by L. R. Flint
She asked the question again, and I stopped dead in my tracks, turning to face her. “Look, if you do not want to come, then just say so and you can stay.” Even though she had the option to stay and be in relative warmth, I knew she really wanted to go, and badly enough that she would end up toughing out the cold. She knew it too and just grumbled some indistinguishable words before falling silent.
I also fell silent, watching the surface of the lake, with its small waves lapping at the edges of the sand about ten feet in front of us. A chill wind shot through the air, chopped up the waves and created a few white caps out near the middle of the lake’s surface. “It is already freezing here and no one else has shown up, maybe we should just head back,” she said, sounding bored.
“Well, maybe the water is warm,” I suggested. “Everyone else can just miss out on swimming.” Eskarne did not say anything so I walked forward and knelt to check the water’s temperature, it felt fine to me, but the girl was not necessarily going to think the same of it. “I think it is good.” Before I could stand completely, Eskarne came up behind me and gave me a shove; I had been caught completely off guard so I toppled into the water. I pushed myself further into the water so that I was able to swim, and then I dove under the surface, letting my new gills take over as I entered their natural habitat.
I summoned Lietha and sent a small wave washing onto the beach, as I swam back to the surface, and Eskarne shrieked as she was hit by the spray of water. “That was cheating,” she yelled at me, when she saw me, floating easily on the deep water with a smug look on my face. “I will get you back for that, someday.” I was not sure if it was meant to be an empty threat or not, but I was not too worried about anything she could do to me.
“Why will you not swim?” I called back. “The water is great.” She glared at me.
“I could use a fire, Master High-and-Mighty Spellcaster. I cannot run about in my underclothes in this cold without freezing to death as you can.” By the end of summer she had been perfectly comfortable in the clothes that elves chose to wear when swimming, so her remark made it blatantly obvious that she was jealous. She was also exaggerating—the extremely cold mornings had been out of season and had passed already, leaving the only bitter cold to the darkness of night, and the sharp bite of the winds coming in from the North.
She continued to glare at me as I dove under the lake’s surface and swam back to the shore. I shook the water from my hair and walked over to my friend.
“Look at this,” she commanded. She grabbed a section of her shirt and squeezed a large amount of water from it. “I am soaking,” she emphasized the last word passionately.
“I did not mean to get you quite so wet,” I defended.
“You may as well have dumped the entire lake over my head.” I shrugged, and commanded the waters of the lake to rise into the air far above our heads, forming a wall of deep, blue-green. “You would not dare,” she shrieked. “Put it back.” I chuckled and slowly lowered the water back to its home, so that it would not be half lost in the wave that would be caused by its immediate release. As I released the last bit of water, Eskarne jumped me and we both toppled over. I pulled us into deeper water with a small wave and we both swam back to the surface. “I have still got all of my clothes on,” Eskarne complained, after spitting water from her mouth.
“They were already soaked, so it does not matter,” I retorted.
“You are insufferable.”
I grinned. “That is what I aim for. Give them to me, I will toss them back.” She removed her outer layer of clothes, with a small amount of difficulty, and tossed them at me. I pressed them together and skipped them across the surface of the lake like an underweight, oversized skipping-stone and they landed on the shore with only a minimal spray of sand from the impact.
“You used magic.”
“I did not."
“Liar.” She splashed me and I dove back under, causing a wave to ripple across the surface of the lake. When I surfaced, the others still had not appeared so I gave Eskarne gills and we proceeded to scour the depths of the body of water, the trick being to not get tangled in the lake weed which, fortunately, was located only at the bottom of the deepest sections of the lake. Time was a difficult thing to keep track of in the watery depths, so we planned to spend only a short amount of time swimming, rather than staying until having sufficiently explored the depths.
When we again surfaced, the sky was still heavy with clouds and we could not tell what amount of time had passed. I beat Eskarne to the beach and gathered her clothes for her, then—since I had soaked them—I called forth a small fire, burning midair. I shook the sand from her clothes and held them next to the flames to dry, though I most graciously allowed her to hold half of the items when she finally joined me. By the time her clothes had dried, our friends still had not met up with us so we made our way leisurely to each of the places that they might have been sidetracked to.
We were about halfway back to Baso Argi when the sun suddenly appeared from its hiding behind the clouds. The warm rays of the sun quickly evaporated any water still in our clothes, and warmed up the land which had been quite chilly that day. It seemed almost as if the sun were teasing, reminding us, after the cold, just what we would be missing in the upcoming winter months.
~ ~ ~
Eskarne and I headed back toward the archery ranges, still unable to find the others. None of the three were there so I tried contacting Izar through magic again—that time she responded.
Where are you? She asked.
At the archery fields for the second time. Eskarne and I have been looking for the three of you for hours—you never showed up at the lake. Where are you? It sounded like Izar chuckled before answering me.
We are at the lake, waiting for you.
Oh, thanks, I thought sarcastically. My sister replied that it was no problem and I severed the connection. “So, where are they?” Eskarne asked. She had seen me before when I spoke to others through magic and now was usually able to tell when such a thing was taking place.
“Do you want to go swimming again?” The girl shook her head, not in answer to my question, but rather the irony that the others were now the ones waiting for us at the lake. We returned to the lake and the only reason I did not do anything horrible to my sister was because that was the last day we would be able to carelessly spend for quite some time.
~ ~ ~
Argider stood silently looking on, as Basajaun and Koldobika bid their farewells and Gurutze said a few words in parting to the small dwarf she had brought. She had informed me in an offhand manner that she required that the dwarf accompany me. That irked me since I had already agreed to take the fellow along, and I was tempted to accidentally leave him behind, somewhere along the way—when he got lost back in our dust.
“Argider,” I said the centaur’s name in farewell and each of us thumped our right fists to our chests in the traditional salutation of soldiers.
“It is time to go.”
I led the way, though Sendoa was our guide, since he had traveled to the Andoni Fields and knew what paths would be best used. The group filed behind me as we walked away from the four people watching our departure. Luckily, we had been able to keep the whole trek a secret from all but Eneko, who had already left, saying he was going to get some time in at the range. It was through the North side of the village that we left Baso Argi again, heading into the darkness of the huge oak forest which stretched for nigh endless miles in all directions. After we had gone about a league, a sweet scent wafted through the dim air, making my mouth water. “What is that?” I asked of anyone who heard me; it turned out to be the dwarf—who had ended up walking between Sendoa and me—who answered my question.
“It could be just about anything out here,” he chuckled. “Anything from roasting flesh to flowers, or anything else you could possibly think of—and some you might not.” I headed in the direction of the smell, signaling for everyone else to stay behind; Sendoa ignored my signal
though and followed. I guessed he was just making sure I did not do anything stupid, which was possible, depending on what had created the smell I was following.
I crept stealthily through the early morning dusk, stalking my prey—which smelt unusually good. As I passed the last few trees blocking my sight of what lay ahead, I got an eyeful of armored Guards, though they were all lazily lying about, waiting for the mouth-wateringly-delicious looking roast—of some sort—to finish cooking. From the size of the sizzling hunk of meat, it looked as if it had come from a healthy sized deer, which was likely, as they were large in numbers—hiding throughout the stretches of dense forest. “That is a deer, right?” I asked of my companion, who nodded in affirmation.
“Would you have Erramun let Basajaun know that these men are here?” I asked, and he nodded again. “Wait here. I promise I will not get caught,” I whispered, with a smile on my face. Sendoa looked as if he might not believe me, but let me go without saying anything. I carefully meandered around the circle of Guards, headed straight—in a roundabout way—toward the roast and my prize.
I halted on the outskirts of the group and knelt down in a position from which I could easily rise with speed, if needed, and began putting the Guards to sleep, one by one. As the last Guard, who seemed to be the one in charge, slumped to the ground in a sleep full of confused dreams, I stood and slipped over to the recently finished roast. What was left of the deer’s body was too long for me to reach each end of the wooden pole stabbed through it, without rubbing the flesh on my clothes, so I waved Sendoa over to help with the load.
The elf walked quickly, straight through the campsite, and helped me haul the roast off to our companions. It was not until we were without earshot that he asked me why on earth I was doing this. “This is not their land—if they want to live within a walled city, then let them do it. Besides, they would have killed us and then taken the meat if the situation were reversed, so really I have done them a favor in letting them live.”
Behind me, Sendoa shook his head in humored exasperation. After that we walked on in silence until we came to the rest of our band, the members of which were obviously curious as to what Sendoa and I had been up to. Sendoa quickly laid any blame to be found on me, since the whole thing had been my idea, and after that he would not say a thing about what we had done. I shook off any inquiries as well, merely hinting that we had relieved someone of their weighty meal, which I personally believed they were in no dire need of. Looking back on my memory of the Guards, I thought they had all looked a bit overfed; although, that could have been a convenient mistake of my imagination.
“Anyway, my stomach is telling me that it is far past its breakfast time. If any of you would care to join me, I am willing to share.” No one else could pass on the food from which the savory smell rose, so we all took a break from our march to eat our hour-late breakfast. The roast was as good as—if not better than—it smelt, and immensely satisfying.
Once our stomachs were satisfied, Sendoa and I returned the roast to the Guards, where we left it over a now low fire, just warm enough to keep the meat from cooling completely. As we crept away, I could hear the first Guard I had put to sleep waking, and I simply had to see the following events unfold. There was no passing up such an opportunity.
The Guard sat up in a daze, his head nodded forward occasionally, as he attempted to keep his eyes open. “What are you doing?” Sendoa hissed as another of the men awoke.
“I just want to see what happens. Please?” He grimaced.
“What the devil?” I spun around, worried that the shout was in response to my presence. “What happened to the roast?”
“You are closest to it, surely you know better than I,” a groggy man announced in self-defense. At that point most of the Guards had reached some level of wakefulness.
“Oh.” He emphasized the word with a great deal of petulant indignation. “Blame it all on me, will you? You were supposed to be on watch,” he shouted.
“You were the one complaining most of being hungry,” another man retorted.
“Aha!”
“Men!” Finally the Captain had awakened enough to realize what was going on, and it seemed that he was quite embarrassed by the state of his men. “This is absolutely ridiculous. It seems our meal has been stolen from right beneath our suspiciously slumbering noses, and yet here you all sit, bickering about it like children.” He turned to the first man and his backup. “No one man can eat half a roast in one sitting,” he derided. Then he turned to the other man and commanded, “You; take some men and find whomever did this.”
I slunk back on all fours until I was a safe distance away, at Sendoa’s side, and then we hurried through the forest to where we had again left the others. When we got back we quickly grabbed our packs of provisions and headed out, not wanting to stay in the area for long, if the Guards were capable of tracking us.
The rest of that day was appreciatively eventless and we camped down for a somewhat quiet night, the only sounds were those of nocturnal animals on the hunt, faraway and muffled by the forest between us. I fell asleep to the quiet sounds of Izar, Alaia, and Eskarne conversing over I-had-no-idea-what. When I awoke the next morning they were fast asleep and they were also the last to wake, even after the dwarf—whom Alesander said was of a nocturnal clan.
~ ~ ~
Throughout the course of that day I actually came to like the dwarf. He was tough and had great stamina; the only way we could have left him in the dust would have been to run at a human, or faster, sprint the entire distance. The small dwarf actually hinted at being a great warrior, though he would not say much about it, only that he had been in a few fabled wars.
The main of that day went without any excitement, except for a small clan of hobgoblins who tried to interrupt our noon meal. It was nearing evening that we again smelt the aroma of cooking meat, though that time it carried the stomach churning scent of rotting flesh. Along with the smell of meat, came a deep-throated chanting; I asked again what the cause of the smell was and, more particularly, the chanting. The answer was goblins—and the real kind at that, not just the small subspecies.
Again I tried to go toward the point of interest, but that time everyone else attempted to keep me from going any closer. I argued that I had never seen a goblin before and that I really wanted to know what they looked like—after all, that knowledge might come in handy in the future. In the end I was talked out of spying on the goblins and I immaturely chose to mope about it for a while afterward.
It was too bad that their convincing had overridden my curiosity, because it would have been the opportune time to rid us of an opposing goblin clan, and Zigor. It would have been easy to kill the King at that time—far too easy actually—but I was not to know that for quite some time, and at the time I learned of it, I was also learning a number of others things which outweighed its importance to me by a great deal.
33 TREES WITH ANGER ISSUES
Sendoa and I knelt facing each other, a little way from the campfire. The rest of our group stood in a circle around us, listening and watching, as a small picture developed in the patch of dirt beneath the hands of the older elf. In the past sixteen days that it had taken us to get within distance of a half day’s march of the mountains—at the far side of the continent from Baso Argi—we had run into quite a few messes, and lost a single pack of provisions, the absence of which we had not come prepared for.
~ ~ ~
After the goblin encampment we decided to send two scouts ahead of the main group, and on one particular day the selected two were Izar and Alaia. The first tangle we caught ourselves in happened on that day.
I heard a terse comment from my sister’s mind, telling me that she and Alaia were in need of a little assistance; she ended by telling me to bring weapons. I dropped my pack and explained the call for assistance as I took off, followed sporadically by those who did not already have their weapons in hand.
I had never heard of trees attacking people—act
ually I had never even heard of anyone hearing of anyone being attacked by trees—so I was surprised to find (when I did) that the two ladies’ attackers were trees, and they seemingly were just the average (though very small), black oak commonly found in the shade of the Oihana’s vast reaches. I ran into a small clearing and did not see either of the two I was after, but shortly I heard a noise, behind and above me, so I swung around, barely bringing my sword up in time to fend off an attack from an old, gnarled branch.
My sword went clean through the branch and the old bit of wood flew across the clearing and landed snugly in the thick pillow of another tree’s branches. The next branch to come at me, I sent flying straight up through the canopy of taller trees which overhung the clearing. When that happened, the tree (whose limbs I had been separating from it) attacked with all fury. My arms became a blur to human sight as I deftly maneuvered to defend against the impossible opponent. Another tree approached from behind and I was unable to hold off the attack of two creatures, each gifted with millions of limbs; the second tree snatched me from the ground by my arms, and the first latched onto my feet, its limbs winding up my legs for a better grip.
My right arm, which grasped my sword, was held tightly out of the range of any and all branches belonging to both trees, so I had to wait and see what would happen, hoping it would not take long for the trees to decide their next move. They did not keep me waiting long—suddenly my entire body was pulled taught, the strength of each tree pulling from opposite ends. I did not enjoy the feeling of being stretched out, and sincerely hoped that that would be the last time it happened. I called on Lietha and the tree holding onto my arms burst into an inferno, which I quickly caused to die down, so that none of the sane trees above it would catch fire.
