The Witch of Thornvale Chapter 22: The Creek Bend

The Witch of Thornvale is a literary portal fantasy featuring two distinct characters. It allegorizes Ludwig von Mises’ Six Lessons.

If you’re just joining the misadventure and you missed Acts I, II, plus the six chapters in Act III, catch them below:

They’ll take time, but they’re worth the read so you can see how Drake Ridgeback and Eirwyn Starweaver ended up as what they hope are unsung heroes in Cinderglen. Once you’re caught up, read Chapter 22 below that awesome banner and get yourself a 50% discount while you’re at it if you’re into anti-Woke fiction by using the promo code VAULTVIP50 at the checkout.

The Witch of Thornvale: Chapter 22

“The witch first.”

The man in the road said it like he asked for the weather, a meal, or directions to the nearest inn. His black cloak hung dry despite the wet air. His boots looked cleaner than they had any right to look on a road this muddy. That alone made Drake hate him.

Behind him, cages lined the far bank of the creek. Faces pressed between wooden slats. Some belonged to men who looked ready to spit blood and fight anyway. Others to women holding children close. One boy near the front clutched the bars with both hands, eyes wide enough that Drake knew who he was before anyone said it.

The wounded man’s son.

Near another cage, the hunter taken the day before sat with one arm tied to the frame. Still alive, but bruised and furious.

Good.

Fury meant Malcor hadn’t broken him yet.

Drake stood beside Eirwyn at the edge of the creek bend. The water moved between them and the cages, shallow and slick over stone. Sunset bled red-orange through the trees, but the road below already started sinking into blue shadow.

The covered wagon sat near the bend. Two black-cloaked castors flanked it. And beside them stood the woman in blue.

Her cloak was darker than Eirwyn’s, but cleaner and less raggedy. It fell in a shape that looked less like clothing and more like a decision someone else made. She was barefoot too, but the earth beneath her feet looked dead. No wind touched the hem, and her eyes fixed on Eirwyn like she looked at a reflection she hated.

Eirwyn’s hand tightened around the quartz shard.

The enemy representative smiled. “You heard me.”

Drake looked at the cages, the wagon, then the man’s clean boots. “I heard a thief trying to sound like a merchant.”

The smile thinned. “Careful.”

“No, that’s your problem.” Drake stepped closer to the creek’s edge. “You’re pretending this is a trade. It isn’t. You stole those people. You don’t own the captives, or Eirwyn, and you sure as hell don’t own the right to sell stolen lives back to the people you terrorized.”

The representative lifted one hand. “We offered terms.”

“You offered robbery with manners.”

A few captives looked up.

Eirwyn glanced at Drake, and for half a second the fear in her face gave way to something steadier.

The representative’s eyes cooled. “The witch comes with us. The first group of captives walks free.”

“First group,” Drake said. “There it is.”

The representative’s jaw set.

Drake pointed toward the cages. “You never planned to release all of them. You take Eirwyn, release enough people to make yourselves look generous, then keep the rest as tomorrow’s leash. Every time Cinderglen refuses, another captive bleeds. And when another village hides someone you want, you drag out another cage and call it order.”

The representative looked past Drake toward Eirwyn. “You brought a mouthy one.”

Eirwyn’s voice cut through the creek bend. “And you brought prisoners.”

The blue-cloaked castor moved at that. Whether it was a turn of her head or a flicker of recognition or annoyance, Drake couldn’t tell.

The covered wagon creaked, and one wheel dipped where the road curved toward the creek.

Drake heard it before he saw it. A strained wooden groan. The squeal the wounded man described at every third turn.

The wagon driver cursed and snapped the reins. The wheel rolled again, struck something hidden in the mud, and jumped, where a small iron hook disappeared under the rim.

One horse screamed when the wagon lurched. Soldiers shouted. The driver pulled too hard, and the wagon twisted against its own weight, and the covered cart stopped right where the road dipped, where the creek bend held it like a hand around a throat.

The representative spun toward it. “Move that wagon.”

That was when the woods answered with a whistle from the left, then another from the right.

Arrows struck the mud near soldiers’ boots. Warning shots.

The soldiers broke formation long enough to look for enemies they couldn’t see. Drake moved, flashbacks entering his mind of those old videos he’d seen about the American War in Vietnam.

He read the scene like it was a system finally showing prices in real time. “Now.”

Eirwyn stepped into the creek. Cold water splashed her bare feet and climbed her ankles. The quartz shard flared in her hand, with blue-white light spilling through her fingers.

The blue-cloaked castor crossed the road toward her, and the air changed.

Wind pressed against Drake’s chest. Subtle at first, then hard enough to make the creek ripple backward. Pebbles lifted from the road and hovered at the blue castor’s feet.

Eirwyn stopped halfway through the water. The two witches faced each other with the creek between them and the stalled binding-stone wagon behind the soldiers.

“You’re still loose,” the blue castor said.

Her voice was young, and that made it worse.

Eirwyn swallowed. “They took you from Thornvale. Just like they forced me to flee it.”

“I was saved from Thornvale.”

“No.”

The blue castor’s eyes hardened. “Obedience is survival.”

Eirwyn lifted the shard. “Survival without choice is just a longer cage.”

The first strike came from the ground.

Mud snapped upward in a jagged line, turning hard as fired clay before it reached Eirwyn. She twisted, and wind tore through the creek bend, breaking the line into shards that hissed into the water.

Drake ducked as one flew past his head. “Great. Diplomacy ended.”

Near the wagon, the blacksmith’s hidden work kept paying dividends. One soldier tried to pry the hook loose and found a second wedge jammed under the axle. Another shouted for tools, and a third abandoned the cages to help.

That opened the far side.

Two hunters moved from the trees, low and fast. A woman from the inn’s people followed with straps under one arm. She looked terrified, which made the fact that she kept moving matter more.

A soldier spotted her and turned, but an arrow struck the ground between his feet.

The cage nearest the creek shifted open just enough for hands to reach out. The hunter inside kicked the latch from the other side while someone outside worked a strap through the bars. The wood groaned.

The representative’s eyes widened. “Stop them.”

As chaos ensued, the blue castor advanced on Eirwyn, her feet sending dark cracks through the mud. “He gives purpose, food, shelter, and a place. You run and call it freedom because nobody made you useful yet.”

Eirwyn’s eyes flashed. “Useful doesn’t mean owned.”

The shard brightened.

Far away, so faint Drake almost missed it, the direction of Cinderglen pulsed blue through the trees.

The village circle answered, and Eirwyn gasped.

The blue castor felt it too. Her gaze snapped toward the shard.

The representative pointed. “Take it.”

Two black-cloaked castors moved toward Eirwyn, but Drake threw himself into the path of one and the castor struck him in the chest with an open palm.

Drake hit the mud hard enough to lose the sky for a second. His ribs screamed, lungs forgot their job, and somewhere nearby, Eirwyn shouted his name.

He rolled before the castor could step on his throat, grabbed a fistful of wet dirt, and flung it at the man’s face.

The castor recoiled, spitting mud. Drake used the second to crawl toward the wagon wheel. His hand closed around the sack of iron pieces hidden near a root.

He shoved another wedge under the axle, and the wagon groaned.

Inside the covered cart, something hummed. It crawled under his skin and tugged at thoughts he didn’t want touched.

Eirwyn cried out.

The blue castor raised one hand. “You feel them.”

Eirwyn fell to one knee in the creek, shard pressed against her chest. “I feel the knots,” she said through clenched teeth.

“Then stop resisting.”

“Stop mistaking chains for shelter.”

The blue castor hesitated just long enough for Eirwyn to drive the shard into the creek water.

The creek lit up. Blue-white light raced through the current, struck the mud around the stalled wagon, and climbed the wheel in jagged veins. The binding stones inside the covered cart answered with a deep pulse that made every branded castor stagger.

One black-cloaked castor screamed and dropped to both knees.

The representative stumbled backward. “Stabilize it.”

The blue castor turned toward the wagon, then back to Eirwyn. For the first time, fear crossed her face of what would happen if the stones broke.

Eirwyn pushed herself upright, shaking. “Help me.”

The blue castor’s jaw tightened.

Behind her, one cage broke open. Captives spilled into mud in a mess of limbs, sobs, and shouted directions. The innkeeper’s people dragged two children toward the creek. Hunters waved them toward the shallow crossing, and the blacksmith barreled into a soldier near the wagon and took a blade across the shoulder for it.

Blood darkened his shirt, but he still drove his hammer into the axle.

The wheel split, and the covered wagon dropped sideways. The binding stones rolled inside their cart with a sound like thunder trapped in a box.

Eirwyn screamed, thrust both hands forward, and the shard shattered. For one impossible second, the creek bend became Cinderglen.

The village circle answered from miles away through mud, water, quartz, and whatever stubborn thread tied free people to what they built. Blue-white light burst from the creek, wrapped the covered wagon, and struck the binding stones unevenly, exactly wrong enough to break what Malcor had made.

A crack split the air. Then another. The covered cart fractured from within, and several castors collapsed. Soldiers shouted and stumbled back. Captives clutched their heads, then blinked as if waking from nightmares that learned their names.

The blue castor stood frozen, one hand pressed to her chest.

Eirwyn staggered toward her. “You can still choose.”

The blue castor looked from the broken wagon, to Eirwyn, then toward the deeper trees where Malcor’s remaining men tried to regroup.

“I don’t know how,” she whispered.

Before Eirwyn could answer, the representative grabbed the blue castor by the arm and yanked her backward. “Move.”

For a second, Drake thought the blue castor would kill him.

She twisted free, sent a wall of wind and grit between herself and everyone else, and vanished into the trees.

That was enough to make the future complicated.

The representative mounted a horse near the rear wagon, face twisted with rage. “Malcor will not forget this.”

Drake pushed himself up from the mud, one arm wrapped around his ribs. “Yeah, well, tell him to write it down.”

The representative kicked the horse hard and fled with two soldiers, leaving cages half-open, a broken wagon smoking with blue-white cracks, and too many captives still dragged toward the far road by men who’d not panicked soon enough to lose everything.

The boy from the cage reached the creek with another captive half-carrying him. The hunter who they tied to the frame limped after them, one eye swollen shut. The blacksmith fell to one knee near the smashed axle, bleeding but alive.

“Retreat,” Drake shouted.

People moved in pieces, exactly as planned. Some through the creek. Others scampered toward the ridge. The rest disappeared into the trees while hunters covered paths. The innkeeper’s people pulled captives under blankets and between trunks. The tanner’s straps held wounded bodies to backs and shoulders.

It looked ugly, but it worked.

Eirwyn stumbled to Drake, breathing hard, face pale enough to scare him. “You’re hurt.”

“You’re one to talk.”

“The stones?”

“Broken enough.”

She looked toward the covered wagon as blue-white fractures ate through the wood. The remaining stones popped one by one, quieter now, like a dying chain losing links.

The creek bend smelled of mud, blood, smoke, and rain that hadn’t fallen yet.

The representative’s voice echoed once more from the trees, thinner now. “Malcor will remember!”

Drake leaned on Eirwyn because standing became negotiable.

“Good,” he called after him. “I’d hate to teach him twice.”

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