With training under their heels, Zan and Jiehong made easy work of the dirt-laden roads which led to Feathervale.

It was high noon when they reached the half-way(ish) point in the day. They stopped for water and a snack of berries and cheese.

“I’m tiring of berries and cheese,” Zan said. “Make it hard to ‘go,’ you know?”

“Oh, I know. Like trying to squeeze out a couple of rats,” Jiehong said, crudely. Zan still laughed, though. As immature as Jiehong’s humor could be, Zan always appreciated his bluntness. He also appreciated how he would let his ‘real’ side show when they were alone. To his knowledge, Jiehong did not show anyone else his rude comedian self.

They finished their snack and returned to their bikes.

Straddling his bike, Zan looked ahead. Road. Burned husks of slain golems. “We’re making good time.”

“We are… I was skeptical about these bikes, sure. They’re getting us places, though. I don’t think we will have any issue with these bikes during the battle. Assuming this operation you are trying to get going actually works.”

“Why wouldn’t it?” Zan asked.

“It’s war. Everything is unpredictable.”

Zan nodded. Jiehong was right on that. War was unpredictable. Just because it was unknowable, though, did not mean they could rest on their laurels and stop trying.

Taking off again, the boys made a beeline for Feathervale. The way for them was mostly clear. A couple of time they had to ask the Wardens for directions. Otherwise, they knew where to go, mostly from memory.

With the road to Feathervale composed entirely of dirt, Zan considered it easy-going terrain. Maybe not the smoothest, but really, the smoothest he would see up here.

They arrived in Feathervale at sunset.

Two days travel by foot cut to one day by bike. Incredible speed, Zan knew.

“So, we find Whiskey, I take it?” Jiehong asked.

Nodding, Zan looked around. The situation looked the same as ever. Rebels outside the town but otherwise nothing of note happening.

Or so it seemed.

Shouting, once a dim verbal glimmer, turned riotous.

A rebel shouted, “Loyalist raid!”

Across the drawbridge suddenly came over a dozen rushing men in armored suits. Although these men carried weapons, they did not clutch them in their hands. Clutching instead rods and planks of iron and wood, they used these staves as crowd control weapons.

The armored men who rushed the rebels did not violently whack the rebels.

Instead, the men pushed the rebels — hard.

Using their staves, several would gang up on a single rebel, push them away, and destroy some tent or campfire. Systematically, they went from tent to tent. Before the rebels organized a counter, the guards had destroyed some half-dozen or so tents and fire pits.

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When the rebels responded to the guards’ attack — a ‘raid’ as one rebel had screamed — they used similar staves. These staves were more bulky, however, than the guards’s pole arms. Zan glimpsed why: larger accouterments attached to the pole — which gave the appearance, Zan thought, of blooming flowers — gave the owner more whacking power. Thus, it made it easier to push back against the guards. Zan suspected the rebels might be using magic to assist in their counter-pushes since he thought it unlikely a few poles with bulbous attachments at either end were likely to shove the guards back so well all by themselves.

Still a way from the town and camp proper, Zan and Jiehong watched the whole affair from the safety of the road.

The struggle continued for nearly an hour, each side grunting and yelling, screeching. After a few combatants suffering a few good whacks, the altercation simmered down. Retreating to the town, the guards fled and left the rebels as they were.

“What the heck?” Zan mouthed.

Looking at Jiehong, Zan wondered if his friend knew what was going on.

Jiehong shrugged. “No idea. Obviously, a conflict. I just thought…?”

His trail ended, Zan shared his confusion. He finished his friend’s thought process. “You just thought… there would be death? That the loyalists would come out, swords drawn, and kill the rebels?”

“I mean, yeah! What else would happen?” Jiehong said. “Holy law? Maybe?”

Zan knew nothing about any so-called ‘holy law.’ With the spectacle over, normalcy and the need to do what they came for re-entered his head. “We should find Whiskey. I didn’t see her during the raid, as they called it. Maybe they already left for the mission?”

“I doubt that bud,” Jie said. “She is probably scoping out recruits. We’ve only been away for a couple of days. Let’s ask around, then find a bed in town.”

So Zan and Jie did just that — they asked the rebels if they knew where she went. Most said she did not know. Eventually, they encountered someone who said, “she left for an inter-faction recruitment run. She should be back soon.” Zan took this ‘recruitment run’ was recruitment for the operation to drive the many enemy outposts from the land.

“Good,” Zan said to himself. “We haven’t missed it yet.”

“Satisfy your worry?” Jiehong said.

“For now. Yes. Let’s go into town. You found some money for beds?” Zan asked.

“A bit. We can’t go hog-wild,” he said.

“As if. Mr. I-Got-Drunk-More-Than-Once!” Zan replied with a laugh.

“Hey! Don’t knock it till you try it!”

“Let’s save ‘trying it’ for after the war. Or at least until the night I lose my innocence,” Zan said, his over-the-top joke about his sex life already regretting.

Jiehong laughed like a boar on shrooms at Zan’s joke. It was why he said it.

Hand on shoulder, Jiehong laughed and said, “Let’s get us some fine mead and a nice meal!”

Entering the town, the guards side-eyed them. One of them muttered something under their breath. Zan thought he said, “Watcher…”

Not wanting to get into it with a guard, though, Zan ignored him.

Together, he and Jiehong went straight to a tavern called the Rusty Cluck.

“A couple of meads and a platter of finger foods,” Jiehong ordered at the busy establishment.

“Everything seems normal, still,” Zan said.

“Why wouldn’t it be? I doubt the Expanse, even with their outposts, will mount any assault soon. Not after we destroyed that large fort they were building,” Jiehong replied.

“True. I just always expect trouble.”

“I do, too. I’ve always expected trouble, though. You haven’t expected trouble until recently. With the war.”

Zan thought about what that could mean. Before the war, he and Jie were normal kids. What sort of trouble could he have been expecting?

He wanted to ask, but the barmaid with oversized features brought them their pints of drink. Jiehong drank deeply. Zan only a single mouthful. Zan really didn’t feel like drinking, but the loudness of it all drove him to it. He wanted to numb the chorus of shouting and music.

Feeling uncomfortable, Zan couldn’t do anything other than fidget uncomfortably in his seat. When the barmaid brought them their food, Zan said, “Jie! Pay the tab! I want to go somewhere calmer!”

Jiehong did as requested and they went somewhere quieter while they munched on little sandwiches and fried cheese bites, washing it down with a swig or three of mead. Closer to the city gate than they realized, Zan heard a commotion near the front.

Wandering over, Zan saw the guards harassing a woman.

With a start, Zan realized the woman was Whiskey.