Book 3. The Long Journey. Chapter 4. Setting Out.
“Um, are you sure you want to speak to me like that?” Laien asked with a mixture of helplessness and resignation. He wasn’t angry, but he was a bit intrigued why this woman dared to be so disrespectful at their very first meeting. It wasn’t even like he did anything to upset her, no? What could a bit of wait amount to when they had months of traveling ahead of them?
“What, can’t the exiled young master deal with the harsh reality?” the woman asked disdainfully. Who was a criminal who only escaped serious punishment due to his position thinking he was? She above anything else hated oblivious kids who despite having everything one could dream of wouldn’t appreciate it and would still act like spoiled young masters.
“Huh?” Laien raised his eyebrows and laughed. “I’m pretty sure you are having some kind of misunderstanding, do you perhaps think my elder brother, the Great Master Rudford and everyone else have abandoned me and sent me off to ‘exile’?” he asked with a smirk. Could it really be that a mercenary would fail to comprehend the situation to this degree? Was this woman biased against him or something and didn’t give the matter a second thought? Or was all she heard the lies the Cail family was spreading about him?
Well… judging by the look on the woman’s face, she might have really been in quite some misconception about what had happened. Laien wasn’t that surprised though; he knew it wasn’t unusual for the rumors to be exaggerated along the way, so if someone simply believed everything he was told he would end up with as much of a misunderstanding as this woman.
“Eh, the rowdiness of mercenaries,” the brown-haired man commented with a sigh and rode to the front, separating his companion from the boys. “We’ve been employed for this escort mission only a few hours ago, so I hope you won’t mind her behavior. The circumstances surrounding you are pretty unclear and nothing else than the fact we are to escort you to the Eclipse Academy was explained to us,” the man said in a neutral tone, neither groveling before Laien and Yin nor being especially respectful to them.
Instead of giving up, however, the woman clicked her tongue and rebuked angrily. “A dog from the losers’ family shouldn’t be trying to boss me around,” she finished with a snort but didn’t say anything else.
The brown-haired man glanced at the woman and suppressed a sigh; this type was sure to become problematic further down the road, but he couldn’t do anything about it. He might have been named a nominal leader of this group by the Cail family, but he knew who exactly Laien was and what kind of influence he wielded. He didn’t have any delusions about who would have the last say amongst them when the time to make any kind of decisions came.
Shaking his head, the brown-haired man gave Laien and Yin a proper look. He nodded in satisfaction seeing that both boys were wearing fairly normal clothes without any eye-catching or recognizable elements. The material their clothes were made of was obviously of high quality, but this much wouldn’t attract anyone’s attention; anyone who saw their group would assume the two are simple young nobles who are being escorted somewhere… or so he hoped.
He couldn’t quite put it into words, but these two had strange, mysterious air about them. It wasn’t something just anyone could tell though, but he had traveled the world for long enough and had seen enough strong people to know what kind of atmosphere would naturally surround them.
The only complaint he might have had about the boys’ attire was that both of them seemed to like white color; this kind of clothing would get dirty extremely fast and honestly was a pain to manage. However, if the two wore capes it would make this less of a problem, so he chose not to bring it up right off the bat. He noted that both were wearing leather-trimmed pants and sturdy boots, so the most important points were covered. Anything else was of secondary importance.
“I believe you are Laien and you are Yin?” the brown-haired man asked casually and continued after the two nodded one after another. “My name is Ruan and I will be your guide; I know my way around the Starlight continent so you don’t need to worry about getting lost or failing to find an inn for the night when you are with me. Honestly, I see no point in having the other six introduce themselves right now; you’d probably forget all they said anyway,” he said with a slight smile, to what Laien and Yin responded with somewhat wry smirks.
“One of you should already know three of those guys though, at least from what they told me,” he added and glanced over his shoulder at the three riders in the back. “Apparently they know you from the time you spent in the Valius family,” he explained and gave Laien an inquiring look. This journey would be much easier if their group got along with each other instead of bickering all the time, so he hoped the boys would feel more comfortable around someone they were familiar with… alas.
“Yeah, I know them. Forgot their names though,” Laien said with a little sigh. The last time he talked with those three was when they requested his help in asking Master Shire to come over to the Valius family for some talk with Garon. Naturally, Master Shire had thrown them out and gave Garon no face. He had told them it would most likely end like that beforehand, but they still pressured him into trying and in the end didn’t even thank him.
To be fair he couldn’t care less after all this time, but his attitude towards those three wouldn’t be exactly friendly.
Ruan suppressed a sigh, beginning to have bad premonitions about the compatibility of their little team. “Either way, if you have any questions come and ask me. Remember though, we are escorting you, not babysitting you so please try not to cause trouble,” he urged the two youths strongly, mainly concerned that Laien would think he was still in the Sakrcente Kingdom and could do whatever he liked.
At one hand Yin didn’t mind Ruan’s warning at all, but on the other Laien frowned and gave the man a cold look. Ruan was just a random martial master of the second rank who he just met for the first time, so what was he thinking reprimanding him in this way? He could take criticism from Rudford, from those he respected and from his friends… but why was this man thinking he could lecture him in such a tone? What was making him feel he was qualified to reprimand him?
“Laien,” Yin spoke up and smiled at Laien when he got his attention. He didn’t follow up with anything though, so he left Laien a little confused.
“Say, where are we going first?” Yin turned to look at Ruan and asked lightheartedly, as if they were about to go on a sightseeing trip. Ruan appeared to be just as confused as Laien about what was going on, but instead of inquiring what was it about he decided to simply answer Yin’s question.
“We will follow the main road along the mountains and head five thousand kilometers to the north-west. We will stop by the Iron Fort at our northern borders with the Anarchic Lands and acquire fresh information about our further road. Our first stop will be the inn of my old friend about two thousand kilometers from here; I’m planning to get there today and I see you have very good horses, but can you keep up?” Ruan explained and asked a bit challengingly, trying to make Laien’s mood better by suggesting a competition… but judging from the boy’s reaction, pretty much failing miserably.
“Eh, whatever,” Ruan sighed silently and turned his horse around, gesturing the two boys to follow right behind him at the head of their group.
“Why are you sulking so much?” Yin asked openly as their small team of nine was trotting out of the Two Weeks City.
“I will tell you later,” Laien replied bitterly. He didn’t feel like explaining himself with those seven listening; he would need to spend many months with them, so he was hesitant to completely antagonize them. After all, it would be much more troublesome to figure out the way to the Eclipse Academy on his own and two kids traveling alone would surely end up being bothered by so many people who for some reason would be certain they could rob them with ease.
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The being said, it really was making one wonder if there really were so many reckless young people in the world that every bandit perceived any youths who traveled alone as an easy prey. Wouldn’t they consider it at least a bit suspicious that two twelve-year-olds would randomly wander into the Anarchic Lands or any other place without an escort?
Yin spent a few seconds being intrigued by the sensation of Laien’s mood suddenly changing in response to Laien’s thoughts, which apparently began wandering somewhere else. After a moment he brought up with a smile. “Just cheer up, there’s no point getting angry at every little thing,” he stated with a light shrug of his shoulders.
Laien blinked a few times, then chortled lightly. He had already heard something like this somewhere, in fact, he might have said something similar himself, so being told the same thing by Yin came out as rather amusing to him. What’s more, the moment his mood changed Yin also couldn’t help but also feel better, what in turn made both of them become quite clearly aware of each other’s emotions.
From what Laien could tell so far, the two of them could concentrate and sense the other’s state of mind if they wanted, but usually, the spiritual bond would only ‘act up’ when the other party was going through a shift in the mood or was experiencing strong emotions. Apart from those times, the sensation of the spiritual bond would be like… breathing perhaps, or the feeling one had of his legs while walking. It was there, but one wouldn’t be constantly aware of it.
Without even intending to, Laien and Yin immersed themselves in the connection between the two of them. It was still a relatively new sensation, so they were quite curious about it and… well. Could it be described as them being compatible with each other? Simply enough, when they focused on the spiritual bond and actively acted to deepen it and make it stronger, they were beginning to feel as calm, relaxed and happy as when resting by a beautiful lake during a sunny day, all the while sipping some tasty juice, or maybe some sweet red wine.
“We’ll be speeding up soon,” Ruan warned and gave the two boys behind him a serious look. For some reason he couldn’t shake off the feeling the two were daydreaming a bit too much; they were acting a little strange too.
“What, worried we won’t keep up?” Laien asked with a smirk, at the moment feeling so relaxed that he even took on a fairly amiable tone with Ruan.
To Laien’s surprise, Ruan seemed to appreciate the change in his attitude and responded with a laugh. “I want to see you keeping up with me. If you can’t, you are cooking dinner for yourselves tonight. Deal?” he proposed, wondering if the boys were up to the challenge.
Laien and Yin looked at each other, both of them amused by the idea; mainly due to the good mood they were currently in.
“Then if you can’t shake us off you will cook a dinner for us,” Laien proposed cheekily, in response to what Ruan laughed merrily.
“We have a deal, kiddos. Don’t forget your promise when you eat the dust far behind me,” Ruan said confidently and directed his horse all the way to the right of the road. “Be sure to stick to the right side and be careful at the turns without good visibility, we wouldn’t want to run over some innocent people,” he warned seriously, thought the tone of his words changed to a softer one compared to the way he reprimanded the two at first.
“Two thousand kilometers. Not all parts of the road are suited for a full gallop so the goal is to make it there by the late afternoon. About ten hours should be more than enough,” Ruan said with a confident smile, then turned to look ahead again. He put more of his weight onto the stirrups and leaned forward strongly, then tucked his legs.
The horse recognized his owner’s intentions easily enough. He neighed excitedly and immediately rushed ahead, getting straight ahead to a full gallop in the matter of but a few seconds.
A bit startled by the speed at which Ruan suddenly started galloping forward, Laien and Yin followed suit. Their horses didn’t need much encouragement to start chasing after Ruan and using the straight road before them, the two powerful beasts began speeding up so much that Laien and Yin couldn’t help but grow restless. They were already going well beyond two hundred kilometers per hour and in fact, were approaching three hundred kilometers per hours… but their two mounts were still speeding up in order to match Ruan’s pace!
The six remaining escorts also sped up, but they kept their speed within reasonable limits; Ruan mentioned where they would be going before, so they didn’t mind arriving two or three hours after those three. They weren’t up for such a crazy ride; it was just much too bothersome to keep concentrating so hard on the road the whole time.
“Those brats really think they can keep up with a former courier,” the woman murmured with a snort. Ruan’s job had been to deliver important messages all across the Starlight continent! Even though she didn’t respect him much as a person and looked down on him since he seemed not to be bothered by the downfall of his family, she recognized his riding skills. The damned man was also riding a cross-breed between their southern war horses and the eastern steppe horses; this cross-breed was much easier to handle and had less shaky gallop compared to pure war horses. It was also more agile than them, though not as much as the far western Hisan horses. Overall, it was a perfect breed for traveling long distances in a short period of time.
“They seem to be keeping up,” Ruan mused to himself while peeking over his shoulder. “They have excellent mounts which even seem to have been trained by a true master of the horse, so it would be a problem if they couldn’t do at least this much,” he thought with a chuckle and smirked slightly. Truth to be told the boys didn’t need to do much apart from staying in the saddle and not falling off, but at the speed of over three hundred kilometers per hour even this much was somewhat of a challenge.
“It will only get harder from now on though,” Ruan thought quietly. “The black-haired one looks a bit tense, I wonder if he will be able to keep up when turns and differences in elevation start. The green-haired one, on the other hand, appeared to be relaxed. Does he have more experience with riding?” he wondered quietly.
“It’s not as hard as it seems,” Yin noticed contentedly. He had been a bit worried since he had only ridden a horse once before when he was four and he could barely remember anything about it at all, but simply by looking at Ruan’s posture he was able to correct his mistakes and easily adjust to going at this kind of speed. He wasn’t too stressed about the ride either, so not tensing up came extremely naturally to him.
“I didn’t know Bellicose could go this fast,” Laien thought somewhat helplessly. “It’s no wonder Siana was so close to winning that race against me, huh,” he remembered, but couldn’t afford to reminisce about the ‘demand’ he had been allowed to make of Siana at one of the evening’s after that race through Neil City. At the moment he really needed to focus on riding; he might have been doing more or less fine, but when the road would get harder… To be completely honest, he wasn’t particularly confident in being able to keep up with Ruan.
“Take this time to get used to riding at this speed, kiddos!” Ruan shouted over his shoulder. “The hard part of the road comes later, in about ten minutes! For now, try to find a stable, but not too straining position for yourselves! Especially you Laien! Relax and lean forward more just like Yin! If you don’t, you will tire yourself out before long and you won’t be able to keep up!” he yelled out a piece of advice, interested to see if Laien would take it or if he would again start acting prideful.
Who surprised Ruan first, however, ended up being Yin, who seemed to have gotten comfortable enough to try and emulate him even further. The boy leaned forward so much his torso was practically parallel to his horse’s back, shifted his hold on the reins to one-handed and gently placed his right hand on the front of the saddle, ready to grab it more strongly if necessary. This kind of position might not have seemed as much… but Ruan knew only skilled riders could pull it off while galloping at full speed through a difficult terrain.
Ruan smiled to himself, seeing how Laien settled for a similar position to his friend’s; though he was obviously much less at ease and was tensing up too much for no reason. Although it was impressive for a kid to even attempt riding in this way, he didn’t think Laien would be able to keep up further down the road. After all, relaxing wasn’t just a matter of being told ‘relax’ and doing it; if it was, then just about anyone could become a fairly skilled rider.
Yet… just as he was about to turn his gaze away from Laien, Ruan noticed how out of nowhere the boy stopped being so tense and in the matter of a few seconds assumed an identical posture to his friend’s. “What? He just… what?” Ruan questioned what he was seeing, finding it really hard to believe. Just like that, all of the sudden Laien relaxed? He had taught many youths how to ride and he had never seen anyone who had trouble with being too tense make a one hundred and eighty degrees turn from one moment to another! It wasn’t something one could do so easily just because he wanted!
What Ruan failed to notice, was how Laien and Yin exchanged a glance just before Laien relaxed. Perhaps it was hard to reason oneself into loosening up, but when Laien could sense that Yin was perfectly chilled out and was being encouraged by Yin to do the same, he managed to break through this subconscious barrier and do just that.
“Those kiddos… this journey might not turn out half bad after all,” Ruan mused with a smile. The way one treated and dealt with horses might not necessarily mean he certainly was a good person, but it usually meant one was capable of learning and if approached correctly, would listen to reason. Content with knowing this much, he passed the next ten minutes or so without looking behind himself and only then called out; “Brace yourselves! We’re entering the high grounds!” as they were approaching the first harder turn of the road and entering the high grounds.