Twenty seconds later he was planting his feet on the far side of the canyon, and waving with a grin back at the two who remained behind.
“You didn’t expect that, did you?” Greta asked Kestrel. Though they were on friendly terms, the gnome maiden rarely spoke to Kestrel.
“No, I didn’t,” Kestrel admitted. “Now, let me show you the elven way to handle this.” He grinned at her. He placed his bow back on his shoulder, then grabbed the rope for a moment to prepare himself. He crouched, then jumped upward, and heard a satisfying squeak of surprise from Greta as he launched himself up on top of the rope, and began to run briskly atop the rope like a tightrope walker, using his elven speed, light weight, and sense of tree-branch travel balance to easily stride along atop the rope.
In half a minute he crossed the canyon and jumped down to the top of the canyon next to Hansen, then gave a bow.
“Bravo, sir elf,” Hansen said as he clapped. “It seems that we’re both full of surprises.”
And then he gave a shout, as he looked out at the rope bridge and saw Greta’s hand slip off the rope as she began her crossing, and plummeted downward towards the river.
“Greta! No!” he shouted, as Kestrel reached out to grab his shoulder.
They both watched the horrific scene as the girl’s body plunged through empty space and hit the water below. She went deep below the surface of the river in a calm stretch of water, then rose back to the top in a matter of seconds.
“She’s still alive!” Hansen shouted as they saw her feebly move her arms. “But how long can she live in the river?” he pointed to a distant plume of mist, a sign of a set of rapids towards which Greta was floating. “It is the curse of the Garrant Spark; one of us must die.”
“Not her. Not today,” Kestrel said through clenched teeth, horrified by what he had seen. He stripped off his bow and arrows, his pack, his boots, and even his cloak and shirt. “You try to keep an eye on us, and bring my things,” Kestrel said as he stood on the edge of the precipice, then suddenly jumped far out away from the cliff, and began to fall quickly towards the river below.
His dive was awkward but successful in allowing him to knife safely into the water, and he rose back to the surface in the middle of his own upward-bound shower of air bubbles. He spread his arms as he reached the surface and gave a thrust to raise himself above the water, then began to churn his legs aggressively, seeking to create the speed to allow him to reach and run atop the surface of the water.
He felt himself rise up quickly as his light body and speed joined to allow him to race atop the river’s pool of water, and he hastily started heading downstream, towards where he expected to find Greta. He ran for several yards, then looked up over his shoulder for a moment, and spotted the thin rope line that spanned the top of the canyon, but failed to find Hansen’s figure before he turned his head to look again for Greta.
The plume of mist was closer than he realized, and the roar of the water was growing rapidly in volume as Kestrel and the river approached the tumult ahead. He spotted Greta’s head, and immediately angled towards her. “Grab my hand!” he shouted as he approached her, and he saw her head turn to spot him.
She raised one arm, and he bent down to grasp it as he focused on pushing his legs to keep churning and moving rapidly while the shock of her added weight and drag hit him like a ship’s anchor suddenly catching in the bottom of the sea.
Kestrel felt her jerk forward as the two of them grabbed tightly onto each other, and he slowed. The water rose to his ankles, and then to his knees, as Greta started to move forward with him.
There was suddenly a rock in front of him, a sentinel in the midst of the river, and Kestrel angled to avoid dragging Greta across the rock as he planted his right foot on it and rose higher out of the river with a little leap that made Greta wildly swing up into the air. He reached for her with his other hand as she flew around him with her momentum, and then he hugged her tightly to his chest, just as they began to enter the foaming, roaring, misty rapids of the river.
“Thank you Kestrel! Thank you! I owe you everything!” he distantly heard her say as he focused on the danger-fraught path ahead. Another large boulder jutted upward like a roadblock directly in front of him, looming suddenly out of the mist, and Kestrel squeezed Greta against his chest as he made a desperate spinning move to avoid hitting the stone, one that caused Greta to tighten her hug around his shoulders. His foot slipped on one of the other tumbled stones in the rapids, and he had to spin again unexpectedly, then found that he was running directly towards the side of the cliff.
He spotted a small sandy beach just a few feet wide and a few feet long, nestled between the foot of the cliff and the foaming river water. His legs were starting to ache, and suddenly he thought that the beach was a refuge where he could stop and catch his breath was the best place to go, if he could manage the arrival.
“Brace yourself!” he told Greta, then put on a last sprinting burst of speed to allow him to travel sideways across the water’s current. The moment his first foot touched the sand he tried to slow down, then twirled his body to cushion Greta from the impact, as he slammed into the cliff wall, and felt her body press against his like a hammer. His head hit the stones behind him, and he momentarily blacked out, then slid downward as his arms released Greta and she rolled to the ground and landed awkwardly.
They both sat on the sand in silence for the span of three heartbeats. “Are you okay?” Greta spoke first, turning and placing her fingers on Kestrel’s cheek as she stared at him.
He opened his eyes and stared at her, then smiled. “That was a thrill, wasn’t it?” he laughed.
She kissed him with delight. “I can’t believe I just did that!” she blurted out.
“The pleasure was all mine,” Kestrel said gallantly, surprised as well by the adrenaline-fed rush they each felt and reacted to. “But don’t think you have to dive into the river again to get a kiss!”
The both laughed together. “Thank you for saving me Kestrel,” Greta said. “I never expected to be rescued. My heart jumped out of my chest when I heard your voice.
“So, what do we do now?” she asked a moment later.
Kestrel slowly stood up, and looked up and down the river. The mists of the rapids made any long views impossible. “I’d say we should try to go down river through the rapids and try to find a way to get to the other side of the river, then try to find a way up to the top. After that, we’ll just need to rendezvous with Hansen, and that will be the easiest part,” he said, as they both felt the Garrant Spark’s unerring tie point them in the direction of the third partner in their quest.
“Let me get my breath for a couple of minutes, and I’ll be ready to go,” he added.
“Take your time,” Greta said. “I’m going to see if there’s anything salvageable in my pack,” she said as she knelt and started to empty out the water-soaked contents.
“Are you hungry?” she asked, holding up a soggy piece of salted meat. “We better eat these now because they’re only going to get worse.”
Kestrel dutifully took the proffered piece of meat and began to gnaw on it, as he watched Greta’s pile of discards grow on the sand. He took a deep breath, and felt ready to undertake the next stage of their journey.
“Let’s get going,” he said. “Climb on my back this time,” he told her. Kestrel crouched down, and Greta climbed on, as Kestrel looked ahead and tried to plan the first few steps he would take into the mists as he tried to maneuver them to get back to the east bank of the river.
“Here we go,” he spoke back over his shoulder in warning, then ran along the strand as he picked up speed. He took his first step on the water and began to move among the stones and pools of flat water as the spray from the rapids showered the pair of them with additional moisture. They moved back and forth, following the river down its flow, and managed to reach the side of the water where they could see the east cliff and river bank clearly.
Kestrel spotted a st
eep ravine that sprayed a small stream’s outlet into the river. It was the first break in the sheer side of the cliff Kestrel had seen, and he cut rapidly over to his right. A pile of debris directly below the ravine offered a narrow opportunity for Kestrel to come to a stop and put them in position to begin to climb upward.
He began to slow down just before reaching the stones and logs that rested in the river bed, and immediately sank up to his knees. He bent forward and used his hands to help absorb the impact with the debris pile, then lay down flat and came to an abrupt stop, panting in exhaustion from the trying run over the river with Greta on his back.
“We’re going to climb up here?” Greta asked as she scrambled off Kestrel’s back them turned and offered a hand to help him up.
“It’s the first opportunity I saw to try to go up,” he answered.
“Let me give you a boost, and you go look up to see if you think we can get back to Hansen by climbing up this,” Kestrel told her. He cupped his hands and lifted her up into the water that came gushing down, a small but quick-flowing stream of water. Greta coughed as she took a mouthful of the stream’s flow, then she was further into the water, grabbed onto something that let her step out of Kestrel’s stirrup, and rose up entirely into the gash that held the stream.
“It’s steep, but I think we can go quite a ways up,” she shouted down to Kestrel after thirty seconds of exploring.
“I’m coming up,” he told her, and propped a log at an angle so that he could scramble up out of the river bed and into the stream.
He made it through the stream, then stood in the ravine, stooped over with his hands on the ground in front of him, the water spouting downward between his legs as he stood and looked up at Greta, and at the rising valley beyond her. It was a daunting sight in just the hundred yards he could see; a steep incline between narrow walls, with intermittent waterfalls promising challenging climbs.
“You take the lead,” Kestrel told the gnome, and they slowly began to climb upward. Each soon plucked a stout stick out of the stream bed and used it as a walking aid. They made slow progress, often slipping in the mud and sliding in the water as they tried to make the difficult vertical journey towards the top of the cliffs.
After climbing over two waterfalls they switched positions and Kestrel took a turn in the lead, but as nightfall approached he guessed that they were no more than halfway up the gully. There was no clear view of the river valley, not any perspective on any features of the mountains other than the walls of their winding ravine. When they came to a small flat stretch of ten yards in length, the first time they had not had to climb, Kestrel held up his hand.
“It’s getting dark,” he stated the obvious. “Let’s spend the night here where we won’t fall back down, and then start up again in the morning,” he suggested.
“Hansen is coming towards us,” Greta said. “I can feel him getting nearer. Can we go on any further to try to reach him?”
Kestrel sensed the distance between Hansen and the two river climbers. “We won’t be able to move quickly or safely in the dark, and we may not find another suitable place to camp for the night.”
Greta appeared to deflate before his eyes. “You’re right,” she conceded. “I just hate to spend a night away from Hansen.”
Kestrel reached out and wrapped his arms around the maiden, pulling her into a tight, sympathetic hug.
“Kestrel, you feel so cold!” she said, as she laid her cheek against his bare chest. It was true; though given his lack of a cloak or shirt or even boots, he should have been much more uncomfortable than he was. The power of Corrant’s Garrant Spark was protecting the members of the bond from feeling all the travails of their journey.
“We’re both cold,” Kestrel observed, as his arms wrapped around her still damp cloak.
“Could we have a fire tonight?” Greta asked.
Kestrel looked around at the stony cliffs that hemmed them in on both sides of their ravine. “I think we’ll be safe from being spied,” he agreed, “if we can get one started.” He removed his arms from Greta, and began to gather the driest twigs he could find, then squatted as he struck a flint against Lucretia’s blade, making sparks fly time after time until he finally got one to catch and begin to glow brightly on the nest of dry twigs. He leaned over and blew gently until a small flame finally climbed upwards and began to spread.
“I gathered more timber,” Greta said behind him, and she handed him more dry sticks that he fed to the growing fire.
Minutes later the two of them were seated directly in front of the fire, with Greta’s cloak spread on a crude frame of tree branches that allowed the material to catch the heat from the fire and grow drier. The sun had set, and the air cooled quickly around them as they ate a few pieces of dry food left in Greta’s pack. They sat quietly and comfortably, resting after their arduous journey, and Kestrel had his arm wrapped around Greta’s shoulder as he continued to feed pieces of timber into the small fire, trying to coax more heat from the smoky inferno.
“Do you have a bride back in your home, Kestrel?” Greta asked him after several moments of silence.
“No, no bride,” he answered.
“Does your heart belong to someone special though?” the girl pressed him.
“Yes, and yes, and yes,” Kestrel gave a soft laugh. “I’ve loved several women these past few years, but I’ve not been loved back, not at the right time, or not in the right place.
“So no, there’s no one whose heart is waiting to see my return,” he finished.
“I’m sure that’s not true,” Greta tried to be supportive. “I’m sure that among your people you’re considered a handsome man, and I’ve seen that you are valiant and kind. There’s someone waiting for you, I just know, even if you don’t.”
They lapsed into silence, and slowly fell asleep.
“Kestrel, Kestrel wake up,” Greta spoke urgently to the elf a few hours later. He opened his eyes and saw that it was still dark.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, sitting up.
“Hansen’s moving,” Greta replied.
Kestrel checked his own sense of their partner, Greta’s groom. Through the connection of the Garrant Spark he could feel that Hansen’s position was changing relative to theirs.
“He’s moving away from us,” she added.
Kestrel’s mind grew instantly alert, as he recognized the validity of her statement.
“Maybe he’s trying to come to see us,” Kestrel suggested. “Maybe he has to go around some obstacle, like a small canyon, to get to us.”
“Maybe,” she agreed. “Do you think that’s why?”
“Maybe,” Kestrel tried to sound encouraging, even though he doubted his explanation. He couldn’t see any stars to see how close they were to dawn, but the fire was dead, with only cold embers left in their small fire pit.
“If we go slowly, I think we could start climbing again,” he suggested knowing that was what Greta wanted to hear. He would also welcome the activity, to help him generate some warmth in his chilly body.
They gathered their few belongings, then began to cautiously climb up the ravine, relying on the dim white glow of the crashing water in the stream that fell down towards the river. Their progress was slow and tedious, and they fell repeatedly in the slick, unseen mud of the pathless route they climbed, but when dawn came an hour later they began to climb faster, aware that Hansen was continuing to move away from them.
They stopped to eat a meager mouthful of Greta’s supplies, then resumed climbing, and by midday they were exhausted but pleased to find that the gradient of the ravine began to radically change, growing shallower, and the ravine began to widen out, so that after another half hour, they stopped suddenly as they were about to emerge from a cluster of pine trees.
To their surprise, the pine forest was intersected by a road, that ran as straight as an arrow to the north, the direction that both of them felt Hansen was moving.
“We can hurry along this road and catch
him!” Greta said excitedly. “We should be able to see him this evening, if only he’d slow down.”
“Why is he traveling so fast, going away from us?” Kestrel asked out loud as they stood in the pine trees and looked at the road. There was no rain falling, but the sky overhead remained overcast with clouds.
“Look at the road,” Kestrel said as he crouched and examined the mud. “There are a lot of boot prints here, heading north.” He shook his head, worried; Lake had told them that few patrols came so far south from Uniontown. A special squad in the area would be a bad sign.
“What are you saying?” Greta asked fretfully. “Do you think he’s been captured? He’s a good hunter, and a good scout; he wouldn’t get caught by a bunch of the Uniontown guards!” she insisted.
“I hope you’re right,” Kestrel said simply, knowing it was pointless to argue. “Let’s start going that way, and see if we can find him.” He insisted on taking Greta’s pack from her to lighten her load, so that they could travel at a quicker speed, as they kept to the side of the road, trying to leave no footprints amidst the mud, and staying close to the foliage that they could easily duck into to hide among if needed.
As evening fell they sensed that they had closed the gap slightly between themselves and Hansen, but the distance remained significant, and he did not slow down when it turned dark, but kept on moving.
“I know you want to catch up with him, and I do too, so we’ll try our best to follow the road in the dark and see if we can get closer to him tonight,” Kestrel told Greta, forestalling any argument she was likely to make. They kept going for another half hour, then felt Hansen stop moving, and they started to make greater progress in approaching him. By the time Kestrel called a halt for the night, they had cut their friend’s lead in half.
“When the moon starts to set, we’ll get going before dawn,” Kestrel told Greta. “I’m going to sleep first while you stay on watch, and when the moon is straight overhead, you wake me so that I can give you a break.”
The Inner Seas Kingdoms: 05 - Journey to Uniontown Page 29
