It was still early morning when the Ronin returned to Lanya’s camp. He walked in nearly without a sound, the only reason she knew he was arriving was because he chose to walk in fully in her line of sight. Lanya visibly perked up when she saw her guardian.

“Ronin!” She called out. “You’re back!”

Elscer slightly chuckled. “I told you I would.”

He walked up to her small fire, where she was roasting one of the birds from last night. It was nowhere near the best butchering job Elscer had seen, but she had removed most of the inedible bits.

“I inspected some of your snares this morning,” Elscer said, picking a piece of meat from the bird to eat. “Good work setting them up. Have you caught anything with them?”

Lanya nodded, halfway through prepping another bird for cooking. They weren’t large, and each was sparse on meat, but together they made for a sizeable meal. “It’s how I’ve stayed alive. My snares usually provide me with enough to keep myself fed,”

“I hope for both of you,” Elscer said, nodding his head down, “You’re eating for two.”

It was strange to Elscer. He had inspected the snares, true to his word, but they were shoddy and amaeutrish, like he had expected. They should have barely been capturing anything. Yet, according to Lanya, they were catching enough to keep both her and her unborn child alive. It only served to solidify Elscer’s theories. It didn’t help him get any closer to solving it, however.

Lanya sighed, and looked up at the Ronin. “What keeps you going?”

Elscer was taken aback by the question. “What do you mean?’

Lanya looked back down at her work. “Well, you’ve only one arm. It doesn’t seem like you have a home to go back to. I don’t either. What keeps you going? Why not give up?”

Elscer sat down fully, gazing into the fire. It had taken him a long time to once again gain comfort from fire. “You’re asking because you don’t know why to go on, do you? It’s a complicated thing, life. It never quite goes the way you expect. You can plan for every eventuality, think you have the whole rest of your life figured out, and then...”

Elscer thought deeply for a moment, not the moment as it was, but back, far away, to his old life, before he became the Ronin. It felt so long ago now, like another lifetime.

“...A single thing goes wrong. And it spirals into tearing down every single plan you made. Before you know it, the life you’re living is irreconcilable from the one you planned.”

Lanya laughed, a sad laugh, one tinged with regret and resignation. “I never thought I’d be living in the woods, chopping up birds that tried to attack me to feed a bastard child in my belly.”

Elscer continued to stare at the fire. In truth, he had been musing on his own life, not Lanya’s.

“But... Why continue? You have a greater fighting spirit than anyone I’ve seen in the village. I know I should, in some sense. But... I don’t know why.”

“Because what else is there to do?” Elscer asked, finally turning back towards Lanya. “Crawl into some hole and die? You’re welcome to, if that’s what feels fitting to you. Plenty of people do. But humanity wasn’t made to die in a hole. Humanity was made to flourish, to take any challenge that comes and tame it, turn it into their own power. We were meant to rise from the ashes of any setback, stronger. If you get knocked down, you stand up twice as tall. It’s our greatest strength as a species.

“We march, not because we see a light at the end of the tunnel, but because we look back and see somewhere we never wish to be again. We march in hope of that light, that we may one day find that grand purpose so many speak of. But at the end of it all, simply being greater than who we used to be is reward enough.”

Lanya stared at the Ronin for a long moment before he spoke again.

“Your birds burning,” he said, standing, and pacing away from the fire, back towards the treeline, placing his one hand on his hilt.

Lanya yelped, frantically removing the spit from over the fire where the poultry was roasting.

The Ronin was already aware of the duo’s presence before they announced themselves to the clearing.

“Attention!” The fat soldier shouted, “It is by order of his lordship, Count Argath, that we take the girl named Lanya with us back to Eilswhire.”

The Ronin sighed, turning back towards the pair. Lanya had frozen, the skewer still in hand.

Elscer paced back towards the fire, towards Lanya. “I’m sorry,” he said. “But it appears you’ll return empty-handed.”

The pair of guardsmen were a contrasting duo. One, short and fat, the other, thin and tall. They were both somewhat young, not much older than Talen. They both had never seen real combat, Elscer could tell by the way they held their halberds, and the way they stood, unready for conflict.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“We’ve been ordered to bring back the girl,” the skinny one said, his country accent quite strong. “And we’re going to deliver.”

Elscer scoffed. “Your lord commander means well, but the village isn’t safe for her. They’re a superstitious folk, and they’ve every right to be. If this girl comes home, with a child out of wedlock, they’ll try to push her back out to the woods. If they can’t... They’ll do what they have to, to make their village safe. She’s safer out here.”

“We’ve had reports of wild animals attacking people out here,” the fat one said, pushing in front of the skinny one. He believed himself to be the commanding superior. “We’ve been ordered to bring her to safety.”

Elscer stepped fully in front of Lanya now, who still sat on the floor, bird in her hands.

“You’re not taking her, and that’s final. You can go back to your lord commander and tell him that the Ronin tells him so.”

Both soldiers took a step forward, readying their weapons. Elscer slid his blade an inch out of its sheath.

“I can promise I won’t kill you,” he said, his posture unchanging. “But I can’t promise you won’t get hurt.”

Both soldiers stepped forward, refusing to back down. A dirty one-armed man with a strange sword didn’t seem to intimidate people very often. However, human opponents were where the Ronin’s skills seemed to shine the most. He understood humans far more than he did animals, and knew how to take advantage of every psychological trick that he could.

They both charged at him with their halberds, the spear tip at the end extended towards the Ronin. Their stance was sloppy, and they held the shaft awkwardly. The weapon bounced up and down with each stride, not held steady.

The Ronin smiled, in spite of himself. This would be easy.

The tall one would be easier to knock off balance first. The Ronin moved, like water through stones, under the blades of the halberd, using his katana to angle the shaft upwards. He fell down to one knee, stabilizing himself, so when the soldier’s legs hit the Ronin’s outstretched leg, sending him falling to the floor, the Ronin stayed in place.

The skinny guardsman fell to the floor, the halberd careening from his hands. The far guardsman, to his credit, followed up quickly to help his ally.

He swung the axe head down towards the Ronin, in a rather well-executed stroke. Against a regular opponent, it might have been a good move. The Ronin, however, was anything but a regular opponent.

First, he stepped clear of the incoming axe head, his sword already moving for the cutting strike. The katana moved towards the shaft of the halberd, just below the bladed components. The sword cut easily and cleanly through the shaft, severed the head from the rest of the weapon.

The head of the halberd fell to the ground, leaving the soldier with nothing more than a long staff.

The Ronin, not quite finished however, spun from his stance, shifting the sword in his hands, finishing the arc by striking the backs of the soldier's knees with the back of his sword. The fat guardsman fell to his knees, and quickly found a cold blade at his throat.

The Ronin stood behind him, holding his sword up to the soldier’s neck. It was the blunt side, but the soldier couldn’t tell the difference. His friend was just now starting to get up, reaching for his halberd that he had dropped.

“Leave it,” the Ronin commanded, his voice strong and coarse.

The skinny guardsman turned to see the Ronin holding his comrade hostage. He slowly stood up, raising his hands above his head.

“Listen to me, and listen well. I will not repeat myself. Go back and tell Talen that Lanya is under my protection, not his. If he sends any more men after her, I will see him myself. I will not be so kind on my second visit.”

He threw the guardsman he was holding down in front of him, stepping back and sheathing his sword. The pair regrouped, and stared at the Ronin for a moment. He nodded his head towards the halberd on the ground.

“Take it. You’ll be needing it if you’re going to defend Eilswhire.”

The skinny one quickly picked it up, and the pair ran back into the forest.

Lanya placed the cooked bird to the side and crawled to her feet, finally moving for the first time since the engagement started.

“Talen sent men to get me,” she said, hope in her voice.

Elscer stared at the point in the forest where the pan exited for a moment longer.

“I don’t trust his intentions. And what I said was true, this is the safest place for you for the time being.”

Elscer knew the type. There who people who loved others, true enough, but they loved control even more.

Lanya looked down, her confliction playing across her face like the light dripping down from the forest canopy overhead. Elscer finally walked back to her, kneeling down to make himself closer to eye-level.

“Listen to me, and remember what I said. All the plans in the world don’t stop life from happening. Whatever you think might happen between you and Talen is an idea, nothing more. I know men like him. He may even have noble intentions at heart, but they won’t come to pass. The only way for him to be with you is to abandon his post as lord heir to this realm, and he will not do that to live with some hermit girl in the woods.”

She pushed Elscer away, stung by his words.

“You don’t know Talen. I know you must have talked to him, but you don’t know him. I spent months at his side, I have spent time with him in rain and shine. I know him.”

Elscer gritted his teeth, holding back his frustration. “I have met plenty of people like him-”

“That’s exactly it!” Lanya said. “You think you’ve met people like him, but you haven’t met him. You think you understand him based on people you’ve met before. But he’s a person! He has his own thoughts, feelings, and drives, just like you!”

“Lanya,” Elscer said, his tone growing more frustrated. “I have had a lot of experience with people like this. Though there are some intricacies, they all have common things-”

“You aren’t willing to see anything different,” Lanya said, cutting off Elscer. “You think you have the world narrowed down, classified for your convenience. You can’t accept something not falling into one of your arbitrary categories. Just because you’ve ‘traveled the world’ and lost an arm doesn’t make you wiser than everyone else!”

Elscer looked Lanya in the eyes for a moment longer before standing, and turning, walking out back towards the forest. Suddenly, there was a pang of guilt in Lanya’s stomach. But why should there be? Why should she feel sorry for her words?

“I promised you I’d protect you until you had your child,” the Ronin said, “And not a moment longer. As soon as both it and you are safe, I will be leaving again. You may figure out how you wish to live afterwards, but heed my words if you want what is best for yourself. Don’t let fairy tales rule your life.”

With those final words, the Ronin walked back into the forest.