She looked up at the word, meeting the stranger"s gaze, the innocent beast between them. A scar stretched across the bridge of the man"s nose. Riven wondered if the one who left that mark still lived. There was hardness in the stranger"s eyes, but under that, curiosity. Riven felt the ground tremble through the soles of her thin leather shoes. There was a sound like rolling thunder, but there were no clouds in the sky."Someone"s coming," the man said with a smile.
Riven looked over her shoulder at the hill that led to the old man"s farmhouse. Six armed riders crested the little ridge and marched their mounts down to the small harrowed field.
"There she is," one of them said. His accent was thick, and Riven struggled to pa.r.s.e the nuance of language she had been trying so hard to learn.
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"But... is she alone?" another asked, squinting at the shadows between the trees.
A quick breeze wrapped around the plow and Riven, sliding back into the shadows of the forest. Riven looked to where the stranger once stood, but he was gone, and the approaching riders left no time to wonder.
"A ghost maybe," the leader said laughing at his man. "Someone she cut down coming back for revenge."
The riders spurred their horses into a trot, circling Riven and crushing the even trenches she had dug that morning. The leader carried a rigid bundle wrapped in cloth over the back of his mount. Riven"s eyes followed that horse as the others moved around her, their hooves compacting the loose earth back into cold, hard clay.
She gave the plow blade a final glance. Two riders carried crossbows. She would be taken down before she reached even one of them. Her fingers itched to touch the potential weapon, but her mind begged them to be still.
Tightness quickened in her muscles. A body long trained to fight would not surrender so easily to peace. A deafening rush of blood began to pound in her ears. you will die, it roared, but so will they.
Riven"s fingers began to reach for the plow blade.
"Leave her be!" The voice of the farmer"s wife was strong from calling in errant cows and it rang out over the field, breaking Riven from her self-destructive urge. "Asa, hurry. You must do something."
The riders halted their circles around Riven as the farmer and his wife crested the hill. Riven bit hard on the inside of her cheek. The sharp pain centered her, quelling her urge to fight. She would not spill Ionian blood in their field.
"I told you to stay in your home until we were done," the leader said to them.
The old man, Asa, hobbled through the uneven dirt. "She"s done nothing wrong. I was the one who brought it," he said gesturing toward the wrapped bundle. "I will answer for it."
"Master Konte. O-fa," the leader said. A patronizing smile tugged at the corners of his thin lips. "You know what she is. She has committed many wrongs. If I had my way, she would be cut down where she stands," He looked Riven over, then wrinkled his nose in annoyance. "Unfortunately, old man, you can say your piece at the hearing."
While the leader spoke Riven"s feet had sunk into the moist earth, momentarily holding her fast. The feeling of being mired, pulled down, overwhelmed her. Her pulse quickened to a shallow beat and a cold sweat slipped between her shoulders as she struggled to pull free. Her mind was enveloped by a different time, a different field. There the horses snorted, their hooves trampling blood-soaked dirt.
Riven shut her eyes before more remembered horrors could bury her. She inhaled deeply. A spring rain floods this ground, not the dead, she told herself. When I open my eyes, there will be only the living.
When she opened her eyes, the field was a field, freshly turned, and not an open grave. The leader of the riders dismounted and approached her. In his hand he held a pair of shackles, swirls of Ionian metal far more beautiful than anything that would have chained criminals in her own homeland.
"You cannot escape your past, Noxian dog," the leader said with a quiet triumph.
Riven looked up from plow blade to the old couple. The lines on their faces already carried so much pain. She would not bring them more. She could not. Riven tried to hold onto the image, the two of them leaning into one another, each holding the other up. It was a moment of fragile defiance before they knew something would be taken. When the old man wiped a sleeve across his wet cheek, she had to turn away.
Riven shoved her wrists toward the leader of the riders. She met his smug grin with a cold stare and let the steel close over her skin.
"Do not worry, dyeda," the farmer"s wife called out. Riven could hear the taut hope in her voice. It was too much. Too much hope. The wind carried the strained words and the smell of freshly turned earth, even as Riven was led farther and farther away. "Dyeda," it whispered. "We will tell the what you are."
"Dyeda," Riven whispered back. "Daughter."