The Orchard of Hope (29 page)

19

Conflict

Maggie was injured and having
trouble walking because of the gash on her leg. The wolf had gotten
a grip on her with his jaws and torn her calf muscle. The wound was
open and bleeding. Kelsey dragged her friend several yards toward
the abbey, fighting wolves back with her knife and watching them
flee whenever she struck them. Several times she heard the loud
clinking noise of her knife hitting against the wolves’
teeth.

Roland arrived to take a hold of
Maggie and guide her. Maggie could feel him and his firm grip on
her wrist, but she couldn’t see him, and his touch made her feel
weak. The gash in her leg made it difficult to walk, but she kept
going as Kelsey had instructed her. She was crying both because of
the pain from her injury and because she was upset with Sister
Clementine for ruining the negotiations.

Kelsey kept her eye on Bardou as
she moved forward through the orchard with her knife drawn,
striking back at each of the wolves who attacked her. A few got a
little too close to her face as they snapped, and she could smell
their rancid frozen breath. Her heart was beating so loudly in her
own ears that she could no longer hear the sound of the wolves’
paws hitting the ground. The battle was silent for her, except for
the sound of her own internal rhythm.

More wolves approached, lunging
forward with their eyes focused on Kelsey’s throat as they snapped
their teeth. The wolves’ crazed expressions gave the impression
that they were craving blood far more than hope. Kelsey swiftly
moved out of the way, striking one of the wolves with her knife as
she did so. She was untouched by this confrontation, but as she
stepped out of the way of the lunging animal, she landed on a
flower that exploded puffy looking seeds along with tiny oval
petals. They went everywhere, giving the brief illusion of snow
mixed with pale yellow confetti. The flower’s seeds were like those
of a slightly larger dandelion. After the first explosive discharge
upward, the flower’s parts began drifting peacefully through the
hostile air. If she weren’t in the middle of a fight, Kelsey might
have taken the time to admire the falling petals and seeds. It
looked as if there were bits of cotton and color dancing on the
breeze.

At the current time, however, the
floating flower seeds were a distraction. Even the wolves were
momentarily captivated by the sight. Kelsey waved her knife through
the air at the drifting particles, and the blade quickly eliminated
almost all of them. However, one seed that landed on Kelsey’s right
forearm burned her skin where it had landed. She didn’t have time
to think about it, so she brushed the seed from her skin and looked
around. The wolves were no longer enchanted by the flower, and they
were regrouping.

Kelsey turned to face them just as
the largest one lunged for her throat again. She steadied herself
with her legs and heard her knife blade striking the wolf’s teeth
as she deflected the attack. The wolf fell backwards and turned
around to face her again. He was ready to spring, but he paused to
stare Kelsey down with a fierce expression. When he finally moved
forward, Kelsey struck him with her knife, and he quickly ran off.
Up until this point she had kept the wolves from doing any
extensive damage to her, though her arms and legs were being
scratched.

The battle was complicated by all
of the rows of trees, which obscured the lines of sight in most
directions. All around her there were wolves and people engaged in
battle, but Kelsey couldn’t see anything past her own
situation.

As another wolf rebounded to attack
her again, Kelsey lifted her leg and kicked the animal away just in
time to deflect an attack from yet another wolf. There were four or
five of them leaping toward her from different angles. She struck
at them one by one, and this is when she noticed their odd
behavior. She wondered if it had started with the exploding flower,
or if it had been happening since the beginning of the battle. What
she noticed was that every time she deflected an attack and slashed
a wolf, the wolf sat down on the ground and stopped fighting or
simply ran away. These weren’t deep wounds. She wasn’t even
striking them all that hard.

At first Kelsey thought the wolves
were giving up easily, but after more than a dozen wolves exhibited
this behavior, she began to see that this was a pattern. She didn’t
need to actually kill the wolves to save hope. She just needed to
wound them, and this knowledge made her feel more confident because
wounding was much easier than killing. She glanced down at her
forearm where the flower seed had burned the image of a petal. It
was an odd mark, but Kelsey didn’t have time to study it. She was
attempting to wound every wolf she could reach as she searched for
the leader.

Brother Michael, on the other hand,
was striking as many deadly blows as he could. He and the other
brothers had already killed about two dozen wolves. Kelsey made her
way over to him as she continued searching through the crowd for
Bardou. Shortly after the wolf leader chased Maggie toward the
abbey, Kelsey lost sight of him in the shuffle.

“Brother Michael,” Kelsey shouted.
“You don’t need to kill them. They respond to simply getting cut.
They quit fighting when they get hurt.” Kelsey inadvertently
demonstrated this when she slashed at a wolf who jumped in her face
unexpectedly.

“What?” Brother Michael replied as
he continued to wield his sword.

“The wolves quit fighting once
they get wounded.”

“I’m not wounding a wolf who wants
to kill me. It’s the wolves or us, and I don’t want to be the one
dead!” He continued fighting viciously alongside Kelsey, who had
wounded about half a dozen more wolves.

No matter how many she saw run
away, though, the wolves didn’t appear to decrease in number. She
wondered if she was wrong and if the wolves’ running away when
wounded was a deception. Could it be some type of new war tactic
that the sorcerer had invented? As she reached her arm out to
strike another wolf, she saw that the flower petal on her arm had
multiplied. There were now several petals forming an almost
complete flower.

“Oh, great!” she exclaimed as she
continued to fight. “I’ve got a flower fungus.”

“A flower fungus is the least of
your worries,” Brother Michael shouted as he gasped for air in
between words. He stabbed at another wolf and then looked over at
Kelsey. What he saw made him stop fighting long enough for the wolf
to sneak forward and grab hold of his ankle. Kelsey leapt forward
and cut the wolf with her knife. It wasn’t a deep cut, but it drew
blood. The wolf immediately let go of Brother Michael’s thick ankle
and scurried away out of the orchard. “It does work,” Brother
Michael said. He paused with his mouth agape to observe the wolf
running away.

Brother Michael was quickly roused
from his reflective state by another wolf jumping in his face. He
attempted to cut the wolf in a less aggressive manner, but this
only made the wolf angrier, and it bit Brother Michael in the face.
They fell to the ground, struggling as the wolf held onto the
fleshy portion of Brother Michael’s left cheek. Brother Michael was
screaming as Kelsey jumped into the fight and tore at the wolf’s
shoulder with her knife. As soon as the wound opened, the wolf let
go of Brother Michael and sprinted from the orchard.

After spewing a few curses, Brother
Michael tore a piece of fabric from the bottom of his shirt and
blotted the wound on his face. The wolves were occupied in battle
with others, and he had a few moments to breathe. He stared at the
knife in Kelsey’s hand.

“What kind of knife is that?” he
asked.

“I’m not completely
sure.”

“That trick with the wolves … It
didn’t work with my sword. Your knife has an effect on them. Where
did you get it?”

“The king bought it for me. Well,
he bought half of it,” Kelsey said. This was not the best time for
a conversation on souvenirs from former quests. She looked around
frantically. “We need to stop this. Do you see Bardou?”

Brother Michael looked around the
orchard as he blotted the wound on his face. Dust was rising up
from the skirmishes, and there were pockets of fighting among the
trees. The pack of wolves had thinned, but there were still too
many to count. It took a few minutes of searching, and Kelsey had
to pause to fight off a few wolves during this time, but eventually
they spotted Bardou across the orchard at the end of the row of
trees where they were standing.

Kelsey took off running, slashing
at every blurred patch of fur lunging toward her as she charged
over to Bardou. As she approached, Bardou immediately made a leap
at Kelsey’s knife hand. His jaws clamped down firmly on Kelsey’s
wrist. She resisted the pain from Bardou’s strong jaws as long as
she could, but she eventually dropped the knife when she heard and
felt one of her bones snap.

Bardou released his grip when the
knife fell, but he snapped at Kelsey each time she reached for it,
and she retreated. The wolf snarled at her, occasionally snapping
his menacing jaws. Kelsey ignored the pain in her hand, as well as
the blood dripping from it. All she could focus on was getting to
her knife again and picking it up. She felt alone without it, as if
she had lost a friend.

She circled around with Bardou,
fending off his attacks with swift kicks to deflect his powerful
jaws each time the wolf attempted to get near. They were stuck in
this threatening stalemate as one of the other Brothers of
Discipline stealthily moved in, wielding a sword. He sneaked up
behind Bardou, and as he was about to stab the wolf, Kelsey
shouted.

“Behind you, Bardou!”

The wolf paused for only a moment
to cock his head in an expression of concentration and then rapidly
spun around to face his attacker. Both the monk and wolf took a few
moments to assess the situation, and it was enough time for Kelsey
to run over and snatch her knife from the ground. As Bardou was
preparing to spring upon the monk, Kelsey again distracted him with
a war cry that got his attention. When he lunged at her, she sliced
a piece of the wolf’s flesh near his ear, and he immediately sat
down. Instead of running like the others, he began to
howl.

Brother Michael was only now
arriving on the scene, and when he saw Kelsey’s wounded left hand,
he tore another strip of cloth from his shirt. He handed it to
Kelsey, and she carefully wrapped her injured hand to stop the
bleeding. She knew it was broken because she couldn’t move several
of her fingers, and it was the most painful thing she had ever
felt.

As Bardou continued to howl, the
other wolves stopped fighting and lined up behind him in formation,
sitting down in rows. As they sat down, they each began howling
along. They didn’t stop the chorus until every member of the pack
had retreated from the battle and joined the group sitting in
formation behind their leader.

“Are they done fighting?” Kelsey
asked when it was finally quiet.

“No,” Bardou said. “But I
am.”

“That’s not good enough. This
needs to end.”

“You fight well for one who has
the seed of doubt.”

“What?” Kelsey asked in
confusion.

“The mark on your arm. You have
the seed.”

Kelsey looked down at both of her
arms and hands. She was cut everywhere, but she didn’t feel most of
the pain. The hurt in her hand was too large for her to notice much
else. However, amid all the scratches and bite marks, she spotted
the place where the flower had burned her. The mark was a single
petal again.

“This?” she asked as she held up
her right forearm.

“Yes. We call it ‘the seed.’ Most
who have the mark become cowardly, and the rest of the pack must
destroy that wolf,” Bardou explained.

“No one is going to destroy me,”
Kelsey said defiantly. “Especially not you.”

“I don’t want to destroy
you.”

“You were going to kill us in
order to steal our hope.”

“Yes, but it isn’t for us. We’re
nothing more than slaves. We traded our freedom for our lives, and
now we owe a debt. Our debt is to be paid with hope.”

Kelsey glanced at Brother Michael.
She could barely think because of the pain in her hand, and she
also knew she wasn’t the best person to hold discussions with the
wolves. There were others – and one in particular – who would be
far better at this task.

“Wait here,” Kelsey instructed as
she turned away toward the abbey. “We need to finish what we
started.”

“The battle?” Bardou
asked.

“No,” Kelsey answered over her
shoulder, “the negotiation.”

Chapter