All of a moment,

an age,

a split second,

a lifetime later,

the air from Faye’s lungs slammed out of her as she landed hard on her back. It took her a few minutes of wheezing and coughing to bring herself under control.

She was alive, that much was obvious, but her head hurt like a night of excess, and she suspected her back would soon complain, too.

She opened her eyes to see that the strange, scarred moon was almost directly overhead. Some time had passed since she had last seen it. There was no way to know where that time had gone.

The rest of the sky was too dark to see, but there were fires nearby that cast enough light to see that she was laid in the middle of a town or village and not a ruined mountaintop fort. The buildings around her seemed basic, rustic, and the people gathered nearby were mostly staring at her.

That’s when she realised, she could hear them talking.

And she could understand their words.

“Who is she?”

“How did she get here?”

“What is she wearing?” The people around her were almost all wearing long-sleeved tunics, and many wore fur-lined heavy outer layers.

“I don’t care who she is, get her out of here, Muir. This is supposed to be my moment.”

It was the last conversation that drew her attention. It was being held closer than the rest, in an angry whisper. A young man, a teenager really, was stood with his fists clenched and squared up to an older man. The older man looked at Faye as she laid still on the ground, and quietly replied to the teenager. She couldn’t hear what he said.

Something about that man told her he was dangerous. He had no obvious weapons, and his clothes were well fitted, but he was standing like some of the better fighters she’d encountered over the years. His stare had been a calculating measurement of her status.

She suspected that he didn’t rate her highly.

“I mean it, Muir. You’re going to get rid of her before—” the teen said again, but before he could finish his sentence, Faye struggled to her feet. She realised she was still somehow cradling her unsheathed blade. Mentally saying a quick word of thanks that it came with her, she decided to hold it with the hilt downward, hiding it behind her arm almost. The steel felt cold in her hand.

“Don’t worry kid, I’ll get out of your way,” she said. “God, my head hurts.”

The young man had turned towards Faye when she had risen to her feet. But now he was in her face, looking down slightly at her.

“What did you just say to me?”

“I said I’ll get out of your way,” she replied. She took a half step back and held out a hand when it looked like he was going to follow her. “Now step back, please.”

She didn’t see the man move, but suddenly he was there, his arm gripping the young teen’s wrist. The teen was scowling, burning holes of hatred into her face, his fist clenched in a gloved fist.

“Master, you should not strike her. You are crested now,” the older man said.

The look of hatred on the teen’s face changed. He smirked instead. It was worse somehow.

“You are correct, Muir. I might hurt the child.”

Faye scowled, was he calling her a child? He had a few wisps of hair on his chin and upper lip, what looked to be the start of an awkward attempt at growing facial hair, and he thought he could call her a child?

“Excuse me?” she asked. The tension of the past few days leaked into her voice. Rather than be intimidated by it, the teen’s smirk widened.

“No, bad behaviour needs to be corrected. I see that whoever raised you did not manage to curb your words… probably due to your deficiencies.”

Faye was on the edge of lashing out with her hand, but the man, Muir, pulled the teen away.

“Your parents, young master.”

Suddenly, the teenager wasn’t scowling in hatred at Faye, but he was battling a wave of panic if the expressions his face went through were any indication.

Without another word, he spun on his heel and stalked away. Muir followed him, without looking back at Faye. There were two people standing at the edge of the square, their backs straight and their hands held behind them. From the looks they were sending her way; she was certain she didn’t want anything to do with them either.

Shaking her head at the audacity, Faye looked around and noticed that the crowd was mostly dispersed by now. Whatever people had been waiting for must have already happened. She guessed that she had gate crashed the final few moments.

Moving toward one of the broader streets, where a lot of the people were moving to, she noticed a man at the side of the street staring at her. She looked at him, his hands were resting on the shoulders of a young boy. When she met his eyes, he called out to her.

“You should know better than to talk back to people like that.”

“I’m not a child, and don’t appreciate being called one,” she replied.

Instead of replying, the man simply shook his head and made his son start walking. They left by a different street than the one Faye had been aiming for.

Following the flow of people, Faye marvelled at the place around her. The street was mostly dirt, and the buildings were made from a mixture of stone, wood, and basic plaster. They reminded her of the old Tudor buildings in places like York, or Stratford.

Either she was somehow in a place that was exceptionally old, or she was somewhere where wattle and daub was a common building method. She had a feeling that it wasn’t the former.

People from the crowd peeled off as they all moved down the road. There were families of all sizes, and pretty quickly the crowd had been reduced to a few stragglers and Faye.

Surrounded by all these people, but as alone as she had been when on that mountain, Faye passed a hand over her eyes. She took a deep breath and ignored how shaky she was when she let it out. She had been in tougher spots.

She survived then and she would now.

Following the crowd had led her to a part of the town, it was too built up for her to call it a village, that was close to a wall. She guessed that with the animals being as aggressive as she’d seen it made sense for walls to be a fixture here.

She could easily make out the walking form of a guard or two on the walls, as well, when they passed by lit braziers.

“Here, lass, take this.”

Startled, Faye jumped and found her hand automatically going to the hilt of her sword.

“Sorry, girl, didn’t mean to scare ye like that.” The man speaking had a large, well-kept beard that was salt and peppered, his brown eyes kindly as he smiled at her. Behind him was the open doorway to his house. A young girl was peeking out, a blanket around her shoulders. He saw that Faye was looking past him and turned to tell the girl to go back inside.

“Here, it’s cold and you look like you could use it.”

She looked to see that he was holding a thick blanket. Her eyes welled up for a moment.

“Thank you,” she whispered. It wouldn’t come out louder. She took the blanket in her spare hand. It was like wool, and she was sure it would be warm.

“Listen, I can’t ask ye to stay in our home…” He didn’t elaborate. “But there’s a public house, on the other side of town, that will give you a warm place to sleep.”

She nodded. It was more than she’d been expecting a few minutes earlier.

“I own a workshop. If you happen to pass by in future, let me know how ye are.” With that, he nodded and quietly, but firmly, shut the door.

The wind wasn’t as bad in the town as it had been out in the mountains, but with how she was feeling now, Faye was more thankful for the blanket than she could say. Wrapping it around her shoulders, even doubled over it was long enough to reach her knees. It was well made. The wool was pliable, but tough and thick.

Keeping it held closed with one hand, and holding her naked sword in the other, Faye turned and began walking back across the town. There were few sounds, this late at night. She found herself wondering why the townsfolk had been awake when she arrived.

That boy had said that it was ‘his moment’. The fires had been lit, ready, in the square. Maybe he was performing something?

She was jostled from her thoughts when she turned a corner and heard jeering and laughing from a group of men. Her hands tightened. Instinctively hunching a little, Faye tried to speed up and get past the group without bothering them; or them bothering her.

“Oi, girl.”

Shit.

She stopped but didn’t say anything.

“What are you doing, wandering around in the middle of the night?”

She was too tired for this. She just wanted to sleep.

“I’m talking to you, girl, answer me!”

“She’s obviously dumb, Boid, don’t waste yer time.”

Faye closed her eyes briefly. She went to carry on walking, but the footsteps told her she wasn’t getting away that easily. She spun on the ball of her foot, locking eyes with the approaching man.

“I said—”

He stopped still. Faye had the tip of her sword levelled at his throat. In the darkness, it wasn’t obvious the sword was blunt at all.

She just hoped he didn’t test her.

“I don’t really care what you said,” she spoke into the sudden silence. “I’m leaving.”

He seemed to be winding up for something, so before he could do anything, she turned tail and ran.

“OI!”

“She had a sword, hah! Did you see the look on Boid’s face when she whipped that out?”

Ignoring the shouts, which were rapidly backed up with more jeers and laughter, Faye disappeared around the corner of a building as fast as she could. She quickly hid her sword once again.

She wasn’t sure what the law was in this place. Back home, walking around with her sword bare like this would land her in a serious amount of trouble, including a prison sentence. She felt strangely vulnerable with the blade in her hand, when surrounded by the buildings she should be safe enough to have it in its scabbard, in a bag.

She soon found herself back in the square she’d woken up in earlier. The buildings around the outside of the square were a little bigger, and some of them even had large shutters across the fronts of the buildings that when opened would let people see right inside.

“Shopping exists, then.”

The fires were still merrily blazing away, and a couple of figures were still standing around them. It was hard to see them clearly, the light of the fires making them appear more like silhouettes than anything, but she noticed that one of them had a spear resting against their shoulder.

Figuring them for guards, she gave them a bit of a wide berth; going anywhere near an authority figure with a weapon drawn was asking for trouble.

For a moment, Faye’s knees wobbled. She locked out her legs and stayed as still as she could.

“Don’t fall. God, just pull it together.”

She kept whispering things to herself for a minute. Taking a few deep breaths, she wasn’t as shaky as she had been, but there was a definite sense of weakness to her legs still. The headache behind her eyes was coming back with reinforcements, drilling into her head with a pickaxe.

She hoped she’d be able to find the pub the man had mentioned quickly; and hoped it wouldn’t be closed. If it was, she wasn’t too sure what she would do. Her exhausted body and mind told her she would not make it more than half an hour more before she would have to just lie down wherever she was.

Wavering a little, she looked back over at the guards. They would be able to tell her where to go at least. She slowly shuffled around, each step sending pain through her head. The closer she got to the fire, the more she needed to squint to block out the light.

“Excuse me?” she called. Her voice sounded a little strange, but she couldn’t tell why.

The figure closest to her turned, but with the great brazier burning behind them she couldn’t tell what they looked like. They were in full shadow.

“Yes?”

“I, uh. I think I’m lost.”

“Lost? You’re in the town square.”

She swallowed. Bile was threatening to rise, she felt her mouth watering and the sickly-sweet feeling in her cheeks that had always preceded a throwing up.

“Um, no. I mean, yes. I know that. I’m looking for the pub.”

There was some silence, only the crackling of the fire could be heard. She felt herself wavering, but she concentrated on not throwing up or collapsing.

“Take the street behind you, follow it and you’ll find the place. It’s hard to miss.”

She went to nod, but the motion made her feel even more sick. Before she really had time to think about it, she was speaking again.

“There were these men. They, ah, threatened me.”

“Leave crested alone, and they’ll leave you alone. Move it.”

She wasn’t sure why, but she had made an about face and was walking away before she realised what she was doing. Without the fire nearby, the light was reduced back to midnight darkness, which helped not make her head worse at least.

Taking the street she thought the guard had indicated, she hoped the pub was as easy to find as they said.

One foot in front of the other.

She wasn’t sure how long it took her. She didn’t find the pub. She could barely lift her head. But she did find a small park where her vision was filled with grass rather than dirt.

There was, of all things, a bench nestled amongst trees.

She slumped into the seat and pulled the woollen blanket around her further.

“Treecats…” was the last sound she uttered before falling deeply asleep.