“Excellent,” I said. “Now if you could give me a little privacy here, I’ll change in one of these stalls.”
“Yeah, I should probably change too,” she said. “I’ll be in the next one down. Be quick, we need to get out of here before anyone gets too suspicious of why no one has captured you yet. Now, no peeking!”
And with that she grabbed the smaller set of clothes for herself and headed into one of the unused stalls next to the one I was still sharing with the Merchant’s horse. Not knowing what else to do, I just changed where I was standing hoping the horse would not take offense and try to bite me.
After I finished, I felt like someone was watching me. I took a look around my stall but didn’t see anyone but the horse. Then I noticed a knot hole in the wood separating Meredith’s cell from mine. Right in the knot hole was Meredith’s eye.
“Hah! I knew you’d try to take a peek!” She said. “Fortunately, I changed faster than you! Pervert!”
I was a little taken aback by this, but then, she didn’t sound mad at me, so I didn’t pay it much mind. I’m embarrassed to admit how long it was before I thought to question how long she’d been watching me before she accused me of peeking.
Once we were changed, we met outside the horse stalls.
“So, how are we going to tackle hitching the horses to the cart?” I asked.
“I have no idea,” replied Meredith. “You were the farmer.”
“I see…” I said. “So, I guess I’m walking a horse out to the carriage and hitching it up?”
“Well, I’m coming too,” said Meredith indignantly. “It’s just I’ve never hitched a horse to a cart before.”
“Well, come with me and I’ll show you,” I said. “It’s not that hard, really.”
And with that I grabbed the horse I had changed next to. I did this partly because it had been so docile while I changed, which was a good personality trait in a pack animal, but also to spite that pompous ass merchant earlier.
Walking the horse outside was easy. The entryway was still a confusion of merchants and towns’ folk coming and going. I walked the horse, with Meredith following behind, back to where the carts were parked.
“Which one of these is ours again?” I asked.
“The small one in the back there,” she said.
Sure enough, in the back, there was a one horse cart with a few bundles already stowed in it. Seeing it, and knowing it had to be the one she meant, I walked the horse over to it. Despite this being an unfamiliar cart, and me being an unfamiliar driver, the horse was happy enough to allow me to hitch it to the cart. Meredith, on the other hand, seemed bored with the whole scene. After half a minute she went around to the back of the cart to check the supplies she had procured, or purloined, to make sure everything was there, leaving me alone at the front of the cart.
“Going somewhere Tyr?” I heard a male voice from behind me say.
I turned around to see a group of three inquisitor initiates. One was standing a yard in front of me, the other two had just emerged from behind other carts.
“I knew when you didn’t appear with the others you must have different plans,” said the first initiate.
I didn’t recognize any of these three, but that wasn’t saying much. As I was shunned by the initiates, I did not spend any time socializing with them. So I only interacted with any of them at practice. And even there, most kept their distance unless they had to fight with me for a drill.
“I think you have me confused with someone else,” I said, trying to maintain my merchant’s disguise.
“You can’t hide from me, I’ve seen you strutting around here far too often,” said the first initiate.
“Yeah, strutting around like you were cock of the walk,” said a second.
“You may be plain, but you are recognizable,” said a third voice, this one female.
Having a chance to eyeball the group, I got a better impression of them. The first initiate was a man in his late teens or early twenties with sandy blond hair, and a middling build. The second was an average looking brown haired boy who seemed content to stand in the shadow of this first initiate. The third was a woman in her late teens with mousy brown hair, a skeptical expression on her face, and was still casually leaning against the cart she had been hiding behind. They were also all armed. The girl with a truncheon, the brown haired kid with a bolas and the blond initiate with a man-catcher.
“Again, I think you have me confused with someone else,” I said.
“Like hell we do!” Said the first initiate. “Let’s get him!”
And with that, the three of them attacked me. The initiate with the bolas started spinning the balls above his head to get ready to throw, the girl stopped leaning against the cart and readied her truncheon. The leader of the pack took a two handed grip on the shaft of the man-catcher and started to walk forward.
Not knowing what else to do, I immediately summoned my sword into my hand and started drawing in magic. My sword appeared in my hand immediately, and magical energies filled me at a good clip, it being midafternoon on a sunny and mild December day. As this was happening, I positioned myself so the cart was to my back and the blond initiate with the man-catcher was between me and the kid with the bolas. I had no intention of giving him a clear throwing angle.
The kid with the man catcher came straight on, fainted high with a thrust like he was trying to hook me around the neck or chest, then tried to swipe around under my guard to trip me up. Seeing this I easily side stepped and parried the attack. Unfortunately, this put me in line with the female coming at me with her truncheon. The first initiate stepped back and she swung at my head, which I parried. Seeing me parry, the initiate with the man-catcher tried again to trip me with the hooked end. This I side stepped the other direction, this time putting him between me and the girl with the truncheon.
Now, with enough power drawn, I let loose a blast of telekinetic force, which sent both the initiates attacking me stumbling. I then quickly stepped back and prepared a blast of electricity for the initiate with the bolas who had not yet entered the fray. But when I looked to where he had been, I almost missed a step.
There he was, but instead of preparing to throw the bolas at me, he was face down in the dirt, and his legs were tied up with his own bolas. So either he was colossally incompetent with that bolas or Meredith had snuck around and used her knockout spell on him. Good to know that she could use that outside of a hospital setting.
This did leave me with two initiates left to deal with though. Both of whom had just regained their footing. Not wanting to let them get the initiative again, I pointed my sword at the guy with the man catcher and released a burst of electricity to stun him. Unfortunately, he guessed what I was about to do, dropped the man-catcher, and rolled out of the way. My blast hit his weapon right on the metal head and sent it flying under an adjacent carriage.
When he got to his feet however, I was on him. Not waiting for him to regain his weapon, I rushed him head on. He was not expecting this and flinched for just long enough for me to fake a thrust with my sword, which he ducked. This was an unfortunate choice as the purpose of my fake thrust was to distract him from the knee I was aiming at his chest. But, since he ducked, it hit him square in the face, knocking him out cold.
With him out of the way and the bolas user knocked out, I spun to face what I assumed would be an imminent attack from the girl with the truncheon, only to find myself alone in the space between carts we had been fighting in. I looked around, and saw a pair of boots, presumably attached to the girl, sliding under a cart. Just as I was wondering what was going on, Meredith came around the other side.
“Well, are you going to help me hide these idiots or not?” She asked.
“The girl with the club?” I asked her, still a little surprised.
“I just dragged her unconscious body under that cart,” said Meredith. “Now you stuff the big blond guy under another cart and I’ll see what I can do with bolas boy.”
“You knocked them both out?” I asked, still a little slow on the uptake.
“Well obviously, Tyr.” She said practically rolling her eyes at me. “Who else was going to knock them out? Fortunately, they were so interested in you that they didn’t notice me sneaking around behind the carts.”
“Excellent! Unfortunately, I think my use of magic may well tip off more initiates so we need to move quickly,” I said.
“Well, duh,” said Meredith.
So with that, I pushed the blond initiate under the nearest cart while Meredith rolled the initiate tied up with his own bolas under another cart. I then jogged back to our cart and finished hitching the horse. When this was done, I stuffed my sword under the clothes and provisions that Meredith had supplied and climbed into the driver’s seat. Meredith was not far behind me, either. She climbed up next to me, then leaned back into the cart section and grabbed a bunch of cloth.
“I have some traveling cloaks for us,” she said. “I think we should put them on and pull the hood up to obscure our faces as we head to the gate, it should help hide our age and make us less identifiable.”
“Sure, it can’t hurt right?” I said.
The cloaks were a decent weathered wool. With the hood up, it also shielded my eyes from the sun a little, which was nice. I then snapped the reins, and the horse pulled us into a walk. I guided us around the other carts, out around the stable and headed towards the main gate.
As we were coming around and entering the causeway heading towards the front gate, I looked around the green to see if any groups of initiates were coming our way. Fortunately, none were, but I was worried how long we had before more showed up after having felt my bursts of magic. Fortunately, now that we were on the main causeway road to the front gate, we had entered the general hustle and bustle of people coming and going from the castle. That should obscure us from any prying eyes heading towards the stables.
The line of people coming into the castle that day, despite being midafternoon, far exceeded the number of people leaving. This meant that the guards at the front gate were occupied with the people entering the gate and were not paying much attention to those leaving. Still, I had quite a few nervous moments as we passed beneath the first portcullis of the gate as one of the guards gave us a hard look before motioning us on out.
Surprisingly though, we had no troubles leaving. The road from Caer Sud headed down the hill crossing back and forth in a series of switchbacks before reaching level ground. Once there, the outskirts of the city of Sudchester began. To my eyes at the time it seemed like quite a large city, being much larger than Forsburg had been. But the truth was, it was just a minor city in the Holy Empire, serving essentially as housing for castle workers and a market where they could procure sundries. It also had various church offices designed to act as the government’s mouthpiece in the city. Still, as I headed into it, I had to force myself not to stare at the buildings, people and general hubbub that was likely fairly standard for a town this size in midafternoon. The sheer quantity of people wandering about was foreign to me.
Meredith, on the other hand, didn’t seem fazed by any of it. She was smiling in the afternoon sun and lounging beside me on the bench seat in the front of the cart. She would periodically look around at particular merchants hawking their goods, or interesting sights that we passed. But generally she seemed content to just be on the road, putting Caer Sud behind her.
It took us about an hour to wend our way through the city. Not that the city was so large, but the streets were crowded and the main causeway, heading to the Eastern North-South trade road was quite a popular one. But, by early evening, we had passed out of the city proper and were trotting through the countryside. The cityscape had given way to more rural surroundings with local farmers’ fields and city officials’ estates.
By the time night had fallen, we were well on the main road north, and Caer Sud was well and truly behind us.
Chapter 25.
That night was spent in a clearing in the southern edge of the eastern forest. It had clearly been used frequently as a campsite, as there was an old fire pit already prepared in the middle. Meredith prepared dinner, such as it was, while I unhitched and hobbled the horse so it could graze without leaving the clearing. I then wandered into the woods a ways till I found a stream we could get some water for the horse.
Everything went quite smoothly that evening, each of us puttering about. It was only when the little chores were over that things grew quiet. The silence stretched out some time before anyone spoke. The sheer enormity of the events of the past day clearly looming loomed large in both our minds.
“I can’t believe we’re really on the road,” said Meredith. “It’s one thing to entertain ourselves for months talking about it, quite another to actually be on the road doing it.”
“I can’t believe we actually got away,” I replied. “I was sure someone was going to see through our disguises before we got out. I honestly thought that they were going to drop the portcullis on us at the last second, trapping us there.”
“Hah, it was a near thing I think,” said Meredith.
“Oh?” I said, a little concerned.
“Yeah, while you were staring daggers at the guards on our way out,” said Meredith. “A couple other squads of initiates rounded the hospital wing and were heading towards the stables as we were going through the gate”
“Damn, really?” I said. “I must have been paying too much attention to the guards not to have noticed.”
“Well, since you were driving, watching the road and the guards was probably better than looking around behind you,” said Meredith.
“Makes me wonder if we camped too close to town,” I said. “If they send out search parties we aren’t that far from the road.”
“True, but they don’t know we left,” she said. “At least, not necessarily.”
“Maybe, but those initiates jumped us behind the stables with the carts,” I replied.
“But for all they knew you were just hiding out there,” she said. “They certainly didn’t expect me to be there, or that I would stun them from behind, otherwise they would have noticed me sneaking around behind them.”
“True,” I said. “Even so, the more distance we put between ourselves and Caer Sud tomorrow the better.”
That night was spent sleeping rolled up in our cloaks and some blankets that had been stashed away in the cart. Fortunately, it stayed warm for this time of year, as this were not really winter weather gear. But for a mild December night, we weren’t cold.
We both got up with the sun the next day. Neither of us were all that comfortable staying put for fear of being caught. So we quickly packed up our things, ate a quick breakfast, and hit the road.
There were some clouds on the horizon as we set out, but they burned off over the course of the day. The farms surrounding Sudchester gave way to rolling hills and larger ranches designed for raising live stock. We ate lunch in the cart at noon without stopping. It gave Meredith a chance to practice using the reigns and directing the horse. Fortunately, this horse was quite docile, so didn’t require much direction from her. It was an easy chance for her to learn the ropes.
We kept traveling well into the night. Neither of us wanting to make the mistake we had the previous night of stopping too close to town. Even though nothing bad had come of it, we still thought we should not repeat it. However, after a while, we were both exhausted and it was getting too dark to see. We eventually found a spot off the road where we could rest, have dinner and care for the horse.
That night things progressed much as they had the night before. We set about doing all the little chores making camp and having dinner entails. We didn’t talk much, but it was no longer an uncomfortable silence. Having had a long day to get used to our situation, things felt more natural.
Unfortunately, that night things got cold. As a result, instead of being huddled up in our own blankets we were forced to combine the two so we could dou
ble up and stay warm. This didn’t seem to bother Meredith any, but it took me a long time to fall asleep. I was not used to sleeping with someone near me, especially not a female someone.
Can’t sleep pansy?
Pansy? What brought that on?
Hah, as if you didn’t know. There she is, all snuggled up next to you, and there you are just trying not to pop wood and disturb her sleep. It’s quite pathetic.
Oh come on. We’re sleeping like this because it’s cold out and we don’t have enough blankets otherwise. Besides, it’s not like anything would happen with the two of us all bundled up in our traveling gear and cloaks under the blankets. It’s so cold out, I don’t think anyone would want to expose even a toe.
Yeah, toe! Hah! Pansy…
Anyway, we are finally on our way to find out about our friends and Meredith’s father. Think of this as a chance to see more of the world than just the corner of my room and the practice field.
01 - The Price of Talent Page 37
