Alright! We know who Alinia is and we're getting to the action! Criticisms and suggestions appreciated. Enjoy as you Read & Review!
Alinia's Battle-Chapter Six-Gone
When Will woke up, things didn't look much better. Following her indefinitely seemed to be the only way to protect the kingdom's knights from Alinia's vengeance. Perhaps I should go talk to her, he thought, try to tell her that this path is destructive, that she's not doing her family any favors. No, she would never listen, he realized. She's hot-headed and impulsive, and convinced she's doing the right thing.
He decided to take a walk. The woods always seemed to calm him, and make his brain lighter, more flexible. As he stepped into the woods, Tug gave an anxious whinny. Will waved him off, assuring the horse he would be back soon. Unbidden, his feet turned toward Alinia's camp. He stepped into the clearing. Alinia was gone.
He raced forward. In the center of the clearing was a ring of stones surrounding a mound of gray ash. Will touched the ashes tentatively. They were still slightly warm, but they were damp with dew. She had been there last night, but left without cooking breakfast. He crossed to where her tent had been. There were six holes where the tent had been pegged down. He reached down. The earth was damp. She had pulled camp before the dew. That meant she had at least a seven hour head start.
Will dashed recklessly back through the forest to where he had left Tug. Who knew what she was planning, who might be hurt? It was Will's job to protect the kingdom and it's citizens, he intended to do both. The pony gave a snort of alarm as he ran up, then relaxed when he recognized Will. Will pulled his tent pegs and rolled the tent and sleeping bag up. Then he threw the cooking utensils and food supplies into a sack, tossing them beside the tent. He paused, looked at the coffee pot and sighed. Not going to happen, he decided.
He placed Tug's saddle and pad on the pony's sturdy back, and checked his hooves for rocks before bridling him and lashing his packs behind the saddle. Then they rode down the path to the camp, where they picked up her trail. At first it was fairly easy to follow. There was little even Alinia's skills could do to camouflage the passing of a 1500 pound horse. When they reached the stream though, tracking got a little hairier. She had obviously assumed he would follow her, Will thought. And she had ridden in the stream, that much was clear. But down or up? The direction he went would make all the difference in whether he would catch up to Alinia, or become hopelessly off course. He frowned, and tried to picture the maps of Caraway he had seen. This was a fairly large stream, almost a river, and Halt had only showed him the best charts when they did Araluen geography. It should have been marked. But for the life of him, Will couldn't remember.
He was about to just make a wild guess and plunge in when something tickled the back of his mind. Alinia wanted to humiliate all the knights she could in tournament combat. And in less than a week, the biggest tournament in the kingdom would take place at Castle Araluen. If she had any particular destination in mind, that was it.
Will thought about it logically. The Semath River made up the border between the Caraway and Araluen fiefs. The stream Alinia was following most likely, from what of it he had seen, ran down from the river that separated Norgate and Caraway, and then into the Semath River. She would follow the stream to where it joined the River, then either be ferried or, knowing her, find a calm stretch and swim her horse over.
Smiling, Will struck out downstream.
All day he followed the current, occasionally leaving the stream to bypass rapids. Along the way, his guess was proven correct, as every time he left the stream to go around a waterfall, there were deep hoof prints in the ground. He was catching up, too. The first time he saw the hoof prints, they were nearly dry. Now, there was water pooled in each one, where it had leached from the saturated ground. At the last bypass, he had even seen drips on the rocks, where a wet horse had shaken itself, that had not yet dried.
At about five o'clock, he reached the Semath, and the hoof prints of Alinia's battle horse left the stream. They were very fresh now, less than two hours old. Then one hour. Then even less.
Will dismounted and told Tug to stay. Then he moved forward on foot. In less than forty-five minutes, Will smelled the faint scent of woodsmoke. Barely detectable but there, like someone burning very dry wood in an attempt to keep smoke down. He smiled, and walked back to Tug. Alinia was not unguarded, from anyone else, or herself.
Tug nickered faintly as Will arrived.
"I'm glad to see you too, boy," he said softly.
Will was subdued that night, not engaging in the usual playful banter he and Tug enjoyed. Instead, he was thoughtful, almost moody. He sat, nursing his coffee and staring into the flames for a long time. Finally, he stood up, throwing the dregs from his coffee cup into the coals. He crawled into his tent and lay down.
"What can we do for her," he whispered to the stars.
They didn't answer.