Galen stared at the dully aqua-colored shimmer of the retreating Lutis as a rapidly growing sense of urgency pressed around him. The certainty that he’d failed to do something important turned his stomach sick in an all too familiar way.
You got some kind of secret bonus on the Diplomacy roll. Maybe you should double down on it?
“Will you help us?” Galen blurted, as the being began to fade. “Help us catch the raiders? Help us stop them?”
Danto slapped Galen’s arm in approval, but even as Galen spoke the words, they felt foolish and desperate.
What whispered around Galen’s head was light and bright and prompted an upwelling in his chest that felt like laughter. Then the space between the trees returned to nothing more than a space between the trees, and Galen was left with nothing in his head but the sound of his own thoughts.
If the dice rolled again for Galen’s new request, he didn’t hear them.
Maybe that’s good. Maybe that means it used the same roll for both my requests.
Or maybe it meant the latter was never an option. There was no way to tell. Galen didn’t have time to think about it longer, because something new caught his attention.
After the Shining One’s retreat, the forest around Galen remained too quiet. Then individual sounds emerged from that void of silence—the crisp flutters of leaves in trees, bright bursts of bird chatter, a crackle in the underbrush that Galen instinctively knew was a scavenging squirrel digging in the detritus.
The air tasted different, a hearty stew of sap and animal musk and the rich earthy scent of well-composted soil. Galen swore he could even smell the direction of the stream by the scent of water on the breeze that was different from the moisture trapped in the soil beneath his feet.
None of it overwhelmed, though. Galen felt he could sense more individual noises and scents, but instead of mingling into a cacophony, they separated into an orderly collection, like polished stones he could lift and look at one by one.
The Shining One did something to me.
Galen’s chest felt oddly light, and his breath came more quickly.
I asked for help.
He thought the laughter had been a rejection of his request. Maybe he’d been wrong.
All that BS about feeling like something was waiting for me. Maybe it was about getting spellcasting abilities of some kind?
The possibility made him a little giddy. Instead of “Militia Soldier,” maybe he got to be something cool. Maybe instead of being stuck with the ball and chain of a family he needed to take responsibility for, he’d get to do something fun and exciting and be special in some way that had nothing to do with what a good, dutiful son he was.
Galen tried listening harder, for the sound of fleeing raiders or anything that might point in that direction. He closed his eyes and breathed in the air. But nothing seemed wrong or out of place.
As Galen tried, though, the sense of clarity faded. The sharpness of everything he heard and smelled turned fuzzy around the edges, until all the things he’d thought he’d been able to sense returned once more to the now-bland soup he’d always known.
Galen opened his eyes. Brin and Danto stood in front of him, expectant expressions on their faces. Galen exhaled, letting the last of what he’d thought was an exciting new development in his life flow out of him.
Hope was a stupid thing. It only ever led to disappointment.
“I thought…” Galen shook his head. “Never mind.”
“What just happened?” Danto leaned forward, his eyes wide. “I could hear something. Whispering, like. Did they talk to you?”
“I didn’t hear anything.” Brin sounded almost sullen, but she leaned forward, too. “Did they talk to you?”
Galen stammered for a moment before shrugging. “Sort of?”
As quickly as he could, with intermittent questions from Danto spurring him along, Galen relayed the Shining One’s half of the conversation that Brin and Danto had heard only Galen’s side of.
When Galen was done, the three of them just stood there for a few more moments. Around them, the forest spread off in all directions, as empty of the raiders they’d been following as it had been all along.
“I’m not sure if we’re better off now or not.” That little vee had dropped between Brin’s brows again. “If the Shining One could be counted on as an ally…”
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“Or at least the enemy of our enemy?” Galen suggested, although he wasn’t so sure about that.
“Yes.”
“Maybe we at least don’t need to worry about the earthen creatures anymore?” Danto piped up.
“Maybe.” Brin continued frowning thoughtfully.
Danto shuffled his feet and glanced past Brin’s shoulder, in the direction they’d been traveling before the Shining One had stopped them.
“So, the mudders are still somewhere ahead of us. And they’re getting away. Now what?”
The excitement and determination that had carried Galen into these woods on the trail of the raiders seemed like a distant memory, now.
What are we even doing here?
They should have stopped when they found Lord Gastusad and his hunting party. They should have gone back through the tunnel and marked it somehow and made their way back to the manor. They should have let the real militia, the commander and the people who knew what they were doing and even Macond handle this.
“We’re overmatched.” Galen looked into Danto’s boyishly eager face, calculating that he was the one who’d need convincing. “Even without the Shining One and their creatures involved.”
But it was Brin who immediately swung around and began to scan the ground behind her. “I don’t want them to get away.”
Galen watched Brin’s braid swing as she crouched and lowered her head to see better into the brush. To the right of where she looked, a cluster of snapped twigs all in one place hung over the faintest impression in the soft rotting leaves of the forest floor.
That’s not the kind of thing I’d have noticed, before.
It wasn’t, but Galen refused to read anything into it. That wasn’t Galen’s biggest concern for the moment, anyhow. He caught himself hoping that Brin would somehow not notice.
We should turn back now.
The thought came in his own voice but with a whiff of sweet green like tree sap and mowed grass. It was nowhere near as strong as those first sensations after talking with the Lutis. Galen forcefully labeled it just another lingering aftereffect that would in time fade, too.
I refuse to let you yank me around. You hear me, game?
A speck of painful hope twanged in Galen’s chest, anyhow.
Brin moved to her right. Her fingers reached for and brushed the snapped twigs. Danto stepped up behind her and peered over her shoulder.
“Something?” Danto’s voice lilted hopefully.
Galen managed to keep his sigh inward. “I don’t want them to get away, either. But we need to be careful.”
Danto glanced back, blond curls in his eyes and a grin on his face. “We can be careful. We’ve done good so far, haven’t we?”
Brin rose from her crouch, tipped her spear ahead of her, and started once more into the woods. Danto waited only long enough to avoid tripping over the shaft of Brin’s spear and followed her. Galen waited until there was a good margin of space between him and Danto, and then he went after the other two.
He couldn’t entirely explain his sudden trepidation. And it wasn’t like they were waiting on his permission, anyhow.
#
The three of them followed the trail another quarter of an hour or so. From the angle of sunlight Galen glimpsed through the heavier forest canopy, the sun stood nearly overhead. Hours they’d been out here, now, and no sign of the full militia behind them yet.
What if they don’t find the tunnel? What if they aren’t coming after us? What if?
Galen had lost all sense of direction. They’d traveled east from the manor but then Brin had said they’d turned nearly north just before they found the tunnel. On the other side of that, they’d gone south from the stream, based on the sun’s position then. Now, though, Galen just couldn’t tell where the sun stood. Even if he could have, he couldn’t have said which direction they’d come from. The best he could do was assume the mud-touched raiders would be trying to get back to The Meres, which meant east to Lake Morene.
But we still don’t know exactly how they got here, either.
At the front of their single file march, Brin suddenly stopped. Her head twitched to the side, and she lifted a finger to her lips.
Galen’s meandering thoughts about where they might be and where the militia might be and everything else scattered like startled birds. Blood rushed through his temples.
Brin lowered into a crouch and motioned Danto and Galen forward.
[You rolled a 13 for Stealth.]
And that meant there was something to roll Stealth against. Unless the GM was screwing with you, but Galen had a feeling that wasn’t the case.
Ahead of Brin’s position, the trees thinned. A grassy hillside sloped down to a single large oak with clusters of other, smaller trees around the perimeter of a small clearing.
Six mud-touched stood in the clearing, in roughly a circle surrounding a pile of objects that it took Galen a moment to recognize—feed sacks, a wooden cage filled with hens, bulging bags filled with other things that Galen presumed had come from the raided manor. Off to one side of those, light caught on the flat steel of a handful of sword blades and rounded edges of a couple of shields.
The hunting party’s weapons.
Heat surged in Galen’s gut and rose toward his face.
Murderers.
The people gathered around the ill-gotten goods stood with sloped shoulders and stared at what they’d taken. For a split second, Galen thought they looked more tired and dirty than frightening. They were armed, though, with bundles of long, narrow javelins tied onto backs or clutched in fists. The gray-green of their kilts and breastplates of woven reeds faded in comparison to the white moss and black feathers that decorated them, but Galen thought they might be reasonably effective as armor.
Danto leaned his head closer to Brin and Galen on her other side. “There’s only six of them.”
Despite the heat in his gut, Galen forced himself to think reasonably. “We’re not supposed to do anything stupid.”
“They killed people.” Anger rang through even Brin’s whisper. “They burned down the manor—for some feed and a half dozen hens.”
The heat moved into Galen’s face.
She thinks I’m just afraid. Maybe I am.
“And all we’d have to take back, assuming we managed to win a fight, outnumbered and out trained, is some feed and a half dozen hens.” Galen struggled to sound reasonable instead of just defensive. “Are you willing to risk your life for that?”
Brin turned her head and looked into Galen’s eyes. Her gray eyes shined with a fierce light, and she scowled. But her lips pressed together, and he thought she might be trying to see things his way. Beyond her, Danto’s brow furrowed, and Galen dared to hope he was seeing reason, too.
Down in the clearing, a man’s voice shouted.
Brin and Danto jerked their heads around to look in that direction. Galen did, too.