The next day, I got up from a very rough sleep when someone knocked on my door. "Hello little children!" I yelled with a fake French accent. "Nice to meet you! Now go...away!" (A/N: Watch Veggie Tales 'Josh and the Big Wall.' That's what one of the French Jerico peas says.)
"Last time I checked," I heard Kel mutter as the door opened, "I wasn't a 'little children.'"
"Kel, DON'T get on my nerves right now!" I told her, sitting up.
She put up her hands in a surrender. "All right. Just wanted to tell you that today we're going after some bandits that attacked the village two days ago, if you want to come."
"YES!" I yelled, throwing the covers off. "Ka-ching! Finally! Some excitement!"
"It's not going to be fun," Kel said tartly, a blank look in her eyes.
"Kel?" I said, looking at her. "Wha--oh. You think that I think that hunting bandits'll be fun? You're very wrong, young one. I'm talking about watching the boys nearly get themselves killed trying to be a hero and get Charrise's attention."
Kel glared at me, trying not to laugh. Then she giggled, then chuckled, then laughed like a hyena. Pretty soon we were both breathless from laughing, and had collasped on the bed, or in my case, the floor.
"Would you hens mind getting down here so we can eat and leave? It'll be jolly, and I want to go!" Owen said, poking his head in the door.
"Oh, shaddup, Sir Crybaby. We'll leave soon enough." I snapped. "Now leave so I can get dressed. Shoo! Shoo!"
At breakfast, most of the knights looked like a mess. None of them were talking and laughing like they had last night. The male squires were talking about how they'd get Charrise's acknowledgement with their heroic deeds. Kel and I looked at each other and rolled our eyes.
About and an hour later, we left. Numair and Daine had been teaching me how to use a dagger and a bow, so I had one of Daine's spare bows and a knife that Kel lent me, plus if I got into a tough situation, I could always use my hand to hand.
The day was going to be one of the worst of my life, even if I didn't know it then. First of all, the bandits were smart. They hid their trail pretty well, and by the time we found one, it was one in the afternoon. We had left at nine.
Raoul grumbled, "I hate it when they get smart." Numair, Kel, and I were riding with him, since Kel was his squire, Numair was a mage, and I was Numair's apprentice.
Hey, it could be worse," I said, trying to be the optimistic, sugar-high Laurie everyone expected me to be, "It could be raining."
think you can all guess what happened next.
Raoul sighed like he was trying not to get mad, wiped the rain from his eyes, turned to me and said, "I hate you."
The rain let up after we were thoroughly soked, an hour later. Then in the mud we found the bandit's tracks. We followed them for another hour, and then in a small clearing the tracks vanished.
"Odd," Raoul said. "They just seemed to disapper."
Faleron, who had come up with Sir Adeon, looked up at the trees. Hannalof was a thickly forested area, and we had been tracking through the woods since we left the castle. Faleron frowned. I looked away. Ever since Sir Adeon had told me what he thought about me and Faleron yesterday, I had suddenly gotten conscious of the way my heart beat faster when he looked at me, and how I wished that he was smiling at me, not whoever else, who was normally Charrise.
"What's wrong?" I asked quietly, riding up beside him. The rest of the knights, Numair, Daine, and anyone else of importance were up front, arguing about what had happened. The knights had stopped riding, so we had stopped too.
He looked at me. "Nothing. It's just...it's strange, that they're just...gone." He looked up again. His eyes suddenly widened, and he quickly trotted his horse up to where the POIs (peoples of importance) were still arguing.
I tried not to think about it, but I felt a little hurt that he hadn't even said, "Excuse me" or whatever. *He's jsut a boy,* I snapped at myself. *Don't start mooning over him. And besides, it must have been important.*
Faleron walked his horse back, looking a little dejected. He moved his horse back next to Fairy, and sighed. "Sorry I left so fast, Laurie, I--" He looked at the trees again. "GET DOWN!" he yelled suddenly, shoving me down on the saddle. I winced at how hard he pushed, and was jsut about to scold him when an arrow flew over my head.
Everything happened very quickly after that. The POIs started yelling to shoot into the trees. A few raggedy looking men dropped down to the ground, one only a few feet from Faleron and me. Quickly I got off Fairy and strung my bow. I loaded an arrow and shot at him. It hit his shoulder. He ran into the woods. I ran after him.
In a spot without trees that was too small to be called a clearing he stopped. He turned and looked at me. "You want t' fight, girl?" he snarled. "Then fight!" He threw a knife at me. I leaned over sideways, and the knife hit the tree behind me directly where my head would have been. I pulled out my dagger. This was no sparr with a training master. This was a fight to the death.
He lunged, I twisted and scratched his arm. He winced and dug his none-too-clean nails into my shoulder. I twisted myself around again and he pulled my knife from my hand. After that I did what my instinct told me to.
I spun out of his grasp and put my hand around his throat. Pulling a move from a form I once did, I broke his knee cap with my palm, then I kicked his windpipe as hard as I could. He gasped and fell down. In an instant he was back up, and he grabbed my arm and twisted it. "Wench!" he said, pulling me to face him. His eyes were full of rage. "You--"
He made a huge mistake then. He forgot about my free arm. I socked him in the nose, kicked him where it really hurt, and did the same move I had done earlier, grabbing his throat and kicking his windpipe. Only this time, it didn't hurt him.
It killed him.
He fell to the ground again, his open, glassy eyes staring at me. I let go of his throat and let him fall.
"Oh dear God," I whispered, backing against a tree. "Oh dear God."
Just then Numair, Raoul, Adeon, Daine, Faleron, and Kel raced into the space. "Laurie!" Numair said worridly, walking towards me. His robes were bloodstained, and his hair was matted with sweat. I realized I couldn't look much better than him. "Are you all right?"
" I saw you run off after that man and I didn't know where you went," Faleron said. "Don't you ev--Mithros." He turned away from me and looked at the bandit's body.
Slowly, everyone else looked at the dead man. "You did that?" Raoul asked.
I swallowed the womit int my throat, closed my eyes, and nodded.
"What happened?" Numair whispered.
"I killed him," I said, very close to hysteria. "I killed him!"
"He was a bandit. He deserved it," someone muttered.
"No, you don't understand!" I was caught between crying and screaming and trying not to do both. "When I was ten I promised I would never make anyone feel what I felt when my dad died. I just did the same thing to his family that the drunk driver did to me and Mom!"
"Laurie..." Daine said. "He was a bandit."
"He could've been someone's father, someone's husband, someone's brother, someone's son," I muttered.
Raoul looked at me sympatheticly. "It gets easier, if it helps," he said.
I looked at him, horrified. "That's what I'm afraid of," I whispered, and let myself cry.
Slowly, everyone left, leaving me with the man's body. I walked over to it. *Him,* I thought. *Not it.*
I pulled my arrow out of his shoulder. It was still wet with his blood. Without thinking, I took the tip and sliced a cut on the palm of my right hand, all the way from my pinkie narly to my wrist. I could feel the thing burn where his blood combined with mine. I hissed in pain, and then I said, loudly, "I swear in the name of Mithros, the Goddess, and all other gods powerful and small, that if I can ever avoid killing, or save a life, I'll do it, even if it takes my life. I swear with the blood of the man I killed with mine. So mote it be!"
Numair had taught me about blood oaths. I knew what I was doing. If I broke the oath, then I could be cast into a world of eternal torture in the Black God's realm, to quote Numair.
I wrapped a piece of my shirt around it to stop the bleeding, clucked to Fairy, and went back to the castle.
Author's Note: All right, Laurie's been gone for, what, 65,000,000 years? Well, I'm back now. And good news, IT'S SUMMER! PREPARE TO CELEBRATE!!!!!! Okay, the reason I was gone was because I had a six-week period of writer's block. Pleasant, huh? I haven't really been able to write since the last chapter of Cass. Anyvays, I'll be writing a lot now, cuz now we get into the real stuff. Like, 2 more chapters and the main conflict starts. Sooo...bye now!
Note on the Story: I read Squire nearly 2 weeks ago, and I've been debating what to do with the story since then. I could either: go with the Squire plot and have to revise all the story, or go with my original idea. I picked a little of both. A few Squire characters (Dom, for example off the top of my head) will appear, as will a few events (Joren's trial). But my idea will stay the same. So in this version, JOREN IS NOT DEAD. Got that? JOREN IS NOT DEAD. But I'm debating whether or not to change it to K/C or to keep K/N as planned. Vote on it!