Traveling through the Heinlein Fens was harder than anticipated.

  The enchantments Marsha provided did help the wagons from sinking into the soft, wet ground beneath their feet, but she hadn’t taken care to enchant each individual horseshoe because there were far too many. Combine that with the uneven ground that was deceptive with how much weight it could hold meant that the horses struggled despite the wagons’ weight being a minimal problem.

  The caravan traveled a lot slower than Rudy had expected because of this. His foul mood hung over the caravan like a dark cloud, oppressive and choking. People rarely spoke, afraid that they might draw his ire and he might release venom upon them.

  For a man who didn’t like speaking, he sure liked to insult people when they did nothing wrong.

  Illnyea ignored Rudy the best she could so she could focus on what she’d do once she returned home to Priscilla and Sulaiman. She allowed herself to get lost in thought, trusting her mare Sunshine to keep up with the caravan’s ambling pace. While Marsha hadn’t enchanted every horse shoe, the wizard had taken care to make sure Illnyea’s horse was equipped with every upgrade she could provide. Sunshine was a good, steady horse, just over five years old, and while the name was a little embarrassing now, Illnyea had been twelve when she named her, so she cut herself a little slack.

  On occasion, Illnyea thought she saw something flicker in the corner of her eye, but when she turned to look at it, nothing was there. She squinted, but there weren't any obvious signs of a creature being there and Sunshine didn’t seem spooked, so it was probably just a fern rustling.

  Illnyea shrugged and returned to her daydreams. If there was a monster out there, the thick incense burning from each wagon would surely chase it off.

  The first person to disappear from the caravan was a man named Jey on the first night they stopped to rest.

  His disappearance wasn’t discovered until the morning, when everyone was packing up and grumbling about how their sleeping supplies were soggy from the damp ground. Illnyea had kept her complaints to herself, sighing as she squinted up at the trees above them. When they first entered the fens, the trees were widely scattered about like large clusters of broccoli peeking over the landscape.

  But as the caravan continued on the path Rudy insisted was correct, the landscape had shifted until it was nearly unrecognizable. Illnyea hadn’t noticed the change until she tried to look for the sun to see if she’d be able to dry her blanket while they rode. The trees weren’t as large as those in the Emerald Forest, but they still stretched a good forty feet in the air.

  Illnyea’s contemplation on the environment changing around them was interrupted by Eileen asking somewhere nearby, “Has anyone seen Jey? Roughly yea tall, bald with a large beard?”

  One by one Eileen asked each person she passed and with each negative answer, the woman’s face grew increasingly worried.

  “Has he gone missing?” Illnyea asked before Eileen could ask again.

  Eileen’s expression was complicated as she turned to Illnyea. Things hadn’t returned to the easy conversation that used to flow before Illnyea saved the wizards, but it seemed that that awkwardness didn’t matter to Eileen anymore as she pursed her lips.

  “He wasn’t in his bedroll this morning,” Eileen said, running a worried hand through her hair. “There wasn’t any sign of monsters nearby, and all of his things are still here, so, so I was hoping that he just stepped away to piss or something.”

  Illnyea frowned. She recalled Jey was a cook for the caravan, an amiable enough man who enjoyed serving good food to people.

  “I’ll join the search party,” Illnyea said, reaching for her sword and strapping it around her waist. Eileen's surprised expression didn’t make sense to Illnyea as she clicked her shield in place.

  “We are searching for him, right?” Illnyea asked, glancing around at the others nearby in confusion. “We can’t just up and leave him behind in the middle of this swamp.”

  Illnyea made a wide sweeping gesture towards their surroundings, which looked extremely uninviting as the sun barely peeked through the thick canopy above them.

  Eileen visibly wavered, chewing on her lip and glancing at where Rudy’s tent had claimed the only flat area in this patch of the fens.

  Illnyea kept the anger off her face the best she could as she used a card that made Illnyea feel dirty to play.

  “If my mother finds out we left a lost employee behind without even trying to find them,” Illnyea said and Eileen’s head whipped back towards her, “she’s going to be very cross. She doesn’t like it when the higher ups treat our employees like they’re disposable.”

  Illnyea’s mother was many things, but an uncaring boss wasn’t one of them. The few times Illnyea heard her parents fighting was over the treatment of their employees, with her mother favoring giving them more benefits and her father trying to find ways to keep the costs down.

  Eileen seemed to find her resolve and four search parties were organized in short order, each sweeping a different cardinal direction.

  Only three search parties returned by the time specified.

  Illnyea was sweaty and dirty, as she had tripped over a hidden tree root and fell into a soggy patch of moss. They hadn’t spotted any signs of Jey, which was disappointing, but Illnyea tried not to let that failure get her down.

  When she returned, Illnyea kept searching for the faces she had wished luck to before she left, counting and recounting when she came up short.

  But that didn’t seem to bother anyone else, as the caravan was nearly finished with their preparations to resume their traveling.

  “Where’s the eastern party?” Illnyea asked Eileen. “Are we leaving without them?”

  Eileen’s face had grown pinched and closed off since Illnyea had last seen the woman.

  But it wasn’t Eileen who responded to Illnyea’s earnest question.

  “We are,” Rudy said, his voice grating as he walked in front of Illnyea to stare down at her. “We can’t afford to waste any more resources on lost causes.”

  “Lost causes?” Illnyea asked incredulously. “How could you talk about your own people like that?”

  Rudy rolled his eyes with his entire body, sneer twisting his face into something ugly and mean.

  “Listen here, girl,” Rudy said slowly, as if speaking to an idiot, “I don’t care about your fucking connections with those damned wizards or that your Cian’s kid. While you’re traveling with my caravan, you listen to me, or you’ll be hogtied and gagged and I can explain to your parents how utterly unsuited you are to being a merchant. Choose.”

  Anger sparked in Illnyea’s chest and slowly flooded her body. She didn’t even want to be a stupid merchant who weighed lives against profit, didn’t want to only see people for how much money they could make her instead of valuing them because they were people.

  (you could kill him and take over the caravan by force, the part of Illnyea carved from broken glass whispered, your sword is right there and he isn’t wearing any armor.)

  Illnyea was taken aback by her violent thoughts and pushed them away, straightening her shoulders.

  “You’re abhorrent,” Illnyea said, unable to keep the disgust off her face. “I don’t care what you tell my parents, I’ll search for our people myself if I have to.”

  Rudy’s eyes narrowed but Illnyea wasn’t backing down, jutting her chin out definitely.

  “Restrain her,” Rudy said, gesturing to the two nearest caravan guards.

  Illnyea scoffed, turning her disbelieving gaze to the men, wondering if they were actually going to listen to such a ridiculous order. She was just trying to protect their people and Rudy was acting like she was being the unreasonable one in the situation.

  The two guards looked nervously between one another.

  Rudy let out an angry breath, snapping, “Restrain her or you’ll all be out of a job when we get back to Meadowyar!”

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  Illnyea’s jaw dropped. “You don’t have the authority to–”

  “Shut the fuck up!” Rudy bellowed, spittle flying. The sudden stillness following his outburst meant they could hear how his voice echoed in the swamp around them. Rudy stood up, slicking back his hair as he took a deep breath. “Guards, restrain Miss Thornewood so she doesn’t go traipsing about.”

  With that, Rudy spun on his heel and stalked to his horse, with Eileen on his heels after a brief hesitation.

  For a moment, no one did anything.

  But then one of the guards moved towards one of the wagons and when he pulled back, there was a rope in his hands.

  Illnyea’s stomach dropped as the two guards approached her steadily even as their faces told a tale of great reluctance. The urge to fight back against them was strong, but it fizzled out as one of them whispered, “Real sorry about this, miss.”

  These men were just doing their jobs, forced into the position because their livelihoods were at stake. If Illnyea struggled, they would be hurt in the process and they didn’t deserve that.

  Even as Illnyea offered up her wrists, inwardly, Illnyea was fuming, fixing a steely gaze to the back of Rudy’s head.

  The guards thankfully hadn’t taken her sword from her nor did they try to take her half-shield off her arm (probably because of how Illnyea glared at them ferociously when it was suggested) and they only tied the rope tight enough to restrain around the shield itself, but that was the only grace she was afforded.

  The indignity of riding a horse without use of her hands was one Illnyea won't soon forget. If Sunshine wasn’t such a wonderful horse, Illnyea was sure that she would have a much harder time keeping up with the caravan given her inability to even steer. She couldn’t even get on and off of the horse without help, and the helplessness of her situation weighed heavy on Illnyea’s mind.

  The only thing Illnyea could focus on was getting revenge on Rudy.

  Even if Rudy was her father’s close friend, Illnyea thought she could find a way to get Rudy expelled from their company. Every person who was in this caravan was technically hired by her parents, even if it was underneath Rudy’s control. For him to threaten to terminate their contracts without just cause created an environment that would lead to no one wanting to work for the Thornewood Merchant Company anymore – that be the basis for Illnyea’s argument to remove him. His rough treatment of Mishra and Marsha, not to mention Illnyea herself, would just make her case stronger because she knew her mother wouldn’t allow that to go unpunished.

  Illnyea stewed with her negative thoughts for the rest of the day and when they stopped for the evening, the restraints were only loosened enough for her to go to the bathroom and eat. Illnyea did her best to keep her emotions off her face when Rudy ordered for her to sleep with the restraints on.

  Her dreams were filled with visions of Illnyea smacking the smug look off Rudy’s face.

  Two more people had disappeared the next morning.

  Rage simmered in Illnyea’s gut like slowly bubbling lava when Rudy decided to ignore the way that people had started to truly become afraid, ordering everyone to continue on. The other members of the caravan looked between Illnyea and Rudy, but no one stepped up when Illnyea remained silent. Her hands were still bound and she didn’t want to take the chance Rudy would follow through on his threat to throw her into a wagon bound and gagged. Illnyea didn’t think she’d be able to make it through an entire day without cracking from the pressure.

  Illnyea kept a wary eye on their surroundings as they traveled, now keenly aware that something was wrong with the Heinlein Fens. A thin fog had started to creep over the landscape like strangling ivy, curling around trees and nipping at their heels. The path they had been following had been steadily growing narrower so wagons could only pass one at a time with maybe one horse to the side of it to keep watch. With the fog obscuring their vision, it meant that one misplaced step would send someone into the swampy muck and delay them.

  Flickering movements kept appearing in the corner of Illnyea’s vision, but each time she tried to focus on them, they were gone. Illnyea had only asked a nearby guard if they saw anything once, and they gave her a look that suggested they thought she was trying to feed into their paranoia. So Illnyea kept it to herself and tried to keep herself ready for anything.

  They had been traveling for a few hours when the wagon in the front slipped off the path and got stuck in a bog.

  Rudy’s swearing could be heard by the entire caravan as he directed people to start pulling it out. Illnyea could offer to help with her earth magic, but she gave into a rare display of pettiness and said nothing.

  It was only because Illnyea glanced towards the canopy, yearning for a clear view of the sky that she saw a brief flash of gleaming metal.

  An arrow whistled through the air and sank into a guard’s throat. The guard looked surprised, tottering forward for a few steps as his hands reached up to the wound, before he toppled to the ground, falling into the mud with a loud splash.

  Horrified silence hung over those nearby.

  Illnyea only had enough time to blink before a volley of arrows rained down onto the caravan, cutting through the canvas coverings and hitting more people than it missed. Screams ran out and people started to panic, ducking for cover.

  Sunshine was a good horse, truly she was, but even good horses spooked. Sunshine reared onto her back legs, whinnying in fear when an arrow struck the ground in front of her.

  For the first time in Illnyea’s life, as she felt herself sliding backwards towards the ground without any way to grab onto something, she whispered, “Oh fuck.”

  Illnyea hit the ground shoulders first, her head snapping to the side as her momentum was abruptly stopped. Her pack hit the ground a moment later, having not been tied as securely as she normally liked it to be.

  The world was a little fuzzy as pain bloomed in Illnyea’s skull, sharp and disorienting. There was a peculiar ringing in Illnyea’s ears and it took a moment to catch her breath.

  People’s screams had a tinny quality to it, pervasive as it made the pain in Illnyea’s head hurt even more.

  It was harder than it should have been for Illnyea to lift her head towards the rest of the caravan.

  Most of the guards were lying on the ground, arrows finding their way into their eyes or throat for quick deaths. Many of them were partially submerged into the swamp as the regular workers scrambled to find some sort of safe place to hide.

  Illnyea tried to sit up and remembered that her hands were bound by stupid rope.

  It was more difficult than usual to call upon her earth magic, like the ground around her was soaked with so much water that it wanted to resist, but Illnyea was persistent. A sharp spike of earth shot up between her wrists and the useless rope fell away.

  Illnyea had to blink away stars as she pushed herself into a sitting position.

  She had to help, she had a sword and magic, she just had to figure out where their attackers were coming from.

  Some of the caravan workers had started to flee into the swamp to take their chances.

  A figure emerged from the fog in front of them, sending the fleeing workers to a halt.

  He was tall, wearing only a ragged set of pants and a black wolf pelt draped across his shoulders, the jaw pulled low to obscure his eyes. On his chest, swirling designs had been drawn onto his skin in a sort of red brown mud and in his hand there was a large, black club.

  It took a moment to recognize Eileen as the woman who was closest to the strange man, since she was covered in mud and she had lost her glasses. Eileen tried to backpedal but slipped in the mud, landing with a splash.

  The man cocked his head as he walked forward, reminding Illnyea of a dog, and then he raised up his club. It crackled with sparks of purple electricity, making Illnyea’s hair rise from the static.

  Then the man brought the club down onto Eileen’s head, sending a horrific spray of pink matter, blood, and bone through the air farther than it should have, each piece sparking as it hit the water. He wrenched his club out of Eileen’s limp body with a wet slurp.

  Illnyea was stunned by the brutality, brain not quite processing what she had just seen when the man knelt down.

  For a moment, Illnyea thought he might be conducting a prayer, but then the man’s hand went to Eileen’s head and he scooped out a mass of pink flesh with two fingers. He slowly licked his fingers before a wide grin stretched across his face, showing off his wicked sharp canines.

  The man threw his head back and howled, the sound rising triumphantly above the screams.

  Illnyea gagged and then vomited, shaking as she held herself up on her two hands.

  What… what was happening?

  Illnyea didn’t know what to do, didn’t know how to help, didn’t know how she could fight back against a man like that.

  When she looked up, trying to figure out if there was any way she could defeat him, Illnyea froze.

  The man in the wolf’s pelt was staring right at her.

  Illnyea had never known true fear until this moment, had never stared at something and thought, I’m going to die.

  (no you’re not, snarled the broken glass lodged in her mind, you haven’t kept your promise with Priscilla, you haven’t helped Sulaiman leave this country, you have too many things left to do, so GET UP.)

  Illnyea’s body began moving before her brain, stumbling movements that pushed her to her feet.

  Sunshine lay dying with labored breathing, three arrows sticking through her poor horse’s side and the sight of one her constant companions in that state momentarily shocked Illnyea.

  (Sulaiman said to never let your pack leave your sight, the broken glass reminded her.)

  Illnyea grabbed her pack and slung it over her aching shoulder. Every step sent waves of pain in her head but she couldn’t stop moving.

  Illnyea had to live.

  Sulaiman would never forgive her if she didn’t.

  She had just gotten around the edge of a wagon when she heard the sounds of someone walking quickly to her location.

  Illnyea began to run, magic surging through her to help make the ground firmer beneath her foot even as it tried to resist her. She ran away from the direction the arrows had come from into the swamp, hoping that there might be some part of this land that might be safe.

  The footsteps grew faster and Illnyea’s hair began to rise from static.

  Desperate, Illnyea pushed magic into the ground, forcing it into obedience with one order – protect her.

  A wave of dirt spikes broke through the ground and there was a sharp yelp of pain before a wall of earth stretched high behind her. There was a loud boom as something hit it, but the dirt held as there someone swore angrily.

  Illnyea kept running, never looking back even as she heard more screams cut short.

  Tears ran down her face, mixing with the mud coating her skin, as Illnyea realized she would never achieve the dream she dared to hold hidden in her heart, a title she selfishly coveted.

  Here was her chance to protect others and stand up for the weak – and here she was, running away without even trying to fight.

  Illnyea wasn't a hero.

  She was nothing but a coward.