Chapter 1

Her life had ended the moment her father had burst through the door, face covered in sweat. Her mother was the first to rise from the mess of half-spun wool baskets they'd been working with, and motioned her husband to follow her to the small shed they reserved for their animals. Alix quieted her breathing, straining her ears to hear as she continued her labour. She searched for familiar words; yet no 'thief' or 'market' came up in the conversation.

The exchange was brief and frantic – her father left without a single word to her, leaving behind a very sombre looking wife.

"Lord Plantagenet's soldiers have been spotted on their way here," she explained, making a quick move for their storage room, opening cabinets full of cheese and dried meat. "Your father has gone to fetch your brothers – we need to prepare to leave. Bring your brother's cloaks, and ready two water skins."

Alix had no room to argue or question. In the midst of any storm, her mother was the one anchor that could bring them all to shore: nothing ever seemed to perturb her. If anything, the difficulties always seemed to strengthen her resolve. It was because of that blind trust that the young girl let herself be carried away by her mother's directions, without giving much thought to what was going on. It was, plainly put, easier that way. She brought the prized water skins they'd inherited from her mother's father, and she made quick work of filling them up. One with ale, the other with the remaining of the water she'd boiled in the cauldron earlier that day. She searched for their cloaks, stashed every day in one of the trunks that doubled as her seating when she was mending their clothes.

As she laid them out on their table, her father came in with her two brothers. She offered the man of the house his cloak, and after taking it he gave her a kiss on the forehead. There was a pained, worried look on his face.

"May god keep you from harm, my sweet Alix," he whispered, more to himself than to her.

He led them all out of the house. Shouts were echoing over the thatched roofs as they ran northwards. Like ants before a storm, the villagers were frantically preparing their escape by loading horses and mules with packages of preserves and kegs of beer. They watched as those who had the most anguished over what they couldn't leave behind, and those who had nothing made a panicked run for the hills, light on their feet with nothing but the clothes on their back.

They chose to leave by a different route: a path that headed to a natural refuge in the midst of the forest, not far from the village. Alix had frequently been taken there by her father and brothers to hunt and practice her bow skills. Her mother had told her that one could never rely on God's grace to always produce a bountiful harvest, and having learned the right skills, should the capriciousness of fate strike she would still be able to produce food for her family.

She had chosen to take her bow with her, even if her mother had not told her to. Although they'd taken some sizeable portions, they would not be enough to feed five mouths for more than a few days, especially if they had to make a run to a village far from the soldiers' trail. As long as they kept close to the woods, she thought she could hunt for them all.

"The blacksmith's family is up ahead," said her mother between short breaths. "We should stick close to them."

A horrifying scream tore through the village, somewhere behind them.

The soldiers of Lord Plantagenet had arrived to the village.

Sometimes only the absence of a thing can force the inexperienced to recognize its former presence. Alix came to the realization that she'd borrowed her mother's steely tranquillity as if such things could be given and taken, her small hands grasping at the eerie feeling as if it was her own. And then the scream had torn it away from her, breaking through the unreality of the moment. She was dragged back to earth with such virulence that her confusion led her to stop in her tracks to look back.

"Alix!" her eldest brother, Roland, grabbed her by the arm. "We can't waste any time! Let's go!"

She let herself be pulled back into a sprint, trying to catch up with the rest. She had seen nothing except the same old cottages on the familiar main street. If they truly had come into town, then the soldiers must have been hidden away behind the church, where the street curved southwards. It added to her confusion, to the unreality of the situation, as she felt they were almost running from an invisible enemy. She saw no horses, no swords, no laughing murderous men – only a scream, shouting, marking their presence with the same ephemereality one would attribute to a ghost. And yet, these ghosts were enough to make them all flee.

The upper north section of the village was empty. The appropriately named 'main street' changed names there, where it was called 'Trivia'. According to Father Audoin, their parish's priest, this was an ancient word that meant 'three-way'. One way led north to the next village on the other side of the hill, some hour and a half on horseback. The other way led west, into the forest that extended to the foot of the mountains. On a normal day the intersection would be a busy place where women would gather to share news and farmers would take a moment to rest from their day's labours. In that moment, however, Trivia was covered in an eerie stillness.

Alix looked into the empty houses as they passed by, straining her eyes to peer into the tiny windows. There was an inn on that side of the village, and in the back she could see the owner's two beautiful, expensive black horses grazing without a single care in the world. Something about that rattled her, and she stopped once again. This time it was Olivier, the second eldest, who tried to pull her back.

"Wait! The horses! See them?" cried Alix. "Why would Mr. Gaston leave them behind?"

"Who cares? Leave them be!"

"Hurry up!" shouted Roland, who had just caught up with them. Alix tried to ignore the bad feeling in her stomach as she followed her two brothers. Their parents had gone on ahead, confident they would follow.

Alix was trying to have one last look at the village when she saw something move out of the corner of her eye. A barely noticeable sound reached her ears, and she was confident that she'd have missed it had she not had such a strange, ominous feeling about the situation. A tingling of metal, one that differed from the sound that floated around her parents as they escaped with their meagre fortune. She'd only seen and heard it once, when Count Angevin's soldiers had passed through the town – it was chain mail; armour, perhaps.

"I think there's someone in the inn – a soldier."

Her brothers paid no attention to her warnings. They hurried her along into the forest, where tall, old pines seemed to shelter them from the chaos they were leaving behind. Sunset was a long way away still, but in the dense cover of the trees it almost seemed like they'd walked into the night. They all knew the road well, and the shortcuts even better:

"Let's go this way, it'll be quicker," said Roland, and the two siblings followed without protest as they ducked into a small, patchy path marked only by footsteps. The road they left behind went further west before bending southwards: it began a slow zigzagging that allowed the villagers to ride uphill, closer to the base of the mountain. The shortcut they were taking led them to a more difficult climb, but for their experienced feet it would be quick work. Their parents, like most adults, would've chosen the conventional road, so they were expecting to meet them at the clearing as soon as they arrived.

Midway through their climb, the sound of hooves fell from between the dense masses of trees. It was innocent enough, and at first the three of them thought that it might be the cart of fellow townspeople, but their hope was soon crushed as they heard unfamiliar rugged voices shout:

"The villagers must have taken their gold this way!"

It made their blood run cold. Alix made a start, intent on crossing the remaining distance that kept them apart from where their parents must've been, when she was stopped by both of her brothers. Roland and Olivier took her by the shoulders and dropped to the ground, forcing her to sit under the shrubbery. The eldest silenced the girl's complains with a motion of his hand.

The chaos above them exploded when a familiar voice rose over the grunts of the soldiers.

"We have no riches! Only these coins! Please take them and leave!"

"One sous and twelve deniers? Really?"

"Breseloc, behind you!"

Alix bit back a scream as she heard the clashing of swords, followed by screaming and the sounds of a scuffle. A pained scream tore through the throat of a man – one that was not her father, thankfully-, and they felt a body drop heavily to the floor. Someone was crying, the soldiers were cursing, and other voices were heard screaming. It was difficult to tell what was happening – only that someone had just been murdered.

"I think that's Agnes, the blacksmith's wife," whispered Olivier. "I can hear Borgon and Urgen, and little Hadwisa."

Agnes' wails quickly drowned everything else. Alix hid her face in Roland's chest, trying to shut out the noise. Through the thick woollen shirt, she could feel him shivering. He was an adult in her eyes – although a beardless one -, four years her senior and meant to be the wisest of them three, yet underneath his dark scowl he was just as scared as the other two. That the strongest of the three was as fearful as he was spoke less of his bravery than of the gravity of the situation they were in; it honed in Alix's mind that in that moment her life could very well change forever.

She shut her eyes, biting her tongue as Agnes' wails transformed into more voices – children at first, and then – her mother's and her father's. The three of them tensed as they became aware of the troubled situation their parents were in: the two of them stood defenceless in the clearing, facing the bloodlust of the Lord's soldiers. They waited for a miracle with baited breath.

Silence reigned supreme for a moment as a strange impasse seemed to overcome the situation above them. Only the impatient nicker of a horse was heard, here and then. There was some muted chatter that they were not able to catch, and they thought, maybe that was it. Maybe the soldiers would go away.

"No! Louis!"

The soldiers attacked. Roland had one arm around his sister, and another one pressing against his brother's arm. Struck by instinct, Olivier had tried to stand, ready to head out to defend their father. The eldest, however, slowly shook his head, even though the desperate look in his eyes revealed he wanted to do exactly what he was forbidding. Neither of their parents would've expected them to do something as foolish as facing an armed opponent with no weapons of their own: they were the children of a shoemaker, not swordsmen. Fables and romances were best left at the bard's table: surviving was a noble act on its own.

So they endured, alone and scared, the sounds of their father's dying screams. The greed in the soldiers' voices transformed them into something ugly, perverse in the siblings' minds. Dry blows hit the ground, ripping off tears and laments from the remaining women. Their begging was drowned by the laughter and the jeering of the assailants, who clearly were enjoying their victims' distress.

Alix, being the youngest, was rebellious enough to leave behind all common sense to believe in the possibility of her having enough manpower to do something. In truth, it was that her restless heart could not take it – death seemed preferable to a life remembering her idleness as her parents were massacred. As much as grief had awoken a reckless fire in her, it had also frozen her brother, Roland, making it easier for herself to wriggle out of his grasp.

She paid no mind to the shocked gasps of her brothers as she sprinted up. She jumped out of the bushes into the road. As she did so, she took notice of the soldier who was right in front of her, looking the other direction, and used her momentum to tackle him into the ground.

"Huh? And where did this midget come from?" exclaimed one of the fallen man's companions, the only one sitting on a horse. Alix's eyes immediately strayed to his spear, the head of which was dripping with blood. "Jaques, get up man. That is pathetic, being taken out by a girl like that."

The other four men in the group laughed loudly at that. They were all dirty, ragged; they had the look of people who had long lost any semblance of humanity. The bloodstains on their clothes – some fresh red, some rusty brown- added little to their menacing air. Even without them Alix felt that they looked monstrous enough.

A voice made her turn her head away from the soldiers.

"A-alix, l-love..."

Alix paled when her eyes met her mother's face. Her bloodied form was slumped over her husband's corpse, like a shield that had been broken through. A scream built up in her throat, but her mouth wouldn't move. She wanted to say something to her – maybe reassure her- but nothing would come out. Her mother, however, mustered enough of her failing strength to reach out through the shocked silence to throw courage back into her daughter:

"Alix, f-fight, d-darling..."

Ah, Alix thought, stumbling back. The scene around her seemed to finally materialize: she took in the broken body of the blacksmith, the blood pooled around him soaking the earth and grass underneath. His two sons, barely a year younger than her, lay near his feet. Their mother sobbed quietly, rocking a crying baby. Around them, almost like cats savouring their newly caught prey, were the soldiers, looking at her with varying degrees of maliciousness.

She drew her bow.

"Be careful little lady" mocked one of them, "you could injure yourself!"

"Ah, go on, you dimwit," said the man on the horse, "let's finish this off so we can get back to the village. These paupers have nothing on them."

"Doubt there's anything good to steal anyway – let's just have some fun with the-"

A sickly crunch killed off the soldier's whining. Alix's arrow cleanly dug itself into his brow, its strength and effectiveness aided by the relative closeness between archer and target. He fell back with the look of a puppet whose strings had been cut. A moment of shocked silence followed.

And then, all hell broke loose.