Kestrel momentarily slowed down in shock from witnessing the scene, then started to sink into the water. He began to speed up again, though his legs were starting to ache. He entered the spreading debris field, his head turning in all directions, trying to find survivors, when he accidentally tripped over a floating piece of wood, and fell into the water.
The bridge of his nose smacked against a piece of wood, and he flailed his arms outward, grabbing hold of the offending instrument. It was his bow! The gift from Kere was in his hands once again, with a quiver of arrows strapped to it!
He grabbed hold of the largest piece of wood floating nearby, then caught his breath. There was no sign of any other survivor in the water nearby, from what he could see among the choppy waves.
“Stillwater!” he gasped.
“Kestrel survivor, the human is safe on the roof. Are you ready to join him?” the imp asked.
“Look around and see if you can find any other survivors first,” Kestrel urged, “then come back and get me.”
A minute later the four imps gathered around Kestrel. “There are no others alive,” Canyon said sadly.
“I’m ready to go,” Kestrel said wearily, shocked by the complete elimination of all of his companions. He took a deep breath, then propelled himself up out of the water, still holding his bow, and the imps plastered themselves against him within the moment, then took him in between the worlds as they shifted him to his new location. For several long moments Kestrel felt the cold, dark nothingness of the journey paralyze him, and then he was standing unsteadily atop the flat roof of a building, next to the body of Jenkins, as the setting sun cast red rays without warmth upon him.
Kestrel slumped down to a sitting position. “Let us go get some supplies for you,” Odare suggested anxiously. “Is there anything you particularly need, stranded Kestrel? A journey back to the Eastern Forest?” she asked.
Kestrel looked at her incredulously, then saw the ghost of smile that played across her face.
“Let me talk to Jenkins first,” Kestrel suggested. He straightened the man out, then lightly slapped his cheeks, jostled his shoulder, and otherwise try to rouse the sailor from his unconscious state, without success.
“Take him back to Graylee, to the palace there, and then bring me travel food, and arrows, and a sword,” Kestrel finally spoke to his blue companions, as the sky overhead began to switch from red to a darker hue.
“Would you like some dry clothes too?” Odare asked, as she observed him.
“Were you appointed to be my mother?” Kestrel asked with a grin, the first time he felt anything light in his heart in hours.
“Heaven forbid that!” Odare replied in mock horror, and the others tittered in amusement, as they gathered around the unconscious Jenkins. Within another second they were gone, and Kestrel was alone in the gathering darkness atop a building in a hostile city.
Something had happened on the ship, he was sure. He reflected on the change in the expression of the harbor pilot as the man left the ship; that man had seen something, and that had triggered the attack by the monstrous Viathin, the attack that had killed the entire crew of a ship. He was in shock at the loss of so many men so suddenly, men who had been so good and served his needs so well while sailing the Inner Seas. They were men who had died in service to him, he thought mournfully.
There was a noise that occurred unexpectedly, and Kestrel scrambled to his feet, for the noise was right on the roof with him. The roof was not completely flat; there was a pair of structures built upon it. Kestrel heard the sound come from the far side of one structure, and he darted to hide behind the other. He had his bow and he still had his knife – Lucretia – upon his hip.
He crouched down behind the small wooden structure, an outlet for vents in the building, it seemed, and watched as a woman appeared from the other, larger structure, apparently a stairwell access to the roof. The woman was west of him, and he saw her outline clearly against the dying light of the sunset. Her figure was noticeably pregnant, and her hands were at her face, while her body heaved in sobbing that he could clearly hear. The woman aroused a sense of pity in Kestrel, and he longed to approach her, to offer comfort for the pain she obviously felt, but he cautiously stayed back out of sight.
“Kestrel friend,” Stillwater suddenly spoke behind his back, his voice strained, “we have brought all that you asked for.
Kestrel whirled around to see the imps, each carrying something, landing on the roof next to him.
“Shush,” he warned them. “There’s someone up here.”
They carefully deposited their loads on the roof.
“Thank you, thank you all, for everything,” he whispered. Kestrel spread his arms wide and gathered them all in an embrace. “Go home now, go home and enjoy your time to visit with friends. You have been so good to me these past several months, you’ve earned the right to rest.” He gave Odare a kiss, one that she returned with surprising gusto, and then released them all.
Canyon and Killcen disappeared immediately. “Are you sure this is wise, elf friend?” Stillwater whispered. Kestrel could faintly hear the woman’s sobs at the edge of the roof. “Can you really manage to make this journey to Uniontown without us to protect you and save you?”
“You have needed us so often, so many times, that I worry about you being out in the world without us watching over you,” Odare chimed in.
Kestrel cautiously glanced over at the figure of the women, still bent with her hands covering her tears. “I have had Alicia fix my ears to allow me to blend in here. I’ve been among the humans so many times that I will have no trouble,” he insisted.
The woman had grown silent at last. “And yet even when you have been among the humans, still you have needed us,” Odare rebutted.
The woman was starting to dangle a leg over the balustrade that was constructed all around the roof of the building. Kestrel saw her body moving across the barrier that surrounded the roof. He turned his attention from the conversation with the imps, and began to creep towards the woman stealthily, crouched low, growing worried about her intentions as he heard her still crying while she climbed into a dangerous posture looking down at the street level far below.
“My lady?” Kestrel called out loud as he saw her swing her second leg over the barrier. “My lady, be careful,” he called as he drew near, and saw the woman hunch herself up as though preparing to leap.
She turned to look at him for a moment, with a face that was full of despair, then she turned away, and leapt out from the edge of the roof. Kestrel dashed forward with an outstretched hand, hopelessly wishing that he could grab the woman. “No!” he shouted. “No!”
He reached the edge of the roof, and looked over the balustrade railing, to see the woman plummeting towards her death on the ground several stories below.
“No!” he repeated his cry, profoundly upset by seeing the woman so senselessly throw her life away. His heart ached, and suddenly his insides seemed to flip, as he felt the power within him self-generate itself into an eruption of energy. The outstretched hand flared into brilliance, and a rope of light shot forth from his fingertips, instantly traveling downward to reach the woman in her midair flight and wrap around her, encircling her several times while it halted her plummet as she reached the halfway point between the roof and the ground.
Kestrel raised his hand, and the shining cable of energy began to shorten, raising the woman back up towards the roof. Astonished at what he had done, Kestrel stepped back from the edge, and watched as the power lifted the suicidal jumper back up to the roof, where it deposited her at a spot right next to him.
“Kestrel lord, you have done a mighty thing!” Odare exclaimed.
And at the moment, the woman threw her arm with all her might and slapped him mightily across the face, sending his staggering backwards.
“You fool! Now we’re both going to die, and it won’t be a pleasant death!” she screamed at Kestrel. “Don’t you hear the alarms being sounded?”
Kestrel heard a faint clanging noise, one that he realized came both from outside the building as well as echoing up the stairwell within. “You used some power of the old gods, didn’t you?” she challenged Kestrel.
“And you’ve got these, these pests!” she further accused him as she motioned to the imps.
Kestrel heard the sound of boots running up the stairs. He looked at the woman. “What should we do?”
“We might as well both jump off the roof and kill ourselves! It will be much quicker and less painful than what they’re going to do to us,” she said.
“Odare, Stillwater, are you ready?” Kestrel looked at the imps and asked.
“We are hesitant, Kestrel diver,” Stillwater answered, though Kestrel ignored him; the elf himself began to straddle the railing.
“Come on,” Kestrel urged the woman, reaching out to pull her over the edge of the roof with him.
“You just stopped me from doing this, and now you’re forcing me to?” she asked in astonishment, as Kestrel stood completely on the other side of the railing, his back to the open space behind him. He shifted his hands swiftly from holding her hands to awkwardly grasping her hips.
“Jump!” he shouted, as he heard the door to the stairway start to open. Startled, the woman obeyed, and Kestrel’s arms lifted her, boosting her leap, as he began to fall backwards with her in his arms.
The two of them began to tumble through the air, hurtling downward at a rapid speed, until suddenly four imps were beneath Kestrel, breaking his fall, rapidly decelerating the fall of the couple, so that they landed roughly on their feet. Kestrel absorbed the abrupt contact, cushioning the woman’s weight as he went down to his knees, and they landed in a filthy alleyway.
“Gods above and below!” the woman exclaimed. “Who could have ever seen that coming?”
Kestrel looked at the four imps who hovered nearby, looking haggard from their heroic efforts to break the fall of the two larger beings. “Thank you. Thank you all. Thank you for coming back Canyon and Killcen, and thank you for staying, Stillwater and Odare.”
“I think I am pleased that you had such great faith in us, Kestrel great and heavy load,” Odare replied. “You don’t have to rely on us quite so heavily, you know.”
“It just shows how much you need to have us with you,” Stillwater chimed in.
“This is touching,” the unknown woman spoke up sarcastically. “I’m going to run for my life, and you should too,” she said, and she began to ponderously, slowly, leave them.
As she left the mouth of the alley, Kestrel started to follow after her, then started sprinting towards her as he saw a pair of men grab her suddenly and pull her out of sight around the corner.
Kestrel drew his sword and turned the corner to find four men in red robes hurrying the woman away.
“Stop! Release her!” he ordered, and strode towards the group as the imps rose in the air to shadow him from above. He was reacting impulsively, he knew, for he certainly owed the woman no allegiance, but the woman’s plight, her desperate effort to commit suicide, still compelled his sympathy.
“Bring him too,” one of the men in the robes ordered, and two of the men turned towards Kestrel. “Or kill him, if that’s easier,” the leader added.
One of Kestrel’s two opponents held his sword competently, while the other seemed unfamiliar and uncomfortable with the weapon in his hand. Kestrel pulled his own new sword, just delivered by the imps, then chose the less prepared man as his first target, and angled abruptly towards the man, making him a shield in the way of the other opponent as Kestrel swung and stabbed a brief flurry of slices and jabs that caused the weaker warrior to drop his sword and double over in pain and fear.
The other fighter, the competent one, stepped around his ally and faced Kestrel cautiously, mindful of Kestrel’s quick success. He circled wide, and Kestrel revolved with him, keeping his eye on the man, as he heard the other two men continue to scuffle away with the woman; the sounds indicated that she was struggling against them, as he heard oaths flying liberally through the air.
“You choose wisely in your first attack,” his cautious opponent suddenly spoke to him. “Was that intentional or just lucky?”
“He was the obvious choice to remove from the battle,” Kestrel answered, then berated himself for being drawn into a conversation. He was not there to be distracted by small talk with a man who wanted to kill him. In anger, Kestrel flipped the point of his sword at the man, then added a slicing motion, as the red-robed fighter backed away.
“There, that should be just about enough,” the man said as he cautiously moved his feet and stayed just inches beyond Kestrel’s reach.
“Enough what?” Kestrel couldn’t help himself from asking.
“Enough time,” the man said. “You were smart to attack the sorcerer first, but you weren’t smart enough to kill him.”
And at that moment there was a flash of bright red light from behind Kestrel. His opponent stabbed his blade forward and pierced Kestrel’s thigh as the elf blinked in confusion at the intense light, and wildly swung his blade blindly.
Kestrel felt his blade strike his opponent, even as he felt the piercing pain in his leg, causing his leg to start to collapse. He steadied himself, then reversed the motion of his arm to swing his blade backwards, and struck his opponent again, eliciting a cry of agony. At the same time Kestrel heard cries of shock and pain behind him from the men who had taken the woman.
Still blinking, Kestrel fell to his knees in pain, then cleared his vision and saw his opponent down on the ground, dead. He clamped his hand over his wound, and turned to see the imps attacking the sorcerer behind him – the man who had apparently created the blinding flash of light – as well as the men who had dragged the woman halfway down the street.
Kestrel shook his head, and gingerly staggered over to where the sorcerer had picked up his sword and was trying to fight off the pair of imps that attacked him. “Fight someone your own size,” Kestrel told the man in a low voice, then pierced his chest with his sword, before he painfully limped towards the other small struggle on the street.
“Leave her be, and go away,” Kestrel told the two men as he approached the trio who were grappling with each other on the street.
The men looked at Kestrel’s sword, and saw the two men dead in the alley behind him. One of them released the woman and backed up, then started shouting for help. “Here! The intruder is here! The apostate is here! Help us, help us protect the temple!” while his companion held the pregnant woman in front of himself as a shield.
Drop your weapon or she dies right now!” the hostage-taker shouted, pulling a knife out of his belt and holding it at the woman’s neck.
Kestrel looked at the woman, and the two men, the carefully bent and placed his sword on the ground, while covertly moving his hand to his hip, placing it on the hilt of his knife. As he slowly stood up again, he heard the sound of a pair of bowstrings released, and then he staggered backwards as two arrows were fired at him from a squad of archers that were running towards the escalating violence.
The arrows struck his chest and bounced off his protective skin as he fell backwards and simultaneously released his knife so that it flew at the man holding Kestrel’s unwilling companion in flight.
Kestrel hit the dirty pavement behind him, and heard the woman scream. He rubbed his hand over his face and sat up, to see the woman bent over, screaming but safe, His leg ached as he stretched the wound while rising to his feet. “Stillwater! Are you and your imps okay?” he called as he limped towards the woman.
“Lucretia, return!” he called.
“We are unharmed, Kestrel fighter!” Stillwater and the other imps came swooping down towards him. “Are you ready to leave this place?”
Kestrel saw the archers forming a line, preparing to fire a deadly volley of arrows.
“Come take us,” Kestrel urged the imps as he reached the woman and encircled her awkwardly in his arms.
“Where shall we go?” Odare asked as the imps began to surround their two passengers.
“Leave me alone! Who are you?” the woman shouted.
“Now! Anywhere! Go anywhere!” Kestrel shouted to the imps as he saw the archer’s release their arrows.
And then the gray emptiness between dimensions swallowed him up.
Seconds later the group emerged on the lawn beside the waters of the healing spring, as the woman continued the scream that she had begun back in Lakeview, until Kestrel clamped his hand over her mouth momentarily. “Where are we?” she whispered as she looked at the dark forest glade they had landed in.
“We saw that you were injured, and came here for your sake,” Killcen said immediately.
“I know that you were only thinking of me,” Kestrel said drily, as he watched the imps begin to undress. “You have time for a short nap, but we can’t stay here all night,” he warned them.
“You speak their language? What are you?” the woman asked.
“This place is a spring whose water is magical; it can heal any illness or injury,” Kestrel explained. “You should soak in the waters for a little while, before the imps take us back to Lakeview. Do you want to go back to Lakeview?” he belatedly asked.
The woman looked down at the bleeding slice in Kestrel’s leg. “You need the water more than I do,” she replied.
“I,” Kestrel stammered, “I cannot enter the water now. The water would heal this,” his hand swept down his thigh, “but I have other things that I cannot allow the water to heal.”
He turned his back to the woman as he bent and carefully positioned the imps in the water, immediately adjacent to the shoreline.
“If you do not get in the water, then how am I to believe it is safe for me?” the woman asked. “Who are you?”
“My name is Kestrel. What is your name?” Kestrel asked.
The Inner Seas Kingdoms: 05 - Journey to Uniontown Page 10
