Much as I’d like to head out immediately, there still is the matter of Golick to deal with. Mainly, if he is planning to come with me, and if so, for how long. He has stopped rolling on the ground now and is just laying there, grinning at the slowly brightening sky.
“Hey Golik,” I call to him.
“Hmm?” He says, pushing himself up onto one arm, and turning slightly to face me.
“Where are you planning on going now that you’re out?”
“I don’t really know.” He says casually. “What about you?”
“Home, if I can make it.” I say, raising an eyebrow at him, isn’t it obvious? “Why aren’t you going to yours?” my brain goes over his words again and I wince quickly adding. “You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to, I didn’t mean to pry.” If he didn’t immediately answer home, it might be because he doesn’t have one anymore, and I don’t want to bring up bad memories.
“No it’s okay, umm...” Golik looks a little flustered. I probably did bring up bad memories. Stupid automatic mouth.
“See, the reason I’m not really going to my family is because, well…” He pauses again for a little bit. “they’re refugees? And I’m not quite sure where they are. Because everyone who is anywhere close to the warfront in dwarven territory gets evacuated, you know? Not quite sure where they went because I was forced to enlist before they moved.” His voice started out hesitant but then became firmer as he filled out his story. “I was kinda hoping I could travel with you for a bit because we’ll both be heading towards the border, me to search for my family and you to head home.” He scratches at his head a little nervously but offers me a hopeful grin through his dirty beard.
“I don’t mind you coming along.” I say rather cautiously. I’ll appreciate the help, and his explanation seems accurate, but there is still something off. “You said you were forced to enlist? How long ago was that? Do you know where the worst of the fighting is taking place?”
“Well, from about six months ago, yeah. I deserted and was caught shortly after that, but I can tell you up to six months ago.”
“Excellent, you can tell me about it as we go.” I glance at the sky, the sun rises in the east, so we should be heading with it at our backs to get to the border. I turn to start walking and see Golik sit up on his haunches.
“You don’t mean we are starting immediately?” He says.
“No time like the present. Also, we need to leave before the guards herd everyone back down and resume their patrols, we are still in sight of the compound walls.” I reply, starting to walk away from the rising sun and the compound. “You coming?”
“Of course,” Golik replies, hurrying to catch up with me. “but it will probably take a long time for everything to resume to normal. I wouldn’t be surprised if the entire cave system collapsed and they won’t be able to start up proceedings again for a month.”
“Still, better safe than sorry.” I say. “We don’t know that the entire thing collapsed. They could be nearly finished herding all of the prisoners back inside instead.”
Golik looks like he’d like to say something, but shuts his mouth instead. We travel companionably for a while, sometimes in silence, other times talking about insignificant things: the weather, favorite seasons, favorite foods. Golik was surprised to learn about how a lot of Elves choose not to eat meat. He couldn’t understand why people would do such a thing, and his bewildered face was quite amusing as he asked me yet again “But why would anyone abstain from meat?” as if my previous answers were somehow unsatisfactory.
“Strange Elves.” He grumbled eventually, apparently giving up on his questioning. His stomach rumbled as if our talk of food had woken it up. “You want to halt here Faladel? I’m tired and hungry, we stayed up half the night, and it’s nearly noon.”
“Sure.” I say, I was getting rather tired, and food sounded good. “Do you know how to forage? I know you wouldn’t get any of your precious meat, but we don’t have anything to hunt with.”
“Well, if we stop here for the day, I could probably make a couple of traps, while you forage.” Golik says, looking around us. We had left the grassy plains behind us, and while we weren’t in a dense forest, there were plenty of trees around for small animals to make their nests in.
“I don’t mind foraging alone,” I say. “Meet you here when the sun hits its zenith?”
“Zenith just means it’s directly overhead right?” I nod. “Sure.” Golik replies.
After a while filled with searching I return to our makeshift camp with my arms filled with roots and leaves. Golik glances up from his work, which looks like a mass of twigs and leaves to me, and hurries over to help me carry all of it.
“We might want to look through all of this stuff.” I comment to him as he places his load down on a large flat rock he’d put here as a makeshift table. “It’s been a long time since I’ve worked with plants and mostly I picked out what looked familiar to me.”
“You’re not kidding.” Golik says, raising an eyebrow at my collection. He reaches over and pulls out a leaf. “Deadly poison in this one,” He plucks another, “but this one is a tea leaf.” I feel my ears flush slightly. “Seriously though, how long has it been?” He finishes, glancing at me.
“Around twenty years” I mutter looking away, embarrassed at my mistakes.
“So, practically never.” Golik says, “Well, unless you’re older than you look by a considerable amount. Guess I can’t really blame you for forgetting all this. Bet you’re glad I decided to come with you now though, right? You wouldn’t last two days without me!” He chuckles happily. “How about I take care of getting the ingredients, and you work on cooking?”
“Probably a good idea.” I admit. “I’ve taken a couple classes in cooking so I shouldn’t be too bad at that.”
“Unless you’ve forgotten all of that too!” Golik says, still chuckling. He finishes his traps while I put together a salad. He had a sharpened stone that he’d found and used to cut the arms off his extra jacket into strips to use to make traps. After he’s done he hands the sharpened to me and I use it to chop the roots. When I’m done there are two evenly split piles of salad on the stone. The leaves are beginning to wilt because of the heat so I decide that we should eat them sooner rather than later and shout to Golik to halt his work.
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
Golik surprises me yet again when he produces two small stone bowls that we can eat from, along with spoons. According to himself, he’d bought them on the black market a while back in case he’d ever escape. One was going to be a backup in case the other broke. It all seems almost too convenient, but I don’t question it. I’m grateful for his foresight. After we are done with lunch, I offer to wash our dishes in a nearby stream I found, and Golik comes to check it out. Apparently the water is safe to drink, so we quench our thirst. Golik sets his traps nearby after we are done, and then we head back to camp and sleep the rest of the day away.
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The next day, Golik finds a small rabbit in one of his traps. He breaks its neck quickly, making sure that it doesn’t suffer too much. We cook the meat, store it in the remainder of Golik’s coat which he’d created a bag out of, and then head out again. We continue like this for a week, stopping to rest when we need to, setting up traps whenever we do, and traveling when we can. We try to stick near the small stream I found, but eventually it goes underground and we don’t have any source of water for a while. Then it rains one night, and although it is uncomfortable to camp because we don’t have tents, at least it provides us with water. The weather clears up the next day, but Golik has a fever, so we have to stop for two days while I try to treat him. When he gets better we continue on our way, soon finding another small stream to travel by.
I start taking us south as well as west, trying to avoid any bustle that might be around Abahak which is slightly north of us at this point. Golik doesn’t seem to care that we are avoiding the smaller villages and sticking to the woodland trails. I wonder about this because he says he is searching for news of his family, but he hasn’t even brought them up once since we’ve started out together. We’d just passed by one of these villages recently, so I decide to bring up the topic with him.
“Golik” I carefully begin, “Why-” Suddenly he tackles me, shoving me off the path and crushing a couple of bushes, muffling my cry of protest at this treatment by clamping a hand over my mouth. A billion thoughts run through my head in this instant. I realize that if he could move that quick he could have killed me ages ago, even without a weapon. I had completely let down my guard near a Dwarf! How could I be so stupid? But why was he only attacking now? Golik was a conundrum to be sure, but I don’t have the time to puzzle him out right now. I feel my old instincts, drummed in by hours of training kick in. I struggle out of Golik’s grip on me, roll over, and grab for where my dagger would be sheathed if I had one. Which I don’t. Because I’m an escaped prisoner. Great.
I look at Golik, trying to size him up and see if I can take him without a weapon. But Golik isn’t even paying attention to me anymore. He is back on the pathway, dusting himself off and glancing forwards, a worried look on his face. I follow his eyes, slowly letting my guard down, and see movements between the trees.
“Go on, hide yourself!” Golik hisses at me. “It’s a Dwarf patrol! They could be looking for us! Get behind those bushes or they will see you and kill both of us on sight!”
I give him one more glance, then hear the hoofbeats of the approaching soldiers and quickly scurry further into the bushes on the side of the trail as the Dwarves march and ride on the path towards Golik. The only upside to this situation is that Golik wasn’t trying to kill me after all. I can see how I thought that in the moment, but it seems rather shallow now. He’s a bit questionable but hasn’t given me a reason to doubt him yet.
“Halt! State your business in these woods!” The apparent leader of the group of armed Dwarves screams at Golik, hand on the hilt of his axe.
Golik calmly stops and waits for the Dwarves to reach him. As the Dwarves get close he says “Good afternoon all, my name is Irken; I’m new to these parts and got lost, but then I stumbled upon this path. I felt sure it must lead somewhere, so I followed it in the hopes that I would find myself in a place I know. Unfortunately, I don’t seem to be getting anywhere. Do you happen to know where the crossing between Kings Street and Helms Deep Road is? I will know my way home from there.” He said this in such a peaceful manner that it put the Dwarves quite off their guard. His tale is so much smoother than it was when he was telling me his backstory. How many times has he told this lie?
“Geez, you're a long way from home, aren't you?” Said one of the Dwarves in the patrol. “That crossing is four miles northwest of here. How did you ever get that far out of the way?”
“It’s these dratted long legs of mine.” Golik sighed, “They make my head always in the clouds, I can’t see where the sun is, so a lot of the time I have no idea which way I’m going.”
The Dwarves in the patrol chuckle good naturedly at his self-deprecating humor. I hear one of them whisper not-so-quietly to his buddy “He’s just a harmless idiot.”
“Your right to curse those legs of yours sonny” said the apparent leader, “you’re so tall that we nearly mistook you for an Elf. We have heard word that there is an escaped Elf on the loose. He worked his magic on one of our own and made him his accomplice in a most terrible deed. They collapsed the entire mine! Damned Elf! It’s not safe for any good Dwarf to be about these nights. He might be murdered in his sleep by that coward. Here take one of our ponies, she’ll make it to your home around nightfall. We’ll come around to pick her up in a week or so.”
Golik smirks slightly, like he’s holding in a laugh. “Oh yes, I heard about that Elf. Apparently, he looks hideous with a huge festering scar right here.” he draws a diagonal line across his face. “It was given to him by a Dwarf on the warfront, it took out one of his eyes. May the gods bless the Dwarf who did it.” I frown, I don’t appreciate the gruesome description, but it is smart to throw them off the scent, so I guess I can’t complain.
The Dwarves continued talking for a while, about politics, crops, if the war was ever going to end. The leader of the patrol claimed that it was almost over, that the Dwarves had a secret weapon that would destroy the elfin armies. Since he couldn’t prove his statement no one believed him. But I can’t help worrying for my family. What if he is right? If he’s an officer, he could have access to restricted information.
When they leave, I come out of hiding to look at our new acquisition. She is short, but sturdy, and looks reliable. Golik is obviously in love. “Aren’t you a beauty my sweet little horse? Such a pretty little horse!” The horse snorts and shakes her mane. “And intelligent too! Look Faladel! She said she doesn’t like being called little.”
I am skeptical to say the least. “How could you get that from a mane shake? She could just be itchy.”
The horse shakes her mane again. “See! She just disagreed with you! It’s as obvious as daylight! How can you not see it?”
“I guess you two just connected. I was completely left out of the equestrian equation. You keep the horse, she is exactly your size anyway. And we’ll go faster if you’re not on foot. But if we have to cross lake Tabahi, we may have to leave her behind.”
“Then let's not cross it. We can go around, right?”
“Of course but we will still need a boat to cross the tail.”
“What do you mean the tail?”
“You’ve never noticed? Lake Tabahi is shaped like a cat, Lake Onik is shaped like a dog. Lake Tabahi’s tail is two rivers that run into the lake. They are too deep for a horse to swim.”
“You can do it, can’t you Myrddin?” Says Golik confidently. Is it my imagination or did that horse just toss it's head in a way that seemed to assent? Strange, maybe Golik’s assertions of her sentience are wearing off on me.
“You already named your horse?”
“It just came to me and it seemed natural to call her that.”
“Fine. That's weird, but I won’t bug you about it.” I will have to ask him my question later, maybe before bed.