((Been a long time since I stretched my writing muscles. Be kind as you rip my stuff apart k thx! ))
The young woman lay pressed against the earth, her head raised just enough over the low rise to allow her an unfettered view.
There must be over three hundred by now.
With practiced patience she studies their movements, the walls, the grass. The sun sinks low.
With darkness comes greater risk. If I am to go it must be now, with the sun at my back.
With elbows and knees she pushes herself backward down the slope. Rising to a low crouch she hastens her pace, moving west to where she left the horse.
The animal is sound, and he has heart, but for this? Will he balk when he smells their stench all around him? He is no steed of the Shaar, after all. I must not let him feel my doubt...
Steeling her resolve, she speaks softly to her mount, bolstering his nerve with her own. She leaps lightly into the saddle, a slight wince the only evidence that the wound in her side has opened and is causing her discomfort. Despite the dressing, she was losing blood.
With her right hand she clasps a long staff with a wickedly sharp blade at either end close to her thigh. The fingers of her left hand encircle the reins almost as an afterthought. With pressure of knee and calf and slight shifts in body weight, she moves the horse into a canter, lengthening into a full gallop directly toward the gathered forces. Bending low over her mount's outstretched neck, she sights her goal and races toward it.
They have not yet seen me. In another moment, I will be among them...
Shrieks of surprise turn to howls of outrage as horse and rider rip through the goblin camp, amongst them and beyond them before they can do more than yell out a warning. The horse snorts, his eyes rolling wildly, but she is ready for this and digs her heels into his flanks, shouting words of incitement.
Close now. We must not falter...
Warned by the clamor of their comrades, those ahead are more prepared. Arrows fly through the air around her. A snarl reaches her ear through the din; something new presses behind. She steals a quick look over her shoulder. A worg closes the distance, its jaws open, the lust of the hunt in its eyes. She turns her head forward and urges the horse to greater speed, but he is already giving all he has.
Focus on the gate. Do not look back again...
Thundering within bow range of the wall, she is suddenly aware of the hot breath of the worg near her calf. As quickly as she perceives the beast, it is gone, its bulk slamming into the ground behind her as the men of the fort riddle it with arrows. With the battle-damaged gate only strides away, she leans forward in the saddle, rising up on the balls of her feet in the stirrups as she feels the muscles of the horse tense against her legs, preparing to spring.
A hard landing and he continues running. Pushing all her weight backward to slow the charge, the horse slides to an abrupt stop, throwing her against his neck.
Dizzy from loss of blood both from the dressed wound and an arrow which found its mark, the young woman slowly slides from the saddle, falling to the ground.
"What in the nine hells were you doing out there?!"
Durgan's gruff bellow comes to her through her haze and she becomes dimly aware that Tarrent has pressed a small vial into her hand.
I'll have to tell them help may be coming, though it may not be in a form they will recognize.
The heat of the burning mound rose in waves, distorting the faces of those gathered around the funeral pyre. Her face wooden, Tala watched as the flames greedily consumed the two bodies; one who, in life, was her lover and one with whom she had shared a wordless understanding.
Her green eyes followed bits of ash and spark borne aloft on the warm currents.
The same currents on which falcons fly carry your spirits to the gods
They held a vigil through the night, sharing silent understanding. The friendship and support she felt from them made it more difficult than expected to say goodbye...
A loud rumbling reaches Tala's ears and she tenses, looking for the source. Pulled from her recollections of the recent past, she realizes the noise issued from her own belly and she relaxes, her wary look replaced with one of resignation.
"Thinking on what was does nothing for what is" she quotes aloud to the emptiness of her camp.
The crickets are indifferent to her mother's saying, as is her hand, which continued to throb dully.
The sun had risen six times since the dawn she left the coster fort. Several times since she had tried to supplement her meager rations with fresh game, a simple matter for her, normally. Hunger gnawed at her.
I have lost focus, or maybe the will.
Her eyes drift to her side and rest on Tarrent's bastard sword, the firelight picking out the detail on the hilt - a falcon flying over the rising sun.
So much that we shared, and yet so different. Yours was to recover the falcon, while mine was to leave it behind.
She brushes her fingers lightly over the engraved image and smiles bitterly.
I will never forget the falcons wheeling overhead, set free so they would not be taken, while their keepers bled into the earth below them rather than submit their way of life.
Closing her eyes tight, she hovers over the sword... over the memory.
She pushes her mother's voice from her head.
You paid for your mistakes with their lives - and your own. I almost lost Pyrh by following your ways, upholding your ideals...
Opening her eyes, she lets out a long, slow breath and looks into the embers of her campfire.
I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn't arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I'm going to be happy in it.~~Groucho Marx
Tala leans over with her hands on her knees, studying the still-steaming entrails of a rabbit laid out on a rock.
I never was very good at this... Now what did Vanel use to say? If the intestines spill out tightly coiled you should go North...or was it East? Gah! I can't see a damn thing in this mess!
"Going to find it in the guts?"
Grabbing her two-bladed sword and jumping backward into a ready stance, Tala's eyes fly to the source of the voice. Surprisingly, it belongs to a human woman, small but well-muscled, with blond hair hanging loose and long down her back. The woman was smiling casually at Tala, sitting in the grass on a tall embankment not twenty feet from where Tala had gutted the rabbit only moments before.
A flush rose in Tala's cheeks as she glances at the entrails, then back to the woman.
How did she know...
"I've seen you out here," the woman stated simply. "A few days."
Tala glanced around doubtfully.
"Well," seeing the look on Tala's face she gestured expansively, "here."
Seeing that she was unarmed and feeling certain that this woman was alone, Tala relaxed her guard and moved in closer.
"What are you doing out here, in these wilds?" Tala asked, cautiously. "There are no human settlements near here."
"I just like to be out and away from things," smiled the woman. "But you," she continued, "you move like you have someplace to go. And yet you are still here." Her gaze rested on Tala, studying her knowingly.
Tala deliberately set her weapon down and unsheathed her hunting knife, setting to work skinning the rabbit.
How long has she been watching me? Why?
The woman watched Tala work for several moments before speaking again.
"I have a friend who is much like you," she offered.
I will not let this woman, whoever she is, keep me from my meal. I will not let her think she has flustered me.
"Oh?" Tala replied. "What is 'like me'?"
"Well he isn't much for words," she replied with a smirk. "Definitive action suits him. He has a mind to go for something and then... he gets it.
Without fanfare, without fuss."
Tala began to sharpen a stick into a makeshift spit, glancing up at the woman occasionally with a neutral expression.
"He moves through the world with his eyes in front," the woman continued, her eyes watching Tala's progress. "Always on the quarry. And he always gets it. I have never seen him miss. But at what cost, that focus?"
"Not an empty belly, at the least," Tala commented, laying the rabbit over the coals of her campfire.
"No," she agreed. "But I wonder how much of the world he doesn't see, with his eyes so narrowly focused. So lost in protecting, he has lost the ability to enjoy the things he holds most dear... the very things he fights for. But he always gets his man. I suppose he can be proud of that."
Tala looked up from the rabbit, curious despite her misgivings. "Maybe he does not need to enjoy these things. Maybe it is the work itself he enjoys."
Perhaps she is crazed with loneliness and only wishes to have some company. She would not be the first.
Fat dripped off the rabbit and sizzled on the rocks.
"Maybe," the woman conceded, skepticism in her voice. "I think I'd like to see him laugh, though. To not only do as he does... but remember why."
"Has he forgotten why then?" Tala asked, turning the rabbit on the spit.
"He has stopped noticing the things he protects, the things he loves," she said, sadness in her voice. "He finds what he is looking for, and then moves on to the next task. And there is always a next task. And he goes, alone."
Tala frowned, thinking on her words.
At least he knows what his place is.
The woman smiled at Tala from her perch. "He's lost his sense of place. This is what I'm saying."
Tala blinked.
She did not just...she could not have...
The woman continued on with no indication whether she noticed Tala's change in expression, and Tala schooled her face back to impassivity.
I am jumping to conclusions, she is just a woman.
"His place is with us, together protecting the things we all love and hold dear," the woman was saying, her eyes taking in the forest around them as she spoke. "When he is gone from us, we lose his contribution to our own efforts. His abilities are less than what they could be because he relies only on himself. What I am saying is that he has lost sight of what he loves and therefore cannot truly protect it, because he has lost the sense of what it is worth."
The woman looked directly at Tala, her blue eyes like deep pools of perfectly still water. "If he forgets what he is fighting for, then how will he fight for it?"
Tala met her gaze with difficulty. "It...it is enough to fight for your life, and live to fight another day." The words fell like ash from Tala's lips. Recited on the Shaar almost as a prayer, the statement suddenly felt like an absurdity to her.
The woman nodded and smiled grimly. "That is how the rabbit felt," she said quietly, looking to the rabbit roasting over Tala's fire.
"It eats and ruts and flees predators," she continued, looking back to Tala. "And when its fellow is caught in the jaws of the wolf, it is alright. For he has survived and will live another day."
Tala remained silent, her lips compressed.
"So maybe it is enough," mused the woman. "But not today, for that rabbit. I wonder how his fellows will mourn his passing..."
"By rejoicing," Tala supplied, a grin growing on her face. "More grass for them."
The woman shared Tala's grin and breathed quietly, "Were we only so simple."
Arranging her hair about her shoulders, the woman smoothly rose to her feet and leaped off the embankment, over Tala's head. She landed lightly, on her feet.
"Be well, Tala. And always remember the rabbit."
Tala watched in stunned silence as she moved off into the forest at a speed unnatural for a human.
There are many strange things in this world. I am not meant to understand all or most of them.
Despite the strange visitor, Tala slept deeply that night. Her usual wariness was replaced with a sense of ease, as if for once no dangers lurked in the wilds. A full stomach for the first night in seven didn't hurt, either.
Awake at the first touch of dawn, Tala determined to track her mysterious visitor. Beginning where the woman sat, she slowly and methodically searched the ground for her tracks.
Nothing human, anywhere. But what are these?
Tala gently parted the grass and touched her fingers to the moist earth, outlining the shape of first one cloven hoof, then another, then another. Even as she found them the imprints began to fade from her sight, the grass springing back into shape as if it had never been flattened.
With a furrowed brow she watched as all around her, the tracks vanished.
The night sky was devoid of a moon, the stars taking advantage of her absence to create a brilliantly layered tapestry of beasts and heroes and swirling vortexes upon the black canvas.
Tala lay on her back, admiring the art.
Several days had passed and there had been no sign of the mysterious woman with the penetrating words. Several days had passed and Tala remained camped in the same spot, her progress stifled as she questioned the reasons why she sought the destination she had determined was her path.
I have learned much about them, since that day. They are many, an entire city. I am one. What do I do when I get there? Challenge their leader? The outcome would change nothing, except that I may be dead, for vengeance. Jodam would not have wanted it that way. Tarrent did not want it that way, I am sure. I will end up like Zuna if I continue on this path. It is becoming an all-too familar one.
Her eyes followed a shooting star as it blazed through the night, finally winking out of existence.
If Pyrh were here, she would tell me to lighten up.
A smile graced her lips as Tala thought of her little sister.
How she could make me laugh! Always joking, playing pranks. The council thought she must be touched, to suffer so much sickness but still laugh and joke. She told them, "If I don't laugh, i'll cry, and that's no kind of a life at all"
Tala closed her eyes and let the memories wash over her.
I remember the time you filled everyone's canteens with dye that turned all our lips and teeth purple. And when you painted smiles and flowers with ochre all over Mother's favorite horse. And, oh! The time you slipped all those fragile stink beetle sacks you so carefully collected under a grass mat in Corel's tent after she insulted me. The way she burst out of her tent, flailing her arms and crying from the stink! No one would go near her for a week!
Tala laughed out loud into the night, remembering. A startled bird took flight near by. Her laughter escalated, echoing off the trees, becoming cathartic, tears streaming down her cheeks.
Slowly, she caught her breath, laughter subsiding. She scrubbed her hands across her face, hugged her knees to her chest and looked around at her surroundings with a small sigh.
The night remained as it had been. The silence and the solitude settled onto her shoulders like a heavy cloak.
FanaticusIncendi wrote:"If I don't laugh, i'll cry, and that's no kind of a life at all"
Wonderful!
I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn't arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I'm going to be happy in it.~~Groucho Marx
))
