Gulamendis noticed he was a good six inches taller than Cristasia, the tallest of the three, and he nodded. ‘I am about average. Some are taller, but not many.’
The elves exchanged glances and then Gorandis said, ‘Well, we are three days from the Queen’s court, so we should be off.’ To Cristasia and Lorathan he said, ‘Continue the patrol, I will guide him.’
They nodded and seemed to melt back into the trees as Gorandis started to run along a trail. Gulamendis hesitated then started to run after the elf. He quickly caught up and said, ‘Do you not have mounts?’
‘We do, sometimes,’ answered the forest elf. ‘But we seldom use them unless the journey is long. Three days is hardly worth the bother.’
‘I’m not used to running,’ said Gulamendis, realizing that he was going to be hard pressed to keep up with this woodland elf. They wended their way through the woods, moving rapidly along narrow game trails. Twice Gulamendis faltered and once he fell, and Gorandis said, ‘You have no woodcraft, do you?’
‘No,’ admitted the elf. ‘I am city born and my time in the wild has so far been unpleasant.’
The wood elf laughed. ‘A city elf! I have never heard of such a thing. Even those who came from across the sea lived on farms or small villages.
‘Well, you learn something new every day, as they say.’ He turned and started running again. ‘We wondered if you simply wanted to be noticed, the way you were trudging along the river bank.’
‘You saw me?’
‘We’d been watching you for almost the entire day,’ he replied.
Gulamendis felt annoyed at being mocked by a rustic. But even more irritating was the fact that the rustic was correct; he had no wood skills, and certainly no desire to gain any.
*
Sandreena awoke holding her mace in her right hand. Gripping her helmet in her left, she started to rise and was on her feet with her headgear in place before she was completely aware of what had awakened her.
She crawled out of her tiny window and made her way as quietly as possible to bed down next to her horse. From her perspective, there was little difference between the run-in shed and the room she had been given by Enos and Ivet. Both had dirt floors, had been recently used as a privy, only had straw to sleep on and housed a plethora of bugs.
Besides, her horse was well trained and would alert her to any approaching danger, which is what had just occurred. The slight snorting sounds and pawing of the ground would probably not alert anyone else, but to Sandreena it was as alarming as a bell in a watchtower. Someone was approaching the little inn stealthily and they almost certainly planned no good to befall the one guest in residence.
As was her habit when outside, she slept in her armour. It wasn’t the most restful way to sleep, but she had grown accustomed to it over the years. Moving as lightly as she could, keeping her shield high on her left arm and her mace in her right hand, she kept her face plate raised, giving her the greatest possible visibility before encountering the enemy.
As she suspected, two figures garbed in black skulked through the open garden behind the house, heading towards her window. She didn’t hesitate, she had an instant before they saw her; flipping down her visor, she charged.
They saw her loom up out of the gloom when she was but three steps from her first target. Before he could turn to meet her, the first assassin was cut down with a savage blow to his head. Sandreena doubted he would rise to trouble her again. The other assailant had wheeled round, following her movement as she turned. He lunged at her with a long sword. She caught the sword’s point on her shield and expertly turned it so that his blade slid along its surface. The motion carried the man in black towards her and she punched him in the face as hard as she could with her right fist, still clutching her mace. The force of it drove the man backward; blood flowed down his face from his shattered nose and he was blinded for a moment. Sandreena swept her mace downward, catching his heel and causing him to fall over. He slammed his head against the ground and lay stunned.
She calmly stood up and kicked him hard in the side of the head, and he went limp. She really didn’t care if the kick killed him, but she would like to question one of these Black Caps.
Enos and his family had been so reticent that she had threatened to leave them to answer for the death of the man she had killed. That had terrified them even more than being accused of helping her.
She didn’t feel sorry for them, they had no way of knowing she couldn’t abandon them, despite them being rude and annoying people. She suspected that even under the best of circumstances they’d be hostile to strangers.