A few wagons had already departed when Clara was sitting down to eat breakfast at the remnants of the campfire. Benny was still busy with shaving. He didn’t want to but Clara had insisted on it. His beard was awfully ugly and he had to look good to attract more customers in the towns they passed through. Eventually, the girl stumbled out of the wagon as well.
She looked around and inspected the wagons and seemed to pause when she saw a wagon that Clara hadn’t seen anyone enter or leave all morning.
“Everything alright?” Clara asked the girl.
“Hm? Yes.” It sounded insincere.
Nannade sat down and had breakfast with Clara. They decided Benny could have breakfast in the wagon while Nannade took the reins for the morning. She liked doing that apparently. Clara wasn’t able to get anything out of the girl. About her past, her travels, her destination, her occupation. But it seemed alright. Clara trusted the girl for now.
Eventually, before noon, Benny insisted on taking back the reins and Nannade sat in the back and watched Clara embroider the newest patch to be added to the wagon. It was red felt and supposed to replace an old piece that had been worn down and torn. The girl took interest and told about how she had made a few outfits herself. She showed her a pair of leather gloves who had tiny slits with overlapping flaps in the fingertips that she could poke her claws through. “It helps me climb trees.” She said.
“So you like climbing?”
“Well, I was raised in Sturreland. There’s lots of trees there.” She said that last part with a humorous undertone. It was a huge understatement, considering almost all of Sturreland was heavily forested, with some woods being so deep and dense that not even the druids of the Lodge know all the secrets buried there.
“Oh, that’s true.” Clara laughed. It was the most she had hear the girl talk about her past.
Occasionally, Nannadewould sniff her arms or legs and look down. Eventually, she leaned in close and whispered in Clara’s ear. Clara accepted the girl’s request and pulled the curtains in the front and back of the wagon.
“What are you doing that for?” Benny asked her.
“Don’t look back here, understand?!”
“Why?”
“Just don’t, boy!”
“Fine, I won’t.”
Nannade handed Clara a brush from her backpack and started undressing. The girl’s clothing was baggy in many spots and underneath she was wearing something like a set of hardened leather armour, bracers, shin guards, and a vest, but Clara hadn’t assumed the girl’s body to be this slender and muscular. It wasn’t boyish, although her female charms were on the smaller side. Like tensed ropes her muscles and tendons ran along her bones and joints, visible even through her fur. Was that all from climbing? Or did she do other things as well? The girl sat down on her knees with her back to Clara. Clara started brushing as she had her asked to. She could tell the girl was enjoying it. With every stroke, Clara could see her coat getting cleaner and shinier, as if she was brushing dust and grime off a brazen statue. She also did the parts the girl could reach herself well enough, just out of enjoyment. Clara had seen one of her kind a long time ago, when she was freshly married, she and her husband had travelled all the way down to Halonnes to see a bit more of the world. There, Clara saw two or three of them pass them by in a crowd. That was the first and only time she had seen one. And now she was brushing this beautiful girl in her own wagon.
Nannade was grateful for what Clara had done. “We can do that every morning if you want to? Nothing I do here is of any importance anyway.”
“That would be wonderful, Clara.”
“Oh, don’t let Bennie hear you use our short names.” The two girls giggled.
The journey went along and Nannade sat next to Benny by the reins. The way the two sat together made Clara wish to see her son married soon. Her daughters looked so beautiful in their wedding dresses, but she did not need any more of that,she just wanted to see him happy with another person.
They saw a small town appear in the distance, off the stone road, next to a sprawling forest. They decided to stop by and offer their wares. They managed to sell a few buttons, leather scraps and yarn. Then Clara heard one of the people say something about a witch. She got down from the wagon and followed the young girl who had said it.
“Excuse me, did you say there was a witch here?”
The girl turned around. “Yes. Deeper into the woods. Be careful as you enter, spirits guard there.” She pointed up the hill. A path was clinging to the slopes and eventually entered the forest, although Clara couldn’t see where.
“What services do you need from her?”
“Just information.” Clara said.
“She takes much coin for even small things if you are not from here. Do not disrespect her or the forest.”
“We won’t. Thank you very much for your help. We might stop here again on our way back. Be well.”
“Be well.”
She had decided to drive the wagon up there for Nannade’s sake, although the girl initially insisted it wasn’t necessary. The path was mostly easy to navigate, only at one point they had to cling to a steep wall to the right in order to not slip off the steep slope to the left. They made it to the edge of the forest. The horses were nervous and Benny was afraid they’d buck any moment. Nannade took the reins from him with a smile, then she started to sing in a weird old tongue. It sounded a bit like the tongue of Sturreland, but Clara could only understand every fifth word or so.
The horses calmed down and did as they were told. Calmly, they trotted along the path through the woods. Nannade looked out for someone or something as she was steering and singing. Clara felt as if eyes from dark corners were fixed on her. Despite the clear weather, the forest seemed dim and cold.
They arrived at a hut on a clearing. Nannade stopped her song and got off the wagon. She turned to the other two.
“I ask that you do not follow me or listen in on our conversation.” Her face and voice had something serious, almost threatening.
“We won’t.” Benny said before Clara could.
The girl walked to the door and without knocking or calling, a person inside opened up.
She was gone quite a while. The horses grew restless again, but did not buck or panic. When she came back out, she thanked the person inside and came back to the wagon.
“I’m done here. We should get back to the road.”
The two agreed. They did not like it in these woods. There seemed to be things here with them. Nannade guided the horses out of the forest and gave the reins back to Benny after they had cleared the last tree.
They came to the narrow passage at the slope again when Nannade suddenly turned around. She was alerted.
“What is-” was all Clara could say before a something that felt like a wet blanket hit her in the face.
The world was dark and she had trouble breathing, only a thin stream of air came through, even sound was drowned out. She could feel that she was being tied up and thrown on the ground. Then the sticky blackness was pulled from her face.
A man stood above her, grinning, clothed in thin leather armour with bits and scraps of metal sown on. He held a dark glob in his hand that looked like some alchemically altered tar. Benny and Nannade lay beside her, also gagged and bound. Benny seemed unconscious, bleeding from the head.
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The man tapped Clara's forehead. “Don’t worry, we’ll set you free once we have everything. Your boy was stupid. He resisted. The girl was smarter. We might take her off your hands. She’ll go for a good price.”
As the man mentioned that, Nannade began loudly protesting against her gag, but the man didn’t pay her any attention. He turned around and helped his men carry the wares out of the wagon. It was probably five or even six people.
Clara turned to Nannade and tried to comfort her. The girl wasn’t crying or scared. Instead, she seemed angered, even annoyed. The girl gave Clara a determined look, then she started to wriggle around in her restraints. The girl’s joints seemed to shift and slip, as if they were dislocated. Clara could hear them crack and pop. The girl’s bindings slipped off like a slipper off a foot. Slowly, the girl got up and rearranged her body, rising from the ground like an angry snake.
Clara could only watch, she forgot the restraints, gag, and even the critters walking on her for a moment and just watched the girl escape from these binds and got herself ready for something.
Run, girl. RUN! Don’t be a fool and save yourself! Clara wanted to scream at her, but Nannade seemed determined to fight.
The girl reached into the pouch on her left hip, and when she pulled her hand forth, a thread of yarn was stretching from the pouch to a ring on her finger. Clara recognized this. She had seen it before, used by mages. On the inside of the pouch must be a flask full of flux oil. Some things started to make sense to Clara now.
The girl also took a few pieces of paper out of a small book hanging out of the pouch. She had no weapon, but these pieces seemed to instil her with greater confidence than any weapon could. The bandits had already noticed her. They yelled out and told her to get back, threatening her by wagging their crude weapons at her. The girl took one piece of paper and held it at arm’s length. It went up in flames and a fire engulfed her left arm, a standing torrent of flame coiled around her like a serpent.
Nannade started her assault. The girl and the flame seemed to meld together in their movements. The fire lashed out at the bandits, searing their eyes and hands, while the girl’s claws and fists tore their skin and broke their noses. A man charged at the girl with a huge knife. Nannade dodged with a leap to his side, grabbed his arm from behind, twisted it up, stepped on his back and while jumping over his shoulder, with a sickening KLOPP, released his arm from its socket. She took his knife and faced the next assailants. In her hands it looked like massive butcher’s cleaver, but when she swung it, it sang and whistled through the air like a songbird. The men tried to gang up on her, but were kept in check by either the burning serpent embracing the girl or the girl’s blade.
They surrounded her closer, started to throw rocks at her. The girl being distracted, a bandit saw his opportunity, charged at her. His knife sunk deep into her right side just as she shielded her from another rock. She screeched in pain, then turned to the attacker, grabbed his throat, dug in her claws and tore open his neck, a fountain of blood shotforth. He sank to the floor like the others.
Nannade was halted by a sudden yell.
“STOP IT OR SHE GETS IT!” one of the men, burned in the face but otherwise well-off, held a knife to Clara’s throat, she could feel the sharp cold steel touching her pulsing vein. Nannade stopped. The two last remaining men around her laughed and got closer. The fire around Nannade died down.
The man got down to Clara, pressing the flat side of his knife to her neck and grinned. “We’re going to have LOTS AND LOTS of FUN with you two girls.” His grin was unbearable. Clara pressed her eyes shut, afraid of what might happen next, but even more afraid to witness it.
She heard the man scream out in pain. She opened her eyes and saw that the man had dropped his knife and was instead holding his right hand.
“DAMN SPIDER!” He yelled and slapped a large brown spider sitting on his hand. “DIE, DIE!”he yelled as he was stomping it into the dirt.
He wasn’t done cursing when Nannade had felled the last two men, then she walked towards him. He stared at her in fear and tried to make a fist, but his hand was already swollen and refusing to do as told, he searched on the ground for his knife, but Nannade was already too close. She stretched out her hands, and with a few long steps, closed the distance to his throat.
Clara watched in horror as the girl clenched her delicate fingers shut around the man’s throat until all struggle had seized.
Nannade sank to the floor. Her entire right side was stained with blood. She took off her clothes to inspect her wound. It looked bad. Clara had taken care of her fair share of wounds in her life, and the girl’s looked to be on the more grievous side of her experience.
Nannade cut Clara’s bonds, then looked at her. “I can’t mend it. It will tax me too much!”
Clara didn’t quite understand what she said, but nonetheless, she ran inside the cart and got all she needed for a suture. When she got back outside, she wanted to kneel down next to Nannade, but with a loud “NOO!” the girl seized Clara’s foot as it was about to set down on the ground where the big brown spider was still laying, a single leg twitching. “NO! Not Aaka!” Carefully the girl took the spider, and put it far under the cart, where it was safe from stomping feet. Then Nannade turned to Benny, who was still bound, unconscious, and bleeding from the head. She looked at the wound and now Clara could see that the skull had been dented in at the wound.
“He has a serious skull fracture. His brain has most likely received a serious bruise.”
Clara didn’t want to believe the girl, but after what she had witnessed, she stopped expecting to see the girl’s limits.
She got out a small square booklet from her left-hand pouch. Now Clara could look inside and truly see a flask with flux oil and a weird spool-like contraption at the opening.
“I’ll need some time. Stitch me up while I draw.”
Clara looked at the girl. She got out a blue thin crayon and started drawing patterns in her book.
“Stitch me up, hurry!”
Clara got to work. She could see no harm to any interior organs, just the skin and muscle were cleanly cut. Still, the girl was in danger of bleeding out if untreated. With every stitch of the needle, the girl twitched, but kept her hand steady on the paper. She looked desperate. Often, she would pause, checking something on the paper and in her head, whispering something to herself that sounded like a Magistrate’s babble or a nursery rhyme.
Clara finished the last stitch and started bandaging her. A short while later the girl seemed to be finished. On the palm-sized, square piece of paper, Clara saw many intricate, curved, straight, and jointed lines connected with words written in a weird script to form a complicated mess.
“I hope this works. I’ll need your help.” Nannade said.
“What can I do? Will it help Benny?” She just saw the girl kill more than a handful of people like in a trance, but she was willing to trust her. She could save her son, Clara was sure of it.
“I’ll need your blood.”
“For Benny?”
“Yes. The blood of relatives works best. I don’t have enough left either way. Kneel over there and give me your arm. And take one of those gauze bandages.”
Clara did as she was told. Nannade held Clara’s arm above Benny. Directly underneath the arm was the piece of paper.
Nannade took a knife and held it to Clara’s wrist. She exhaled and inhaled very carefully, then looked Clara straight into the eyes. “This will hurt. You’ll have to take care of yourself after this.” Her eyes seemed tired, at the verge of collapse. Then she pushed the knife into Clara’s wrist. The pain seemed to nail her to this world. She felt Nannade clenching down on her hand, making sure she couldn’t pull it back.
The blood from her wrist dropped onto the piece of paper and Benny’s clothes. Then the piece of paper went up in flames. The blood disappeared as if soaked up by the air itself, and a glimmer surrounded Benny, a maelstrom of energy and power connected the three of them as well as a fourth being she couldn’t see, but it definitely was therewith them.
The spell seemed to have worked, Benny’s head was no longer dented, he was no longer bleeding. Nannade lost all tension in her body and fell over.
“Aaka.” was the last thing she could say. Then her consciousness slipped away.
Clara was alone. Seven dead men lay around her. Both her son and this mysterious girl were unconscious but stable. She herself was busy bandaging and suturing her wrist. Their cargo was strewn all over the slopes, where the bandits had dropped it. At least the horses had calmed down. She felt as if a horrible storm had passed her by.
Clara didn’t know where she should start.