The Dark Ferryman by Jenna Rhodes

haft of his tool tightly. “What do you want from me?”
    “Nothing that I can’t have whether you give it to me or not.” With a dry laugh, Quendius lashed out, his sword cutting through the old man’s tunic. Fabric caught and fell in limp shreds. Magdan shook, not with fear but with anger, and his eyes shone fiercely in the dim light, which was anything but dim to Quendius. He pulled his scythe into a defensive position across his body, set his bowed legs, and gritted his teeth.
    “I’ve stopped brighter lads than you,” the old gardener forced out.
    “Perhaps.” Quendius cut through the air again, this time across the elder’s breeches, leaving his legs bare against the evening air. His legs, like his hands and face, were weathered and etched with the working of the soil and recalcitrant thorns and branches, weeds and rocks, tendrils and lashings. Hard work, gardening and farming. “I’ll give you this, old goat of a man, you’ve backbone. For that, I’ll let you return to your lord. I don’t care if you carry word of me or not. Better perhaps, if you do.” He withdrew his blade slightly. “I am Quendius.”
    Whether the old man considered his name to remember it or not, he could not tell, for Magdan’s answer was to lunge at him, business end of the scythe sweeping across the air, catching on his vest of curried wool, brushing across his bare skin with a burning slice, but not deep enough to slow his reaction. He jabbed, and jabbed deeply, the other crumpling in front of him with a bubbling gulp and hiss.
    Magdan did not die. Nor would he for a bit. Quendius pulled back. He cleaned his sword in the dry dirt about them before sheathing it. His sharp eyes caught sight of the winter-woolly mountain pony the gardener had staked not too far away, as well as three young saplings dug up and bagged, resting next to a small cart to carry them, gardening by light of the moon like a superstitious old Dweller. Luck for this harvesting, it seemed, had escaped Magdan this time.
    Quendius heaved him up, over his shoulder, like a sack of meal and dumped him onto the cart bed. He threw the saplings in as well, and untied the mountain pony from its staking. “You’ll be home by morning,” Quendius told the ashen-faced gardener. “You should live that long.” He tugged the ragged wrappings of the shirt tightly about Magdan’s chest. Then he slapped the cart pony on its rump, hard, and the startled animal jumped in its harness, bolting away and dragging the cart thumping behind it. It would, once the scare left it, find its way back to the stables.
    Quendius took up the heavy bundle of cuttings and returned to his own mount. The beast’s nostrils flared at the smell of fresh blood on him, but did nothing more than that, used to the smell although not liking it.
    Quendius rubbed his knuckles under the creature’s chin. “You know who the master is,” he told it, before lashing the aryn wood behind the saddle pad. The horse grunted and shifted its weight unhappily at the burden, but it would bear that, and him, and more if he asked that of it. It had been trained to do so. He turned its head toward his fortress. He wondered if the gardener would live to repeat his name.
    Bistel rode in, midmorning winter sun on his shoulders, to find his courtyard in commotion. The gardener’s cart stood in the center of it, ringed by stable and farm lads, and a healer, bloodied rags tossed to the ground, and aryn saplings half falling from the cart. He dismounted. “What is going on?”
    “It’s Magdan, m’lord,” the head lad said, swinging about, face pale. “He’s been done for, m’lord, and he won’t tell anyone what happened or let us move him. He says he’s dying, and we’re to clear the courtyard because he’s Returning.”
    Bistel felt a coldness in his core that the winter sun would not be able to warm. “Do he says, boys. Take your leavings of him while you can, and keep the yard clear. I’m the only one