“Sleep Mathew. I can watch for a few hours and wake him when I'm tired or if something happens. I have Elvin senses so I hear and see better. I’m too restless to sleep anymore right now.”
“He would kill me.”
“I'm awake he's not in charge anymore.”
Mathew nods and goes to his roll lying down. At least someone respects a royal decree.
I am sitting up and decide not to move. I can’t move much on my own anyway. I can hear Mathew breathing deep and slow. He fell asleep almost instantly. Thirty-six hours of riding after that spell would take it out of anyone.
I let Kemp sleep past the time when his watch has to start. In fact, I stay awake until the sky is gray and the sun is peaking over the horizon. Sarah rises first stretching and looking like she is feeling better than she has since we left.
“Azure you’re finally awake!”
She comes running over and hugs me. I hug her back weakly. I still haven’t eaten anything but at least I’ve been able to hydrate myself.
“When did you awaken and why is everyone else asleep?”
“I woke during one of Mathew’s watches. He had only thirty minutes to go so I told him to sleep and I would watch and awaken Kemp should anything happen. It was very quiet. I couldn’t sleep anyway.”
“Are you hungry?”
I nod, “I'm starved. I was able to drink a lot last night, Mathew said it was ok.”
“We have stayed near a river. Well stayed within range to be able to reach it in at least half a day of riding so we would never be without water.”
She talks as she prepares a meal. It is shockingly none of the dried food that Kemp’s family gave us but fresh berries and roots. Things she can find foraging. I didn’t know she had such talents and I am very happy to know she is able to take care of herself.
I have the knowledge to survive in the wild alone as well, my father saw to it because every Elf can and as I am his child I had to learn as well. My mom and I looked at it as an adventure and surpassed his expectations.
“You seem to be doing well. Mathew said you two were floundering.”
She smiles and chuckles.
“He likely thinks so and hopes. He seems to be doing alright but I have a feeling he's more comfortable being a normal guard following his charge around doing normal things and protecting. He can’t protect you from this threat so I don’t think he knows quite what to do. Kemp is in his element even more so than I am. He's taken charge and seems completely at ease.”
I nod. Mathew said as much.
“Why is it morning? Why was I not woken?"
Kemp sits up and looks around. Mathew wakes from his raised voice and rubs his eyes?
“Mathew, why didn’t you wake me? How could you fall asleep during your shift what if something had happened?”
“Nothing happened and he went to sleep because I ordered him to.”
Kemp turns and notices me awake. He pushes himself out of his sleeping roll instantly forgetting to berate poor Mathew, which is a good thing. He comes over to me feeling my head and grabbing my wrist to check my pulse. I smile and can’t help but laugh at him. Sarah gives me some food and hands out some to the boys.
“You look better.”
Kemp is staring at me and refuses to eat until I start to eat. I put food in my mouth and he puts some in his. Looks like if he is going to eat I’ll have to keep doing so as well. Luckily I need the food to replenish some energy.
“I feel better. Just drained. It will be a little while before I am back to my full energy levels but with food and rest I should be alright in a few days.”
“We should fish or hunt. Make a fire to feed her.”
Sarah says it then sees the look on Kemp’s face. It says without a doubt there will be no fires. I smile this I can help with.
“I can tell you don’t like the idea of a fire, likely because people can track the smoke but after I find out where we are I can help with that. Would someone help me walk around a bit? I might not be able to stand on my own for a little. Once my legs get used to walking again I should be fine so it won’t be forever I promise.”
“I’ll do it.”
Kemp gives the rest of his food to Sarah and comes over to help me up. I put one arm around his shoulder and he puts one around my waist to keep me up. We walk around a bit in the woods until I am walking more and more on my own. I grab Kemp’s hand and squeeze it ready to draw on him if I feel like I am falling over. I pull us toward the edge of the woods and lookout. The great plain….
“This plain. We need to get away from it as soon as we can. We need to pack and leave. Now.”
He turns and rushes us back supporting me more and more so we can go faster.
“What is wrong with the plain?”
“The ones that live there. It’s a mutant breed, something animalistic with human intelligence. They are lethal. We have to leave now.”
He nods and we get back as fast as I can move with his aid. The others are packing up the food and filling the water skins.
“Pack up we are leaving now!”
He gets the horses ready barking out the order while the other two stare at us in shock.
“Kemp she’s not ready to ride now.”
Mathew is right, I am barely standing on my own and weary just from hurrying back here but that doesn’t matter. Not right now.
“Listen to him now!”
They look shocked at my screeching but move swiftly to obey. Thank goodness for the chain of command.
I feel a powerful tide ride through me and shudder. “No….”
They look at my face as it drains of blood and a look of horror crosses over my face.
“What?”
“They’re here.” My voice is only a whisper but they still hear me. I run to my horse and jump on turning him in toward the plain. It hurt, moving like that, but it is that or die.
“Who is here?”
“The merpeople are on their way we need to move now!” I am already moving my horse toward the plain.
“Where?”
“To the plain.”
Kemp pulls his horse to a temporary stop and looks at me like I am crazy.
“Can we outride the animal mutations you mentioned when we came running back?”
The others pale at that as I shrug.
“We shall have to try or we die by the mermen’s hands.”
We all ride as fast as we can toward the plain me leading the way. Kemp stays close to me like always. The mermen are hot on our trails as we ride. They can move fast. The plains slow them though. The plains are not their territory and they cannot draw power from any water if we get far enough away. Occasionally they will pop down and not come back up. The screaming starts and the horses start reacting to the moving soil and fear surrounding them.
Viktor
Azure rides in front leading the way. She points and shouts. There is an ancient oak ahead that we need to reach to be safe. So we ride. She is weak and doesn’t stay in the lead the whole time. Sarah and Mathew outride her. I slow to stay close to her but kept my horse going. I hear a scream and look behind myself to where the noise came from. Her horse goes down. The others look back and I wave them on. They push harder going for the oak.
I try to turn my horse but he won’t so I jump off and slap him on the rump. He goes running towards the others and even starts to pass them before Sarah grabs his reins and keeps him in pace with her horse. She is far more useful on this trip than I ever thought possible.
I run towards where Azure went down slicing at the grass that grows above my head as I go. The dual swords are not machetes and not meant for chopping but they are sharp and work well enough.
I get there to find something that looks half wolverine and half gopher attacking Azure. It doesn’t seem to be having as easy a time as it thought it would. She uses some sort of spell and it flashes brightly. I have to throw my hand in front of my eyes and when I look back it is wiping at its eyes.
; “Azure!”
She comes running over to me and I notice she is sweating and panting as she grabs my hand and runs back along the path I came down to get to her. It is not that long before we are trekking through uncharted territory. We try to follow the path the horses made but they were going so fast they basically flew over the grass and not a lot of it stayed down.
Another creature pops up in front of us and glares at her. I can see in its eyes that it knows what she did to it and it wants revenge. I have never seen such awareness and intelligence in an animal’s eyes. I let go of her hand and pull out my other sword. Another pops out of the ground behind us and I wish that Mathew were here to take the one in the back.
“Watch yourself, Kemp; I’ll deal with this one on my own!”
I have no choice but to trust her and hope she can hold it off until I am done with this one. It doesn't prove to be easy. It blocks my shots with its talons and I curse. I manage to change my swing at the last second and hit its fingers instead of talons. It hisses when I finally land the blow slicing tendons in its finger-like butter. It doesn’t give me another chance to strike before back-handing me. I land on my back and look up I to see fire coming from the princess’s hand as she flings fireballs at the other creature. It catches fire, as does the grass around us.
She comes over and grabs me pulling me up and clasps my hand. The other creature pushed back as the fire came closer.
“It seems to work on the creatures but what about us?”
She smiles and runs straight into the flame. What the hell is she doing?
“Jump!”
I don’t think I just act and do as she says. She whispers a spell and the flame shrinks to a size we can jump over. When we land she falls twisting an ankle in the process. She screams and I help her up. I get to her right side and help her move as fast as she can away from the fire and the screaming creatures. I am not sure why someone hasn’t done this before if it is so effective.
We get to the tree line and she pulls us into a jump. Creatures jump out of the ground on the safety line as we sail over their heads. We land and roll. Sarah and Mathew come over helping us up and pulling us back from the edge.
“Thank you.”
I nod though I should be thanking her as it is her command over fire that saved us. She is shaking, sweating, and paler than death. “Are you okay?”
Sarah brings us some water and I shake my head and make Azure drink it. It doesn’t help any. She still looks terrible.
“What can we do?”
She starts to sway and I grab her shoulders as she lifts her head to look at me weakly.
“We...need…get further in...”
I nod. “We can. We will.”
She nods.
“Don’t resist…when they come….”
She passes out then and I lean her against me so she won’t fall.
“You’re bleeding we should bandage you before we move on.”
I look down. It looks like I’d been slashed when backhanded. I hold out the injured arm and let Mathew clean and bandage me using my body and my other arm to holds the princess up. What had she meant about resisting? Who is coming? We were escaping the mermen so I can’t imagine she wants us to give in to them. The ones that survived retreated. They can live on land but fire is their weakness and biggest enemy. Between the plains being on fire and the creatures, they retreated to safer grounds.
When I am bandaged up I lift the princess and carry her to my horse. Sarah did a good job calming them.
“We will ride until we find a place to stop. After that, we could all use a break to rest and eat. The horses are still jumpy and tired and they need to be fresh since we only have three now and they will have to take turns carrying both her and me.”
They nod. We get on them and ride at a trot to find a place to settle down. We find a cave that is hidden by trees and bushes.
“Those are berries. Edible ones I can collect some if we stop here.”
I nod. “It looks good. Mathew, please check inside the cave. Make sure it’s safe. If so we will tie the horses by that patch of thick grass and make camp inside. We should be safe to have a fire at the entrance. I don’t think the mermen are coming after us until they can assess and figure out how to deal with their dead and injured.”
Mathew goes in and comes out a few minutes later smiling.
“Not only is it safe it’s got a jar with water dripping in, freshwater at that and firewood stacked up inside. A fire pit has been set up and everything. If we can catch anything with some traps Tim showed me we should be able to eat meat today for dinner.”
We all think about that and are extremely glad. Sarah grabs all the bedrolls and sets them up making a soft place to lay Azure down. After she grabs an empty pot she finds and fills it with berries from the bushes outside the cave.
She starts snacking on them as we use the pot of water to refill our water skins and Mathew goes out to set traps. He comes back and leans against the wall sighing.
“This is not what I expected when I joined the army.”
Madeline and I look at each other, then him, and burst out laughing. He looks up shocked at our reaction and then starts laughing too.
“At least you knew about the danger. The most dangerous thing I was supposed to face was court rumors.”
We laugh again and all start thinking about what we expected from life and what we are actually getting out of it.
“How about you Viktor?”
Mathew looks at Sarah in shock. She shrugs.
“The mermen know where we are using our real names will not change that. Besides we are safe. Haven’t you noticed the difference here? The air is fresher, the berries sweeter, and the earth greener. We are in Elvin woods. It’s not the full glory of their land because we are on the edge but we are. The mermen won’t pass.”
Don’t resist them...
“That was what she meant.”
Both look at me and raise their eyebrows in question.
“She told me before passing out not to resist them when they came. I had no idea what she meant. We were running from the mermen why would we give up when they arrived? We had crossed the boundary when she said it. She meant not to resist the Elves when they come for us.”
They nod.
“How long do you think we have?”
We both look at Madeline, the name thing is going to be a problem soon as it feels wrong to use our real names but is annoying to keep up pretenses. The spell is making it feel odd to use our real ones likely; it’d been a good idea and bought us enough time to get to the Elvin lands so it was worth some discomfort.
Who knows really? None of us know anything about the Elves. The only one that does is passed out again. She’s been using too much magic lately. The healing spell she did for me caused her to pass out and she has done far more spells since.
Mason checks the traps and comes back with a rabbit. Madeline cringes and gets up moving away from his knife carving and cleaning. She sits on the other side of Elainne and runs her fingers through her hair.
“When she first came here we always went riding. She hated the castle, she hated the king for being nothing like his sister, her mother, and she hated being thrust into a position she never wanted. She came to escape and instead got thrown into something much the same as back home. Only instead of hating her human half, they hated the Elvin half. It was the same thing in both places; she wasn’t born with the right bloodline.
“She cried every day even while studying up on the kingdom, its people, and its trading partners. She was miserable; she never showed the type of curiosity that her aunt told me of when asking me to be one of her Elainne’s ladies.”
“She went through a great loss.”
Madeline nods and I can’t understand why she is telling me this. It is terrible to hear, how she was before adapting to her new life, how she still feels sometimes, even now. How I saw her be when we rode out after the day Mason and I had been honorary honor guard
.
“I do not tell you this so you understand her better.”
She looks up at me with piercing eyes.
“I think you already know her better than anyone could, or at least you understand her in a way others cannot. She was curious about you. She had me bribe people to get your file. It wasn’t like a girl smitten, I have seen plenty of girls smitten, she was intrigued and curious and she felt a connection to you that couldn’t be explained. I think…I think you and her were meant to meet. You were supposed to be her champion, to be with her through it all. Her mother died so she would come here and save you so you could save her in return.”
I pull back and shake my head. I don’t believe any fate would be so cruel to a girl and her mother.
“That is not a kind thing to blame on someone.”
I agree with Mason. Madeline smiles and shakes her head.
“I do not blame Viktor, I blame the fates. She’s half Elvin they have…guardians watching over them that influence their lives so they follow their destiny. Her mother’s murder happened so suddenly and so late into their marriage. Their daughter was sixteen already, from the standpoint of an assassin who wants an Elvin lady or lord to inherit wouldn’t it have been more prudent to kill her before the child was born and a contender to the throne?”
Mason and I look at each other and he shrugs. She is right of course. But what if it had been a vendetta against the king or a show of power. Many sinister plots lurk in palace hallways. More plots than one person can count.
“We don’t know anything for sure.”
She shakes her head smiling. “No, we do not. But I have read about Elvish champions Viktor. A human cannot become one, yet you have. Also if it’s something the fates decree you will know it right away. The first time bare skin touches, even fingers or hands, you will be shocked. An actual shock I've read. Like being struck by lightning but not as painful...more startling.”
I wonder why she hadn’t been shocked when healing me.
Mason has started the fire, cleaned off his hands, and joined us near the sleeping princess. The rabbit is roasting and I cannot wait for it to be done. One to share between us all will not be filling but it will be better than nothing.
Champion Complete Series Page 10
