by M. K. Adams
You made the right decision, she told herself as she watched more of the captives being brought out into the light. This is where you belong.
Chapter 26
Despite tasting victory, the journey back to camp was a sombre one.
“Give them the horses,” Kwah demanded, signalling towards the fragile and vulnerable bodies of the rescued Hemeti as the company prepared for the journey back to camp.
Turiel had wanted to go off and find some food for them, but Kwah had emphasised caution, opting to wait for Tyler to check them over first back at camp. So after putting some water into their bellies, they had set off.
“Which way are we going?” Lyvanne asked Greyson, who had just finished helping her set one of the Hemeti steady on horseback. She knew the way they had taken to arrive at the North Road, and she was sure that it wasn’t the same way they were now travelling back to camp.
“It’s only cautionary, kid,” Greyson replied, an impressed smile hidden beneath his shaggy beard. “Always take the long way home, just in case anyone is tracking us.”
• • •
Once they had been journeying long enough to be confident that wasn’t the case, they changed course and made directly for the woods, travelling at the fastest pace possible so that they could get those they had rescued into some modicum of safety.
Lyvanne found herself walking alongside Turiel the rest of the way back. Jocelyn had distanced herself from the rest of the group, choosing instead to scout ahead. Lyvanne knew that seeing her people thrown into the back of carriages like slaughter animals had pained her, but she the best thing for her right now was probably time and space.
“Why couldn’t you use your magic?” Lyvanne asked Turiel, trying her best to start thinking about anything other than the almost lifeless Hemeti riding on horseback only a few metres away.
Turiel didn’t particularly look like he wanted to talk much but Lyvanne was ready to the force the issue if it kept him distracted from what they’d seen.
“We try not to kill people when it’s not absolutely necessary. They might be fighting for the king, but for most of them it would just be a job, they have families back home somewhere. If I used magic in front of them, then we’d have to kill them. I can’t risk the king finding out about me. Otherwise, he’d send a warlock of his own to come and find me and it might mean the deaths of everyone else around me. It’s not worth the trade off, I would rather risk showing more of our numbers.”
The answer seemed fair, but the similarity to her own position made Lyvanne feel guilty. She had had the choice to hide, but she had chosen to lure the king towards them regardless, putting those lives that Turiel chose to protect, in danger.
To her right Lyvanne could see Kwah and one of the Hemeti men from the camp talking to one of the captives. Upon their initial rescue, none of them had been forthcoming with any information about who they were, where they were heading or why they had been taken. But it appeared that Kwah was having slightly more luck now, with one of them at least: a tall Hemeti man, who had grey hair and a long scraggly beard.
“What will we do with them?”
Turiel looked over at the same Hemeti that Lyvanne found herself watching. “Not sure, I don’t think there’s ever been something like this before. We’ll help them get better, find out what they know and then if I had to guess Shri’ook would want to offer them the choice to join us or make their own way, the same way you had that choice.”
Lyvanne nodded. She liked that idea.
One of the rescued Hemeti caught her attention. He appeared to be a similar age to Kwah, older than Turiel but not as old as the aged Shri’ook. His ears were pierced in multiple locations, and for some reason she couldn’t shake the feeling that she knew him from somewhere.
• • •
Back at camp, the returning men and women were greeted with quite the fanfare. No injuries and a good haul often called for an evening of celebration around the campfires. Any chance of that was quickly diminished as Lyvanne watched as one by one people began to take note of the Hemeti riding horseback.
“What is this?” Shri’ook asked as he paced across the camp towards their arrival.
Kwah ran over to greet him. “We need to talk.”
Shri’ook nodded and the pair turned towards the Annex with Turiel not far behind.
“Come with me,” a Hemeti woman from camp said delicately as she led the rescued captives towards Tyler’s medic hut.
Deciding that her help wasn’t needed anywhere, Lyvanne decided to find Jocelyn. It didn’t take long, her friend had stayed at the edges of the woods nearby some guards patrolling the perimeter, choosing not to follow everyone else back into camp.
“Are you okay?” Lyvanne asked, as she approached her friend who had sat down at the base of a tree looking out over the countryside that lay beyond the woodland’s edge.
“Been better,” Jocelyn replied truthfully as Lyvanne sat cross-legged beside her. “I knew that my people were treated like savages by many of your kind, but I never expected to return to the ways things had been centuries ago. Even under a king like this.”
Lyvanne’s eyes met the floor. “Your kind.” The words had made her realise how strong the divide between their two peoples could be at times. It made what The Spring fought for all the more clear. This group of fifty or so people fighting for what they believe in were living proof that Hemeti and Humans could live cohesively together. Proof that not all humans were like those who lived in the Upper Level. They just needed to make the rest of The Rive see it that way.
Lyvanne put a loving arm around Jocelyn’s shoulders. “We’re not all like that.”
Jocelyn smiled back. “I know you’re not, little one… has anyone ever told you that you have the heart and head of someone three times your age?” she asked, putting her arm around Lyvanne’s waist in return.
Lyvanne chuckled and shook her head. “Well, you do,” Jocelyn confirmed with a smile.
“I read the letter from Sinjin,” Lyvanne said out of the blue a few moments later. “Thank you for asking him to look out for my friends.”
The fact had escaped her mind with so much going on, but now as she sat here consoling her friend she was reminded of everything Jocelyn had gone out of her way to do for her.
“You’re welcome. They sound like nice people and they don’t deserve whatever future Astreya has for them.”
Lyvanne couldn’t hide the grin as she watched the sun slowly begin its descent into the rolling hills along the horizon. “No one ever came back for us. Not that we expected them too, you know? But we hoped. I plan to go back for them one day.”
“I know you will. I’ll help you if I can.”
“Before we do that though, I have one more favour to ask,” Lyvanne couldn’t believe what she was about to ask for, but as well as to check on Jocelyn’s well-being it had been the other reason for her venture out to find her friend.
“Anything,” Jocelyn replied as she looked at her friend quizzically.
“I would like it if you could teach me to fight,”
Jocelyn rose to her feet and stared down at the motionless Lyvanne. “Lyvanne, you’re too young.”
“No I’m not,” she replied, her answers already pre-planned in her mind. “Abella told me about young lords who start to learn when they’re much younger than I am.”
“I can’t, it’s too dangerous. Besides, you don’t need to learn. You have a whole camp of people here who would be willing to protect you if you needed it.”
“That’s just it Jocelyn, I don’t want protecting anymore. If you hadn’t been there when Drystal attacked me then I would dead by now, and back at the road I could see that you wanted to go and help when you thought a fight was about to start. I can’t keep being a burden, I need to be able to look after myself and I’m going to have to learn eventually anyway.”
Jocelyn stood there, hands on hips. The cogs turning in her brain obvious to see. “I don’t suppose there’s
much point in me arguing with you is there?”
“You said it yourself… heart and head of someone three times my age.”
Jocelyn nodded in defeat. “If I do this for you then you don’t tell Turiel, leave that to me okay?”
Lyvanne’s eyes lit up and she nodded wildly. “Thank you Jocelyn,” she said as she rose to her feet and wrapped her arms around Jocelyn’s chest.
“Don’t go thanking me yet,” Jocelyn said, gently pushing her away. “If we’re going to do this then we may as well do it properly, no half-hearting it.”
“Of course!”
“I’ll warn you now, I’m pretty tough. It won’t be a pleasant experience.”
Lyvanne had expected as much. Jocelyn had always had an air of confidence about her, especially for a Hemeti, but the way she carried herself both during her fight with Drystal and the calmness she exuded as she prepared herself for a fight on the North Road told the story of someone experienced with violence.
• • •
Jocelyn paced back and forth, the wet leaves of the canopy grinding beneath her feet as she began to work out how exactly they were going to do this without worrying Turiel. The answer was that it wasn’t going to be easy.
“We’ll start by using our free time when we get any. If Turiel goes out hunting, or off on a mission with the others then we’ll stay behind and train in the woods, away from too many prying eyes.”
“Why does it need to be such a secret?”
Jocelyn thought back to all the times that she and Turiel had talked about Lyvanne, even before they’d met her. All the conversations they’d had about the one who would lead them to victory and the certainty in Turiel’s voice.
“Truth is, although you might not act like it most of the time, you’re still a kid,” Jocelyn said as she knelt down and took Lyvanne’s hands in her own. “Don’t get offended, it’s the truth,” she continued as Lyvanne’s face flushed red. “The problem is that Turiel doesn’t always see you that way, and I just don’t want him getting ahead of himself. In fact, I don’t think he even fully understands how he sees you anymore. Some days he acts like he wants to protect you because you’re younger than us, other days he wants you to be our saviour. So telling him that you’re learning to fight might be a strange conversation to broach. Understand?”
“I think so.”
“I promise that when I get the next chance I’ll speak to Turiel alone, explain what we’re doing and why we’re doing it. I’ll try not to let him get too excited and hopefully he won’t send you off into battle the first chance he gets,” Jocelyn said jokingly. “For the record, I’m still not 100% okay doing this with you… but you at least deserve the chance if you’re going to join us. No point treating you like a child anymore.”
“Why not start now?” Lyvanne asked, her voice brimming with eagerness.
Jocelyn grinned. “No time like the present, I guess. Come on then.”
The pair headed back into the depths of the woods, looking for somewhere where they could train without being seen by people in the camp and without running the risk of a patrol walking past. Not that it really mattered, but Jocelyn wasn’t fond of the idea of Turiel finding out about this from anyone but her. The place they settled on was a small clearing between four large trees, which Jocelyn noted they could use as a perimeter.
“Give me one then,” Lyvanne said, motioning towards the two swords hung around Jocelyn’s waist.
Jocelyn had to stop herself from laughing in the girl’s face.
“No way. They come into it much later down the line. For now, we’ll start by teaching to evade.”
Lyvanne’s face was etched with disappointment, but this wasn’t a game and whilst she’d never had to train anybody before she wasn’t stupid enough to start her off with sharpened blades.
Jocelyn taught Lyvanne how to “dance” during a fight as she called it, ducking and weaving out of harm’s way. Something that she proved quite capable at after years of doing the exact same on the streets of Astreya. Whenever they found the chance the pair would escape to their small patch in the woods, and there they would train, often until long after the sun had set and the moon had taken into the sky. After a few days, Lyvanne felt comfortable enough to dodge Jocelyn’s hits without instruction, after a couple of weeks she had begun to strike back. That’s when Jocelyn started taking things seriously.
Chapter 27
The sun was setting on another hour of training with Jocelyn. The smell of whatever it was that Oblib was cooking for that evening had long since started drifting through the trees, making it nearly impossible for Lyvanne to concentrate.
“Can we go back now?” Lyvanne asked as she knelt over and leaned her body weight onto her knees.
“Not until we finish the routine,” Jocelyn replied, barely even panting or showing signs of any kind of fatigue.
Lyvanne grunted and from her bent over position lunged a surprise attack at Jocelyn, vying for her with a balled up right fist. As always seemed to the case Jocelyn saw the attack coming and easily dodged, grabbing Lyvanne by the wrist and using her own momentum to throw her to the floor.
“What do I keep telling you? Stop being so wild with your attacks, keep them measured.”
Lyvanne could have quite easily stayed on the floor, let the insects come and make their homes in her hair, but she was just as stubborn as the Hemeti who was causing her this torment. So, she pushed herself back to her feet and readied herself for another round.
Lyvanne dived to her right, hoping to see some kind of opening in Jocelyn’s defensive stance. When one didn’t appear, she resorted back to rushing her, trying in vain to tackle Jocelyn to the ground.
“You fight like Drystal,” Jocelyn mocked as she held the much lighter Lyvanne against her waist, locking her arms in place and not letting her go.
The insult was meant to goad her into losing concentration and historically it had worked quite the treat, but Lyvanne was prepared this time and had wanted Jocelyn to lock her in close. She was inside her defences now and releasing his own right arm from trying to tackle Jocelyn to the ground she balled up her fist and threw all her remaining strength into a punch that connected squarely with Jocelyn’s side, sending her staggering back a few steps and forcing her to release her hold of Lyvanne.
Jocelyn rubbed the impact zone and looked across at her student with a measure of pride. “Well done, little one.”
Lyvanne grinned like a child, her white teeth on show for the world to see.
“Now can we go back?” Lyvanne asked exasperated.
Her task of striking Jocelyn complete, the pair started their trek back to the camp. It had been three weeks since the incident on the North Road and the camp had been subdued ever since. Many were angry over how the Hemeti were being treated by the king and tempers had come close to bubbling over more than once. Unfortunately, none of those rescued had been able to supply any real information of value, they neither knew why they had been taken from their homes nor where they were headed. As Turiel had suggested, they had been nursed back to some semblance of health and were given the choice as to where they wished to go from there. Those with children opted to return to return to the world, to try and build new lives for themselves. There were two families, six Hemeti in total including the two children. Shri’ook and the other leaders had taken pity on them and given both families a horse each and some supplies to help them along their way. They were pointed in the direction of a nearby village that The Spring used to resupply and set off on their way.
A Hemeti by the name of Ronnoc spoke on behalf of the other four. His voice was foreign to her, but she refused to let go of the notion that this wasn’t the first time she had met Ronnoc. The others shared no such familiarity, but they seemed nice enough and Lyvanne took some childish delight in not being the newest member of camp anymore.
The older Hemeti whom Lyvanne had seen talking to Kwah on the return journey from the North Road was one of them. The other two were
a pair of twin sisters, and they told a gruesome story of how their family had been all been killed when they resisted arrest. As such, they had no one left to go back to and decided to fight back against the person who had caused their suffering. They didn’t talk an awful lot, but Lyvanne didn’t blame them for that, she hadn’t exactly been the most open person when she first arrived either.
The camp was busy when they returned. Everyone was there, there hadn’t been much traffic along the North Road in a few days now and it had given everyone a chance to relax and regain themselves after what had been some turbulent times. The camp being busy also meant that Lyvanne had enough cover to go and wash herself down before joining the others for their evening meal. Jocelyn had still yet to tell Turiel about their training, and it would raise suspicions if she turned up covered in mud. The bruises she couldn’t do much about, Jocelyn had a tough punch. Her long sleeved tunic, which she now opted to wear on most days, did a decent job of covering them up, but the charade wouldn’t last for long. The once oversized clothing that Jocelyn had gifted to her back in Astreya was already beginning to conform more tightly to her body.
After cleaning herself down, Lyvanne grabbed a plate of food: a mix of vegetables, rabbit meat and a homemade sauce as accompaniment. She found her friends sitting around one of the smaller fires off to the edge of the camp. Kwah had already finished his meal and was tending to the fire, but Turiel it seemed had waited for Jocelyn to return before he started eating, so the pair had just started digging in when Lyvanne appeared by their sides.
“About time you joined us,” Kwah said as he motioned for Lyvanne to take a seat among their circle.
Despite his age, Kwah had started treating Lyvanne like a little sister. He often looked out for her and took her along on his daily chores. She was even sure that he had cottoned on to the training she was doing with Jocelyn, but he was yet to say anything about it.
“Where’ve you been?” Turiel asked through a mouthful of food.