Dawn was shocked for a moment. She stood frozen. Then she said: “Of course, they have been roaming around here for several days. If the demons were scouting for us, they would have found them too.”
Grinna nodded and sighed.
“Bad luck for them. They can’t have been gone for very long, else the fire would be cold. The tracks are clear enough. Several demons were here, but there are no traces of a prolonged fight. Even if the hunters were good fighters, caught by surprise they had no chance. “ She massaged her neck. “All the more reason to hurry and report to Atelang as fast as we can.”
Dawn gaped at her. “But the demons will kill them!” she cried.
Grinna grimaced. “I know, but they might already be dead. And if we follow them and the demons kill us, no one will be left to report the danger. Then a lot more people might die.”
Teren laid a hand on Dawn’s shoulder. “It sounds cold, but we have to keep sight of the greater picture here. The lives of two people against many.”
Grinna extinguished the fire and said: “We leave their belongings here. Maybe they can escape on their own.”
Dawn knew it was a forlorn hope, but the rangers were certain they could not afford to follow the hunters. Ankou nudged her, he had noticed her distress and was purring softly to her. She stroked his soft fur and tried to block all thoughts of what might happen to the hunters. She hadn’t cared for them, had even be afraid of them, but she did not wish their fate on anyone.
Grinna said, “We’ll go as fast as we can, Dawn. It will be exhausting for you, but we need speed more than anything else.”
Dawn rubbed her nose. “Maybe you should leave me here, you’d be faster on your own.”
But Grinna shook her head. “Out of the question. You can’t fight them off by yourself. I believe it is proven now that the demons won’t simply leave you alone. In addition you have more information on the caves where the demons live than anyone else. We need you.”
That said, they traveled on without talking further for hours. The rangers set a gruelling pace. They all ate trailbread and jerky on the move and Dawn found herself flagging after several kilometers. When they reached the clearing where the rangers decided to camp for the evening, she was dead beat and more fell than sat down. She tried to heal herself with Nurture and it worked against the blisters that had formed on her feet, but the exhaustion stayed with her. Ankou laid down a short way apart from her, munching contentedly on a rabbit he had caught on the way.
The rangers set out the camp and fireplace on their own. Dawn would have liked to go to sleep at once, she wasn’t hungry. But Grinna urged her to eat some toasted bread and jerky and to drink some tea.
“I know you are exhausted, but you need the energy.” She said firmly.
Obediently, Dawn ate. To her astonishment, she found she was ravenously hungry once she had managed to down the first bites. She wolfed down her food and went to sleep directly after. In spite of her weariness, she slept fretfully. In her dreams she saw the queen in her cave chamber with the circle of runes. She had laid one of her eggs down in the circle and was butchering the hunter with the long blond beard, his dark blood flowing in rivulets over the egg and the runes glowing brightly. After a little while, another demon brought out the next egg and the second hunter, taking away the first one. Calmly, the queen butchered that one, too. As the runes once again glowed brightly, the queen suddenly seemed to notice Dawn looking on. She turned and looked at her, red eyes glittering maliciously, and said with her strange hissing voice: “I will come for you, child killer.”
Dawn woke up screaming. She sat up with a jerk and fought for breath, her heart hammering. Ankou stood up next to her growling softly and fur bristling as he tried to make out the enemy.
Grinna and Teren sprang up and looked around the camp wildly, weapons at the ready. Once they had assured themselves there were no enemies around, Grinna looked at Dawn and asked. “What is it, Dawn?”
Dawn rubbed her face, still breathing hard. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you. It was a dream. I saw the queen killing the hunters and she talked to me and told me she would come for me.”
Grinna nodded. “Small wonder you have nightmares, after all you have been through in the past days.” She came over to Dawn and sat down next to her bedroll. “Try to go to sleep again, we have a hard day in front of us tomorrow.” Dawn laid down again with Grinna at her side and Ankou lying next to her. But in spite of Grinna’s reassuring words, she felt a strange certainty that the hunters really were dead, killed by the queen. It had not felt like a dream. But perhaps it was just her imagination running wild. It took her a long time to fall asleep again.
The next few days followed a similar pattern. The rangers got up early to prepare breakfast and break camp and set a stringent pace until the end of the day. In the evening the camp was mostly silent. Dawn was worn out and only interested in food and sleep and the rangers weren’t inclined to talk much among themselves. They had no encounters with serious enemies. A few of the grey lizards that accosted them were dispatched by the rangers almost without breaking stride. Dawn got rid of her aches and pains in the mornings with Nurture. She wasn’t sure if she would have managed the pace without it.
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At last, in the afternoon of the fourth day, they made out the grey walls of Atelang, dotted with several small towers, in the distance. They had reached open fields now, after traveling through forested mountains during the last few days. The fields extended all around them over soft green hills. Farms and one or two small villages dotted the landscape. Dawn saw cornfields that were growing healthily, interspersed with patches of beets and potatoes. In the distance, closer to Atelang, soft meadows were holding grazing livestock.
When they reached the hills and the open area, Ankou held back, tail flicking nervously. Dawn looked at him quizzically and got a sense of reluctance from him. He didn’t want to come out into the open space. Her heart sank. She had counted on Ankou being there with her, among all the strangers in the city. But he was a wild animal, and even if he had chosen to befriend her for reasons of his own, he obviously didn’t want to leave the wilderness. Dawn swallowed down the lump in her throat, eyes brimming with tears and told him: “It’s alright Ankou, I will go on without you. We can meet again when I leave the city. Take care of yourself and don’t get caught by any demons, please.” Ankou purred softly, blinking at her with his yellow eyes and nudged her with his head. She stroked his soft fur a few times and he turned around and vanished silently into the forest they had just left. The rangers looked at her sympathetically and Grinna laid an arm around her shoulder. They didn’t say a word and Dawn went along with them with a heavy heart. They encountered a small road that crossed the fields and followed it.
As they traveled through the fields, Dawn noticed that the rangers had relaxed, now that they were out of the forest. In the course of the next hours, they followed the road that grew progressively wider. People were working in the fields and traffic picked up. They encountered wagons, drawn by horses or oxen. The rangers were greeted politely by everyone they met. Dawn felt miserable as they closed in on Atelang. Apart from the rangers she didn’t know anybody in the city and she felt sure that she would be met with distrust and contempt. The disobedient daughter who had run away from home to escape her wedding. She would have loved nothing more than to turn around and follow Ankou back into the forest. But what Grinna had said was the truth. She was ill equipped to spend her life alone in the wilderness. At the very least, she would have to improve her fighting skills and a few other skills wouldn’t go amiss either.
Darkness fell shortly before they reached the main gate with the two guard towers at the sides. The gate was already closed but Teren greeted the guards in front of it familiarly, and they welcomed him back warmly, bickering with Grinna and him. Dawn was tired and just exchanged a short greeting with the men, who mustered her inquisitively.
“Did you pick up a stray, Grinna?” The older one asked, laughingly. “Leave it to you to travel in the wilderness and come back with a lone girl in tow.”
Grinna laughed. “There are stranger things afoot than encountering a girl in the wilderness, Yannick. Now let us through, we need to talk to Madden urgently.” Yannick raised his brows at that, but signaled his comrades inside, and a small door set into the big gate opened to let them into the city.
They followed a cobble stone street into the city. The streets adjacent to the gate were quiet and dark, some lanterns at the crossroads throwing a feeble glow into the darkness. Further along, they encountered tall houses, several floors high, built out of the same grey stone as the walls. Their windows blazed with light. The street wound around the houses in curves and they arrived at a tall rectangular structure with a guard at the door.
“Hello Damon,” Teren said quietly. “We just came in and need to report to Madden.”
The guard mustered them and said: “He should be alone in his office. Go on in.”
They entered and followed a short hallway to a big brown door at the end. Teren knocked at the door and they were bid to enter.
The office was spacious and warm, a fire blazing in the hearth. A great map of Atelang and the surrounding hills took pride of place on the left wall. Behind a huge desk made out of dark wood sat a heavyset man with short grey hair and a ruddy complexion. Cool grey eyes gazed at the party.
“Teren, Grinna. I didn’t expect you back so soon. And who is this?”
“Hello Madden,” Grinna said coolly. “This is Dawn, we met her on our last mission in the mountains. We have a lot to tell you.”
“Why did you bring her here?” Madden replied, his voice glacial. “She’s not a ranger, obviously.”
“As I said, we have a lot to tell you, and Dawn has information bearing on the matter.” Grinna’s voice was no warmer than that of her counterpart. Dawn looked at her, astonished. She had never heard such a tone from the always bright and friendly ranger.
Madden snorted. “Next you will tell me that Nathan’s wild tale of demons in the wilderness was the truth.”
A leaden silence fell in the office.