“How could Jonson stay away from anyone who looks as endearing as you do right now?” he asked her.
“I don’t know,” she said emphatically. “I wish you would ask him that!
“But you haven’t answered my question,” she said.
“We are on friendly terms, but I do not love her,” Kestrel said.
“But the point is, she has several skins of water from the healing spring. If you can go to her right now and tell her that I have two injured elves who need the water, she could give you a skin, nice and dried and sealed, that you could bring to me right now,” he directed. “Her name is Alicia,” he reminded her.
“You want me to expose myself to this elf woman for you?” Dewberry asked.
“She’s already seen you,” Kestrel pointed out. “She’s seen you without clothes; you’ve seen her without clothes. This will be a surprise at first for her, but not a shock. She won’t scream like Merilla did.”
“Which of us do you like better without clothes? You’ve seen me, the elf, and the human – which of us is most beautiful?” she seemed sincere in her question.
Kestrel paused and looked at Dewberry, realizing that she had a serious interest in his answer, that she needed to feel her beauty affirmed. Her groom’s choice to ignore her was hurting her, he could tell. “You are the bluest,” he grinned as she stuck her tongue out at him, “and blue is my favorite color. So you are the most beautiful to me. If you weren’t already married, I might try to ravish you myself right now!”
“I knew it!” Dewberry said triumphantly. “You did unclothe me the first time we met, simply out of desire!” She darted in close to him, grabbed his face with both her hands, and kissed him soundly upon the lips.
“I’ll go to the less beautiful Alicia, tell her that her beauty pales in comparison to my own, and ask for a skin of healing water,” Dewberry recited her plan.
“Wait! Wait,” Kestrel hastily interjected. “First, tell her that I have two wounded elves who need help, then ask for the skin of water. Then, after you have the water, then you can tell her that you are most beautiful to me.”
“Okay, Kestrel, elf lover-friend, that is what I will do. Then I will bring the water back to you. Then I will go tell Jonson that you are madly in love with me,” she listed her objectives and disappeared within seconds.
Kestrel sat down against the side of the barn, closed his eyes, and smiled at the memory of Dewberry’s infectious good humor and enthusiasm. He sat silently as the minutes passed, then opened his eyes when Dewberry called his name.
She stood on the ground before him, at eye level as he sat, and proudly held a skin out before her.
“She was glad to see me visit, once she got over the fright,” Dewberry narrated. “She was worried that you needed the skin, and wanted to come take care of you herself, but I explained that you were fine, and that this water was for other elves you had met.
“So she gave me a skin, and told me to tell you that she is thinking about you,” Dewberry continued, then gave a devilish grin. “That’s when I told her that you had selected me as more beautiful than her or the human! She scowled, and said, ‘Go away blue pest! Don’t come back for his sake any more’, and so I came back here!
“It was a triumph!” Dewberry concluded.
“Yes it was,” Kestrel agreed, reaching for the water skin. He stood up. “I have to go treat my men,” he told her. “And you need to go tell Jonson about your conquests today.”
“I will, friend Kestrel. Thank you so much for cheering me up today!” Dewberry said brightly, and then disappeared.
Kestrel strolled back to the smithy, water skin hanging from his hand, and entered the building to find one elf already unshackled, and the other nearly so. “Here, have a drink of this,” Kestrel instructed them in Elvish, handing the skin over as the smith looked up at the strange language.
“I’ll tell my boy to get some food for your slaves,” the smith said, “as soon as I finish this,” he grunted the last word as he swung his hammer to strike a link in the shackle around one of the ankles of the elf at the anvil.
There was a mighty crack, and the shackle fell away. The smith motioned for the elf to switch locations of his feet, and the still shackled leg rose to the anvil in place of the freed one. The smith placed the chisel on the link he selected to break, then lifted the hammer and swung it to a crashing explosion, removing that shackle as well, so that the chains fell from the elf, and both former slaves were free.
The smith stood and stretched his back, and Kestrel took the water skin from the elf who held it, and offered it to the human. “Have a drink if you want. It’s good water; it’ll make you feel better.”
The smith took the bag without comment and squirted a stream down his throat then handed the skin back to Kestrel and bellowed for his boy. “Bring a feast for these three – whatever’s available in the larder,” he told the youth.
“Your slaves are free now. So you intend to set them free in the forest?” he turned to Kestrel.
“Yes. I’ll take the long way about to get to back to Estone city,” Kestrel replied.
“And you were able to go into town and just buy them from a gambling hall?” the smith asked, as his servant arrived with a bag of foods.
“I won a lot of money playing their games, and it was cheaper for them to give me the slaves than my winnings,” Kestrel simplified what had happened. “We’ll just take the bag and be on our way, if you don’t mind,” Kestrel told the smith.
He didn’t distrust the human, but he had no feeling that he could completely trust him either, and he needed to start the journey back, knowing that it would be slowed down by the weakened and crippled condition of his new acquaintances.
“Go right ahead; for what you’ve paid today, you can keep the sack,” the smith grinned. “Here’s your own staff back too,” he pulled it off a table top and tossed it to Kestrel.
“Can you bring our horse out from the stable?” Kestrel asked the boy, who immediately ran to do so.
“He’s obedient; you need to keep him around,” Kestrel grinned at the smith.
“He’s my own son; he listens better than I did at that age,” the man agreed.
Kestrel switched languages, as he spoke to the two elves whose heads had turned back and forth, following the conversation. “We’re going to start back home now. I have a horse, and I want you two to ride it today, and maybe for a few days,” he instructed them. “I know you don’t like the idea, but I want to get away from here as fast as we can, just to be safe, and the horse will help speed our departure.”
They looked at him, then looked at each other. “We understand. We don’t like it, I’m sure you know, but we’ll do it,” one of the two answered.
They walked out into the yard, where Kestrel helped both men climb atop the saddle, and he instructed them to hold on.
“I’ve got one question,” the smith said as they readied to leave. “Are you human or elf? I know I shouldn’t have to ask, but you almost seem like one of them somehow.”
“I am human,” Kestrel said, then turned away and started the horse in motion with him. “And elf too,” he added softly as they left the yard.
He led the horse to walk at his pace for several minutes until they were safely away from the blacksmith shop and moving out towards the farms along the road. “Hold on tight,” he spoke up to the elves, “we’re going to pick up the pace.” He broke from his walk into a full Elven running stride, and the horse immediately began to move at a brisk trot beside him, as the riders exclaimed and grabbed on tightly to the saddle and each other.
For the rest of the day, until sunset was nearly complete, they continued to pass rapidly away from Green Water, passing along the shore of the North Sea, and finally turning inland to settle in for the night in a camping spot.
“Let’s stop here,” Kestrel said at last, breathing hard as he reined the horse to a stop beside him. “You can climb down. You’ll be sore,” Kestrel advise
d as he helped the former slaves off the horse.
“Here,” he tossed them the water skin. “Both of you take a drink from this, but not a lot. It comes from a special spring, and if we give you some each day for the next few days, plus feed you some food, you’ll be nothing but better.”
“Master, who are you?” the taller of the two elves asked.
“I am an elf, made to look like a human,” he replied. “I’ll tell you more after I tend to the horse and we set up camp. If you can gather some wood, we’ll start a small fire.”
They went about their tasks, and several minutes later they sat down together in the darkness, illuminated only by the small fire and the stars overhead, unaware that the guards from the gambling hall had visited the blacksmith with a band of supporters, seeking information about the whereabouts of Kestrel and the elves, intending to take the slaves back and to slay Kestrel for his humiliation of the manager.
“Who are you?” Termine, the taller of the two asked.
Kestrel talked about himself in a limited way, hiding much, but revealing enough to provide a plausible tale for the two former slaves to understand how he had come to be in Green Water. “And then the goddess blessed the cubes I tossed, so that I won every time, and soon the gamblers owed me more than they could pay, so I took you two as payment, and here we are,” he concluded.
“Now, tell me your story, how you came to be slaves, and how you came to be in Green Water,” Kestrel asked. “I guess you were caught in the battle at the fire?”
“We were,” Hinger, the other elf confirmed, as they took turns eating and talking. “Our squad watched Commander Mastrin took a group out to try to break up the firethrowers, and we and the others were instructed to try to run south and get around the end of the fires, so we could take shelter in the safe part of the forest.
“Mastrin’s forces went down too quickly though; the humans just waited for them and butchered them, and we weren’t able to make it to safety,” he continued. “The humans came at us, and we put up a fight, but not many survived.”
“They rounded up the survivors, tied us all in ropes, and herded us together,” Hinger added.
“Was there a girl named Lucretia?” Kestrel asked with a lump in his throat.
“There were four or five score captured altogether,” Hinger continued. “I didn’t know many of them; I barely knew Termine. There were a few females, but they were separated from us pretty quickly.”
“Then after the first day, they didn’t attack any further. They could have burned the whole Eastern Forest – there weren’t any other defenders left, but instead they packed everything up and left the battlefield, taking us with them,” he explained. “It was a horrible march. They didn’t feed us much, they beat us just because they could, they left our dead lying by the side of the road – a lot didn’t survive. Maybe two score or three score made it to their city.
“Then things happened to us and to them. They fought among themselves; a lot of them were killed, and they attacked the city. Then they took an ax and cut off our feet, so we couldn’t run away, I guess,” he stopped talking, emotion overcoming him, and Termine picked up the story.
“We were put on a ship after the humans’ war with themselves was done, those that survived, that is, and we went across the sea to another great city, and we were sold off at auction. Hinger and I were bought together by a trader, and we worked on his ships, getting whipped and mistreated terribly,” he said. “The trader came up here on a voyage and must have lost money at the gambling house, because we were given to the house, and have worked there the past week.”
Kestrel felt the tears rolling down his cheeks at the bleak recital of the horrific events.
“All praise to Kai for sending you to save us,” Hinger said. “I’ll make an extra devotion and pledge to the temple to thank her.”
“As will I,” Termine agreed.
“As will I,” Kestrel concurred.
“Since there are three of us, we’ll take turns on watch,” Kestrel announced. “I’ll take the first shift, then wake Hinger for second, and Termine can take the third,” he directed.
The two ex-slaves fell immediately asleep, while Kestrel walked around the perimeter of the campsite, and came back to add new tinder to the fire from time to time. It was that fire that gave their location away to the gambler’s men who were still following them, and Kestrel’s watchfulness that saved them.
Near the end of his shift Kestrel heard the men approaching, and woke the other two elves. He gave them his bow and arrows to use, while he went out into the darkness of the trees, and waited for the men to pass by him. There were eight men, walking in a cluster towards the flames of the camp fire, and when Kestrel was sure they were within the range of the elven archers who were hidden in the darkness, he began his attack. He swung his staff with full force at the back of the head of one man, then jabbed and twisted the newly spiked end of the staff into the throat of the man next to him.
He heard the twinge of his bow, and one of the humans screamed, while the others realized they had been ambushed, and began to shout and flail. One of the men swung his sword blindly, but managed to score it across Kestrel’s stomach, a painful cut that he ignored as he twisted his staff between the man’s legs to trip him, then ripped the hooks across his opponent’s throat, and heard a gurgling noise as another arrow found its target.
There were three humans still left, blindly thrashing about in the forest. One was clearly running away, he could tell by the receding sounds, while one was still approaching the fire, and one was near him. With one hand holding his injury, he dropped the staff in the other hand and pulled out his sword, then snuck beside the human closest to him and stabbed the man in his kidneys. His victim gave a loud, sobbing scream of pain as he fell, and Kestrel administered a lethal blow out of mercy.
The bow sounded again, and Kestrel heard the final human hunter fall among the leaves on the forest floor. “That’s all of them,” he called out to the other two elves, “ and I’m coming in to the fire now.”
The other two returned to the fire as well, and met him there. “Kestrel, you’re hurt!” Hinger exclaimed as they came face to face. “Do you want to drink some of the healing water?” he asked, preparing to go in search of the water skin.
“No,” Kestrel answered sharply, and they both looked at him in surprise. “If I touch it, my ears and eyebrows will start to grow back to elven form,” he belatedly explained. “I’ve learned that the hard way, and had to undergo surgery twice to look human.
“’I’d rather not have a third surgery,” he added with a grin. “Hinger, you’re on duty now,” he told the elf, and he went to his bedroll to lay down. He slept uneasily that night, as the pain of the cut across his stomach troubled him, but awoke shortly after dawn nonetheless, and helped prepare the camp for their departure. He went out into the forest and raided the packs and pockets of the dead men, then they resumed their journey, and he jogged alongside the horse with its double load of elves into the southeast.
That night they had another fire to provide some warmth as the evening grew cooler, as Hinger and Termine debated whether their feet were healing, or if it was just their imagination. By the third evening of their journey they concluded that they were regrowing the lost limbs, and they mounted no watch as they decided they were beyond danger of discovery.
Seven days later the group reached Firheng, a return to the Elven nation that made the two former slaves cry with appreciation. They walked in through the city gate with less in the way of a limp as their feet continued to regenerate, and Kestrel led them into Belinda’s office to report to Commander Cosima.
“Kestrel! My husband whispered my name this morning!” Belinda cried tears of real joy when she saw him. “I’m really going to have him back!”
Cosima listened in amazement to Kestrel’s story of rescue. “I had no idea you would do any more than see the edge of the city and return,” he exclaimed when Kestrel was finished recoun
ting the tale.
“Colonel Silvan will want to hear your stories,” Cosima told the two returned guards. “He’ll ask you so many questions you’ll discover that you know and remember things you couldn’t possibly be aware of during your time in captivity.”
“And his wife will have more of the healing water, to help your feet grow back further. You’ll not need anything else,” Kestrel assured them. It was true that their sores had disappeared and the scars they bore had shrank and faded into relative obscurity. “When you see Alicia, tell her Kestrel says thank you.”
They drank ale that night and talked with Arlen over dinner to celebrate their safety back among elves. “You know,” said Termine, “after a while I didn’t even notice he looked like a human,” he observed late that night, as he placed a hand on Kestrel’s shoulder. Kestrel grinned at the backhanded compliment.
The next morning Termine and Hinger were given a messenger tube to take to Colonel Silvan, and they left Firheng to make their way back to Center Trunk, the first elves to return from their captivity among the humans. After he watched them limp away from the gate of the guard base, Kestrel went back to see Commander Cosima again.
“You made more of your training trip than I expected Kestrel, and you did great work that was good in more than one way – it was good for those two men, it was good for our people, and I suspect it might even have been good for you,” Cosima said.
Kestrel nodded his head in agreement. It had been an eye-opening trip. He had started the trip with his memories of the prejudices that elves had shown against him because of his human characteristics, and questioning the moral values of elves versus humans. The decadence he had seen in Green Water, particularly the practice of slavery, showed him that humans did not occupy a moral high ground versus elves. And the eye-opening exposure to seeing elves as slaves had awakened a passion in him to achieve another goal while he infiltrated the humans – he would seek to rescue other elven slaves as well, if they were to be found.
The Inner Seas Kingdoms: 01 - The Healing Spring Page 32