“How did you do that?” Lucretia asked.
“Alicia said that she was tired of always having to fix me every time my ears grew,” Kestrel joked. “So the goddess gave me this tool to change my appearance, depending on where I go,” he switched the ring to his right hand, and watched the expressions on the women’s faces change again.
“That is amazing!” Lucretia said, as Kestrel returned the ring to his left hand. “Where did you get that?”
“A human goddess came right down to see Kestrel at a chapel in Estone,” Alicia told her friend breathlessly. “She was right there, as close as you are right now. She told Kestrel he had challenges ahead, and she needed his help, then she gave him the ring. It makes me have a little respect for Kestrel now!” she explained, growing relaxed once again after leaving Estone’s human society.
“I am going to go to the palace, and see if Elder Miskel will meet with me to talk,” Kestrel said. He looked out the window and realized it was only midday. The trip to Estone and the revelation from the goddess had come and gone in a matter of a few hours, incredibly enough.
“Would you go get some lunch for us first?” Alicia asked. And so Kestrel went to the mess hall and piled food on a tray, which he took back to Lucretia’s house, where the three of them ate together before his journey across town to the palace.
At the front gate of the palace he asked to speak to Elder Miskel. At length he was show into the gate and escorted around a walkway along the exterior of the palace building to a separate compound, where the uniform of the army was the predominant clothing, and then he was left in a waiting room for several minutes.
Miskel and three other officers entered the room and took seats around the table, Miskel sitting alongside Kestrel.
“You look in incredibly good health compared to what I saw of you before you disappeared from the palace last night,” the Elder said. “My staff debated whether we should even come into a room with someone who can vanish from closed rooms, apparently heal miraculously, and even seem to change his appearance.”
“Not to mention fighting a fatal battle in the palace against a member of the nobility and the former spymaster?” Kestrel asked.
“That too,” one of the officers agreed. They all carried knives, Kestrel noted, and he didn’t doubt there were armed guards outside the room.
“Still, there were all the cryptic references Silvan made to his agent extraordinaire that I felt warranted a chance to hear from you,” Miskel added.
“How did you leave that room last night?” he asked.
“Let’s put that question aside for now,” Kestrel said. He wasn’t sure yet whether he trusted this group of men enough to reveal his unique relationship with the sprites.
One of the officers started to bristle, but Miskel held his hand up to prevent an outburst. “As a gesture of good faith, we’ll pass that for now. But tell me, how did you recover from all those wounds you had last night, and how did you repel the other arrows that hit you?”
“This vest,” Kestrel plucked at the garment, removing it for the officers to see, and showed one of the holes in the material to Miskel, “has yeti skin inside it. There’s hardly a weapon I know of that can penetrate it.”
Miskel looked through the hole at the dark hide inside, as did the other officers. “We heard from Silvan that you had killed a yeti while on a training mission, but he didn’t mention this.”
“He didn’t know. This is from the second yeti I killed, one I hadn’t told him about early last winter,” Kestrel answered.
“You’ve killed two yetii?” one of the officers asked scornfully.
“Yes,” Kestrel answered. “How many have you killed?”
“Gentlemen,” Miskel interrupted, “let’s work together here. I saw that magic knife you flung around last night, and I’m fully prepared to believe you could have killed a yeti.”
“Strab claimed that you are a traitor. He said an officer in Elmheng had lodged a warrant for your arrest,” a different officer said.
“I have been on assignment out of the Eastern Forest for most of the past year,” Kestrel answered. “Yet I suspect someone has been collecting my pay packet the whole time, and didn’t want to be discovered as a thief. So he tried to file charges against me to cover his own crime.”
“We can check the records on that,” the officer replied.
I’m sure you will,” Kestrel replied. “And what’s more, I think Major Strab had traitorous intentions of his own, if he was allied with Sir Chandel.”
“What makes you think Chandel was a traitor?” Miskel asked.
“He kept those monster lizards as pets,” Kestrel said. “In all the lands I’ve been to – Estone, Graylee, Hydrotaz– the traitors who kept those pets were all friends of Uniontown, a nation far south of the Inner Seas. The people of Uniontown are trying to invade and conquer all the lands of the Inner Seas. It was Uniontown agents who persuaded Graylee to help Hydrotaz set the big fire in the Eastern Forest, and then persuaded Graylee to doublecross Hydrotaz and conquer it.
“Uniontown has its own gods who are hostile to our gods, and to the gods of the humans from the Inner Seas,” Kestrel added. “We must fight Uniontown on behalf of our own people’s freedom and for the sake of our gods. We can’t afford to let traitors infiltrate and destroy us.
“I’m sure it was people who were friendly with Chandel and Strab who promoted the idea of sending elven fighters out into the plains and open lands to fight against Hydrotaz, wasn’t it?”
He observed one of the officers look at another, as Miskel stayed focused on Kestrel. “And what if it was?” Miskel asked.
“That would be sending our men to slaughter. Out in the open
– without trees for defense– being outmaneuvered by men on horses, men with stronger bows and longer shooting ranges? Our elves would be slaughtered; our nation would be left defenseless,” Kestrel said passionately.
“This man doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” retorted one of the officers, the one who had raised the charges that Kestrel was a traitor.
There was a noise outside the door, a bustling of people, shouting and running, that made all heads turn. A stroke of intuition made Kestrel rise, and step towards the door.
“Where do you think you’re going?” the combative officer asked.
“Something’s happening. I need to find out what it is,” he said as he opened the door.
He pulled the door open, and a junior officer who had been opening the door from the outside nearly fell in. He looked at Kestrel, then looked at Miskel. “Sir, we have a situation in the palace. There are sprites flying about, looking for your guest!” the officer said excitedly.
“Sprites?” the combative officer inside the room asked scornfully. “Are you drunk?”
“Where are they?” Kestrel asked. “What do they need?” He didn’t wait for an answer, but burst out through the door into the hallway.
“Reasion!” he shouted. “Reasion, I’m here.”
“They’re down this way, sir,” the messenger came out and pointed.
“Get back in here!” Kestrel heard a voice roar inside the room.
“Take me to them – take me fast!” Kestrel told the messenger, deeply worried about sprites willing to make themselves visible to search for him. Together the two began running, and Kestrel heard the other officers from the meeting running behind them, trying to keep up.
They passed through a hall, and Kestrel saw a small blue person go flying by down the next corridor.
“Reasion! Dewberry!” he called. “Reasion, Reasion, Reasion,” he finally grasped that he could call them to him.
Instantly, five sprites arrived. “Friend Kestrel!” one of them spoke. “Your elf women friends are under attack!” the blue bodies were already surrounding him.
“Take me to them!” he shouted, and then they translocated him to the front room of Lucretia’s house, where a half dozen men in red robes were battering the bedroom door.
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Kestrel pulled his knife our of its scabbard and plunged it into the back of the nearest elf, then reached around and used it to slit the throat of the next closest assailant. The others turned in response, and Kestrel raised his staff and swung it forcefully at their faces, making them duck back.
“I’m here Alicia!” he shouted as he flung his knife and then placed both hands on his staff to defend himself from the attention of the attackers.
“Lucretia, return,” he called as he saw his knife fell one more of the attackers. He backed towards the house’s broken front door as he held the staff with only one hand, while catching his returning knife with the other hand. A sprite circled around behind the attackers, leaving the small group that had floated above the fray, and it began to stab at the rearmost of the men in red.
An attacker thrust a sword past Kestrel’s defenses, striking his shoulder. He had failed to retrieve his vest, he realized, as the sword slid along the shield on his skin and then sliced his flesh. Kestrel flung his knife at that man even as he fell backwards out of the window of the house.
He landed on the floor of the porch, and rolled over, shaking his head, then raising up to look in the window. The sprites had ganged up on the last attacker left in the house and killed that man as well. “Lucretia, return,” he said softly, as the door of the bedroom opened, and Alicia came out into the hallway, carrying a board as a weapon.
“Kestrel! Are you okay?” she asked, seeing him framed in the window, his shirt stained red where his shoulder was wounded.
“It’s just a flesh wound,” he said as he climbed back into the room through the window frame.
“Thank you, thank you all!” he told the sprites. “You saved our lives.”
“Kestrel friend, Alicia called Reasion, and cried for us to find you at the palace when the attack started, and because of all that you have done for us, we felt that we must help your friends, so we did,” one of the sprites told him, as the others anxiously floated nearby.
“You have been good friends. You are like brothers and sisters to do so much for us,” Kestrel answered, a compliment that made the sprites smile and hum with approval. “Go now; return to your lives and please let us know how we can serve you as you have served us.”
“Thank you! Thank you so much,” Alicia added, as the sprites started to disappear.
“Now, take off your shirt and let’s see what you have there,” Alicia said, pushing him down into a chair.
Kestrel removed his shirt, and Alicia gently probed the wound. “It doesn’t look bad, but you sure are a bleeder!” she commented, as Lucretia came over to join the exam.
“What am I going to do with all these dead bodies?” she asked.
“More importantly, why did they attack you two?” Kestrel asked. “They’re wearing the red robes of the southern gods of Uniontown, but how would they pick you two out?”
“I’ve heard that there were more and more men wearing those red robes in Center Trunk since Chandel became the princess’s beau,” Lucretia said. “It would make sense that they’re looking for revenge on you, since you killed their leader, but I don’t know how they would have connected us,” she agreed.
“I’ve got a skin full of healing water back in my office,” Alicia said. “We should have filled up some last night at the spring.”
They all heard a distant rumble, and the sound of shouts in the distance. “What could possibly be happening now?” Kestrel asked. He picked up his shirt, and pulled it over his head. Together, the three of them went out onto the front porch, from which they could clearly hear distant sounds of conflict.
“That sounds close enough that it must be happening right on the base,” Lucretia pronounced.
“You two stay here, and stay safe. Go back inside and lock yourselves in the bedroom until I come back,” he said.
“Kestrel, you’re injured; you can’t go out there looking for a fight!” Alicia loudly protested as he ran inside and took a bow and quiver from a lifeless attacker.
“This fight is looking for me,” he answered grimly, as he stepped off the porch with his weapons held ready. “Call the sprites and have them take you to the healing spring if there’s no other choice,” he called over his shoulder, and then he began to trot along the road, heading towards whatever new trouble was roiling the city.
As he rounded a corner, the noise grew louder, and when he jogged a block further to a new street, where he reached the administrative center of the army post, he saw a large crowd of men in red robes besieging a command center, meeting stiff resistance from those inside. Kestrel stopped and knelt at a spot partially obscured by a bush, at a distance from which his semi-human strength could accurately shoot an arrow, and dumped the quiver of arrows out on the ground. He notched the first arrow, then drew the bowstring, and felt the injury in his shoulder twinge as he pulled the string tight and released.
He picked up another arrow and shot, then shot a third and a fourth, ignoring the pain each time, as he tried to remove as many of the attackers as possible from the troubled army building. He wondered how so many men in red had entered the base, but then thought no further of it as his arrows began to have an impact, dropping one man after another, splashing motionless puddles of red cloth and flesh across the muddy pavement of the grounds, and causing some of the attackers to turn and look at where the arrows were coming from.
Before Kestrel was identified, there was a sound out of Kestrel’s sight to the right of the battle scene, and the red robes began to rearrange themselves, apparently anticipating an attack from that direction. Men who were clearly officers and leaders of the rebels suddenly came into Kestrel’s view in their new formation, and he began to fire rapidly at the commanders of the red robed group.
“You’re doing a good job,” a voice behind him said, and Kestrel turned to see two regular members of the guard, looking disheveled. “We’ve been running for our lives, trying to find someplace where we can start to fight back. There’s a half squad over there,” the speaker pointed in the direction the rebels were facing, “ready to make a suicide attack against those fellows you’re mowing down.”
“You two take positions and get ready,” Kestrel told them. “Some of the rebels will be coming in this direction to stop my shooting in a minute, and they’ll come into your range quickly. With three bows firing we can cut them down in a hurry.
The men nodded, and scuttled across the street to a second location, where they knelt and prepared their arrows.
Just as Kestrel had expected, a squad of a dozen and a half rebels in red, half the force that was attacking the command post, began charging up the street towards where he knelt, as the other half pelted away in the other direction. He began to fire arrows as rapidly as possible, cutting the attackers down, but causing his arrow supply to dwindle rapidly. As his arrow numbers dipped to less than a handful, the other two archers began to fire as well, and suddenly the number of soldiers in the charging squad began to decline at an alarming rate. Kestrel pulled his knife free and tossed it, then shot the next two arrows.
“Lucretia, return,” he ordered as he shot his last arrow, then waited for the knife to come hurtling back. The number of attackers still sprinting towards them had dwindled to only a half dozen, and they were drawing perilously close.
“Draw your knives and let’s go get them,” Kestrel called over to his new allies. Down the street he could see that the forces inside the barricaded command center were coming out to attack the reduced group of red robes in front of their building, as the half squad of army regulars down the street also attacked their rebel opponents outside the command post.
He threw his knife again, then held his staff in front of him as he ran at the small band, and began thrashing the stout pole about, putting the red-robed fighters on the defensive as his two companions approached and joined the fracas. Kestrel used his staff to knock the heads of the remaining opponents, who realized that they were headed towards certain defeat, and grew des
perate. He called his knife and threw it again, then rammed the end of his staff into the stomach of the last attacker.
“What’s happening here?” he panted as soon as the last of the men in red robes fell.
“We heard that the guards at the gates let all these fellows in, and that there’s more of them attacking other points around the base,” one of the archers answered.
“Go check on the command center,” Kestrel told his two companions. “I have to go check on friends I left someplace else, and then I’ll be back.”
He turned and trotted away, going back to make sure Lucretia and Alicia were safe.
“There are rebels wearing red robes attacking the base,” Kestrel told the two when he found them safe. “One group is dead, but there are rumored to be more,” he told them as he picked up three other quivers of arrows.
“Why would anyone try to attack the army base, the home of the guard, in the middle of Center Trunk?” Lucretia asked.
“That’s a good question,” Kestrel paused in his labors to consider it. “There’s no good reason. There’s no way they could think they could win.”
“Maybe they don’t need to win here. Maybe this is a distraction from something else, a way to keep the guard tied down,” Alicia suggested.
“Where else could they be looking to attack?” he replied. “The palace!” both women said at the same time.
“They could be attacking the palace, trying to kill or capture the king,” Lucretia said excitedly.
“Reasion, Reasion, Reasion,” Kestrel called suddenly. He reached down and grabbed one of the red robes from a dead attacker, and pulled it on as the silent sprite appeared. “Reasion, could you and your friends take me back to the palace, to the place you removed me from when I was injured last night?” he asked. “It could be of the greatest importance,” he added urgently.
The sprite nodded and disappeared, giving Kestrel time to remove one of the swords from the dead attackers, and belt it on. “I’m going to go to the palace,” he told the others. “One of the officers who questioned me this morning seemed very skeptical of the things I said, almost like he was a follower of Uniontown himself; the evil ones may have infiltrated the guard and the palace already. I’d like to go find out whether there is trouble in the palace.”
The Inner Seas Kingdoms: 02 - The Yellow Palace Page 36
