Free The Very Best of Kate Elliott by Kate Elliott

officer’s sash bunched up across his chest, she thought he was a wounded Forlanger. She hefted her walking stick to bash in his head before he woke.
    But then the light changed, shifting through the branches to illuminate his face clearly: an older man, dark hair sifted with white. A face she knew and would never forget, although she had only seen him once in her life, on the day ten years ago when the market hall had been dedicated and given over to the village.
    She would never forget the crookedly healed nose, the scar on his cheek, the metal brace he wore on his left leg. She knelt cautiously and eased the bloody glove off his left hand: yes, his left little finger was missing, as it said in the song— He was last to get on the boat and yet all the Forlanger wolf got of him was his smallest finger.
    The wounded soldier was General Olivar.
    Struck down and somehow abandoned or lost by his own men.
    She was so stunned that she sat with a grunt and pressed both hands to her belly, panting softly as she tried to gather her scattering thoughts. Ten years had aged him, as it had aged her: ten years ago her eldest child Mari had been a mischievous girl always singing some silly song, her eldest son had still been alive for that was before the shivering sickness had taken the boy, and her two youngest not yet even born.
    A hoof-fall sounded, gentle as mist, and then another.
    So the Hanging Woman announced her coming.
    She looked up.At the edge of the clearing Uwe hid under an evergreen bitterberry shrub, crouching with arms wrapped around knees. All she could see of him was his face like a frightened baby moon. Moonlight collected in the open space as magic into a bowl.
    The hoof-falls touched as lightly as the light itself.
    Shadows tangled, stretching and winding, coming into life.
    The Hanging Woman’s noose took shape as a rope of darkness coiling across the grass.
    The old oak had a cleft, and in its hollow many years ago an old cunning woman well versed in herbcraft and mystery had lived for several winters. That was the old woman of the wood, the witch for whom the hill was named, although there had been another cunning woman before her according to the stories told to Anna by her grandmother when she was a child.
    Anna glanced once more toward Uwe and, as she hoped, he had not moved, trusting to the bitterberry’s prickly scent to shield him. Rising, she grasped General Olivar by the armpits and dragged his limp weight halfway around the tree, whispering the chant of protection she had learned from the old woman: “Leaf and branch and grass and vine. Let me be like them, what the eye sees but does not notice.”
    Just in time she hauled him in through the cleft, into the dusty dry shelter of the tree’s heart. The smell of smoke still lingered. He gasped softly, and his eyes opened.
    “My sword,” he said in a hoarse whisper, as if he already knew what she was about.
    She had to risk it. The sword would betray their presence. The narrow cleft had been barely wide enough to admit the general’s shoulders. She squeezed back through it now and to her horror heard the creaks of men shifting on saddles and the thump of many ordinary horses rather than the eight-legged steed ridden by the Hanging Woman. Pulling her bridal shawl up over her head gave her cover, of a sort, as she glided around the base of the tree. Four riders emerged into the clearing from the path that led, through thickets, to West Hall. They were too far away yet to see the ground clearly but if she moved again they would see her, so she did not run but instead placed herself to stand squarely over the fallen sword, letting her skirt cover it.
    Their pale tunics and dark sashes marked them as Forlangers, a fine lord and three of his retainers to look at them all agleam in their pride. But the moonlight showed their faces: a wolf and his gaunt and ugly brethren, hard of heart and bitter of blood.
    Night and the ill-omened tree made them nervous.