The smith stood and stretched his back, and Kestrel took the water skin from the elf who held it, and offered it to the human. “Have a drink if you want. It’s good water; it’ll make you feel better.”
The smith took the bag without comment and squirted a stream down his throat then handed the skin back to Kestrel and bellowed for his boy. “Bring a feast for these three — whatever’s available in the larder,” he told the youth.
“Your slaves are free now. So you intend to set them free in the forest?” he turned to Kestrel.
“Yes. I’ll take the long way about to get to back to Estone city,” Kestrel replied.
“And you were able to go into town and just buy them from a gambling hall?” the smith asked, as his servant arrived with a bag of foods.
“I won a lot of money playing their games, and it was cheaper for them to give me the slaves than my winnings,” Kestrel simplified what had happened. “We’ll just take the bag and be on our way, if you don’t mind,” Kestrel told the smith.
He didn’t distrust the human, but he had no feeling that he could completely trust him either, and he needed to start the journey back, knowing that it would be slowed down by the weakened and crippled condition of his new acquaintances.
“Go right ahead; for what you’ve paid today, you can keep the sack,” the smith grinned. “Here’s your own staff back too,” he pulled it off a table top and tossed it to Kestrel.
“Can you bring our horse out from the stable?” Kestrel asked the boy, who immediately ran to do so.
“He’s obedient; you need to keep him around,” Kestrel grinned at the smith.
“He’s my own son; he listens better than I did at that age,” the man agreed.
Kestrel switched languages, as he spoke to the two elves whose heads had turned back and forth, following the conversation. “We’re going to start back home now. I have a horse, and I want you two to ride it today, and maybe for a few days,” he instructed them. “I know you don’t like the idea, but I want to get away from here as fast as we can, just to be safe, and the horse will help speed our departure.”
They looked at him, then looked at each other. “We understand. We don’t like it, I’m sure you know, but we’ll do it,” one of the two answered.
They walked out into the yard, where Kestrel helped both men climb atop the saddle, and he instructed them to hold on.
“I’ve got one question,” the smith said as they readied to leave. “Are you human or elf? I know I shouldn’t have to ask, but you almost seem like one of them somehow.”
“I am human,” Kestrel said, then turned away and started the horse in motion with him. “And elf too,” he added softly as they left the yard.
He led the horse to walk at his pace for several minutes until they were safely away from the blacksmith shop and moving out towards the farms along the road. “Hold on tight,” he spoke up to the elves, “we’re going to pick up the pace.” He broke from his walk into a full Elven running stride, and the horse immediately began to move at a brisk trot beside him, as the riders exclaimed and grabbed on tightly to the saddle and each other.
For the rest of the day, until sunset was nearly complete, they continued to pass rapidly away from Green Water, passing along the shore of the North Sea, and finally turning inland to settle in for the night in a camping spot.
“Let’s stop here,” Kestrel said at last, breathing hard as he reined the horse to a stop beside him. “You can climb down. You’ll be sore,” Kestrel advised as he helped the former slaves off the horse.
“Here,” he tossed them the water skin. “Both of you take a drink from this, but not a lot. It comes from a special spring, and if we give you some each day for the next few days, plus feed you some food, you’ll be nothing but better.”
“Master, who are you?” the taller of the two elves asked.
“I am an elf, made to look like a human,” he replied. “I’ll tell you more after I tend to the horse and we set up camp. If you can gather some wood, we’ll start a small fire.”
They went about their tasks, and several minutes later they sat down together in the darkness, illuminated only by the small fire and the stars overhead, unaware that the guards from the gambling hall had visited the blacksmith with a band of supporters, seeking information about the whereabouts of Kestrel and the elves, intending to take the slaves back and to slay Kestrel for his humiliation of the manager.
“Who are you?” Termine, the taller of the two asked.
Kestrel talked about himself in a limited way, hiding much, but revealing enough to provide a plausible tale for the two former slaves to understand how he had come to be in Green Water. “And then the goddess blessed the cubes I tossed, so that I won every time, and soon the gamblers owed me more than they could pay, so I took you two as payment, and here we are,” he concluded.
“Now, tell me your story, how you came to be slaves, and how you came to be in Green Water,” Kestrel asked. “I guess you were caught in the battle at the fire?”
“We were,” Hinger, the other elf confirmed, as they took turns eating and talking. “Our squad watched Commander Mastrin took a group out to try to break up the firethrowers, and we and the others were instructed to try to run south and get around the end of the fires, so we could take shelter in the safe part of the forest.
“Mastrin’s forces went down too quickly though; the humans just waited for them and butchered them, and we weren’t able to make it to safety,” he continued. “The humans came at us, and we put up a fight, but not many survived.”
“They rounded up the survivors, tied us all in ropes, and herded us together,” Hinger added.
“Was there a girl named Lucretia?” Kestrel asked with a lump in his throat.
“There were four or five score captured altogether,” Hinger continued. “I didn’t know many of them; I barely knew Termine. There were a few females, but they were separated from us pretty quickly.”
“Then after the first day, they didn’t attack any further. They could have burned the whole Eastern Forest — there weren’t any other defenders left, but instead they packed everything up and left the battlefield, taking us with them,” he explained. “It was a horrible march. They didn’t feed us much, they beat us just because they could, they left our dead lying by the side of the road — a lot didn’t survive. Maybe two score or three score made it to their city.
“Then things happened to us and to them. They fought among themselves; a lot of them were killed, and they attacked the city. Then they took an ax and cut off our feet, so we couldn’t run away, I guess,” he stopped talking, emotion overcoming him, and Termine picked up the story.
“We were put on a ship after the humans’ war with themselves was done, those that survived, that is, and we went across the sea to another great city, and we were sold off at auction. Hinger and I were bought together by a trader, and we worked on his ships, getting whipped and mistreated terribly,” he said. “The trader came up here on a voyage and must have lost money at the gambling house, because we were given to the house, and have worked there the past week.”
Kestrel felt the tears rolling down his cheeks at the bleak recital of the horrific events.
“All praise to Kai for sending you to save us,” Hinger said. “I’ll make an extra devotion and pledge to the temple to thank her.”
“As will I,” Termine agreed.
“As will I,” Kestrel concurred.
“Since there are three of us, we’ll take turns on watch,” Kestrel announced. “I’ll take the first shift, then wake Hinger for second, and Termine can take the third,” he directed.
The two ex-slaves fell immediately asleep, while Kestrel walked around the perimeter of the campsite, and came back to add new tinder to the fire from time to time. It was that fire that gave their location away to the gambler’s men who were still following them, and Kestrel’s watchfulness that saved them.
Near the end of his shift Kestrel heard the men appro
aching, and woke the other two elves. He gave them his bow and arrows to use, while he went out into the darkness of the trees, and waited for the men to pass by him. There were eight men, walking in a cluster towards the flames of the camp fire, and when Kestrel was sure they were within the range of the elven archers who were hidden in the darkness, he began his attack. He swung his staff with full force at the back of the head of one man, then jabbed and twisted the newly spiked end of the staff into the throat of the man next to him.
He heard the twinge of his bow, and one of the humans screamed, while the others realized they had been ambushed, and began to shout and flail. One of the men swung his sword blindly, but managed to score it across Kestrel’s stomach, a painful cut that he ignored as he twisted his staff between the man’s legs to trip him, then ripped the hooks across his opponent’s throat, and heard a gurgling noise as another arrow found its target.
There were three humans still left, blindly thrashing about in the forest. One was clearly running away, he could tell by the receding sounds, while one was still approaching the fire, and one was near him. With one hand holding his injury, he dropped the staff in the other hand and pulled out his sword, then snuck beside the human closest to him and stabbed the man in his kidneys. His victim gave a loud, sobbing scream of pain as he fell, and Kestrel administered a lethal blow out of mercy.
The bow sounded again, and Kestrel heard the final human hunter fall among the leaves on the forest floor. “That’s all of them,” he called out to the other two elves, “ and I’m coming in to the fire now.”
The other two returned to the fire as well, and met him there. “Kestrel, you’re hurt!” Hinger exclaimed as they came face to face. “Do you want to drink some of the healing water?” he asked, preparing to go in search of the water skin.
“No,” Kestrel answered sharply, and they both looked at him in surprise. “If I touch it, my ears and eyebrows will start to grow back to elven form,” he belatedly explained. “I’ve learned that the hard way, and had to undergo surgery twice to look human.
“’I’d rather not have a third surgery,” he added with a grin. “Hinger, you’re on duty now,” he told the elf, and he went to his bedroll to lay down. He slept uneasily that night, as the pain of the cut across his stomach troubled him, but awoke shortly after dawn nonetheless, and helped prepare the camp for their departure. He went out into the forest and raided the packs and pockets of the dead men, then they resumed their journey, and he jogged alongside the horse with its double load of elves into the southeast.
That night they had another fire to provide some warmth as the evening grew cooler, as Hinger and Termine debated whether their feet were healing, or if it was just their imagination. By the third evening of their journey they concluded that they were regrowing the lost limbs, and they mounted no watch as they decided they were beyond danger of discovery.
Seven days later the group reached Firheng, a return to the Elven nation that made the two former slaves cry with appreciation. They walked in through the city gate with less in the way of a limp as their feet continued to regenerate, and Kestrel led them into Belinda’s office to report to Commander Cosima.
“Kestrel! My husband whispered my name this morning!” Belinda cried tears of real joy when she saw him. “I’m really going to have him back!”
Cosima listened in amazement to Kestrel’s story of rescue. “I had no idea you would do any more than see the edge of the city and return,” he exclaimed when Kestrel was finished recounting the tale.
“Colonel Silvan will want to hear your stories,” Cosima told the two returned guards. “He’ll ask you so many questions you’ll discover that you know and remember things you couldn’t possibly be aware of during your time in captivity.”
“And his wife will have more of the healing water, to help your feet grow back further. You’ll not need anything else,” Kestrel assured them. It was true that their sores had disappeared and the scars they bore had shrank and faded into relative obscurity. “When you see Alicia, tell her Kestrel says thank you.”
They drank ale that night and talked with Arlen over dinner to celebrate their safety back among elves. “You know,” said Termine, “after a while I didn’t even notice he looked like a human,” he observed late that night, as he placed a hand on Kestrel’s shoulder. Kestrel grinned at the backhanded compliment.
The next morning Termine and Hinger were given a messenger tube to take to Colonel Silvan, and they left Firheng to make their way back to Center Trunk, the first elves to return from their captivity among the humans. After he watched them limp away from the gate of the guard base, Kestrel went back to see Commander Cosima again.
“You made more of your training trip than I expected Kestrel, and you did great work that was good in more than one way — it was good for those two men, it was good for our people, and I suspect it might even have been good for you,” Cosima said.
Kestrel nodded his head in agreement. It had been an eye-opening trip. He had started the trip with his memories of the prejudices that elves had shown against him because of his human characteristics, and questioning the moral values of elves versus humans. The decadence he had seen in Green Water, particularly the practice of slavery, showed him that humans did not occupy a moral high ground versus elves. And the eye-opening exposure to seeing elves as slaves had awakened a passion in him to achieve another goal while he infiltrated the humans — he would seek to rescue other elven slaves as well, if they were to be found.
“So, the seasons have moved along, and we need to get you up to Estone so that you can sail out before the shipping lanes freeze closed for the winter. Here are your orders from Silvan, with details on how you should plan to send messages back to our side once you’re over in Hydrotaz,” Cosima passed a folded sheet of paper to Kestrel.
“You’re good to go as of now,” Cosima rose. “And I don’t know if we’re likely to see you back here in Firheng again for a long time. I know you’ll have to be back in the Eastern Forest within a year and a half, as your ears start to grow back. I hope we’ll get a chance to see you pass through here. I’m sure you’ll have some interesting stories to tell,” he said as he walked towards the door and opened it.
“And you’ve got some friends here who will want to see you again,” he added. The commander held out his hand and shook Kestrel’s. “Go with the peace and protection of the gods.”
“Thank you, commander,” Kestrel replied as he felt the strong grip. “I look forward to seeing you again with some entertaining stories to tell.”
He turned to see Belinda, who was standing and facing him as he heard the door to Cosima’s office close behind him. “Oh Kestrel, come back to us safe and sound!” she said as she hugged him. “I want you to have dinner with Ranor and me.”
“I look forward to that,” Kestrel said gently. They pulled away from one another, and stared into each other’s eyes, then Kestrel stepped back. “Good bye, Belinda,” he said softly, as he left the room. His pack was in his room, ready to go; he soon picked it up, and put all his weaponry on, then left Firheng on his way back to Estone.
Chapter 30 — Jonson’s Needs
Kestrel stood on the road, looking at the walls of Estone not far away, as they glowed red in the sunset’s light. He’d taken three days to travel this far from Firheng, three days that he had spent scrubbing his mind of his feelings that he was once again an elf pretending to be a human. For the next several months, he knew he had to convince himself that he was a human — he needed to feel it in his heart and be able to convince everyone around him that there was nothing elvish about him. The words of the blacksmith in Green Water still replayed in his memory — “Are you a human or an elf?” Even when he looked and acted most human, the smith had found something about him that raised the seemingly preposterous question.
Those circumstances had been unusual though, and he didn’t expect to see another elf for many weeks or months to come. And starting with his passage thro
ugh the walls of Estone, he would have to put his Elven identity as deeply under cover as possible. He took a deep breath, then resumed his journey towards Estone, and half an hour later he passed through the gate.
He needed to find a place to spend the night. He had spent the whole journey north thinking about that question more than any other. He wanted to go see Merilla first — first and foremost — to see what reception he would receive, and what feelings might be ready to flare up between them, if the gods were to capriciously decide their romantic timing was allowable now. But he knew that he was only going to be in Estone for one or two or three nights, until he had arrangements to sail away, and he would be treating Merilla in a manner that was callous if he simply visited her briefly to satisfy his own desires, then left.
There was a square near the docks, and he knew there were decent inns nearby. He would go there and book a room. He would book a room and think about Merilla, he knew, as he walked through the darkening streets of Estone, as the autumnal sun set, casting its last weak rays into the city. Then, after he had a room, he would eat dinner, and he would continue to think about Merilla. And after that, no matter what he did, whether he went to an armory and practiced, or sat in a tavern and drank, or walked around the streets near Daley’s shop, he would think about Merilla.
Minutes later he reached the square, and selected an inn, The Mermaid, where he got the last room available. He left his pack and his bow and his sword in his room, and went downstairs with his staff. He stood in the doorway and looked into the dining room, where a few men in red sat, then walked outside into the darkness, and began to walk towards the section of town where Daley’s millinery shop and Hammon’s leathermongery were located around the corner from one another.
When he arrived, both shops were dark, but the living quarters above each showed windows that glowed with light, and he stood on a far corner where he could stare at both sets of lights and both doorways and felt the turmoil in his heart as the minutes passed and he made no move to approach either home. He felt his feet grow cold as he stood motionless on the corner, then the cold began to seep through his cloak, and at last he left the corner and returned to his inn, where he sat alone at a table in the tavern, and drank an ale with his dinner, before he went to bed alone for the evening.
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