Prologue part V
L’Aurel
(The Ranger’s Tale)
L’Aurel waited patiently on the deck of the
Waverunner, happy to stay in the breeze of the vessel’s deck. Hundreds of passengers flooded the small ramp ahead of her, seemingly desperate to get off the ship, and onto the Thanesport docks. Rather than try to fight her way through them, she relaxed and waited.
Take your time and watch, L’Aurel-dear. Men are always in a hurry, rushing from birth to death. You have a bit of their blood, a bit of my
blood, but you’ve your mother’s as well. Be patient, let them act first. This way, you’ll always be able to ensure that you act last.
Aon burned low in the sky, pushing its heat (but precious little light) through the thick grey clouds that now shrouded Thanesport in dull, lifeless twilight. Even the wind seemed somehow deadened as she waited for the narrow ramp leading down to the dock to empty its humanoid cargo into the busy dockside shops and taverns that the port city had to offer. Though she didn’t particularly want to spend any longer on the salt-encrusted deck of the Waverunner, she wasn’t in any hurry to set foot in Thanesport. No grand quest had brought her here. Not even a mediocre quest. She was doing little more than running from loneliness, fleeing the sadness in her heart at being left
alone.
Thanesport was different, but not as different as she had expected. There were a lot more people, of course. More than she could imagine, in fact. Yet, here she stood beneath a forest of masts not so very different from the canopy of her home. The difference she felt most keenly was her father’s absence. Now, only the memory of his cool, steady voice accompanied her as she made her way through life. She hoped she was ready.
No one can tell you when you’re ready for something but yourself, L’Aurel- dear. Your heart always tells you true. Fear is a liar, fear is a thief. A deceiver. But as long as you know
that fear is only trying to interfere with the message of your heart, you can ignore it. Your heart speaks softly, but true. You’re ready, my love. Now pull…
The last of the crowd had filtered off the walkway, then, leaving L’Aurel with an open path before her. She looked over her shoulder for one long last gaze at the ship had carried her to a new life. Silently, she thanked the sea for a safe journey, and then started down from the deck, carrying everything that she owned in a single sack thrown over a tightly corded shoulder.
* * *
Her labored breathing flooded her ears, blocking out the sounds of the forest around her. Sweat burned in her emerald green eyes, but she blinked it away, frantically searching the shadows around her for any sign of her pursuer. Her muscles screamed at her, begging her to stop moving, to stop running. But she couldn’t. Not if she wanted to get out of this with her hide intact. She had been hunted long enough. Now, she would become the hunter.
Taking a deep breath to calm herself, she reached up to her face, smearing grime and sweat across her brow, but finally clearing the sting from her burning eyes. This had been going on for days, chased from the shadows by a figure she could barely see. She knew who it was, and she would
not give him the satisfaction of taking her. She glanced down at her bow, checking to make sure her arrow was properly notched, ready to spin through the air toward the target she chose. She tugged at her bowstring as her hand screamed in piercing, cramping pain. Her fingers had been curved around the bowstring for what seemed like days. It may have
been days. She hadn’t been tracking Aon’s traverse across the sky. She had been running. But she would run no more.
L’Aurel was tired. Exhausted. But she had to stay ready.
The unready are soon the un-living. That much she knew.
Carefully—silently—she moved, placing her bare feet between leaves and fallen branches. Stilling even her breath, she darted from shadow to shadow, hurtling beneath limb and leaf. She flew over the deadfall so common the dense forest that was her home, wary of leaving any trace of her passage for the Hunter to follow. Branches tore at her cheeks and eyes as she sped through the wood, grasping at her passage with an almost living desperation.
As she ran, she searched her surroundings, looking for the perfect spot with which to—
There!—lay her ambush. She slowed, gently parting the bows of oak and ash, fading into the shadows, positioning her body so that she would be all but invisible to the untrained eye. As she pushed herself further back against the tree that would serve as her hiding place, she took a slow, deep breath, cautious not to penetrate the sounds of the forest with a gasp for air.
She leaned against the wide trunk, safe in the embrace of darkness, at least for now. Still clutching her bow, arrow still notched, she carefully rotated her shoulders back in their sockets. She allowed herself the pleasure of the small
cracks that accompanied the stretch, but forced her arms to stay taught, ready to aim and fire with less than a moment’s notice.
Believing herself safely hidden, she focused her sight and her hearing outward, straining every sense for some sign of her pursuer. She continued her slow cycle of breath, letting the sounds of the forest around her fade as she half-consciously searched for anything out of place. She would find him before he could find her. She had to.
As she let her senses blanket the forest, she kept her breathing shallow, silent to all but God, himself. Though her tired arms continued to scream at her for release, she did not relax. She waited for her hunter, eyes narrowed with an anger that had built over days of pursuit. This had gone more than far enough.
Her mind wandered for hours, or perhaps only seconds, running through a thousand plans and scenarios for her still-missing hunter. She refused to believe that he had lost the trail. He had harried for too long to allow this. She had become used to his presence, just beyond the shadows. It couldn’t end like this. It was so…anticlimactic. She wanted to scream. She nearly did.
And then she heard it. A branch snapped, right of the setting sun, over her left shoulder. She didn’t move. She’d let her ears see for her. Besides—she had fallen prey to this, before. This was no more than a ruse to draw her out of her hiding place.
And then she heard the true sign of his passage. Nothing. At least, nothing more than a rustle of leaves, a stirring of the air. Something that should have faded into the sounds of the wood. But this time she was ready. And waiting.
She didn’t have to turn. In one fluid motion, her bow lifted, and her elbow flowed back, pulling the already taut string almost to its breaking point. Then, she released. The bow snapped forward, pulling the string and arrow forward faster than even L’Aurel’s keen eye could see. As the arrow pulled free of the bow, it’s carefully fletched feathers set it spinning through the barely shuddering leaves of her makeshift shelter. Silently, it hurtled forward, slicing through the still quiet air.
And then it stopped. The hunter grunted, and then fell. The idyllic sounds of nature, pierced by the crash of a man to earth.
Resisting the urge to cheer, L’Aurel pushed herself into motion, darting out of the shadows of the tree that had been her savior. As she ran toward the fallen hunter, she reached across her thickly solid body into the quiver of arrows strapped to her hip. She drew another arrow, quickly letting it settle into its natural place on the bow. Just as the arrow reached its rest, she skidded to a stop, several feet from the fallen hunter.
Ignoring the protests of the arm that had only recently been given its first rest for some time, she drew back the bowstring, ready to fire again should the hunter prove
uncooperative. Gazing down the slender wooden length of her arrow, she spoke. Her voice cracked. She had not spoken since the hunt began.
“Throw your weapons away! Now!” She hoped her voice displayed more menace than fear. She certainly
felt fear most strongly, but he didn’t have to know that.
He didn’t move. He didn’t stir. Had she killed him? She didn’t think so. While her strike should have been enough to knock him down, it was unlikely that it could have ended his life. Was his chest moving? She needed a closer look.
Cautiously, she inched forward, no less silent than before. He may only be unconscious, and there was little advantage in waking her quarry as she stood over him. Her bow had served her well, but it was hardly the best weapon to use in such close quarters.
Standing over the prone figure, she looked again, still trying to determine if her fallen foe was still breathing. Bowstring still pulled, she kicked softly at his ribs, hoping to see some life in the face down body. Still nothing.
She started to kneel, hoping to turn the body over to expose its face to Aon. She slowly released her bowstring, keeping the bow and arrow held lightly in her left hand, as she hesitantly reached down to touch her quarry with her right. In retrospect, she would think of this as her worst mistake.
Her hand within a hair’s breadth of the hunter’s cloak, he moved. Blindingly fast, his own left arm snaked around her ankle, and then pulled, sending her sprawling, crashing to the ground next to him. He rolled onto his back, lightning wrapped in forest green. Before L’Aurel could get her feet beneath her, he was already standing, having found his own feet while she was still trying to regain control of her breath.
He turned back to her, pulling his cloak back up to shadow his face. Still no good look at her attacker. Moving with graceful fluidity and almost blinding speed, he reached across his own slender hips, and with the familiar sound of metal against leather, drew forth a short, wickedly curved blade. He danced toward her with his strange dagger flashing in the scattered rays of sunlight that forced their way through the forest, above.
Just as he stood above her, she made her move. As he slashed at the soft flesh of her stomach with the knife, she rolled away, ending with her feet beneath her. She was disappointed to see that she had not succeeded in putting any significant distance between her attacker and herself. This was going to make using a bow difficult.
She tried, anyway. Her right hand darted toward her left, which still held the bow and arrow. Grasping the loosened string around the well-fletched arrow, she yanked back, hoping to fire before the hunter could strike again with his blade.
She wasn’t fast enough. He kicked at her ankles, trying to bring her back to the soft ground of the wood. Meanwhile, his blade arm slashed at her face and arms, knife still flashing in the sunlight. She ducked and weaved, desperately trying to back away further than he could pursue. Every time she tried to loose her arrow, he was there—harrying her. Distracting her.
It seemed to L’Aurel that she backpedaled forever, hurling her body away from the hunter’s steel. At last, she saw an opening—a tiny hitch in his furiously working shoulder. She lifted the bow, ready to loose the arrow into the hunter’s chest from less than a few feet away.
She aimed, and then loosened her fingers, setting the arrow free to hit its target, and send him back to the forest floor. Or, at least, that was what was supposed to happen. As she let go of the string completely, it snapped. After the small hitch in the hunter’s shoulder, he had continued his strike, slashing in a shallower arc than he had done before. Steel parted the taut string, and cut deeply into the yew of her bow.
Useless. She snarled. Throwing the broken bow aside, she drew a dagger of her own. This was not going well. Even as she tried to bring the blade to block the lighting strikes of the hunter’s knife, she felt metal sliding across her flesh.
She slashed at her enemy in utter futility, unable to score even a cut as he easily slipped past her every defense. She knew it would be over soon. In fact, she was right.
Suddenly, his attack pattern changed, and he slashed at her eyes, sunlight cutting into her vision, soon to be followed by cold steel. As she threw up her arms to protect them, he lashed out with a short kick, catching her behind the knee. Her feet were pulled from beneath her, and she found herself falling again.
She hit hard, knocking the breath from her lungs and the blade from her hand. She gasped for air, trying to force her lungs to work after the fall. Still begging her lungs to function, she tried to sit up, but instead found icy cold steel against her throat. It was over. She had lost. It was time to pay the price.
Finally catching her breath, she rasped, “You win. I submit.”
She could hear the smile in his words, even from the shadow of his cloak. “What’s that? I don’t think I heard you, my prey…”
“I submit!” she tried to shout, words scraping against her throat as they escaped her laboring lungs.
Still keeping the blade on her throat, he knelt beside her, much as she had done mere minutes before. “You do know what the price of failure is, don’t you?” he asked, amusement seeping into his ominous words, unseen in the shadowy hood.
She swallowed hard. “I do.” She tried to blink back tears. “Death.”
He laughed. This was not making her loss any easier. “Yes. I suppose it is,” he muttered, as he pressed the steel harder against her thickly muscled neck. “But not today.”
Suddenly dropping the oddly curved blade, his hands darted to her ribs. Not again! His fingers danced across her sides, brushing just hard enough to make her…
laugh. “Today the price is
tickling, L’Aurel-dear!” he shouted over her uncontrolled guffaws. “And the payment will be dire indeed!” he wailed as his fingers continued to pull laughter from her exhausted lungs.
Tears of laughter flooded from her eyes as she rolled, trying to escape his grasp. “Father! Stop it!” she yelled in the few second pauses between bouts of chortling. “Knock it off!” she gasped, as he exacted his vengeance for her failure.
Eventually the punishment subsided, and the two of them, father and daughter, lay on the forest floor, staring at the clouds between ancient limbs. “It was a good shot you made, today,” he said, rubbing his chest where the dummied arrow had hit him. “If there had been a point on it, it probably would have actually felled me. As it was, it knocked more than the wind out of me. I think it’s time we got you a bow with a stronger pull.”
Her thick brown brows furrowed as she responded. “It might have been a good shot, but it wasn’t enough to keep you down. And I’m still terrible with a knife.”
“Certainly better than the last time,” he said. “I’ve got more than a few nicks, even with the blades dulled.”
“But nothing anywhere vital…?”
“Nothing,” he sighed. “We’ll have to concentrate on knives for the next couple of months. I think there’s very little left I can teach you about the bow, anyway,” he said, turning his weather-beaten face from the sky to look into her eyes.
She managed a smile at that. “You mean it? You really think I’m good with the bow?”
“Better than good, L’Aurel-doll.”
She beamed.
“But I can’t have you getting soft, yet. You still lost. Run along home, and make sure that bow is ready to pull by the time I get there. I’m not as young as I used to be, so I’m going to take a leisurely pace as I head back to the cabin...try to work the kinks out of my muscles that I’ve gained by chasing you for two days. I’ll be back by suppertime.”
She smiled, and then rolled easily to her feet. He might be old, but she was not. “Of course, Father. I’ll see you at the cabin. I love you!”
Grunting as he pushed himself off of the forest floor, he responded, “I love you, too. Now get.”
* * *
L’Aurel found herself standing on the tattered boardwalk, with the unregulated clamor of far too many people pushed into far too small a space cutting into her memories. She raised a hand to her cheeks. Was she crying? Must be the dust. Light! She missed home already.
He had died less than two months later. Fever, from the deluge that had flooded the forest that very night. He’d held on for more time than she cared to remember, though. He never quit. She wished she were as strong as he.
They’d never gotten the chance to practice with knives. But his curved blade was packed into the bag she carried on her back, along with everything else that was left of him. She was going to make a life, make him proud. This seemed as good a place to start as any.
She looked around, sizing up the dockside inns that crowded the busy docks of Thanesport. Her eyes seized upon a wooden sign, topped by an iron mockup of a sword’s scabbard. “The Rusty Scabbard,” she wondered aloud, reading the inn’s name from the sign below. There were worse places to begin, she supposed. Make every step a careful one, my L’Aurel-dearest, but never be so cautious that you fail to step, at all.
And so step, she did. The Rusty Scabbard. Maybe she'd find some inkling of purpose, there. She snorted at the thought. And maybe pirates would attack Thanesport! Half giggling at the thought, she rearranged her bag over her shoulder, and started across the street to the inn.
