The boy ran quickly through the forest, breath hitching in his chest with fear and cold. That and anger had long since sapped the energy from his veins, but he kept going, doggedly putting one step in front of the other despite the leaden tiredness that dragged down every fibre of his being. Tears had frozen into salt mines on his cheeks.

But he couldn’t stop.

Around his hands, unbidden, unwanted, flickered the very reason that he was here, in this forsaken patch of woodland, on the border to Mercia, instead of at home with his parents- his recently not-so-loving family. Fire. It lit the inside of his skin, casting a shifting amber glow that traced the delicate mapwork of veins- a map leading precisely nowhere. His Curse.

It was because of this that he’d slid up the window of his room earlier this evening, shaking with fear and shame, and slid down the roof tiles to freedom. He’d managed to navigate his way to the ground, the remainder of several uneaten meals stashed inside his shirt, and, hitting the ground, had run, run, run. The guards outside hadn’t even seen him go- had assumed he was one of the many beggars that thronged the streets of his home city.

And now, here he was, dressed in the frayed remains of what had once been fine clothes, and miles from anywhere. But not cold. The fire in him saw to that. The fire that had…his sister…but no. He couldn’t think about that: it was still too raw to process. He saw her face pass in front of his mind’s eye, eyes wide with pain and fear (fear of him!)…

That was why he had run.

He stopped, thin chest heaving for breath, and leaned against one of the thick, forbidding trees that punched upwards from the ground in thick black lines. Half his bread was gone. It was dark. There were probably bandits, wolves, soldiers in these woods. And he had no idea how to survive. How did people hunt? How did they even find their way home when it was this dark, this cold?

Fear gripped his throat in greedy talons, making it even harder to draw thin, cold air into his lungs. He sniffed furiously, and scrubbed at his eyes with the last of his pride. He needed a house. A home. Somewhere with a kind, loving mother and a father who didn’t flinch every time he cast eyes on him. Somewhere where his sister couldn’t be hurt by the fire in him…

But where could he go?

2: A Bad Start

Part 1- Penda

 

My name is Theodoric Allardsson.

And I’m cursed.

I’ve been cursed since I was six, and that’s not an easy thing to have to live with. Try throwing the concepts of imminent death, social outcastery and a nomadic lifestyle into one pot and explaining it to a child and you get one hell of a mess afterwards. If you think your life is bad: try living it as a powder keg.

Not that I’m complaining. This is just how life is for me, and I’m used to it. Humans are creatures of habit; I have my own. At the moment it boils down to living on the march, eking out (temporarily) a living by hunting out and curing meats, trying to avoid confrontation with humans, and always, always being ready to pack up and move on. You can forgive me for thinking that my life wasn’t the most comfortable. The truth? Being an outcast is a lonely job, badly paid and one where the mortality rate isn’t terribly high.

So when that girl came out of nowhere and shook up my world, it took everything I knew about life in general and rudely tipped it on its head. As a rule, I didn’t interfere with people’s lives. With her, though...life suddenly got very exciting. From the outset, let me just say that I don’t recommend it.

Excitement is a dangerous thing.

****

The weird thing was, it started on a perfectly ordinary day- that is, a day in the life under the newly-installed Duke Eodred of Penda, and I was attempting to sell my meats. He was, by all standards, a harsh ruler, imposing taxes, guards- all of the trappings of dictatorship, whist his family, the Pendites, sunk into disgraced oblivion. A month ago, he'd seized control of the whole Duchy of Penda. I'd missed the specifics, being in the middle of a forest at the time, but I'd heard enough to see that the coup had been sudden, vicious and unexpected. There was probably more to the story, and at an earlier time, I would have been more interested in what was happening, but sadly living rough tends to focus your mind on more immediate concerns- for example, dried meats. Usually, I ate them myself, but today I wanted something other than smoked venison- it was all I'd been eating for the last two weeks.

Sadly, I was going to be confined to slogging through them for a while yet, as nobody seemed to want to buy. I had a fail-safe rule that applied everywhere I visited: I visited a town, they didn’t heckle me, nobody knew who I was and I left as soon as I could.

But today- today, Paxor Town was restless. People scurried up and down the streets, up and down, up and down- for Saint’s sake, it was like they were attached to strings!- until, eventually, I gave in. I’d only been in this town for a day, and it had seemed like there were rich pickings to be had, but watching Edmund the blacksmith conduct a fast walk down the street, hand resting nervously on his rarely-used sword hilt, I knew that it was probably time for me to move on. Nerves and me mix in the way that fire and gunpowder tend to mix: explosively.

I put away the selection of smoked meats that I’d been attempting to flog- there weren’t many, anyway, just enough to store at a moment’s notice- and lightly touched the knife I kept strapped to the inside of my arm.  Its leather sheath was heat-cracked and slightly charred, but I hadn’t yet had the opportunity to replace it. That was another problem with living on the road- lack of materials.

Irritated, I shouldered my pack, the heavy load bumping against my back, and seamlessly peeled away from the wall, joining the flowing crowd like a fish, going with the current, flowing into the main market square. It wasn’t large- this wasn’t a large town- but even so the amount of crowded people there surprised me. This was busy, for a non-market day.

But then I saw the girl.

She was easy enough to notice. Standing before the crowd, and standing out from the crowd- not due to her clothes, which were rich enough to have money of their own- she carried herself in a way that spoke tall, proud, nobility. She wasn’t classically beautiful, but she drew the eye like a moth to a flame.

And, as I knew all too well, flames have a habit of burning those who get too close.

Head down, I slid through the rapidly thickening crowd, a snake rather than a battering ram, threading my way gradually through the people to where the town’s main thoroughfare ran out into the gates- about a hundred metres from where we were. Those who turned to scowl at me got my vintage Glare Mark Two, perfected from years of general obnoxiousness and a fair bit of panic: I had to get out of here as fast as possible.

But over the heads of the crowd, a confrontation was brewing.

Unable to help myself (where food and trouble are concerned, I have next to no willpower), I peered at the scene unfolding before the Market Hall like some kind of gruesome tableau. The girl in red was being shoved, jostled by some man in Eodred’s uniform who I recognised by sight- nobody special, an acne-ridden thug for hire. He snarled something indistinguishable, which carried halfway to me due to the dead hush that was slowly falling over the square as I watched, and the girl responded haughtily, shoving him backwards-

-and just like that, the mood turned ugly.

Men dressed in the cold uniform of the City Guard stepped like magic out of the shadows, swords were drawn, manacles were produced. Spellers and Cursers stepped forwards, hands raised in preparation for trouble, preparing to deal out death as easily as a hand of cards. I watched in a haze of suspended disbelief. What were the odds? Just my luck; I’d gotten myself caught up in a political coup. Eodred must have ordered this- why, I wondered. Perhaps the girl had rejected him, or perhaps she’d made an unkind- though justified- comment about the general ugliness of his nose.

But surely I had to do something. All of these silent townsfolk- what were they doing? Sod all, as per usual, like frightened animals...cursing myself all the way, I hitched my bag higher up my back, checked my hands- clean- and started to edge through the crowd.

You’d think that someone with so little to live would have a better sense of self preservation, but I am happy to tell you that is absolutely not the case.

Perhaps the universe agreed with me, because just at that moment, a little ahead of me, a man started shouting, his aggressive words echoing awfully across the rapidly quietening -square. Seconds later- bizarrely- an arrowshaft grew out of his chest.

For one long, drawn-out second, there was complete silence whilst the crowd digested this turn of events.

Then, someone screamed, and all hell broke loose. Everyone panicked- and a stampede of scared humans is one of the most dangerous things you can get caught up in. I was pressed back as they scattered like ants, pushed towards the centre of the square as tables and stalls went flying like birds. A man screamed, high and shrill, somewhere to my left, and a blaze of light went up, water droplets spattering the crowd. A sick clawing settled in my stomach. He’d been Cursed- now he was dead.

I’d seen enough- I had to go. And my chest was burning, fingers of fire clawing at my insides. It was time to go...holding my breath, I ran across the square, pack bumping awkwardly against my back. It contained everything I owned, so I wouldn’t need to go back to the shack I’d been sleeping in. I spotted a break in the crowd and went for it, slipping through two screaming women and down a side street that led to a side door out of the city. Speedy getaway; clean exit. Perfect.

Or it would have been- until I was thrown sideways as someone crashed into my waist and sent me sprawling across the hard-packed earth. My bagstrap ripped and the whole thing flew across the road like some kind of ungainly bird and bounced off the wall of someone’s house. Heat flared the full length of my body and I gasped- no, no, please let it be under control- and then groaned as my body complained in a hundred different places. Something dug into my back: I was lying on someone’s leg.

“Get out of the way!” My attacker wheezed. “Saint’s blood, get off me!”

Hold on, wasn’t it supposed to be the other way around?

With a tremendous effort, I rolled off the leg and onto my haunches, hand going automatically to the knife on my arm. I looked down- and my stomach did a slow, lazy flip. The ground where I’d fallen was charred and black. As I touched the leather binding, it smoked and fell away, and the hot blade fell into my palm. I flipped the hilt into my hand and, thus armed with my pathetic little needle, scrutinised the person who’d launched themselves into me.

A shock ran through my body: it was the girl I’d seen in the marketplace, levering herself painfully upwards as I watched.

“You!” I said, surprised- and then felt like a huge idiot. The way in which she was glaring at me didn’t do anything to disperse that idea. A burning headache was blossoming at my temples, and I rubbed at them tiredly. That was all I needed.

“Yes, it’s me. Don’t just stare! Help me! Quick, they’re coming-”

“The City Guard?” Slowly, I lowered the knife.

“Yes. Are you deaf? And the Cursers. Help me up!”

Automatically, I glanced at my palm. It was clean- as far as I could tell, so I stuck it out and she grabbed it with a smooth, long-fingered hand. This woman didn’t work for a living. Of course not- she was nobility. And right now, as she readjusted her slippers and hitched up her dress, she was nobility on the run.

“I’ve got to go-”

Too late. As I watched, the way I’d just come was blocked off by a soldier in icy blue- and then the clink of mail announced another’s arrival from the opposite direction, sword drawn. The girl watched with wide, angry eyes, and whipped a small ornamental dagger out of her bodice. She had spunk, I’d give her that, especially since against these odds she was doomed.

“Lady Isolde! Stop this madness now, and come quietly.” The man who’d snuck up on us spoke, and she shrunk backwards, as though wishing she could melt into the wall. “If you don’t, we’ll have no choice but to use force.”

“I won’t go!” The newly-named Isolde spoke with a force that startled me, and held her dagger out. “I’d rather die than go with you, Col! Traitor!”

His face darkened. “Take her.”

“Wait!” Pain was making me stupid; I blurted the words out before I could think. “Stop!”

Everyone turned to look at me, surprised. Believe me; nobody was more shocked than me. I tried again, my thick Mercian accent echoing oddly off the high walls. “Let her go. She en’t gonna hurt anyone.”

“I don’t believe this. A bloody do-gooder. Well, it’s not going to help you. Step aside, lad, and let the men do their work.”

I took one look at the quivering girl blustering next to me, and decided that I couldn’t just leave her.

“No.”

A sword was levelled at me. “I won’t say this again. Step aside, or get run through.”

“I’ll get run through, thanks.”

“Your choice. Perce, take her!” The guard looked at me, shrugged and then, without warning, lunged.

I saw him coming, ducked as his sword whistled over my head and saw the second guard slam Isolde into a wall. She crumpled like so much paper, and the anger which I tried so hard to keep silent, kindled in my stomach. As the man named Col stabbed at me, black beard bristling with aggression, I dived out of the way, dropping the knife, every muscle straining away from the blade, and spat fire at him.

Yeah, you read that right.

Col jerked back- but too late, his luxuriant beard flamed up like a torch, and he screamed- first from surprise, I guessed, and then from pain.

I didn’t wait. Fighting fairly was for dead men: I launched myself forwards, tackling him around the middle and sending him crashing to the floor. Flames raced down my hands and set fire to his lovely blue tabard- oops. I punched him across the face- once, twice, until the whistle of air next to my face warned me of the other guard. Sure enough, the blade followed, grazing past my cheek and parting the skin like butter. I yelled out in pain, and jumped backwards, coming up in a crouch with my back to the stone wall of the nearest house. Miraculously, Isolde’s dagger was lying next to my left foot- I grabbed it and held it up self-consciously. This thing was only good for eating dinner with. My knuckles hurt from where I’d hit Col.

The man looked at me with stunned disbelief, eyes racing from my face to my hands, which flickered with tongues of flame.

“What are you?” He spat at me.

“Someone with better manners than yow.” I told him, and swept my hand outward. It did nothing, but he reared backwards in shock, and I took advantage of it, following his movement and getting inside his guard. He raised his sword; not fast enough. I slid the dagger into the flesh of his hand and he roared, dropping the blade in a shower of crimson droplets. One. He lunged blindly at me with his opposite fist- I dodged that and hooked my leg around his knee. One pull- he was down. Two.

I finished him off with the hilt of the dagger. Three- and out for the count.

Now I really was in trouble.

So much for do nothing.