by M. K. Adams
“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” Jocelyn scolded before jabbing him in the rib cage so that Lyvanne had an opportunity to ignore the question.
The meal was good. She had started to find even the rabbit meat more refreshing than usual once the training with Jocelyn had started in earnest. She ate faster than before and more heartily, as though each meal might be her last. She just hoped that no one noticed too much.
The four remained around the fire long after they’d all finished their food and taken back their plates to the washing pile. Lyvanne couldn’t remember a time where they had all just sat up together talking late into the night, and now that it was finally happening she couldn’t stop yawning.
“So we finally make it off the ship,” Kwah said, halfway through telling them the story about the time he rescued Turiel from slavers. “And the first thing this Tikah does is trip over his own feet and fall backwards into the ocean!”
The group burst out laughing, all of them with the exception of Turiel who sat there red faced and embarrassed.
“Needless to say I wasn’t happy, the kid was too weak to swim out on his own so I had to go in after him, all the while we had slavers shouting and throwing spears at my brothers.”
“It’s not like I fell in on purpose,” Turiel tried to defend himself. “We got away didn’t we?”
Kwah patted him on the shoulder, “That we did friend, that we did.”
“What happened to your brothers Kwah?” Lyvanne asked. This was the first time she’d heard him mention brothers, in fact any family in general, but the jovial tone with which he spoke about them signalled that it was a safe topic to broach.
“They stayed behind in our village. There are many places among the Shimmering Isles which work differently to The Rive, our people live mainly in tribes and my brothers were needed to both defend and inherit the tribe which my ancestors have governed for centuries.”
“You’re royalty?” Lyvanne exclaimed innocently.
Kwah laughed, as did Turiel. “No I wouldn’t call it that. Governing and defending a tribe in the Shimmering Isles is no different than being a farmer in this countryside. It is just a job, one that is passed down from one generation to the next.”
“So why didn’t you stay behind as well?”
“Because of my Father. He was a great man, he loved the tribe and he loved his father the way I love him. But he knew how to live his life too; he travelled all over the world, earning his living as he went. He visited the more civilised areas of the Shimmering Isles, the big cities and such. Then he sailed across the sea and wound up here in The Rive. Eventually he went back to our tribe, met my mother and had my brothers and I. But just like him, I wanted to do something with my life before I go home and settle, I wish to grow up like my father, so that I in turn can be just as good a man for my children to one day look up to. Turiel gave me that opportunity to do something with my life.”
The story was touching. Lyvanne could hear the love that Kwah had for his family in his voice, and the way in which his eyes brightened as he talked about them. Hoping for a similar story she turned her attention to Jocelyn.
“So, Kwah wants to grow up to be like his father… who do you want to take after?” She asked, nodding her head in Jocelyn’s direction for all to see.
Jocelyn twisted and contorted in countless different ways, as if mulling over the meaning of life itself before answering.
“Well, it may be the current trend, but I would have to say my father too,” The rest of the group booed playfully, egging her on to shake things up.
“I’m sorry but it’s true, he was a good man and I hate to admit it but I was his favourite!” The others laughed. “And let’s face it that was the best choice he could have made. I have no doubt that if you ask Sinjin the next time we see him he’ll say he wants to be like our mother.”
“The answer is fair,” Kwah said passing his judgement and turning the attention toward Lyvanne. “Go on Lyvanne, what about you? Got any heroes you want to emulate?”
Lyvanne mulled it over, she didn’t have any parents that she could remember or look up to. She could say any of the people sat around the fire with her but she would just be too embarrassed.
“Well… growing up on the streets of Astreya you don’t tend to have many people to look up to other than physically. But if I had to grow up to be like someone… I guess it would have to be Abella, the lady who took in the orphans. She was smart and she knew so much about the world beyond the walls. That and she actually cared what happened to the children.”
“A good answer,” Kwah said from across the fire.
“What about you Turiel?” Lyvanne asked excitedly, expecting him too to say his father also.
“Rachel Goldheart,” he replied, not really lending any thought to his answer. “She taught me everything I know and without her many of us, including myself, wouldn’t be here anymore.”
“What a lovely thought,” Jocelyn joked as she tucked her arm under Turiel’s and rested her head on his shoulder. Lyvanne hated to admit it but the answer had been somewhat cold. Then again, that’s Turiel’s nature, she thought as she watched on as Turiel tried to shake Jocelyn off his shoulder like a tired brother.
It came as quite a surprise to Lyvanne when she looked around after nearly an hour of more talking and realised that nearly everyone else in the camp had gone to sleep. There were the usual glimmers of torchlight coming from within the woods as people patrolled through the trees and Greyson was still sat outside his hut, writing on a piece of parchment what Lyvanne presumed to be his next big song. But apart from themselves and the distant hoot of an owl, the camp was silent.
“I think it’s time I head to bed,” Turiel said before gently pushing off Jocelyn who was still leaning on him.
“Me too,” Kwah echoed. “Make sure you don’t stay up too late ladies, you still have to do chores even if you’re tired,” he joked before setting off for his bed. They didn’t stay up for much longer either. With the conversation all but gone, tiredness swept in quickly.
“I’m going to tell Turiel about our little training sessions tomorrow,” Jocelyn said as the pair gathered up the mess they had made and headed over towards their hut.
“Just make sure you tell him how good I am,” Lyvanne said through a yawn. “That way he can’t be mad.”
Jocelyn laughed and put an arm around Lyvanne’s shoulders as they walked. “I hate to admit it, but you are pretty good.”
Chapter 28
Jocelyn grabbed Turiel mid-way through the morning. She didn’t have much of a reason to take him away from helping around the camp, but no one seemed to mind too much when they grabbed a pair of horses and set off through the woods.
“Where are we going?” Turiel asked as they guided their horses through the maze of trees and shrubs that encircled the camp.
“Nowhere in particular,” she replied, “but I thought it was time we had some time alone for once”
Turiel seemed pleased with the idea and said little more until they’d passed the guards patrolling the borders and broken through the final line of trees.
“So… which direction then my lady?” Turiel asked, feigning nobility as the pair mounted their horses.
Jocelyn didn’t reply, instead she kicked her heels into her horse and galloped away, leaving Turiel both literally and metaphorically in her dust. Smiling, he gave chase. The pair travelled north, winding their way through a series of meadows, fields and eventually even passing into the rolling hills that lay on the horizon if you were to look out from the woods encasing the camp. They had no real destination, and no real need to consider how long it would take them to make the return trip to camp.
“How long do you think we’ve been gone for?” Turiel asked as the horses came to a stop by the edge of small stream. The water wound its way down from one of the nearby hills before disappearing back into a rocky outcropping a few metres away.
Jocelyn looked up at the sky. “Probably a
few hours. It’s well past noon at the very least.” It was hard to judge properly, given the overcasting clouds that had formed above, but when the sun did poke through it was far past its pinnacle.
“Maybe up there is a good place to camp? We don’t have to head back tonight if you don’t want to?” Turiel replied, pointing up the stream and towards the summit of the nearest hill.
Jocelyn nodded, dismounted her horse and led it up the hillside, occasionally stopping to allow it to drink from the stream. Turiel followed suit and grabbing the reigns of his horse he guided it along path of the water.
“I’m pretty certain I won that race you know?” Turiel said as the pair made their way up the hill.
Jocelyn scoffed. “You call that racing? I could have gone twice as fast if I needed to.”
“Sure you could have, and my horse is actually hiding wings that could have flown us the distance if you’d only given me the chance and not gallivanted off right from the start.”
The two enjoyed their professional rivalry. They were both competitive people, and it often lead to them bringing out the best in one another. Jocelyn thought for a long time that it was part of the reason that she found Turiel strangely attractive and endearing.
The two sat together on the hillside for the rest of the day. They reminisced about older times, happier times when all they’d had was themselves and Sinjin. They laughed when a toad leapt up onto Turiel’s leg, sending him jumping into the air and squealing like a child. Finally, they sat and watched as the sky turned a pale shade of red, the sun setting far off along the horizon giving way to night.
“Why did we stop doing this?” Jocelyn asked as she gazed upon the glowing sky. Turiel’s hand was in her own. She wasn’t sure when it had happened, but she wasn’t going to complain.
“When we started focusing on things larger than ourselves, I guess,” Turiel replied, his eyes transfixed on the burgeoning night sky.
Jocelyn didn’t want to think of anything being more important than they were to one another, but she knew he was right. As children, they’d had more time to spend together, then Turiel started travelling the world in the hope of starting The Spring and everything had changed. She had told herself that she would do everything she could to keep things the way they had been, but maybe she too had lost sight of that along the way.
“What do we do when all this is over?” The thought of what was going to happen after their ultimate victory or defeat had never really occurred to Jocelyn before. She’d always been someone who tried to live in the here and now, but sitting there with Turiel, really alone for the first time in a long time, it felt like the right time to start thinking about it.
Turiel turned his gaze from the sky and looked into her eyes. Jocelyn guessed that he too had never really given it thought before. “Well… it depends, I guess.”
“On what?” Jocelyn replied, half expecting him to say on whether they won or lost.
“On whether you want to live in the North or South… heck, we don’t even have to live in The Rive,” Turiel said, a smile on his face the likes of which Jocelyn had never seen from him before and one that she couldn’t help but replicate.
There was no point hiding it anymore she decided, no point teasing tension where they both knew it existed. “Settling down to one or the other sounds like a mighty big commitment.”
“Maybe so. What do you suggest then?”
“Well Mr. Grand Adventurer, why don’t you show me around the world?” In her heart, Jocelyn had wanted to suggest Avagarde, but the thought of what it might become once the war had come and gone only brought up pain that she didn’t want to ruin the moment.
“I could do that,” Turiel said with a gleeful smile, “I’m sure there are at least a few places in the known world that you’d like as much as Avagarde.”
The two hadn’t broken from each other’s gaze since the conversation started and Jocelyn had decided that she didn’t want to wait anymore. She pulled Turiel in gently by the hand and for the first time in their lives, and long overdue by both their reckoning, their lips touched.
Not even a legion of the king’s soldiers could have separated them for the rest of that night. They quickly decided to spend the night on the hilltop and enjoyed each other’s company in ways that they had only ever been able to dream of before then.
When they awoke in the morning everything was different. They didn’t feel like the friends they had been the day before, instead to her they were… something more. Her stomach filled with a thousand butterflies when she saw him lying there next to her, his clothes scattered across the hilltop. At first she felt open, vulnerable, and wondered whether she should put her clothes back on before he woke up too. But as she lay there watching him sleep, the cool morning air blowing against her bare skin, she decided that this wasn’t unnatural at all and instead enjoyed the moment.
“Good morning,” he said when he awoke at long last.
“Good morning,” Jocelyn replied, a childish grin on her face.
The conversation was awkward and stifled at first. Neither of them could stop giggling like children who had just discovered some forbidden secret that they couldn’t share, but as the morning drew on, they settled back into their old habits and relaxation appeared to set back in for the both of them.
“Come on, we better get back otherwise they’ll have Kwah out looking for us,” Turiel said as he gathered up the final remnants of his clothing.
Urgency struck Jocelyn. Her brain reminding her why she had brought him out here in the first place. She was scared to say anything, not wanting to ruin what had been a perfect night.
“Turiel… I need to speak to you about Lyvanne before we go back.”
Turiel turned and faced her. He had admire how beautiful she looked standing there, her hair ruffled and the morning sun beaming onto her green skin and hourglass figure.
“What about her?” he asked, his head only half in the conversation.
“I’ve been training her to fight. We haven’t moved on to weapons yet and she has good reason to want to learn -
“I know,” Turiel interrupted, his expression and voice deadpan.
“You… you know?”
“You aren’t exactly the most subtle people in the world Jocelyn. Kwah knows too. We joke about how we know whether Lyvanne’s had a good day training or a bad one based off the mood she’s in when you get back.”
Jocelyn just stood there, her jaw agape and her mind empty. All this time, all the secrecy because we thought he wouldn’t approve, she thought.
“Why didn’t you say something?” she asked, raising her voice.
Turiel shrugged, “It wasn’t my place to say anything. I knew you would tell me when you were ready”
Jocelyn couldn’t believe it, but she couldn’t have been more relieved. She wasn’t sure that she would have been able to continue the training without him knowing if Turiel taken the news the wrong way she would have, so a very real weight had suddenly been taken off her shoulders.
“She’s learning fast,” she finally said as the pair stood there silently.
“I don’t doubt it with you as a teacher. I imagine she’ll be the best swordswoman in the camp before long.”
“We’re yet to train with weapons -
Turiel pushed past her with some haste, his gaze caught by the horizon. “What is it?” Jocelyn asked as she followed him towards the edge of the hill that overlooked the series of rolling hills and small valleys to the North.
Turiel pointed to the summit of one particular hill in the far distance. Banners gleaming silver and green in the morning sun.
“The King’s soldiers,” Turiel said, before hastily grabbing any of his remaining belongings and untying the reigns of his horse. “Take your horse and get back to camp, you need to warn them.”
“What are you going to do? You need to come with me!” she exclaimed.
Turiel shook his head, “We need some idea of how many there are if we’re going to
survive.”
“We can scout them when they’re closer,” Jocelyn argued, trying her best to tug the reigns out of his hands.
“Listen to me Jocelyn,” Turiel said, his voice stern and his eyes serious. “You know what Lyvanne has seen in her dreams.”
“She’s seen us die,” Jocelyn replied, the words coming blunt like a dulled blade. She recalled the way Turiel had recounted Lyvanne’s sleepless nights and vivid blood-filled nightmares. She understood.
“I can’t leave this to chance. We need a strategy, and if we’re severely outnumbered then we need to know that so we can give ourselves time to run.”
Jocelyn nodded. He was right, and this wasn’t the time to argue. “Don’t be long, we need you back at camp.”
Turiel nodded, grabbed her around the waist and brought her in for another kiss.
“Don’t let that be the last one.”
Chapter 29
Turiel pushed his horse as fast as it would go along the North Road. He knew that soon he would have to veer off into the countryside around him to avoid being seen, but until then he intended on making up as much distance in as short a time as possible.
His thoughts were on Jocelyn, for every stride his horse made towards the enemy, she would be making a stride towards camp. He tried to do the calculations in his head. The hilltop where they had spent the night had been a few hours ride out from the woods, and the banners he had seen were maybe another few hours, even half a day out if the terrain and weather was against you. The king’s soldiers would be slower, they were likely on foot given how long it had taken for them to arrive after Lyvanne gave away their location. That meant they had somewhere between one and two days before they would be at the camp.
It’s enough time to run, Turiel thought to himself as his horse bounded along the road. But he knew that wasn’t the course of action they were going to take, not unless the odds were heavily weighted against them.
The Annex had been filled with discussions over what to do in the days after Lyvanne’s admittance to luring the king’s men directly to them. Arguments had been made for both sides; Turiel himself had wanted to pack up there and then. Relocate the group to somewhere else, far away from where they were currently.