Free Wayfinder by C. E. Murphy

laughing, until their chase brought them over a cresting hill and into a scene of chaos.
    She reined up, though her horse’s impulse was clearly to join the fray as Aerin, shouting, charged a group of farmers and by proxy, Ioan, who forced himself in front of her, their horses crashing together. One of the farmers, a woman, jumped forward to brandish a scythe at Aerin. Aerin backed away, more because of Ioan’s interference than the armed farmer, though to Lara’s eye the woman had a sure hand with the instrument-turned-weapon.
    The noise, for half a dozen people and two horses, was astounding. Lara could pick no words out of the uproar, though Aerin’s soprano was unusually aggrieved. Ioan bellowed over the farmers, whose voices were raised together in war cries as one drew daggers and spun them in his hands. They were more than the peasants the idyllic pastoral setting suggested, Lara realized. They were very likely trained warriors, which, given the history of the land, seemed wise.
    Warriors who evidently didn’t recognize their king. A dagger flew, narrowly missing Ioan himself and wedging flawlessly into the armor joint at Aerin’s shoulder. She screamed as much in rage as pain, and transferred her sword to the other hand as she drove her horse forward again. Ioan rushed her a second time, drawing his legs up to launch himself bodily from his horse to tackle Aerin. They crashed to earth in a rattle of armor and supplies, both horses dancing in agitation. One of the Unseelie ran forward, carrying a spade he lifted like a piston, ready to drive it down even as Ioan balled a fist and cracked it across Aerin’s jaw.
    She hit back and scrabbled for the blade she’d lost when he tackled her. He dropped a knee onto her forearm, shouting incomprehensibly over her yell. A flash of resolve rushed over the spade-bearing Unseelie’s face, and he changed his grip to swing it like a baseball bat at the back of Ioan’s head.
    Lara stood in her stirrups and roared, “That is your
king
!”
    Later, although her shout had been infused with truth, shethought it wasn’t her power that had stopped the brawl. The Unseelie farmers simply hadn’t been aware of her presence until she yelled, and then there was no chance of mistaking her as one of them. Her humanity, not her power, ended the fight.
    But not soon enough. The spade, already in motion, slammed into Ioan’s head. He fell forward, arms flung out, and dropped across Aerin, whose shouts were muffled beneath his weight.
    Too late, the farmers lowered their weapons to preparatory stages, horror spreading across the spade-bearing man’s face. Lara, swearing vehemently, rode forward and slid from her horse’s back with none of the care she had taken earlier; Aerin’s spell was indeed weaker than it had been.
    What little medical knowledge Lara had said the bludgeoned king shouldn’t be moved. Aerin had no such knowledge or compunction, and shoved Ioan away. He flopped to the side, head lolling and blood beginning to pour from the back of his skull. Lara cried out with dismay and knelt, trying to cradle his head so the wound wouldn’t sustain further damage. “Get a healer.”
    “Who—
what
—are you?” The woman with the scythe looked torn between obedience and curiosity. Lara curled a lip and the man with the spade dropped it and ran for the distance.
    “My name is Lara Jansen. I’m a truthseeker, and this is your king you just brained. He’s still breathing.” She bent close, making certain that was true.
Willing
it to be true, though she didn’t think a truthseeker’s power stretched that far. “What the hell were you thinking?”
    “We saw—” The woman faltered, eyebrows drawn down. “We saw the Seelie woman, saw the man come after her—”
    “And decided to hit the one tackling her, too?” Blood filled the lines of Lara’s palms and dripped from the sides of her hands to stain her borrowed leggings. Someone would never want them back, after