Elan nodded, not speaking as she picked her way through the rocks that were strewn across the base of the cliff side.
"Stay close and move as quickly as you can, but not so quickly as to make a mistake," he told her without looking back. "I'll pick out the easiest path I can find."
"I'll keep up," she said softly.
"I'm sure ye will, lass."
*****
"Damn them!" the gruff man cursed, scrambling across the rocks as he and the group he traveled with picked their way across the landscape toward the point they'd deduced the two drifters were making for.
By luck or design, they had chosen one of the farthest points from his group's position to climb the cliff face, and he'd have to push hard if he wanted to intercept the pair. Obviously they were new to the area, because everyone who traveled the wastes frequently knew the cliffs and would never normally climb in that area because it was one of the more common places for brigands to stake out.
The irony of that situation was lost on him as he herded his men along the well-traveled path, ignoring the griping and cursing that came from them as he did.
"Ah, shut yer mouths!"
Well, mostly ignored them.
"We'll be on them before they reach the top, and there's only two of them so quit yer whining and move!"
Most of the band of eight shut up then, though the real whiners never did, of course.
Them, he ignored. Nothing would shut them up anyway, and the rest would probably start to get real worried if something did.
*****
"Ah!" Elan yelped involuntarily as her feet slipped on the slick stone, her hand just snapping out to catch a grip before she began to slide.
Kaern looked back at her. "Are ye alright, lass?"
She nodded shakily, firming up her grip.
"Good. Not much farther, but when we get to the top we'll have to keep moving," he advised her.
She swallowed, her heart pounding in her chest, but nodded. "I'm okay."
"Come on then," he told her, turning back to the path.
She gritted her teeth as he turned back to the path but doggedly began to follow him up what apparently passed for a “path.”
The top of the cliff face came sooner than Elan had expected, or could have hoped, but the treacherous path had taken a toll on her as they climbed. Her limbs were scraped, her fingers bloodied and bruised, and she felt like she'd just run full out for longer then she'd ever tried before.
Climbing wasn't her strength, she thought.
Kaern didn't let up when he pulled her up over the lip of the cliff. He only let her gasp a couple breaths, then hauled her up by the pack on her back and shoved her off in a new direction.
"Come on, lass," he said in his odd accent. "It's time to be moving again."
She stumbled along ahead of him, moving faster than she could have hoped for, but she suspected that he was taking it easy on her just the same. His looks around and occasional bursts of frustration with their pace indicated that he wanted to move a lot faster.
He led them toward a path that cut through some light trees, more scrub than forest, but Elan couldn’t help but gape at them. Elan had seen trees before, but never so thick as these. Only a handful grew near her home, and even the oasis had only a few dozen. There looked to be hundreds here, blocking the view of a person trying to look more than a few feet through the interwoven mass.
Kaern was looking over his shoulder now, though, as they moved, and his motions were tense, like he was jumping at shadows.
"W...what's wrong?" she asked, gasping as she tried to catch her breath.
"Nothing ye can help with, lass," was all he'd tell her. "Now move along like a good girl. We've got ground to cover 'fore the night falls."
Then he'd normally give her a shove in a new direction, as if he couldn't make up his mind where they were going.
All in all, it was frustrating as hell for her, and she was coming close up on letting him know it.
She was, in fact, about to yell back at him the last time until he suddenly shoved her and yelled out, "Get down!"
Chapter 7
"Get down!" Kaern yelled, slamming a flat hand into the Elan’s back, right between her shoulder blades where the pack was riding high.
She stumbled forward, losing her balance this time, and Kaern twisted as the fletched arrow plucked at his furred cloak as it whistled past.
The thud of the arrow slapping into a tree just past them was followed by the eerie vibration of its shaft in the air and the sudden silence of the wildlife around them.
Elan half yelped and half grunted in pain and lost air from where she had hit the ground, her anger flashing as she pushed off and rolled over. The slap of the arrow distracted her attention briefly, her eyes flitting over to the quivering weapon that lay embedded in a tree some dozen feet away.
She frowned, her brow furrowing as she tried to figure out how the arrow got there, but it was the sudden movement of Kaern that attracted her attention next.
Kaern's hand dropped to his hip, his thumb popping a snap on the leather scabbard he wore as his hand closed around the hilt of the sword he'd never drawn before. When it slid from the sheath, Elan's eyes widened in shock and surprise.
It was beautiful, gleaming brightly in the sunlight as it slid clear of the tattered old leather, so unlike her old sword. Her father had given her a fine weapon, he'd said, strong and light and able to kill demons. She'd learned since then that he had told her the truth. Her sword had served her well. It was her failing that had cost her the defeat at the hands of the demons and their human lackey, no fault of the sword.
But her sword had been an ugly thing compared to this slice of light that Kaern lifted into the air. The light gleamed off its every surface, it seemed, reflecting daggers of brilliance in all directions as Kaern drew the blade up near his head in a stiff stance that held the weapon as an extension of his self, making him a full four feet taller as the blade rose from his shoulder level straight up to the sky.
It was only then that she followed his gaze and started with the first true hints of fear.
Eight men were rushing from the woods behind them, blades in their own hands, and their faces were masks of murderous intent.
Elan rolled on her pack, grasping at the straps in near panic as Kaern strode forward with the blade still in place at shoulder level. She fumbled until one strap came loose, then kicked and yanked until she slid her arm free of the other.
She needed a weapon!
Her sword was gone now, taken by the traitor as a trophy, and she'd had no chance to get another since. She cast about, scrambling along the ground for a club or a rock. Anything would do, because anything would be better than her hands.
A scream, not of anger or fear, but of pure energy cut the air then, and she spun around on her haunches just in time to see Kaern meet the fastest of the charging men. Kaern yelled suddenly, a burst of sound that seemed to strike like a fist and freeze her heart in her chest.
It had the same effect on his opponent, she thought, because the other man hesitated for one brief instant before he and Kaern met, and it was his last hesitation ever. Kaern ducked low as he twisted his torso and snapped his arm out with the long elegant blade in a short, fast arc. It sliced through the leather armor of the charging man as if he wore nothing at all and bit deep into soft flesh.
The stroke continued through as Kaern kept moving, drawing his blade through the man's guts with a single long slice that opened his bowels to the light of day and dropped him in an agonized heap.
The next cry that split the air wasn't energy; it was anger. Hatred. Fury with Kaern for killing one of their own became the brigands’ battle cry, and they converged on him in their anger.
Steel clashed against steel and iron then as Kaern twisted and placed his feet with care on the rough ground, deflecting blows meant to end his life with deceptive flicks of his own weapon.