AUTHOR'S NOTE - Need reviews

AUTHOR'S NOTE - Need reviews! Please. Constructive critism would help, too.

AUTHOR'S NOTE - I've created an official DQ fansite - deltora-dot-110mb-dot-com. Please check it out - what have you got to lose?

Hamish left. Bryan was happy to see that Jervyl was loyal enough to stay behind, though he whined for a while. He soon forgot that anyone was missing, however - he doesn't have much of an attention span.

Jay avoided Bryan for as long as he could afterwards, knowing the barrage of questions he would soon be faced with.

He could only last so long, however. Eventually he had a stalker - he was sneaking off to relieve himself when suddenly Bryan stepped out from behind a tree.

Jay yelped, and shouted a string of curses that could injure anyone's ears. Jervyl came darting over, excited, wondering what was going on, and hoping to join in on the fun.

"Bloody hell - what the - "

"What's going on." It wasn't a question. It wasn't a command. It wasn't anything that could be explained with words. It was...it was...

"I could ask the same thing." He was still surprised. Bryan could hear it in his voice.

"I'm not freaking kidding - who was Hamish? What business does he have in Tora? Why are people trying to kill us, and why does the TYSOL sword need to be kept hidden?" Bryan practically exploded. Jervyl barked.

A sigh. "I don't think - "

Bryan's face was going purple. "Don't say I'm too young. If it has something to do with me, which it obviously does, I want to know all about it."

Jay signed again, and said reluctantly, "This is going to take a while."

Bryan shrugged, and swept his arms around himself in a casual manner. "I have time." He sat down on a mossy stump.

"I know. But we don't. C'mon, I'll explain it while we're traveling." And he walked back to the camp and started packing up. Again.

...

"About two hundred years ago, the Queen of that time - Queen Freida - decided that a Royal Guard wasn't enough to protect the palace, and, by extension, the royal family. She took one of the head guards aside and told him her plan."

"Her plan?"

"She created a band of warriors - hand-picked to fight beside the Guards - and gave the head of them the legendary sword that her great great great great grandfather King Lief had wielded."

"Oh. So..."

"Yep. The TYSOL sword was King Lief's."

"Why does it have the symbol - and TYSOL - on it, then?"

"This is where the second part of my explanation comes in. You remember Jaega?"

"Who?"

Jay sighed. "Don't you remember anything from your lessons?"

Bryan shrugged sheepishly. "Not really. There was this one girl, two seats ahead of me, then - "

"I don't want to hear about your shattered love life. Jaega is a country to the south of Deltora. It's planning an invasion."

Jay's tone - rough with something Bryan had never heard before - and Jay's words threw Bryan off course.

"Deltora's going to war?" he asked, shocked.

"Calm down, nothing's certain yet. All we know is that Jaega is planning invasion, and that, if it invades, Deltora will have to raise to the challenge."

"OK. Where does Hamish fit in all this?"

"I don't suppose you remember the story of Doom and the Resistance?"

"I remember that one, actually."
"Perfect. Hamish has started another Resistance."

"What's he resisting?"

"Not 'resisting' so much as 'helping'. He's playing the unpaid information center, and he loves it."

"So I suppose this is also where you come in."

"Yep. I do errands...protect important players..."

"'Important players'? How am I an 'important player'?"

Jay stopped walking. He stared at Bryan earnestly as he said his next sentence: "Bryan, the wielder of the sword is the Warrior Leader. You wield the sword - you are destined to become the leader of the next generation of Warriors!"

Bryan snorted. "As you know full well, I'm just a thief from a lower-class Del family."

Jay still hadn't started walking again, and he was just as earnest as ever. "King Lief was just the blacksmith's son - or so he thought."

Bryan snorted again. "I think you're putting too much stock in the past. It happened. It's over. History doesn't repeat itself that closely."

Jay didn't say anything out loud, but he mumbled something that sounded like 'You'd be surprised' as he started walking again.

...

The felis was hungry.

She'd been on the hunt for days, but she hadn't found anything. Or anyone.

Her master was angry. She could feel his rage beneath her fur.

Once out of that cramped housepet form, she had changed, immediately after waking up, into her natural state - a giant golden cougar-like being, with immense claws and teeth to match.

She was running - just for the sake of running, after days in her miniscule kitty form.

A lump on her head and a throb in her brain reminded her why she was hunting...reminded her who she was hunting. First she would deal with the black-haired man, and then...then she would complete her job with the boy.

She'd never doubted her orders before - especially such easy-to-follow orders - but these orders...she cringed to think about what she had been told to do.

Bring the boy to me, alive.

How hard could that be?

She gritted her furry jaw, and started stalking a deer. She had to eat, after all.

...

"Jervyl, stop barking! There's nothing out there, okay? Nothing."

The dog was tense, and would rise every few minutes to bark at something. At first, Jay or Bryan would go and check what was there, but now they were annoyed at the paranoid dog for disturbing the peace one too many times.

Jervyl barked at the darkness one last time, and lay down with a huff.

It was almost dark, and the camp had been set for perhaps a half hour. Supper had been eaten, and no one really felt like telling a dog to shut up.

"See. Nothing out there."

He didn't realize it at the time, but there was something out there...and she was getting closer...