*Disclaimer: Do I look like John Flanagan to you?
Sorry it took so long to post! Hope you like :)
Chapter 3
"Do you know why they were looking for you?" Gilan asked Leon; they had ridden hard all night, and would have kept going if Leon hadn't been so obviously exhausted, so they had stopped for a few hours to rest and eat. Now they were on their way, again.
"No." Leon replied shortly; "You probably have a better idea than I do." He paused, "The only thing that I can think of, is that they somehow figured out that I survived and came back." But they talked like he was an important piece to something. Will thought, But what? And is he really as clueless as he seems?..
They all breathed a sigh of relief when Castle Araluen came into view; it had been a long five days.
"Will! Gilan! Kayle!" A tall knight called, striding toward them.
"Horace!" Will embraced the taller man. Obviously old friends, Leon thought.
"What took you so long? I was beginning to think you'd been ambushed." Horace said jokingly. Gilan and Will exchanged glances; "What happened?" He queried, no longer smiling.
"We happened upon a ravaged town and an unusually adept band of vagabonds." Gilan explained shortly; "And this is Leon; lone survivor of Wilder. He doesn't make a bad traveling companion, either." He nudged Leon forward; taking the hint, he stepped up to Horace and held out his hand. Quick thinking and not terribly shy. Horace thought, grasping the youth's hand.
"As you might have guessed, I'm Horace."
"Pleased to make your acquaintance, sir." Leon replied, acknowledging his rank with a polite nod. But a bit stiff... He grinned;
"Just Horace is fine. Save all the protocol for when it's necessary." Leon nodded and stepped back, unsure of what to do next. "Don't worry, I'm not going to bite." He jested, trying to loosen Leon up. It didn't work.
"Have you ever been to a festival, Leon?" Will asked; he shook his head. "Well then, we'll make sure you get around after we report to Crowley."
Hey, Halt; have you seen Crowley?" Gilan queried, "We can't seem to find him."
"I haven't seen him since this morning." Halt replied. "How'd your latest assignment go?" Will sighed, rubbing his jaw;
"Not so good; we ran into a ruined town, a homeless boy, and a skilled band of brigands. And apparently, all three are tied together somehow." Halt looked grim, as usual.
"What did you do with the boy?" Will looked surprised,
"We brought him with us."
"And where would he be now?"
"What do you mean, he's right-" He broke off and looked around; "How in the- Gilan, Kayle; did either of you see where he went?!" Just great; we brought him all this way just to lose him! Cursing silently, he tried to remember the last place he had seen him.
"Will, I think I know where he might be." Kayle said, "A ways back, when we stopped to talk with Sir Rodney, Leon kept looking over where the horse races were being held; we just passed near there a few minutes ago; I think he went to go watch." Gilan grinned;
"That's my apprentice; always keeps a close watch, this one." Kayle shifted uncomfortably.
"Well then, lets go find him."
* * *
"Hey Will, Halt; long time, no see. Come to see the horses?" Horace asked.
"Not exactly; Leon disappeared and we have reason to believe that he came this way. Have you seen him?" Will explained.
"Can't say that I have. Want help looking for him?" Just as Horace finished talking, they heard a wail:
"Danny? DANNY?! WHERE ARE YOU!!!"
"We'll never find him in this crowd; we don't even know if he's still here." Kayle mumbled dejectedly.
"We'll find him eventually, he couldn't have gotten far." Gilan commented, slapping his apprentice on the back. "Looks like another race is starting over there. Let's see if our wayward companion is there as well." Turning toward the track, they were suddenly confronted by a frantic woman.
"HAVE YOU SEEN MY CHILD!" She shrieked, grabbing the shocked beyond all reason Kayle by the shoulders and shaking him. "YOU'RE SORCERERS! USE YOUR POWERS TO FIND HER!!!" Gilan swiftly pried the hysterical woman from Kayle and kept her an arms length away.
"Calm. Down." She took a few quick breaths and seemed to calm down slightly. "We don't have 'powers', but we can still help you find her. Now, where did you last see her?"
"WellIhadjustfinishedhagglingwiththatpatheticexcuseforamerchantoveraboltoflinen..." As the woman continued to spew forth unintelligible sounds, Kayle's attention wandered to his surroundings; several people had stopped to glance at the frantic woman, but most were waiting for the the next race to start, and as he looked on, the rope dropped and the race began. A movement caught his eye; a young girl was sitting in the middle of the track, playing in the dirt, totally oblivious to the horses bearing down on her. When they were less than thirty feet away, she looked up, alarmed; she stared in shock for a few moments, then screamed.
"THAT'S MY DANNY!!!" The woman wailed, nearing hysterics. She grabbed Gilan; "SAVE HER!!!!" There's no one close enough to do anything. Gilan thought grimly, grinding his teeth; the entire crowd stood motionless, powerless to do anything.
There has to be someone that can do something! Kayle thought, frantically looking for someone that was close enough; a familiar figure caught his eye. Maybe-
"LEON!" He shouted at the top of his lungs.
Leon had made it to his chosen spot, undetected; Stupid to rope off such a big area, if you're that far back, you can't see anything! He thought, Looks like I made it just in time.
"LEON!" Looking up, he saw Kayle, horror written all over his face. Silent, Kayle turned to look at something, then back at him. Sensing Kayle's sense of urgency, he followed Kayle's line of sight. He saw the girl, frozen with fear, with the horses closing in, going to fast to stop. He closed his eyes as the sharp agony of an old memory knifed through him; one he had buried long ago. As it overwhelmed him, he subconsciously reacted.
* * *
"What happened?!" Will asked when he reached the mass of people gathered around who knows what at the race track.
"Some fool boy tried to save a child who was playing in the middle of the track." Oh, crud...
"Well, did he?" Will demanded.
"I saw him disappear under the horses' hooves, so I wouldn't be betting on his survival, or the kid's." Swearing under his breath, he began to shove his way through the crowd; once people noticed his grey-green cloak, they began to move out of the way. Horace and Halt caught up to him just as he reached the edge of the track. The sight that greeted him almost made him laugh out loud: a very rigid Leon was being smothered by a sobbing woman, and all but strangled by the small girl.
"Oh, thank you, boy; you saved my Danelle!" The buxom woman managed to say through her tears. If she's really grateful, she'll quit suffocating him. Will mused. Leon began trying to pry the girls arms from around his neck, to no avail until the mother noticed what he was trying to do. "Danny! Come to Mama now, dear." Looking up, 'Danny' somehow managed to recognize her mother through the tears in her eyes and hair in her face.
"MAMA!!!" Wailing, she fairly lept into her mothers arms.
With the crowd dispersing and the woman gone, Halt got his first clear view of the boy; taking in the longish, almost brown, dark auburn hair, the tall, lanky build... but it was his eyes that got Halt's attention. Clear grey/green, with the slightest touch of blue, the color of the sea after a storm: Halt had seen eyes like that once before, but he shoved the memory away and forced himself to study the boy. Nervous, but with good reason, him sneaking off like that... Halt reasoned. Watching those around him warily, the boy got to his feet and began dusting himself off, waiting for inevitable questions; he didn't have long to wait.
"Why did you go off on your own, Leon?" Will asked softly; he stopped and looked at Will.
"We were near the races, you stopped to greet a friend, I tried to get a better look at the horses; when I turned around, you were gone. Instead of getting lost trying to find you, I decided to stay around here where you could find me if you came looking." He went back to brushing himself off.
"Why didn't you stay in one spot?"
"I didn't think you would look there; you would think that I had just walked off, so you would look where you thought I had gone, not where I'd been." He replied simply, not even bothering to look up.
"What I want to know, is why you threw yourself in front of the horses." Horace put in; Leon looked at him blankly.
"You don't know a whole lot about horses, do you?" Without waiting for an answer, he continued: "Most horses will avoid stepping on or trampling something that's alive, at least directly; their hooves might clip you, they might not be able to avoid stepping on you completely, but they will avoid you if at all possible, even to the extent of jumping over you."
"'Most horses'; how did you know that those particular horses wouldn't-"
"So, you're telling me you Araluens ride man-killers? And to answer your next question, while they wouldn't have killed that girl, she could have gotten hurt pretty badly; she was covered in dust, and so would have been harder for the horses to see: I shielded her. And also, by jumping in front of them, it would be impossible for the horses not to notice me, and thus, they avoided her by avoiding me." Horace opened his mouth to answer, but Leon cut him off again; "'Most horses' are sane: the ones in the minority are the ones that are not, and could care less about trampling people. However, the more horses, the more likely you are to get trampled; not all the horses will be able to avoid stepping on you. And if there's, say, a thousand stampeding toward you..." He shrugged, letting them draw their own conclusions.
"Will, Gilan; I heard you were back." Crowley said, walking up to them. "I'm ready for that report."
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