Shadows and Steel | ✓

chapter ten

-10-

The sun hadn't peeked over Eryan's buildings as the team saddled their horses in the stables only a street away from the warehouse. Elle stroked her beast's soft nose, its coat silky and black. She didn't speak to the other assassins as she swung into the saddle, holding the reins loosely. With a single nod to Jax and a click of her tongue the horse stubbornly began to trod.

Its hooves clopped through muddied streets coated in god knows what. Elle caught Tristan's eye, his mouth twisted into a grimace at the mud splattering onto their bags. They squelched past inns and apartments stacked precariously on top of one another, every so often spying a lone figure in the window or smoking a pipe out of their front door. 

The assassin didn't let herself relax until the slums began to thin out into barren fields and streets evolved into trails.

Jax led the small party, on his white beast, closely followed by Kath, then Tristan. Only Leo dawdled behind her, partly because his beast stopped to sniff every flower it could reach with its neck. The city had drifted into smoke on the horizon by the time the sun had risen, casting a cold light over the surrounding area.

If Elle remembered correctly, there had been a war outside the city's gates many millennia ago. The fields had never recovered, the villages burned, so now it lay as a wasteland, sprawling overgrowth and solely ripe with weeds. 

After a good few hours of riding they entered a small village, greeted by merchants hollering their wares and girls chasing each other around the central well. Townspeople pulled back their small children from their great beasts. Elle caught the eye of a hardened woman, kneading dough in the frame of her front door. 

She glared at the newcomers, eyes narrowing. The assassin dipped her head towards her, warily glancing at the other hostile locals.

"We shouldn't stop here," she murmured to Tristan just ahead of her. He didn't give an audible reply, merely nodding, but she could see his own eyes flitting between everyone in the main square. Poorer districts had been forgotten by the Enforcers, so they held much contempt at Eryan's wealthy residents.

Jax directed them through the town and down a less-formed trail that had barely been used. Overrun with shrubbery and teeming with undisturbed life. The locals didn't bother travelling directly through Orioch, so it would seem. Branches snapped as the horses trampled them underfoot, their sharp ears pricking when an animal call echoed through the trees. Elle gripped the reins tighter, scrutinising the trees for...something.

Tales of ancient beasts and magic residing in this forest had circulated for years. In the name of speed, the team favoured the shorter journey to Lorel; instead of a winding country road circumventing the forest, they delved into the heart of it. The time itched past, Elle finding nothing better to do than begin to count the amount of birds she would spy perching upon their boughs, gazing curiously down.

The light filtering through the leaves grew dim as the sun finished its passage across the sky. They had ridden for the whole day, yet their journey into Orioch hadn't even started. It would take about two weeks of travelling along the infinite stretch of trees and paths to emerge out the other side.

"I have heard stories about travellers getting lost in these woods and never returning. Some say they were eaten by the ferocious beasts, or hunted down by the magical sorceresses and trapped." Leo supplied, fascination lacing his tone. Jax and Tristan shared a withering look.

"Those are bedtime stories spun to stop children from running into these woods." Jax huffed. But even he couldn't deny the unnerving nature of the gangly trees, branches like hooks and coarse bark twisted into snarls. "Do you believe in that wishy-washy stuff?"