Tarrin pushed her away, looking down at her with his emotionless expression. "I'll see you in Suld," he repeated, then without another word, he turned and started walking out of camp.
"Tarrin, you clod, at least let me say goodbye!" Sarraya fumed at him.
"You can catch up," he called over his shoulder.
And so, Tarrin walked slowly away from the unnamed ruin of the Dwarven city, alone. He didn't really know why he was so intent on leaving, so much so that he wasn't willing to wait for the others, but it was something strong enough to do.
Sarraya caught up with him a few moments later, and she didn't look very happy. "Do you know that you are the rudest person I've ever known?" she demanded hotly. "Why I ever accepted you into Fae-da'Nar is beyond me!"
"Live with it," Tarrin said in a cool voice.
That effectively shut Sarraya up. She flew along with him in sulky silence until Denai trotted up to them some time later, after they had ascended the shallow valley that held the ruin and found themselves looking out over a barren expanse of windswept desert, with very little vegetation, but many rocks of various sizes to cover the desert floor in their place. "You're mean, Tarrin," Denai accused. "I didn't have half as much time with Var as I wanted."
"You can undress Var later," Tarrin told her, in a manner that even made the Selani blush. "Which way do we go?"
"We want the fastest route to the Sandshield? Does danger matter?"
"No."
"My, you're curt today," Denai huffed, pointing northwest. "Then we want to go that way. It will bring us close to an oasis we'd be better off avoiding, but you said danger is no concern."
"What's wrong with that oasis?" Sarraya asked curiously.
"Nothing, it's a lush place that actually has a small forest, but that means that it's infested with kajat and inu. The trees give them cover, so they can get too close to you before you know they're there."
"The Selani aren't used to that kind of terrain, Denai. I am," Tarrin told her calmly. "I know how to kill kajat and inu."
"We noticed. Were you going out of your way, or did that many actually come after you?"
"Both," Sarraya laughed. "Whever Tarrin felt testy, he'd hunt down a playmate."
Denai chuckled. "Well, are you ready to get left behind?" she said in a swaggering tone to Tarrin.
Tarrin snorted shortly, then picked up into a loping pace.
Denai was a true Selani, and that meant that she knew how to run. She could run at high speeds for long periods of time, and there were only a handful of non-Selani that could keep up with her. Even fewer of them could overtake her, and fewer than that could run her into the ground. Tarrin proved that he was one of those few. The uncertainty with what was going on in Suld had him worried, and he was intent to get there as quickly as possible, now that he had nothing holding him in place. So the pace he set leaving the Dwarven city could only be called murderous, so demanding that even Tarrin had begun to feel the effects of it after a half a day. Tarrin's inhuman endurance, bolstered by his regenerative powers, was put to the test with the pace he set for himself, a pace that left him weak and exhausted by sunset.
The effect it had on Denai was much, much worse. The Selani refused to be left behind, refused to admit that she couldn't keep up, so she pushed herself beyond her limits. Denai's intensely competitive nature had made keeping up with Tarrin a holy crusade, something which would not end in failure. To her credit, she had managed to keep up with him for a majority of the day, but then the effects of the heat and the exercise had begun to take their toll, and she started lagging behind more and more. Tarrin slowed up from time to time during the afternoon to make sure that she was still following, but those were the only repreieves he granted himself. Denai had no chance to rest, no chance to slow down, pushing herself to keep up with Tarrin. By the time they stopped, near sunset, Tarrin and Sarraya already had camp made by the time Denai staggered into camp. And all she did was wobble over to the fire, panting heavily, then collapse in the soft sand. Only her labored breathing assured them that she was still alive.
"Poor thing," Sarraya crooned. "You pushed her too hard, Tarrin."
"She pushed herself. All she had to do was tell me to slow down."
"She'd die before doing something like that, you know. Her honor wouldn't allow it."
"I'll slow down a little tomorrow," he promised.
"You did that just to prove to her that she was wrong, didn't you?"
Tarrin only gave her a slight smile, then his expression melted back into that emotionless, stony mask.
"And they think you don't have a sense of humor," Sarraya laughed. "Jegojah hasn't caught up yet."
"I don't think he's going to. I think he's started out after Kravon. Jegojah said his goodbye last night, but I don't think anyone except me noticed. And I think that's the way he wanted it."
"Well, I hope he has good luck," Sarraya chuckled.
Tarrin did slow down to a less murderous pace the next day, and the days thereafter, but it was still a pace that gave Denai serious problems. To her credit, she refused to be left behind, keeping up with them, but the effort left her all but incapacitated during the nightly camps. She would splay herself on the ground, trying to recover after they pulled in and the others made camp. Then she would eat what was offered to her, drink enough to restore her body's water, and then immediately go to sleep, wherever she happened to be at that moment. Tarrin had to carry her into her tent every night and tuck her in, a chore which he didn't mind all that much. He warned Denai that he wasn't going to dawdle, not with such an important reason to return to Suld, but he was starting to get concerned that the exertion was going to be bad for her. Denai had seemed like a little girl to him, a child, and that gave him reservations about what his pace was doing to her.
Six days after they started out, the terrain began to change. Rock spires began to appear again in the landscape, and the vegetation began to thicken considerably. Tarrin decided that it was time to start stopping during the midday heat in the shade of one of those spires to give Denai a little rest. She was just fine until the noonday, when the blistering heat of the desert sucked all the strength out of her and left her struggling for the afternoon. Denai didn't say much about the stop, but the relief and gratitude was written all over her face as they pulled in. Denai even built a fire and hunted down a handful of good-sized rabbits to serve as a noontime meal.
"I wonder why we haven't seen the Aeradalla," Denai mused. "They should have reached us by now."
"We won't see them, Denai," Sarraya told her. "They'll fly south of us. For them, Suld is reached faster by a more southerly route. They don't have to go to a pass to get over the mountains."
"I didn't think of that. It must be wonderful to fly," she said in a dreamy tone.
"I thought it was pretty nice," Tarrin said absently.
"You flew?"
"Ariana brought us down from the top of the Cloud Spire," he told her.
"Sometimes I dream about having wings too," she admitted in a distant tone. "But I guess it's just a silly daydream. The Holy Mother never meant for us to fly, or she'd have given us wings too."
"Daydreams are never silly," Sarraya told her.
"How far are we away from this forest?"
"We'll reach it tomorrow," Denai replied. "We should be able to skirt around its edge. We're about seven days from the Sandshield. Maybe five, if we keep running like we have."
"Six," Tarrin told her. "We're keeping the pace, but we'll stop during the midday from now on."
"Thank the Holy Mother," Denai said with an explosive sigh. "How do you stand running in the heat?"
"I told you before, Denai, heat doesn't bother me," he told her. "This--" he said, holding out his arms-- "means nothing to me."
"You should have been born Selani," Denai grinned.
Tarrin twisted the manacle on his arm in irritation, wincing when it pulled out a few strands of fur.
"You should take them off, Tarr
in," Denai told him. "I know they mean something to you, but if they're bothering you that much, you should take them off."
"It wouldn't be the same."
"Would it? Just carry them around with you. That way they're always there for whatever reason you keep them, but they're not tearing the fur out of your arms in the process."
Tarrin looked at Denai, and he could find no logical argument to deny her suggestion. He looked at Sarraya, who only laughed and winked at him, saying "don't look at me. I'd rather see you without them myself. I'm not going to give you a reason to refute Denai."
It may have been logical, but the illogical reasons were strong. It just wouldn't seem right to not wear the manacles. What they represented was more important than getting the fur pulled out of his arms. They were a reminder of the price of trust.
But what did that mean to him now? He had become more trusting, despite the manacles. He had accepted Sarraya and Phandebrass and Camara Tal. He had accepted Var and Denai, had found it in himself to resist his paranoid fear of strangers when necessary. The manacles reminded him of the price of putting his trust in strangers. Var and Denai, Camara Tal and Phandebrass, and especially Sarraya, they had proven their worth to him. They weren't strangers anymore. He still suspected and feared strangers. Did he need the manacles to remind him of that now?
"I'm going to get some rest," Denai said. "I'm going to need it."
Denai laid down by the extinguished fire, and Tarrin laid back and looked up at the sky. The Skybands were widening slowly as they moved northwest, and now they were the same width as he remembered them from Aldreth, his home. Aldreth. He hoped the village was alright. He'd come out into Arkis far to the north. and he'd be using the Skydancer mountains as a reference while he crossed the Frontier. He'd come very close to Aldreth. If he set his course right, he'd come out in Aldreth. Part of him wanted to do that. With all the stories over what happened when the Dals invaded, he wanted to go there, to his old home, go there and make sure everything was alright. And it would be nice to go back, back to the farm, look around and remember his past before being turned. It seemed so distant to him now, going there would be like a reminder of a life long lost, a reinforcement of who he was and where he had come from. No matter who or what he was now, he had started as Tarrin Kael, a young villager from Aldreth, who had lived on an isolated farmstead just far enough away from the others to make it feel like his family had the whole world to themselves. Those were good times, and he'd like to go back there and relive them again, if only for a day. To remember what he often refused to allow himself to remember, afraid of the nostalgia and bitterness it may bring in him. He was who he was. The villager boy he had been was long gone, and there was no going back. But it would still be nice to go home.
Aldreth was the only home he had ever known, and even now, with everything that had happened, it was still the only place he thought of when someone mentioned home. It was the place he imagined when someone talked about family. It was where he was meant to be, despite all the craziness that had sent him halfway across the world.
It was home.
Tarrin held up an arm, looked at the manacle there. Maybe. He might take them off, someday. His attitudes had changed since he had decided to leave them on, changed greatly. But not enough. Just as his fur and tail and claws and ears were, the manacles were a part of him, defined a part of himself, and he wouldn't abandon that just because of a little discomfort. Good or bad, they were a part of him, and they would remain.
For a while longer.
Chapter 20
The strange woods that Denai had talked about were no exaggeration. They were honest-to-goodness trees, and he was told that they surrounded a large, nearly lake-sized oasis.
But they were a kind of tree that Tarrin had never seen before, tall trees with no branches on the trunks. The only foliage on those brown-barked, ribbed trees was at the very top, and it consisted of a fluffy, down-like greenish fuzz growing from drooping spines that blossomed out from the tops of the trees like some kind of gigantic flower. Those bizarre leaves drifted and danced in the wind, and the trees looked as if one good sandstorm would uproot them and send them flying like the seeds of a dandelion.
Tarrin and Denai stood on a rocky promontory on a very low escarpment wall, staring at the forest some longspan or so to the northwest, directly in their path, with the midday sun beating down on them from above. The trees were strange-looking, but they were thick, making the wood deep and dark and a perfect place for things to hide. He could see wide tracts in the woods, where kajat had probably knocked over the trees to form pathways, and there was a very large herd of chisa grazing on a grassy undergrowth that grew on the ground under the trees. He could see, looking closer, that there were large lizards climbing on the tree trunks, trying to get to strange fruits or nuts that dangled from the foliage of the trees, out far enough to make reaching them a dicey proposition.
Tarrin had to agree. The place probably was infested with the reptillian carnivores of the desert, given that so many prey animals lived within the forest's boundaries. That meant that it was a place worth avoiding.
Avoiding it would be a simple matter of skirting it from the south. They were only two days from the Sandshield, by Denai's estimation, and it was almost due west from their position. They wouldn't have to enter the forest, only pass close to it. But passing close to it would probably be just as dangerous as entering it. Kajat tracks were on the ground not five spans from them, on the sandy ground at the base of the small, five-span high escarpment, showing that the big predators, and most likely their smaller cousins as well, did leave the forest and come out into the windswept plain from time to time.
"I've never seen trees like that," Sarraya noted from her hover between them.
"The clan that lives here trades the nuts from the trees," Denai said. "It's a dangerous pastime to collect them, but they're very good at it."
"The Selani tend to be good at anything they put their minds to," Tarrin noted absently, looking to the west, to the Sandshield invisble beyond the horizon. So close. They had been in the desert for three months now, and he was ready to leave. He looked more Selani than Were-cat now, with his sun-browned skin and sun-bleached hair, which was nearly white now. His time in the desert had been eventful and he had enjoyed much of it, but it paled in comparison to the driving need to get to Suld, and get there quickly.
He had checked in with Keritanima during their journey to the forest. The spring was coming late to the northern sections of the West, and much of Draconia and points north and west were still snowbound, even in the lower plains. It was still snowing in the mountains. That was a tremendous relief, but he knew that it wouldn't last forever. He figured it would take him about a month to get from Arkis to Suld, and he also knew that it would take a month for the ki'zadun's armies to reach Suld once they could march. That was cutting it very, very close. All he could do was thank the Goddess and her sisters, T'Kya and Leia, the goddesses of the weather and nature respectively, that the snow was still coming down in the north. They would need him in Suld, need his power, to fight off the Demonic horde that the ki'zadun had assembled to destroy the Tower. It was a race now, and from the looks of it, Tarrin had an edge.
But that could all change if a warm spell melted the mountain snows, and that warm spell was more and more likely as the spring matured into summer. It was already unusual that it was still snowing so far into spring, so counting on the snow to stay on the ground wasn't a realistic hope. All he really wanted--or realistically hoped for--was that the snow would stay on the ground long enough for him to get to Arkis. Once he got to Arkis, he could outrun the marching army and beat them to Suld. Armies didn't move very fast, and though Tarrin had to cover three times as much distance, he could do it ten times faster.
Keritanima had seemed almost bubbly when he talked to her. She was in Suld now, with her Wikuni army, and she had more coming. They had put cannons on the walls and had blockaded all Tykarthian
ports to stop any possible supplies from getting into the hands of their enemies. The king of Tykarthia had been furious over the blockade, called it an act of war, but Keritanima literally told him to stuff it and get ready to fend off an invasion of nightmares. She had also managed to get information that the Ungardt had stopped the war with Tykarthia. This surprised Tarrin, since he hadn't yet talked to Jenna. He wanted at first to talk to her immediately, but then he remembered the severe weakness he had felt after his own ordeal. It took him two days to recover from that, and Jenna wasn't a Were-cat. It would tak her much longer. So he decided to allow her to have a full ten days of rest, a full ten days to recover and come to terms with what had happened, before talking to her. But it seemed that someone else had already told someone in Ungardt what was going on, and it wasn't necessary now for him to intervene. He had a sneaking suspicion that the Goddess had done that, had directly told Jenna what to do, what to say to their mother to get Grandfather to stop the war, and that is what seemed to have happened.
Things looked favorable, in that regard. Keritanima told him that the Ungardt were assembling into large groups, and that was an omen of what was coming. Even an army of Trolls would be wary to attack a mob of Ungardt berzerkers. Ungardt didn't form large, singular armies. Every clan was its own army, and it only followed orders from its clan chief. That was seventeen separate formations of Ungardt, and they weren't all going in the same direction. Some were moving into Tykarthia, obviously to attack and slow down the ki'zadun when they did march out of the Draconian mountains, and some were moving along the coast either on ships or on foot, Suld being their obvious destination. Tarrin didn't hold much hope for the survival of those armies intending to attack the ki'zadun in Tykarthia, but they would buy everyone else precious time. Ungardt weren't ones for guerilla tactics. They would fall on the enemy in a furious assault, and about all they could hope to do was engage the army and slow it down a few days, and thin out the numbers. Tarrin didn't like the idea of men and women throwing their lives away like that, but under the circumstances, he wasn't going to object too much. If the enemy was attacked three separate times it would slow them down by nine days, at the least--one day to set up, one day to fight, one day to recover--and those nine days would be critical. The Arakites were coming, already on ships and under full sail for Suld, and the Legions would make every difference in the world. Even a few of the famous Legions could turn the tide of battle, for there was no army of soldiers better trained, commanded, and experienced than the Legions of Arak. Their endless battles with Godan and Nyr made them some of the most fit soldiers in the world.
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