The Lord Son's Travels (42 page)

   
Elenna didn’t even try to go
back to sleep that night.
 
She
alternated between gazing at the new sword and her newly scarred back in her
small compact mirror.
 
The castle
was silent at night; a stillness as a city girl she had never known.
 
She wished a car horn would beep or
crickets or something would break the stillness.
 
She wished for anything that would make home not so far away
or the night so strange, or to help her understand her new crazy emotions that
had arrived with the new weapon.

Chapter 39

The
next day was not the nightmare he had feared; when he met Elenna at breakfast
he merely gave his normal unemotional greeting.
 
Whatever she felt she kept to herself; she returned his
neutral tone.
 
After eating, the
Allé-dônian leadership met again.
 
Tarien was as surprised as the others that Elenna had been chosen a
Bearer.
 
He said very little, but
stared into space for long periods of time as the others debated their plans.
By the time of the evening meal the knot in Adrien’s stomach had loosened
enough to calmly sit with her to discuss her new mark and its progress towards
healing.
 

   
After two days filled with
difficult and tedious public discussions of the next stage in their journey,
and a few more private hours of silent pondering of his new and confusing
emotions involving his traveling companion, Adrien decided her new cuts had
healed well enough to plan their departure from the castle, and it was time for
her first lesson with Midiral.
 
After the final meeting of the leadership for the day, Adrien led Elenna
to the practice field, and with a businesslike air demonstrated how to call for
and send away Midiral.
 
The hardest
part was catching the sudden weight at the appearance of the weapon; Midiral
still weighed the same as any other sword, and the first several times she made
the call the sudden mass threw Elenna suddenly and violently off-kilter.
 
Adrien admitted to the same difficulties
at first with
Arèal
, and promised with
practice she would become much more graceful in the movement.
 
Elenna was rather pleased to learn she now
had a vibrant shade of green as her own color to wear and would no longer be
stuck with shades of beige.
 
He
promised to have a ceremonial green gown made for her in Evendor, to compare
with the colored blouses he and the other Bearers wore.
 
After the first hour of practice, the
last bit of wariness in their interactions had disappeared.
 
As the walked back to the main building
for noon meal, Adrien regaled her with stories of the Neda Alia and the battles
they had waged and always won.
 
She
listened with acute interest, especially when the stories contained mentions of
Midiral.
 
Adrien was actually a
good storyteller when the subject interested him, and he was very grateful to
her for if not forgiving at least pretending to forget his crazy
indiscretion.
 
Elenna didn’t seem
to hold any bad feelings against him; that was all that he had hoped for after
his actions.
 
It never occurred to
him that perhaps she didn't regret their hasty actions that night at all, and
was troubled only by the revelation then sudden loss of his affections.

Then
it was their final day in the castle before the ride to Evendor.
 
Their road was dangerous; the monsters
had been reported to have overtaken many towns and valleys along the way.
 
They decided that Tarien and his men
would take the longer but safer route to the north-west.
 
There were stories of elves camping in
that direction, and with a letter from Adrien as introduction the men should be
safely escorted to their rendezvous in Evendor.
 
Brendan, Elenna, and Adrien would be accompanied by a small
group of soldiers on their journey, all dressed as common refugees.
 
Their road to Evendor would be filled
with homeless wanderers seeking shelter, so they should be able to pass unnoticed.
 

The
last meal passed agreeably; Driad was sorry to be losing his guests.
 
He promised to pay a visit with his
family back to Allè-dènè when the war was ended.
 
All of their provisions had been organized and rides
obtained, so that evening all they had to do was prepare their personal baggage
for an early departure.

The
road was filled with travelers heading to the Lady’s City, many in wagons
carrying all of the possessions they could salvage from their abandoned
homes.
 
Several had brought cows;
each animal tied to the wagon by rope or herded along by a member of the
family.
 
A few families had joined
together in bigger bands for protection.
 
Their group received several offers to join with others but were
politely but immediately refused.
 
A couple of times Brendan visited with some of the other travelers to
seek information.
 
No one knew
anything more than they had already learned before their departure,
though.
 

Several
times that day they encountered bands of patrolling monsters coming from the other
way.
 
Usually they ignored the
humans, but in the afternoon one of the monsters was hungry, and snatched a
young boy who had been trailing behind an overloaded wagon.
 
Adrien ordered immediately that no one
was to respond, with a reminder of the futility of starting a fight when
outnumbered.
 
The soldiers muttered
amongst themselves; Brendan gripped his sword hilt and Elenna had to hum a song
to keep herself from thinking the words that would bring Midiral. After the
monsters had passed, no one spoke of the incident, but dinner was only bread
and water and eaten silently.

During
the next two days of riding, the forests waned from deep and lush to open
savannahs, then finally to desert.
 
The daily temperature grew from comfortable to warm, but the nights
stayed cool.
 
They slept around a
fire at night, as the guards took turns on duty.
 
This morning Adrien estimated was the half-way point in the
journey.
 
At the morning meal,
Brendan told Elenna what little he knew about Evendor.
 
He had been told that the city itself
was very beautiful; some of the students who had snuck into Allé-dôn to recruit
believers talked of it as a floating city surrounded by clouds.
 

“What
is that?” one of the soldiers interrupted.
 
He pointed to the south.
 
The land was desolate; they could see for miles to the flat
sandy horizon.
 
The north had a few
rolling hills with traces of vegetation.
 
It was to one of the hills he pointed.
 
There were no other travelers in sight; most of them were
also still camped further along the road.
 

Adrien
turned in the direction the man pointed.
 
“I see nothing,” he said.
 
As if his words were a cue a half-dozen men leaped from behind patch of
shrubs only yards away and rushed at them, brandishing their weapons and
shouting threats.
 
The camp flew into
an uproar as the men reached for their weapons.
 
Elenna felt the heat from the flash of Midiral arriving in
her outstretched arms.
 
She took a
deep breath to steady herself, as the wave of attackers neared.
 

The
battle was intense.
 
These men,
whoever they were, were very well-trained fighters, much better then the
monsters she had faced before.
 
She
allowed her instinct to take over.
 
Behind her one of the soldiers screamed as he was gutted by a swung
blade.
 
Elenna swung around to
avenge him, but not before the attacker had killed another of the guards.
 
Only one of the soldiers was left to
stand beside her, Brendan and Adrien. The last attacker lunged and nearly
reached Adrien, who leaped aside barely in time to avoid the falling blade.
 
As Brendan jumped protectively in front
of him another of the attackers took advantage.
 
He sliced deep into Brendan’s right arm above the
elbow.
 
Brendan collapsed to the
ground with a howl of anguish, trying to contain the resulting spray of blood
with the fingers of his other hand.
 
Adrien roared in fury and fell upon his attacker, dispatching him with a
series of violent blows, while the remaining soldier stood guard against
further attacks.
 
Elenna dropped to
her knees next to Brendan, who had clenched his eyes closed and moaned in
agony.
 

"More
are arriving, Lord Son," the soldier announced darkly.
 
He pointed towards the far hills.
 
Adrien acknowledged this with a
muttered curse, and ordered Elenna to return to her feet.

“What…”

“Send
Midiral away and help me find a place to hide our bags.”

“Why…”
 
He pointed to the hills.
 
Over two dozen men were now spread out
in a line approaching quickly with weapons at the ready.
 
“We can’t let them take your books or
the new weapons.”

Elenna
picked up her backpack and frowned as she studied the local area.
 
There were no rocks, trees, or any
other decent place to hide her bag out of sight of the approaching men.
 
When he realized her dilemma, Adrien
hurriedly devised a back-up plan.
 
He grabbed the bag from her hands and instead fastened it to the saddle
of the nearest horse.
 
When he was
sure it was secured well enough for rough traveling he ordered the remaining
soldier to mount and continue onward to Evendor. "Tell anyone who asks
this bag belongs to the Lord Son of
Allè-dôn
and must be protected." The soldier complied with the command despite his
obvious preference to stay to guard the royalborn from the coming
attackers.
 
The horse whinnied as
they galloped off in the same direction they had been heading.

“He’ll
make it safely to Evendor, I hope,” Adrien explained.
 
“The Lady of Evendor would respect the personal property of
a royalborn and leave the contents unexamined.” Now he could finally kneel down
next to his friend and finish examining the injury.
 
Throughout their conversation about the backpack, Brendan
had been focused on covering the wound tightly with his bare hands trying to
diminish the heavy flow of blood.
 
Adrien helped him sit up long enough to roughly pull his shirt over his
head.
 
He then ripped off one of
the arms to tie around Brendan's bicep as a tourniquet to stop the bleeding,
and had Elenna fold up the rest of the material to hold against the deep gash
as a bandage.
 
She allowed Brendan
to lean against her for support, as Adrien rose again to his feet with a scowl.

“Who
are these people?”
 
Elenna
demanded.

Adrien
grimaced.
 
“Slave traders.”
 
The band of traders had reached their
camp.
 
Adrien picked up one of the
swords of the fallen soldiers and held it high in silent warning as the
arrivals formed a circle around the three of them.

The
leader of the group glanced around as he dropped down from his mount.
  
“Take the horses and supplies,”
he called back to one of his men.
 
“They’ll be useful.”
 
He
turned his attention to the small group of survivors.
 
“The injured man can remain here.
 
He'll be no use to anyone I think.”
 
Several of his men approached Adrien;
enough of an unbalanced fight that he lowered his blade in response.

 
The leader smiled brightly in happy
surprise at the third member of the party.
 
“Tis a woman!
 
How lucky!
 
Been a while
since I’ve had one of those.”
 
He
approached Elenna and examined her like a used car on a disreputable lot.
 
“She’s a valuable find. The bosses will
like her.”
 
Now his grin revealed a
set of rotting teeth.
 
“Though she
will be a little coarser for use, eh, my friends?”
 
He poked her roughly in the shoulder, then grimaced in
astonishment and sudden pain as she reached out to grab his fingers and firmly
twisted.
 

Two
of the other bandits arrived quickly to pull her to her feet and away from
Brendan.
 
The leader tested his
fingers and nodded with relief that none were broken.
 
Her companions watched helplessly as the leader approached
her again, this time with her hands firmly secured in the tight grasp of his men.
 
He twiddled his fingers in the locks of
hair that had come loose from her braid during the fight.
 
“You're a wild little thing, aren't
you?"
 
He glanced down at her
traveling clothes.
 
"Wearing
britches.
 
You must like the feel
of something between your legs, eh?”
 
Elenna snarled and tried to break free.
 
The leader smiled as a thought occurred.
 
“Maybe I should take you now and lessen
some of the fight in you.”