Disoriented, shaking on her legs, with little to no information about what was happening, Rowena got up to stand in the tilted carriage. A quick glance revealed that Norina was outwardly fine, but there was a thin trail of blood from underneath Ava's long dark hair, trickling down next to her ear.
"Ava, can you hear me?" the noble asked, but there was no response.
Rowena placed a hand on her cheek, trying to gently feel for a facial reaction, a jaw clenching or other muscle contraction. Any form of movement that would tell her if she was conscious and simply unable to answer or not.
There was nothing at all, but she could tell that she was at least still breathing. She heard screaming from outside, yelling even, along with the familiar clang of clashing iron. At that moment, someone hastily opened the door next to them.
The two women, who were wide awake, gasped before they saw Logan Randall standing there. "We need to get you out of the area," he said, looking over the three of them until he saw Ava sitting there unresponsive.
In a split second he had to make a decision. He knew it could be bad to move her since he could only see the blood on her face. He was no doctor, obviously, so who was he to judge if her life was in danger or not?
But when he turned his head, he saw the fiends that had attacked her waiting for them just a few meters away from the bridge. They must have chosen this spot because it was obvious for them to take this route rather than waste more time going around the gorge.
Bandits in tattered clothing were no big deal to people like the heir to the Duchy of Varnhagen and their loyal first division knights, but not all of them were first division, only those who had come with the young lady.
Normally, the guards would always be selected from the second division. At the same time, since they had intercepted the carriage first, some of their horses had gotten away. Something that seemed insignificant at first glance was very crucial in their overall situation.
They had traveled about half of the way, and those particular horses weren't just wild and violent when handled incorrectly, they were also unusually fast.
For a distance that took them eight days to cover, a normal horse-drawn carriage would not only take more than twice as long, but would also need to take more frequent and longer breaks.
The second problem was the front carriage, which couldn't stop as quickly and was now a bit further ahead, splitting their forces between them and the lady. But even in the midst of this chaos, he couldn't tell if it was a good idea to just take her away. Shaking his head, he closed the door.
"Don't be scared, we will easily protect the carriage. We won't even let them reach you." It was already a big embarrassment that they hadn't noticed the people in the vicinity ahead of time.
They had aimed at the front wheel and axle, shooting at them with large crossbows. They managed to get a long bolt into one wheel, breaking it off and sending the axle out of that side's mount, which in turn tipped the carriage over.
The coachman's seat was damaged in the process, and the surprised horses, which already had enough power to do so any day, broke loose.
He had watched the whole scene in horror, as he was still part of the outer guard. It shouldn't have been possible to hit them at all with the two horsemen guarding the sides, but now that they had two carriages, they had moved to a reasonable distance from one another on either side, so they wouldn't have been able to be right next to the vehicle at all times.
It was a good thing they had hit the second carriage, so it hadn't turned into an even bigger debacle. But that didn't make it any better.
Rowena looked up through the window that connected her to the coachman, pushing the curtain aside so she could see the fight. At the front, she could see Sir Sean, Sir Yaakov Mizrahi, and her first brother Alan.
Blinking, with one hand on Norina's shoulder to keep her calm and the other under Ava's chin to monitor her status, she watched them. Her heart felt torn from all sides. She didn't know them, she didn't really care if they died, but these knights had been nice to her.
Well, they wouldn't die, that was for sure. She could see the knights of the second division collecting the horses and taking them back, while being surrounded by all this violence. It seemed that the more bandits came out of the woods, the more time it took to kill them.
'Do they have an unlimited supply of underlings or something?' the lavender haired woman thought, 'What an absolute shit show.'
But from where she was, now kneeling with one leg on the bench between her maids, bracing herself against it, she could watch, her view slightly obstructed by the downward angle.
'Their swords weren't shabby, but they weren't great either. Typical divine artifacts,' she commented to herself.
Rowena wasn't nervous at all. She could see that Alan van Varnhagen could take care of dozens of these imbeciles in a matter of seconds. Nothing new there. If anything, she was surprised that they hadn't wrapped this up already, but she could imagine that there were reasons for that.
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Whenever she read a novel and saw things like this - clichéd bandits appearing whenever a noble carriage could be spotted on an unsupervised path - they usually made a joke of it. As if it was ridiculous to think that they would dare to lay a hand on those protagonists.
And yes, she couldn't deny that it felt that way right now, as her brother disposed of them in bunches at a time. But there was more to it than that.
Logan Randall didn't fight because he was a Spellkeeper with fire Manifestation. In the woods, especially on the south side where the climate was much milder than up north, he couldn't blast whatever fire Manifestation he had inherited.
Unless they had a Manifestation, there was little they could do in an active battle with merely Mana control. Of course, they could enhance their physical abilities, as Rowena had done, so they could fight with a sword as her first Brother, a Holy Knight, did.
But Logan Randall was a "High Priest". And said High Priest instantly opened the carriage when the front had calmed down a bit.
He had to wait until the situation was settled enough for him to no longer stand guard before he could lay his hands on the dark haired servant's forehead and lower stomach.
Rowena took her own hand away so as not to disturb the flow of Mana. There was no such thing as "healing magic" in that manner, except for the ability granted by "Mercy", the Numbered, which the Saintess now had as her contract.
But as Mana had healing capabilities, in and of itself, if one was proficient enough in controlling it without harming the patient, a Spellkeeper could support the natural recovery of the human body.
'It's not as fancy as growing new arms or legs if they got severed, but it does the trick.' At that moment something clicked in Rowena's mind.
"Logan Randall," she said quietly but sternly, "did you also help with my recovery while I was unconscious?"
Having just finished what he had to do, looking relieved and wiping a bit of sweat from his own forehead, he looked up. No sign of the cheeky smile he always wore, but she couldn't tell if it was just because of the situation or because he was trying to convey his honesty.
"I have, my lady," he said, looking up at her as Ava began to move a little, "if you are wondering if I know... Yes, I do. But I won't say anything until you do. It is not my place."
'Maybe he was wondering why I didn't help Ava,' she thought in response, trying to figure out his motives, 'but I wouldn't do that if he is right there next to us. There is no urgency at all.'
She didn't dare try to think about his words in more detail. Of course he would know - if someone sent Mana into someone else's body to stimulate their natural healing, they would also feel their Mana paths.
In fact, if there were pathways that weren't developed, that would be one way to detect a dormant affinity with Mana. Still, he hadn't tried to reveal it at all.
But Logan Randall didn't actually think much of it. He thought that if she had wanted others to know, she would have informed them. He was a knight for the duchy and she was the lady of that duchy, that was all there was to it. At that moment, he was happy to see that the injured woman had only suffered a mild concussion.
But losing consciousness was usually a very bad sign. In her case, it might have been caused by the shock rather than the injury itself, so she should be fine with a little rest.
Of course, that didn't mean that there shouldn't be a real doctor looking after her as soon as they reached Nerena's territory.
When the whole ordeal was finally over, the three women had to leave the carriage for a while, as the axle had to be repaired and the horses had to be calmed down and strapped back onto the carriage.
"How is it?" Alan asked the man who was just trying to re-attach the wheels to the axle.
"Not good. We'll make it over the bridge, as we have to slow down there anyway, but we'll have to get a replacement in the next Territory."
"All right. Good work."
"Before we continue, I'd like to go into the woods for a minute," Rowena said, her voice lowered as she looked at Logan Randall, who was still standing next to the three young women.
Ava was still very drowsy, sitting in the grass next to Norina, who held her hand and had an arm around her shoulders for support.
"What do you mean? You can't go into the woods alone."
"But I have to go alone. Norina has to stay with Ava."
"That isn't what I mean. You can't go, there might still be bandits around. What is it you need in there?"
"It's not that I need anything. I just... drank a lot of tea," she whispered for lack of a better explanation. Was there even a way to politely say you needed to go to the restroom? She couldn't think of one.
Her embarrassment was obvious, and of course her guard realized what she was talking about. He blushed just as she did, but the color disappeared so quickly that it might as well have never happened.
He looked away with a fake cough. " I certainly can't let you go in alone, but I'll stay far enough away to give you the privacy you need."
"Thank you." That was enough, she didn't need much after all.
As she slipped behind a tall bush, visible but invisible to the wizard, she put her hand on the grass. 'A chance like that might not come again so fast.'
The ground wasn't quite as blessed in these regions, as they were largely uninhabited on this side of the gorge, and the gorge itself was impervious to Visitors coming through. The Surface was down at the bottom of the gorge, hidden beneath the salty water of the sea that connected to it.
This meant that the blessing up there was far from spotless. It didn't take long to find a hole in the carpet, just a little bigger than her hand. It was a bit bad when it came to security, but just because there was unblessed ground didn't mean a Visitor would or could use it.
Most of these holes weren't big enough for a Visitor to just squeeze through. 'But a jacket would easily slip through.'
She couldn't hear much, but the black piece of cloth suddenly emerged, as if it had grown out of the soil under the grass. She immediately grabbed it and held it to her face, burying her nose in her old scent.
It felt so long ago that it almost brought tears to the corners of her eyes - and not just because it smelled like someone had wiped a sweaty homeless person with it. The familiar weight in one of the large pockets gave her a feeling of comfort.
But she had to pick up the pace so as not to add to the strange rumors about her own person. So she grabbed the jacket by the sleeves and quickly rolled it up a bit to reduce its length in order to covertly string it around her waist.
The movement of lifting up her skirt a bit and securing the jacket might have seemed quite natural if anyone had looked her way, and her slightly puffy skirt did well in hiding the additional fabric until they safely reached the Nerena territory.