Free Dust and Water: A Song For The Stained Novella (A MAGICAL SAGA) by Cassandra Webb

Blood Stained.

    “Hey!” some girl shouts from atop a white horse, scaring the crap out of me.
    I run, stumbling and tripping, but refusing to let go of the boot that I just found.
    A few trees safely between the girl and me I stop and wait. A girl. What’s a ruddy girl doing out here on her own, yelling at me and me uncle and me Pa? This is a dangerous, secluded, section of road, not somewhere I was expecting to be bothered.
    There’s a lot more valuables on the ground – what with some battle just happening between slave traders and bandits just yesterday – even ripped up bandit shirts can fetch me some coin.
    The girl leaves my score alone. I dig a hole and bury the boot and other things that I already have – there’s no way I can carry everything, not since the two guys who consider themselves family have kept on running; all of the way to the city, I’ll bet. They really are my family, my Pa and uncle, but they look and act nothing like me.
    The girl rides to the other side of the road.
    Damn. She found something good, and it was hanging from a tree. How come I didn’t see it?
    I wonder if I could take it from her. Probably not, she looks rough and scarred; plus she has a sword.
    I could tackle her to the ground. But I don’t.
    When she finally rides off, I slip back down into the roadside ditch and salvage as much as I can, reburying what I can’t carry and fashioning the shirts and coats, odds and ends, that I can carry into a bundle before loading it up onto my back. I feel like a packhorse. My first few steps are staggered, as I try to get into the groove of hauling all this stuff.
    A pumpkin soup colour paints the skyline, blurring the distant road with sunset. I just know I’m going to be pack-horsing this stuff all night. If my Pa thinks that he’s getting a single coin out of me, he has another thing coming.
    If you don’t haul it, you haven’t earned it.
    Eventually, my legs are burning so fiercely that I can’t take another step so I stagger up the side of the road and into the bushes. I sit my style, which is like squatting so my bum doesn’t get covered in dirt. I don’t care about a bit of dirt, but I do care about getting a cold bum.
    What I wouldn’t give for some water; but hey, I did find a flask.
    I pull the cork and sniff; spirits. It wasn’t on one of the bandits, I found it in the middle of the battle – where the slave traders were – must have been a good year for them. It’s a really nice flask. Might have to keep this one for myself.
    Slave traders and bandits, they’re all rotten. If word of their battle hadn’t reached my Pa in the city, we wouldn’t have practically run out here to take what they’d dropped. Battles are messy things, and even without them travellers along these roads always lose stuff.
    I swig, cough, hold my breath, and force the cork back into the flask.
    Yep, it’s Baren all right. Foul Baren alcoholic spirits, they’re the worst on the market. It could have been clean water with a bit of honey in it. I’m not thirsty enough to drink spirits.
    Pulling one of my many concealed blades out I absently toss it at a tree. I can’t do this distance at home, the walls are all stone and if I keep hitting the support beams the tavern’s likely to fall in on the cellar; but I love the feeling of letting a blade fly, of hitting my mark, of being good at something. I repeat the process, lodging the blade into the same hole I just made… and again. This isn’t really relaxing, but it’s better than walking with all that crap.
    I’m ready to pull my makeshift tied-up-in-knots goods, up onto my shoulders, when horse girl comes riding out of the bush opposite me.
    Frozen, I watch her wander down the road. She looks odd, riding with no saddle, just rope for a bridle and moving in perfect unison with her horse. They look like one creature and if I were any dumber – maybe dumb like my Pa – I’d think they were connected in some way.
    Unless they’re