The Forestwalker

by Sarah Wheeler

Table of Contents

Chapter 8

Gareth could do nothing but lie silent and still on his perch in the tree as the five bandits and their two captives disappeared into the forest on the other side of the road. He wanted to leap from the tree and race after them, kill all five of the bandits with his bare hands, and rescue Kastor and Shanna before they experienced more than a few minutes at the hands of slavers. But he was hopelessly outnumbered, and if he was captured too, none of them would escape slavery. So he forced himself to remain hidden until he was sure the bandits were gone, then he climbed down out of the tree and began to gather up the meager belongings that the bandits had strewn about the woods.

He collected it all together, then began to sort through it in an attempt to pack it all into one bundle that he could carry. A few tears escaped his eyes when he found Shanna's doll lying in the dirt under one of the bushes. She must be terrified right now, and she was probably wondering if Gareth had seen what had happened, why he hadn't warned them or tried to stop the bandits, and whether he would rescue them. He would – he had promised to protect them, after all, - but it would take time, caution, and careful planning, and both Kastor and Shanna would likely suffer under the slavers before Gareth could free them. As he brushed the dirt and leaves off of the doll's dress and out of its yarn hair and placed it carefully beside his own doll in his wooden box, he only hoped she would remember the promises he had made and not give up on him.

But when he found his old chains, he realized that rescuing his young master and mistress would mean giving up his newfound freedom. It was a small price to pay – it wasn't as if he was really free anyway – but it wasn't going to be easy to return to being Kastor's silent, subservient punching bag. Still, he had a promise to keep, and returning to Kastor was what he deserved for letting this happen. He could have protected them, he could have warned them about the bandits if he had been where he was supposed to be, watching over them as they traveled down the road. He had been the careless, irresponsible one, and he could not afford to forget that. He placed the chains in his box of keepsakes too – even though they barely fit – then wrapped it carefully in one of the blankets and placed it in the bottom of the knapsack. He layered the clothes and camping gear over it, bundled up anything else that wouldn't fit in the knapsack into a blanket, then tossed everything over his shoulder and headed back to the waterfall pool. He couldn't risk breaking the cover of the trees and crossing the road during the day, so he was going to spend the afternoon preparing to do nothing but follow those bandits until he could rescue Kastor and Shanna.

At the stream, he unpacked all the bundles and spent the afternoon washing all the clothes, blankets, and camping gear. He mended the tears in the clothing, blankets, and knapsack, filled all the canteens with fresh water, and gathered enough food to fill both his reed basket and the cookpot. He wrapped the food into single-serving packets with leaves to keep it fresh, and made a lid for the reed basket to keep its contents secure and dry. Then, he packed everything that he would not need into the knapsack, wrapped the cookpot, two of the three full canteens, the pocketknife, the sewing kit, and the tinderbox in a blanketroll that he secured to the top of the knapsack, slung the knapsack onto his back and secured the third canteen and the reed basket full of food over his shoulder, then headed back to the road. He concealed himself in the bushes at the edge of the road and rested until just after dark, then he crept across the road under the cover of darkness and silently entered unknown territory.

Fortunately, the bandits' trail through the forest was easy to follow, even in the dark. They had been leading unwilling captives, and it was unlikely that they feared being followed here in their territory. It helped that the moon was just past full and still cast quite a bit of light over the dark forest. Despite being able to easily track the bandits, though, it took Gareth more than half the night to find them, because he had allowed them to get so far ahead of him.

Once he saw the flicker of firelight, Gareth crept forward until he could just see the shadow of a guard patrolling the camp's perimeter, then he climbed the nearest tree in order to see exactly what he was facing. The five bandits he had seen on the road had been joined by three more. Six of them were asleep under blankets around the fire, while two were on guard – one patrolling the perimeter, the other sitting and keeping watch over their belongings, which consisted of two pack mules tethered to a tree at the edge of the clearing and two cages made of wood and rope. Inside of those two cages lay Kastor and Shanna. They were both asleep, but they were restless. It was too dark to see if they had been hurt or badly treated, but Gareth could tell that their ankles were now hobbled by ropes, and that Shanna's hands were now tied in front of her, though Kastor's one good arm was still tied behind his back. Gareth's heart went out to both of them. He wouldn't wish their situation, or the future they believed they were facing, on anyone, not even Kastor. He settled into the tree and tried to fall asleep, but his sleep was restless. His finely-tuned senses reacted to Kastor and Shanna's every moan and whimper, and his past returned to him in nightmares whenever he closed his eyes.

He woke the next morning to the sound of Shanna screaming her brother's name. “Kas? Kas! Please, don't hurt him! Please!”

Gareth looked down on the scene, his heart racing. Kastor was being dragged out of his cage, still half-asleep and barely aware of what was going on. When he realized what was happening, though, he began to struggle against the two men dragging him towards the center of the clearing, shouting, “Let me go, you monsters! Let! Me! Go!”

“Gag him, and hold him down” the leader said. He was sitting by the fire, stirring something in a pot. The two men were joined by another as they forced the struggling Kastor onto his back next to the fire; one held his legs down, the second put his full weight on Kastor's right shoulder, and the third stuffed a wad of rags into Kastor's mouth to muffle his shouts, then held his head still. The leader was now tearing a white linen cloth into strips and laying them on a clean blanket by the fire. By the time he had a sizable pile, Kastor had worn himself out and had stopped struggling, and Shanna had stopped screaming and was now huddled on the floor of her cage, sobbing and clinging to the bars as she watched her brother. The leader got up from the fire, pulled a knife, and advanced on Kastor. He and Shanna both began to scream again, and Gareth had to bite his tongue to stop from doing the same.

“Oh, stop it,” the man said, slapping Kastor hard across the face. “I'm not gonna hurt you, but this will hurt if ya don't calm down.” Kastor, stunned from the blow, had no choice but to lie still as the bandit leader used the knife to cut away the bandages keeping his broken arm immobile. With a surprising amount of care, the man unwrapped Kastor's arm and slowly laid it flat out on the ground, examining it carefully as he did so. Kastor whimpered in pain and fear, but he did not struggle. “Not a bad break,” the man said after a minute, “and whoever fixed it for ya did a good job settin' it. My guess is it wasn't the little girl.” He looked over at Shanna, who was now huddled silently at the back of her cage, her face chalk-white with fear as she watched what was going on.

The man removed all the bandages from Kastor's arm, tore off his shirtsleeve below the elbow, washed Kastor's broken arm carefully with soap and water, and dried it completely. Then, he took some of the strips of white linen and began to wrap them around Kastor's arm from his fingers to his elbow. Once he had wrapped the whole arm twice, he used a wooden spoon to remove a thick white substance from the pot on the fire. As he spread it thinly over the wrap on Kastor's arm, then proceeded to warp more linen strips on top of it, Gareth finally realized that the man was putting Kastor's arm in a cast. He watched closely and committed the process to memory, and it was a relief to hear that he had done a good job setting Kastor's arm.

The bandit leader put six layers of wrappings, held together and made rigid with some sort of glue, around Kastor's arm, then changed the bandage covering the stitches on Kastor's other hand before having him lie still on the ground for almost an hour while the cast set and hardened. While one of the men stayed on the ground next to Kastor to keep him still, the rest of the bandits – four men and three women, including the leader – busied themselves with cooking breakfast, loading up the pack mules, and tidying up the campsite. Once Kastor's cast was dry, his guard allowed him to sit up. He was given a sling made out of a strip of old blanket to support his arm, then his guard untied his other arm from behind his back and retied it to his casted wrist. The rope around Kastor's neck was then tied to the rope between his wrists so he couldn't lower his hands below the middle of his chest. As one of the female bandits let Shanna out of her cage and led her over to sit beside her brother, Gareth noticed that her hands were tied the same way. She sat down awkwardly next to Kastor and reached out to cling to his hand as his guard removed the gag from his mouth. Kastor briefly looked over at her and squeezed her hand reassuringly, which caused her to relax slightly and her face to take on a determined expression as she let go of his hand and wiped her dirty, tear-stained face on the almost-as-dirty sleeve of her dress just before the female bandit brought them each a bowl of porridge. Gareth watched sympathetically as they struggled to eat with their hands bound; Shanna finished her breakfast first, then did her best to help Kastor by taking his bowl and holding it up to his mouth so he could eat it easier.

“Aw, ain't that sweet,” the leader said as he came back to put out the fire.

“Please, sir, why did you fix his arm?” Shanna asked meekly.

“Hafta make sure it heals right. Slave's not worth anything with only one good arm. What I wanna know is, who fixed it in the first place? And those stitches in his hand were a good job too. That you, girlie? Cause you look a little young ta be a doctor.”

Shanna looked away, not wanting to say, but Kastor told him instead. “It was my slave. He ran away, though. What's it to you, anyway?”

His insolent tone earned him another hard slap across the face. “You better learn ta watch your mouth, boy. So you had a slave once, eh? That means you know what's expected of them. I suggest ya learn fast, if ya don't wanna be sold to the mines or some other place where slaves don't live long enough for anyone to care about their manners.” Kastor went pale at that, and Shanna began to cry again, but the bandits didn't seem to care about their fear and distress. They were dragged to their feet, and rope leashes were tied to the ropes around their necks that held their hands. Their leashes were handed to two of the bandits as two others took the pack mules' bridles, the leader and one of the female bandits took point, and the last two took rear guard as the group headed due east into the trees.

Gareth waited until he couldn't even hear them any more before climbing out of the tree to follow them. The bandits were experienced woodsmen, so he couldn't risk following them too closely, but with two mules and two hobbled captives, their trail was easy to follow. And it was easier for him to keep his mind clear and not act rashly if he didn't have to watch Kastor and Shanna being abused and treated like slaves by their captors – though that weakness made him feel even more like a coward. So he kept his eyes and his mind on other things as he shadowed the bandits, and he spent his time memorizing his surroundings and thinking of ways to free Kastor and Shanna. If they were kept in those wooden cages every night – and Gareth had seen one of the bandits breaking them down and loading them onto one of the pack mules – then releasing them would not be hard. The problem was the guards. There were always two guards, if the pattern he'd observed last night was typical. One patrolled the perimeter while the other sat and watched their captives and other belongings, they traded jobs every half hour or so, and they switched off with the other bandits every two hours so everyone spent time on watch every night. It meant that there was little chance of catching them off-guard, less chance of them falling asleep on watch, and no way to sneak Kastor and Shanna out from under their noses. Gareth would need time to study their habits and find an opening. It meant leaving Kastor and Shanna at the mercy of the bandits, and it meant risking their safety since he had no idea how long it would take for them to reach Devrost, but he had no other choice.

As soon as dusk began to fall, Gareth stopped following the bandits, choosing to wait until full dark so he would not risk being seen when he got close to their camp. He ate a meager dinner as he hid in the bushes, and once the sun was completely down, he crept through the trees again until he saw their fire, then climbed a tree on the perimeter of their camp and settled in for the night. The bandits were all still awake and sitting around the campfire, passing around a bottle of something – probably spirits – as they talked and laughed and joked with one another. They appeared to be oblivious to the suffering of their two captives, who were huddled in their cages and looking rather the worse for wear after a day of being led through the forest wearing leashes and hobbles. Kastor was gagged again, and his face was bruised and swollen – someone must have gotten sick of him talking back – and Shanna was clutching her knees to her chest and rocking back and forth as she muttered something under her breath. Gareth couldn't hear what she was saying, but after watching her for a while, he realized she was saying, “He's always nearby,” over and over again. She did still believe that he was there, but that was cold comfort while he was helpless to do anything but watch her and his young master suffer.

It wasn't long before two of the bandits got up from the fire to go on watch while the other six took out blankets and were soon fast asleep. Gareth stayed alert just long enough to confirm that the pattern of their nightly watch was the same as the night before, then he too went to sleep. His dreams kept his sleep from being restful, though, and he woke blearily with the dawn. He watched with a sick feeling in his stomach as Kastor and Shanna were pulled from their cages and set to work cooking, packing up the camp, and doing all the other things that the bandits had done for themselves the morning before. Fortunately, the bandits removed the ropes that tied their hands to their necks so they could have some freedom of movement, and while they reprimanded the children for being slow or making mistakes, they didn't beat them or deny them food. Kastor also was not expected to do much, because of his injured hand and arm, though he did get slapped and kicked several times for being insolent and refusing to do any work. Shanna, on the other hand, stayed silent and did exactly as she was told, just like a good slave should, and the bandits recognized her obedience. After they had both been fed, Kastor's hands were tied behind his back, but Shanna's were left free, and as the group headed off into the forest, no one stopped her from grabbing the hem of Kastor's shirt and holding on to it comfortingly.

Gareth followed the bandits more closely that day, hoping that a weakness in their alertness while traveling through the woods would give him a chance at getting Kastor and Shanna away from them. Unfortunately, it became clear to him all too quickly that they were experienced slavers and very good at protecting themselves and their captives. He did get to see Kastor being chastised and gagged again after barely an hour of travel – he was going to have to learn to keep his mouth shut, or they were going to do more than just gag him and slap him around. Watching Shanna was harder, though, because she already seemed broken and resigned to her future as a slave. Gareth didn't blame her – he had done much the same when he was captured, as a way of coping – but it was heartbreaking to see her bright, joyful personality so completely suppressed and her normally smiling eyes so completely without hope.

Even Kastor noticed his sister's hopelessness, and it affected him deeply. Whenever he looked down to see her clutching at his shirt, his eyes would flash with pain and anger. When the bandits stopped around midday to eat and drink and one of the bandits ungagged Kastor so Shanna could give him bread and water, he tried to comfort her. “It's gonna be alright, Shan,” he whispered to her. She glanced at him briefly, nodded, then looked past him into the forest, her eyes lighting up briefly as they scanned the bushes, but returning to blank despair when she looked back at her brother. She gave Kastor the rest of the bread and water in silence, but she hugged him briefly before the bandits dragged them both to their feet and gagged Kastor before marching them off into the forest again.

That night, when they stopped and the children were forced to set up the camp, Kastor did not complain, and he did his best to help his sister with her work once he was done with his own. This earned him approving glances from the slavers, and they left him ungagged and bound his hands in front of him rather than behind him when they put him in his cage for the night. Unfortunately, this good behavior only lasted until the next morning, and by the time the bandits led them off into the woods the next day, he had new bruises on top of the old and was cruelly bound and gagged again, which made Shanna sob bitterly as she followed him into the trees.

Gareth followed the bandits for days, studying their habits until he had their daily routine memorized. It rarely changed: the morning guards would wake their captives before their companions, they would all take their time getting ready while Kastor and Shanna cooked breakfast and cleaned and packed up the camp, then they would head into the woods and travel due north along a barely-discernible trail through the forest, stopping only at midday for a brief meal, then find a secluded clearing just before dark. The bandits would relax with their bottle of spirits while Kastor and Shanna set up the camp and made dinner, then they would lock Kastor and Shanna in their cages and sit around the fire talking and drinking until several hours after dark, at which point two of them would get up to stand watch while the others went to sleep. Each of the bandits took a turn on guard duty during the night, so they were always alert and well-rested; Gareth couldn't find a single opening in their defenses, no matter how hard he tried. But even as his hope of getting Kastor and Shanna away from the bandits dwindled, his resolve to do so got stronger, especially once he saw Kastor finally push his captors too far.

Kastor's attitude towards his captivity remained as erratic and unpredictable as it had been the first two days. Sometimes, he would be as silent and compliant as Shanna, but at other times he would stand defiant. He would talk back, refuse to do as he was ordered, hurl insults at his captors, and act like he didn't care when they slapped him around or gagged him and forced him to go without food and water for his defiance. He also tried to act like he didn't care how the bandits' treatment of him affected Shanna, but watching her retreat further and further in on herself was tearing him apart inside, and he didn't seem to know how to deal with the fact that he wanted to protect his sister but was unable to do anything for her.

It didn't help that Shanna no longer cried any more, or reacted to much of anything. She did everything she was told, she never got in trouble or resisted an order, and though she did get slapped or chastised a few times for speaking or looking at her captors, she never made the same mistake twice. Watching her, Gareth saw his first week as a captive being replayed, and he knew what she was going through. But he also watched her scan the forest as she was led along during the day, and he heard her whisper the familiar mantra of “He's always nearby” every night before she fell asleep, so he knew that she was not as broken and hopeless as she let everyone else think she was.

But Kastor didn't know that, and it became harder and harder for him to control his anger at what was being done to him and his sister, especially once Shanna's 'good behavior' began earning her special attention from the slavers – specifically the three women. They began taking special care of Shanna – they would take her to sit with them by the fire after Kastor was in his cage at night, they would wash her face and brush her hair and feed her sweets, they would take turns having her walk with them during the day, and they started giving her easier jobs and expecting less work of her as Kastor's arm got better. The extra work didn't bother Kastor, but he didn't like the bandits doting on his sister, and though Shanna tried to act like she didn't mind, it was clear she didn't like it either.

It was late evening, almost a week since Kastor and Shanna had been taken captive, and Kastor and Shanna were sitting just outside the circle of firelight, eating leftover scraps from the meal they had just made for the eight bandits. One of the women was watching over them while the others sat and passed the bottle of spirits around. When it was empty, one of the men got up from the fire and went to fill it again from a barrel tied to the back of one of the pack mules. This was one of the few things that the bandits still did for themselves; for some reason they wouldn't let the children touch the barrel or the bottle that they filled from it.

“Hey, boss, we're almost outta this stuff,” the man said as he returned to the fire. “How long til we get to the next stash?”

“Three days. Don't worry; it'll last til then,” the leader reassured the man as he took the bottle from him and took the first swig. “And a week after that, we should be in the city.”

“I hope those kids bring us good money,” the other bandit said as he sat down. “I can't believe Rosen got that caravan, but we're the ones who hafta restock the supply caches on the way back from Devrost.”

“It's business, Doral,” the leader said. “The price of getting ta work out here with them. Fortunately, traffic along the main road should increase over the next few months – harvest season an' all. We'll get lucky too one of these days.”

“We need his numbers and his equipment if we're ever gonna be that successful,” the woman called Jez said, “and we're not gonna get all that by selling slaves to the markets one or two at a time.”

“I know that,” the leader said with a scowl, swiping the bottle and taking a swig amid protests before passing it back to the man who'd been holding it. “I don't like dealing with slaves any more than you, especially kids. That's why I have high hopes for these two, assuming I can get that boy ta behave by the time we get to Devrost. They're young, healthy, well-bred and well-spoken, the girl is pretty and the boy probably has a good education. That makes each of them worth more than twice what we've ever gotten for anyone else. If we can find the right buyer, that is.”

Gareth, lying on a branch halfway up a tree at the edge of the clearing and silently eating his own supper, felt his stomach twist and lost his appetite when he heard them talking so casually about the cost of another human being. He still had vivid memories of two men once having the exact same conversation about him, and it had been degrading and humiliating even though he hadn't understood what the men were saying about him. As he listened to the bandits talking about what they could get for Kastor and Shanna, he watched his young master and mistress, who were also hearing every word. Shanna had finished eating; her face was pale as she listened to the bandits, then she laid her head on Kastor's arm with a despairing sigh. Kastor had been trying to ignore what their captors were saying, but he couldn't ignore his sister's despair. He reached out his unbroken arm as far as the ropes binding his wrists would let him and gently stroked her hair. Shanna reached out and grabbed his shirtsleeve for comfort for the first time in days, and Kastor looked down at his sister, a stricken expression on his face. Gareth saw what he saw at that moment: she was small, helpless, and terrified. Even though he knew that some of it was an act, at that moment Gareth wanted to burst into the camp and take her away from all of this, consequences be damned. Only his practical nature held him back from doing something so rash. Kastor, unfortunately, was a little more impulsive, and it appeared that he had reached his last thread of self-control.

At a signal from the leader, the woman standing guard over the two children leaned down and took the rope leash around Shanna's neck, tugging on it gently to tell her to get to her feet. She looked up at her brother, her hand tightening on his sleeve, and for the briefest of moments it looked as if she was going to disobey the woman and not get up. But then, with another sigh, she let go of Kastor and got woodenly to her feet. As she followed the woman to the fire, her head bowed, Kastor got to his feet, a disturbing look of fierce resolve on his face. One of the other bandits had gotten up from the fire to take him to his cage; as the man reached for Kastor's leash, Kastor suddenly lunged at the man and headbutted him square in the chest. As the man fell to the ground, winded, Kastor turned and bolted towards the edge of the clearing. It was a valiant escape attempt, but ultimately futile; he stumbled on the rope hobbling his ankles and fell before he'd taken more than a few steps. That didn't stop him from trying to get away, though; he had gotten to his knees and was still moving forward when he was grabbed by two of the bandits. They had to lift him bodily off the ground to stop him, and even then he fought against them with all his might, screaming, “Let me go, you bastards! I won't let you do this to us! You're gonna pay for this! Let! Me! Go!”

Shanna was being held by the woman who had taken her to the fire, screaming and begging the bandits not to hurt her brother, begging her brother to stop fighting them, struggling and trying to go to him. The leader ordered the woman to put Shanna in her cage, then signaled for the two men holding Kastor to bring him into the center of the clearing. “You gotta learn some manners, boy,” he said as the other men came forward to subdue Kastor, “an' I'm gonna get my money's worth outta you, no matter what it takes.” His four men lay Kastor prone on the ground, facedown, while the leader went and cut a switch from a nearby tree. When he returned, he pulled up Kastor's shirt, exposing his back. As his men held the struggling, shouting Kastor down, the leader stood over him and brought the switch down on his bare back.

The scream that was ripped from Kastor's throat as that first blow landed cut straight through Gareth's heart. He could hear Shanna sobbing, but he forced himself to watch, stone-faced, as the bandit leader laid thirty long, bloody welts across Kastor's back, each one accompanied by a pained scream. Once it was over, he threw the switch into the fire. “Gag him and put him in his cage, and we'll see if a day or two without food will teach him to think twice about trying to escape.”

Gareth sympathized with the pain Kastor must be in as he watched him lying on the floor of his cage, sobbing and shaking in agony. Shanna was crying too, and she didn't stop, no matter how the bandit women tried to console her as they took her out of her cage and led her over to the fire. They didn't keep her there for very long, and when she was back in her cage, she stayed awake for hours just staring at her brother, tears streaming silently down her face as she watched him tremble in pain in his sleep. Gareth watched her until she fell asleep, and he closed his eyes some time near dawn thinking that things couldn't get worse.

But he was wrong. The next morning, after the children had done all the chores and packed up the camp, the leader dragged them both into the center of the clearing. As they were held and guarded by the rest of the bandits, he removed their restraints, then ordered them to remove the ragged remains of their clothes and tossed them each replacements made of brown burlap. Shanna was given a dress made of an old sack, which she put on silently, and Kastor reluctantly dressed in a shirt and pants that looked suspiciously like an old set of Gareth's clothes. The disgust on Kastor's face was evident, but it faded quickly as the bandit leader threw their old clothes on the fire and forced them to watch the last traces of their old life burn as he replaced their restraints. By the time the rope was retied around his neck, Kastor's eyes were as blank and hopeless as his sister's. But it wasn't enough for the bandit leader. He pulled his knife again as his companions held the silent, terrified children, then he used it to raggedly cut off Shanna's long hair to just below her ears and shave Kastor's curls to stubble. Now, they were both slaves, in every physical sense except one. Gareth tried not to reflexively finger the collar around his neck and the shackles on his wrists as he watched the bandits head off into the forest with their captives.

Gareth stayed motionless in the tree until long after the sound of the bandits moving off into the forest had faded away. He kept his emotions in check until he reached the ground, but when he finally did, he found that his legs would not hold him. He slumped against the tree's trunk, tears streaming down his face, cursing Kastor's stubbornness, his own cowardice, the circumstances of his life that had led him here and bound him physically and emotionally to the Cranes, and the fates that had pulled him away from his home in the first place. He couldn't do this any more. It was too much responsibility for one thirteen-year-old boy. Kastor and Shanna were lost to him; in just over a week, they would be sold to the slave market in Devrost, the bandits had left no openings in their defenses for him to slip through, and his young master and mistress were already well on their way to being physically and mentally broken. He couldn't bring himself to follow them today. He needed time alone, so he set off into the deep woods away from the bandits' trail. He would be able to find them again later if he needed to.

Gareth wandered aimlessly through the forest, trying to clear his head, but even the peaceful beauty of the woods surrounding him couldn't ease his mind and soul. He had always suspected that slavery had changed something deep inside him, and now he knew it for sure, because he would rather be captured himself and sold back to the slave market with Kastor and Shanna then allow them to face those horrors on their own. Part of him wouldn't be able to face being free if his young master and mistress were slaves... especially Shanna. In order for him to be able to keep his promise to Master Teskar, he needed a miracle.

And that was when he looked up from his misery to find that he had wandered into a field of dreamlace.