Leonhardt pulled her legs in closer. There was nowhere for her to run, nothing to hold on to save for her faith. She remembered Gavin’s last homily and the monster Camilla so boldly faced. These are just shadows, she told herself. Be brave. Keep faith. In those words, Jael found the courage to stand against whatever demon lurked on the edges of darkness. When she stood, however, a different beast was there to greet her, and not in the ocean but there with her on deck. It was a wolf, warm as summer in a blonde coat, panting and craving, slaver dripping from jaws the size of a horse’s. Be brave, she commanded, afraid, yet finding her courage pressed in the palm of her left hand. Her father’s sword—hers.
Jael leveled the tapered point of the frost-white steel with the eyes of the beast now snarling before her. She was ready. The wolf crouched low and bolted over the flooded deck, its paws splashing fast as a storm, and before she could blink, it was on her, lunging for her throat, and without knowing what to do or when to move, Jael plunged the sword into the heart of the wolf and was spattered by its simmering blood. It stung in her eyes and filled her tongue with the taste of iron. She spat out what she could and cleared her face with a clean forearm till she could see again. What she saw was that the wolf was gone, replaced by another.
“Mother,” she whispered, agape at the body impaled on her sword. But it wasn’t her sword. The hilt and blade were those of a great knife,—heavy—the weight of the corpse bending the weapon, nearly wrenching it from her grip. She tried to pull it out, but when she did, she felt a stabbing tear through her abdomen. She looked again. Now it was her who was pierced, not Dahilla, and Zach’s hand had wielded the blade.
Jael gasped, embarrassed by her nakedness in front of Zach who was staring with laughter in his squinty eyes. “Don’t look!” she cried, both hands flying to cover herself, finding strange clothes where prior was flesh and blood. Boots, she saw examining her body, hard brown leather, thick, and laced just below her knee; hose underneath as high as her waist; and above that a gambeson of dark brown linen.
“Come back to me, Jael,” Zach called from afar, from a raft drifting toward the black horizon. Leonhardt could hardly hear him over the sound of wind whipping his canvas sail. She ran. As fast as her feet could slosh through the flood, she ran for the end of the cog where her promise was shrinking in the distance. But with every step, her pace became slower. Her body became laden, weighted down with maille and sword and surcoat and gauntlets. Last was the helm, a great helm with the embossed face of a lion at its crown. She heard Zach shout but couldn’t make out the sound. He was too far now, and she could go no further—the edge of the cog and an expanse of ocean between them. Then on the raft she saw with Zach the wolf, bloody and hungry, and for a moment she forgot where and who and what she’d become. She stepped off the boat and into the water.
†
The world was a haze as Jael awoke to the patter of rain like hooves on mud. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes. Dawn had yet to break over the Valley Road, and not a soul was stirring in the novitiates’ carriage. None save Leonhardt. The wagon was packed with women on their way to become Religious Sisters, and there was little enough room for them all during travel, let alone to sleep. Jael had volunteered to take the rear, where cold air snuck inside between the door flap and carriage cover. Soaked and shivering, she regretted it now. The knot tying the door flap had come undone and let in the rain overnight.
Everything was wet: her riding boots, her linen trousers, her shift and her woolen shirt, and even her surcoat with her sword wrapped within—though the latter stayed safe under an oily rag. It was the first thing she checked after stripping off her borrowed quilt, that the steel of the guard and pommel were dry and oiled, that no moisture had stolen into the scabbard and onto the blade. She drew it out and read the inscriptions, said a short prayer for her father, and sheathed it again.
Cold and soaked, there was no going back to sleep. Her damp clothes looked less than inviting, but it was them or sit nude with a dozen snoring maidens. Grimacing, she dressed and fastened her sword belt and surcoat, then stole outside with a sodden thump.
The rain fell lighter than Jael expected while she walked the caravan from end to end. By the time her first round was done, there was only mist and morning fog, and she had forgotten her shivers and chaffing clothes. Her mind was taken with what life would be like in the holy capital. She’d be a knight of Pareo serving in the saint’s personal cavalry, the Saint’s Cross, second in honour only to the Temple Guard. “If it is His will,” echoed Paul’s words, “perhaps you may be permitted to swear the knight’s holy oaths.” That perhaps stuck her like a thorn in a rosebush. The Struggle was coming. She’d need every hour of practice that she could get.
During her second lap around the caravan, Jael strayed from the camp and took refuge on a grassy knoll alongside the road. Here, her footing was firm, and she could practice unseen the techniques her father had taught those last few years. God Save me, she prayed, drawing the sword into her left hand and wrapping
