Hampus was cordial enough towards Putty, and the relationship was mutual, which was all that Kestrel asked.
Hampus was growing less obnoxious in Kestrel’s eyes as well. While Elder Miskel may have intended for the arduous trip to drive the princess’s suitor to quit the journey, and thereby lose status as a hero, Kestrel had been surprised to see that it had produced different results. Eventually, primarily after the battle with Putty’s mother and the adoption of the yeti as a companion, Hampus had stopped whining. Then he had begun to actually be productive, occasionally hunting for the food they ate along the way to extend their dwindling supply of dried travel foods.
So now, Kestrel felt confident that they would face no more serious problems than convincing people and elves to accept Putty’s presence among them when they returned to civilization.
The river turned in a great bend, changing its flow from westerly to northerly, a signal to Kestrel that they were relatively close to settlers, and only a couple of days away from their arrival at Narrow Bay, the human city they would transit through to take a ferry to North Harbor, and then to go on to the North Forest.
As he and Putienne, moved around the outside of the bend, Hampus glided atop the river waters on the inside of the river’s wide turn. The elf’s route was shorter in addition to being easier, and he regularly stopped and waited for the other two to draw even with his position, or he went on ahead to look at the landscape that awaited them.
“Kestrel,” he called late one afternoon, as he turned around from an advanced position and came racing back to his companions. “There’s a plume of smoke up ahead. Are we close to that city?” he asked, referring to Narrow Harbor.
“No, not close enough to see smoke,” Kestrel answered, hurrying his own steps.
“Don’t try to follow me,” he turned and told Putty. “I’ll come back to you after I check this out.” And with that he went scrambling up over the rocks and beached tree trunks and other river debris, then sprinted out onto the surface of the river.
He heard the yeti warble in surprise and distress as he left the creature behind, while he skittered across the water and rapidly departed from the land-bound yeti. He wondered what Hampus had seen and misinterpreted – perhaps a low hanging cloud, or perhaps some freakish local fog, he guessed.
Seeing Kestrel approach, Hampus reversed course and returned to a location from which the smoke was evidently visible, then he ran up onto the shore and waited for Kestrel. The distance involved in running atop the water was farther than Kestrel expected to be able to run, so he veered towards the shoreline early, and walked along a sandy stretch of beach.
As he approached Hampus, his angle of view pivoted around the trees that grew inside the bend on the river, and he suddenly caught sight of a distant, dark pillar of smoke rising into the air several miles downstream. It appeared to be in a location that Kestrel surmised was in the middle of nowhere, and he was baffled by the sight.
“Perhaps there’s a forest fire?” he ventured when he reached Hampus and stood next to the elf. “That can’t be Narrow Bay; we’ve got to get out of the mountains first.”
Putty called out, and they turned to see the yeti attempting to scramble over the riverside debris to reach them, progressing slowly as she went. When she reached her two companions minutes later, they resumed their journey northward.
As night started to fall, they set up a camp site atop the banks of the river; they were nearer the still-dark column of smoke, but not close. Kestrel built a fire, while Putienne and Hampus were hunting in the nearby forest. He heard a distant scream, a man’s voice, and then a wailing scream a woman’s voice.
Kestrel jumped to his feet, and listened intently. There was no further sound for several seconds, then the woman wailed again.
“Hampus! Putienne!” Kestrel called, and repeated the names. There was no response, and then the woman screamed again, for a third time, and Kestrel decided to act. He stooped to pick up his staff and felt for his knife on his hip, then ran to the river, leapt out onto the surface of the water, and under the darkening sky, he ran atop the river for several hundred yards, then returned to the bank and ran more slowly atop the sand and stones as he recovered from the exertions of water-running.
Ahead he could see a ruddy glow reflected off rocks, and he faintly heard a woman’s sobs. He approached the scene of the glow for several minutes, until his legs felt recovered, and then he took to the water again. He ran atop the water as he approached close to the illuminated scene, one in which he could hear not only the woman crying, but the murmur of several men talking as well.
He swung in close to the shore as he ran by the spot where he could peek around the rocks to see the fire. He looked to his left and saw the flames of a large fire, build at the base of a mound of large blocks of stone. There were a pair of groups of men on either side of the fire, partial curves that were like parenthetical remarks bracketing the flames.
Those men were the ones who were talking, motioning to one another with great animation as they conversed. Near the base of the fire he saw a figure slumped on the ground, and the woman who he had heard appeared to be stooped atop the inert figure.
“What’s that out on the river?” someone called suddenly as he swept by.
“Probably just a bird, if it was anything,” Kestrel heard another voice respond.
Kestrel turned, his legs tiring once again, and ran to the river bank, where he jumped up onto the sandy shore, then collapsed to his knees in exhaustion.
“Stillwater, Stillwater, Stillwater,” he called as he gasped for breath.
“Kestrel friend, what are you doing here? Are you okay?” the imp asked a moment later as he emerged in the darkness.
“I’m just out of breath,” the elf answered as he stood up, his hands on his hips. “I heard screaming from the people around that fire over there. Could you fly over it and see what they’re doing?”
“Certainly I will,” Stillwater answered immediately.
“I heard a man scream, and then a woman, and I think I saw them by the fire,” Kestrel advised, as the imp rose into the darkness and disappeared from sight.
With another deep intake of breath, Kestrel began to stalk across the rough terrain of the strip of land that lay between the river and a short, stony cliff. As he approached the pile of boulders that had fallen from the cliff and created the shelter for the people around the fire, Stillwater came flying back.
“The man is tied up Kestrel, and the woman is crying. The others are building something from wooden sticks by the fire,” the imp reported.
“Do they have any weapons? Any bows or spears?” Kestrel asked.
“I saw clubs and knives,” Stillwater replied.
“Okay, I‘m going to go see if they can use help. I think they’re hostile, but I’ll find out for sure. If I run into trouble, I may call for help,” Kestrel advised.
“I will keep an eye on you from overhead, and assist you if I see problems,” Stillwater answered.
With that rudimentary plan in place, Kestrel gripped his staff and his knife, then walked to the opening among the rocks, the river to his back, and stepped into the fire’s illumination.
“Is everything okay here?” he asked.
“Who’s there?” the men around the fire were startled, as one of them shouted the question.
“Help me! They’re going to kill him!” the woman screamed.
The men from around the fire seemed to move as a single unit, suddenly advancing towards Kestrel.
“Stop! Stay back!” Kestrel warned them.
They failed to heed his advice, and he flipped his knife at the closest of them, striking the man in the chest, and making him fall, dead.
The crowd reacted in astonishment, then anger.
“He killed Petre!” one of the men shouted. They rushed past the woman and her inert companion, moving as an angry mass towards Kestrel.
“Lucretia, return!” Kestrel called, and the knife struggle
d to dislodge itself, then floated back to him.
It was slow, slower than the original enchanted knife had been, the wonderful weapon that he had received from Kai, and though he felt pride in his accomplishment in creating his copy of the enchanted weapon, he could see that its slow pace was not going to enable him to significantly diminish the score of men running at him.
As soon as he felt the knife in his hand he flipped it at the men, then stepped back and grabbed his staff in both hands, ready to fight.
“Stillwater! I’ll need help,” he called.
Just as he finished his shouted plea, he saw an attacker fall with an arrow in his shoulder, and then another fell too.
There was a sudden roar, a chilling, monstrous threat, coming from the darkness off to Kestrel’s left.
A trio of imp pikemen suddenly charged down at the men attacking Kestrel, swooping down from the dark sky above and spearing the right flank of the attacking force, then veering away.
“Lucretia, return!” Kestrel called.
Another arrow flew from the stones on the left and sent another attacker tumbling to the ground.
There were suddenly less than a dozen men left, between Kestrel and the fire. A large shaggy shape appeared on Kestrel’s left, as Putienne lumbered into view.
“Stop right there!” Kestrel shouted, suddenly feeling confident that the arrival of so many allies had turned the direction of the battle. “Stop and sit down; if you do, no one else will get hurt.”
Three men sat down in place immediately, while the others remained standing, stunned by the incomprehensible actions occurring around them.
“Putty, come here,” Kestrel called, starting to walk towards the men, and waving to his companion.
“Have you ever tried to fight a yeti?” Kestrel asked the defiantly standing survivors as he approached them.
Putienne fell into step beside Kestrel. The yeti had grown over the course of their journey, he suddenly realized. She now stood taller than him, taller than she had been when they had first become acquainted. And at the moment, illuminated by the flickering red and yellow fire light, she looked more intimidating and dangerous than he thought he had ever seen her before.
Two more men sat quickly. There was a scuffling sound behind the group, and Hampus sprang down from his perch, his bow held ready to fire another arrow. The imps came down and hovered just inches above the ground as well, their pikes pointed menacingly at the attackers.
And with that, the last of the men took seats on the ground.
“Wait here, Putty,” Kestrel directed the monster.
“You men stay still, or the others will attack,” he shouted at the sitting group.
“Hampus, Stillwater, friends,” he switched languages, “thank you all for your help. You made it very dramatic!” he laughed, as he walked in a wide arc around the prisoners to reach the woman who sat upright next to an inert figure.
“What words were those you spoke?” she asked, then looked at him more closely as he approached her and knelt beside the wounded man.
“My gods! You’re an elf!” she exclaimed.
“Mostly,” Kestrel agreed. “What’s happening here? What’s wrong with him?” he motioned to the man on the ground.
They hit his head; they knocked him out. They want to sacrifice him in the fire, as a sacrifice to their god, to please him,” she answered.
“He’s going to die,” she spoke matter-of-factly.
“Hampus,” Kestrel called. “Please go back to our campsite and get one of the skins with the healing spring water,” he instructed.
“Right away, Kestrel,” the elf answered. He set his bow down, then went loping out of sight towards the river.
“We’ll see if we have something to heal him,” Kestrel told the woman. “You stay with him; I’ll be back in a moment.”
He stood and walked back to the men who sat on the ground.
“What were you doing to that man?” Kestrel asked as he stood near them. He held his staff ready to strike anyone who made a move towards him.
“Krusima was angry with us. He made the ore we were mining disappear,” one of the men answered.
“You’re miners?” Kestrel asked, surprised by the man’s answer.
“Yes; we came to these mountains last fall to start a new mine. There was a good vein of tin ore we were following, but it disappeared two weeks ago. We prayed to Krusima, the god of the earth – he’s a human god,” the self-appointed spokesman explained to Kestrel.
“Krusima wouldn’t ask you to make a human sacrifice,” Kestrel said assertively.
“He did though,” another man affirmed.
“He’s never asked for anything like it before, but our god really did make this demand,” a third sitter chimed in.
“No human god has ever asked for a sacrifice like this have they?” Kestrel aloud, a rhetorical question. He couldn’t imagine any of the gods seeking the death of a human as part of a ritual. He didn’t know Shaiss or Krusima well, but he hadn’t ever heard anything from Kai or Growelf to make him think such terrible practices were condoned by the gods. Not even by Krusima, who he knew was angry with him.
“Never before,” one of the men spoke up. “But Krusima stopped answering our prayers a fortnight ago. We heard nothing from him, no indication that he approved or disapproved of our work. Then, two nights ago, several of us had a vision that he wished for us to make a sacrifice,” the man said.
“We all talked about it, and thought it was crazy, but last night we had the same dream,” someone else said. “So we thought we had to do it.”
“Kai,” Kestrel said under his breath, “is this possible?” He didn’t expect the goddess to answer but he had no way to interpret what was being recounted.
“There will be no sacrifice,” Kestrel said decisively. “Where is your mine?” he asked.
“Its’ just west of here, up on the mountainside. You can see it in the daylight,” one of the miners answered. “That’s where Krusima spoke to us, deep inside the mine,” the man explained.
“Go back to your mine and dig for the ore. Krusima wouldn’t really make it go away, I don’t believe,” Kestrel said.
“Are you a priest? How do you know?” someone challenged him.
“No, I’m no priest, especially not for Krusima, but I do not believe he would ask such a thing of his followers, when we’ve never heard of him asking for anything like it before,” Kestrel replied.
“Here’s the water, Kestrel,” Hampus came running back up to the site of the conflict.
“Go sprinkle some on the back of the man’s head,” Kestrel gestured towards the pair of people who remained in their place, closer to the fire. “Then try to make him drink some, even just a few drops.
“And ask the woman to take a drink too,” he added thoughtfully, hoping to revive her spirits.
“All of you go back up to the mine,” Kestrel repeated. The miners looked and acted defeated, and he thought it was safe to release them. “I’ll come up to see you and the mine tomorrow.”
“What good will it do for you to come see the mine?” a miner asked in a dismissive tone.
Putty gave a growl, and the miner shut his mouth.
“Go now,” Kestrel told them. Within seconds, they were all on their feet and running off into the darkness, leaving the rescued and their rescuers alone in the fire-lit opening among the stones. Satisfied that they would offer no threat during the night, Kestrel walked over to join Hampus and the others.
“What’s happening?” the woman faintly asked. “Elves, yetis, and sprites all appearing out of the darkness to save us?” she said plaintively. “I don’t understand,” Kestrel translated her words for the others.
“We are imps! Not sprites, not gnomes, not anything else; we are imps!” Mulberry said definitively. “No offense is taken, mind you, for I’m sure none was intended.” She firmly planted the end of her pike on the ground with a thump, in affirmation of her statement, and Kestrel translated ag
ain, with a grin.
“No,” the woman faltered, “no offense was intended.”
“That’s enough, Mulberry,” Kestrel gently chided the imp. He knelt down beside the woman, and placed his hands on the man’s head. “Did you drink some of the water Hampus brought?” he asked, as he let his hands roam over the back of the victim’s skull, finding the lump and the contusion from the blow to his head. They didn’t seem life-threatening, he was pleased to note. The water from the spring was very likely to heal such an injury quickly.
“I drank some. I don’t know why,” the woman said. She was compliant, glad that someone had come to rescue them, and then to accept the responsibility for whatever was going to happen next. The events of the night had left her too distraught to carry on alone any further.
“It’s water from an enchanted spring,” Kestrel told her. He looked at her, trying to evaluate her, to guess her story. “What are your names?” he asked.
“I’m Raines. This is my husband, Passet,” she answered quickly.
“Well Raines, we’ll spend the night here with you and Passet, if it’s okay. Do you have a home near here? We can take you home tomorrow if it’s not too far. He’d be better off healing at home if the trip isn’t too long,” Kestrel told her.
“We don’t have a home,” Raines told Kestrel. “Yet,” she added. “We came out here to the wilderness to get away – to start over,” she corrected herself. “We were caught by those men, and they just attacked Passet. They hadn’t touched me.”
Kestrel looked at her. Her story didn’t make a lot of sense. Two seemingly under-supplied humans didn’t seem likely to just wander into the wildness, unless they had no idea about what they faced.
“We’re going to go get our supplies and bring them back here to camp with you,” he told her. “Hampus will stay with you while the rest of us are gone for a little while,” he explained as he stood up.
He switched his language to the elven tongue. “Putty and I will go back to our camp and bring our things back here, if you’ll keep an eye on these two while we’re gone,” he said to Hampus.
The Guided Journey (Book 6) Page 20
