold it. Then, slowly, she felt as her form began to break: back bowing, legs shaking. Another second and the cart would be her grave.
“Hurry it up!” she exclaimed, but it was too late. Her body gave way. Her heart stopped while she waited for the cart to come down on her collar bone. It never did. And when Jael opened her eyes, she found the wheel on its axle and Zach above her, sitting atop the platform.
“Come on, M’lady.” he said, smiling. “Put your back into it, why don’t you.”
Leonhardt smiled as well, something about his squinty brown eyes stealing her attention from her sore shoulder. Even as they went their separate ways, she couldn’t take her mind from the feeling. It haunted her for days on afterward, so much so that the following Lunday, on her way to church on
