Free Oathbreaker: The Knight's Tale by Colin McComb

We knew the intruder was alone. We knew he was skilled in the lore of our wood, too, because we didn’t know where he was.
    We also knew he was dangerous. Cox would never have called us otherwise. He would have let us track the intruder down ourselves and deal with the interloper as we dealt with all trespassers in the King’s Forest. We showed no mercy.
    We gathered at the stilt lodge, moving silently, singly and in pairs among the old trunks. Usually we traveled alone, but this was the Year of the Journeyman. Those of us who had taken ’prentices two years ago now traveled with our charges to see their skills. Warren had Xis, an old southern infantryman who had taken to the teachings as well as any child, and already he moved more silently than some who had been born to the wood. Three others came as well, with the nicknames we’d given ’em: Toll Halfman, the eunuch from Terona; Strom Surehand from the cold northeast; and Brus the Clean.
    My ’prentice had washed out. There was no shame in it.
    I was one of the first to arrive. We greeted each other with a nod and a name (“Mishi,” they said to me), and no more—foresters are quiet folk at the best of times. When thirty of us were there, Cox began to speak. His words were terse, clipped. “I received word from Terona. The intruder is one of the King’s Chosen. His name is Pelagir. He’s carrying a child. If the child comes to harm, it’ll be your head. The Council of Knights has asked that we shoot to wound Pelagir, not to kill him. Recovery of the child is of primary importance.”
    It meant a kidnapping, then, from a family high up the social ladder. Maybe the highest. The Council wanted vengeance, and it was going to be terrible. We’d pay if we stood in the way of their punishment. And if we had to die to get the child, it wasn’t sacrifice enough.
    We slung our yew bows onto the pegs in the walls and took the dull bronze crossbows from the racks in their place—plain arrows wouldn’t do against one of the King’s Chosen. There was no way we could fire an arrow that would hit him unless we managed a distraction, and that was unlikely. True, the crossbows were unreliable. Sometimes they exploded when they fired, sometimes they didn’t fire at all, and they required yearly maintenance by Verthain, the wizard of the forest. But against a knight, the eldritch bolts they fired were the best option we had. These crossbows had no strings to tangle in the brushes and branches. The forks summoned and focused energy from within the worked metal of the weapon, launching the quarrel only when we squeezed the crossbow’s stock. If they were more trustworthy, we’d use them all the time. As it was, we used the yew bows except in emergencies. If worse slipped to worst, we had our knives, though of course they’d be useless against a knight.
    We left the stilt lodge without saying anything else and fanned out through the woods to the west. If we ran across the knight, we’d be dead unless we had backup, but we couldn’t travel too closely together, or he’d be warned of our coming. Against any ordinary person, these precautions would have been unnecessary. We’d use these tactics against one of the vicious things that sometimes wandered into the forest from the blasted hills, and the cautions would keep us safe. Against one of the King’s Chosen, they might not be enough.
    I grew afraid then—afraid of losing the forest, afraid of losing my life. My heart knocked in my chest, and my legs weakened as I trotted through the massive trunks. But my only choices were to pursue the knight and the child, or to break my oath and lose my life. In the end, I had no choice at all. I would die in the service of the forest I swore to protect.
    That didn’t diminish my fear in the slightest.
    I slipped through the underbrush, the crossbow fastened tight against my back. I ducked hanging branches and leaped over fallen trees. I launched myself over moss-laden rocks,