Chapter Two: Footsteps of Fate
What is the price of walking free?
Of wearing red and blue with green?
Who can say how long we wait,
To take our many footsteps of fate.
When we rode into town that morning, I had high hopes that we would be able to find a caravan to travel with (caravans meaning caravan guards, of course), but I had not counted on Lyn's plains pride and snappish attitude. Every time I found a merchant that I thought perfectly suitable, Lyn skulked about through his wagons and found something wrong. The first man, a long, skinny creature with moustaches as thin as his body, had apparently been transporting a batch of prime dragon weed all the way from Etruria. Dragon weed being the addictive hallucinogen that it is, Lyn went into a fury, and I had to drag her away from the man's carts before she did something drastic or he called the local town guard.
The second fared no better. That worthy was a fat man, and short, with a funny turban wrapped around his head that I was not so sure actually meant he came from the Nabuta desert peoples, since he wore so much makeup that I would never have known if his skin was white, black, or purple. At any rate, I should explain that I like fat merchants. Even if they have strange dealings, it is usually in pleasure slaves or illegal food products, both relatively innocuous and difficult to pin on the caravan as a whole if caught. Lyn, of course, barged in on a man taking pleasure from a girl-child, and he hardly escaped with his necessaries intact.
By that time, we were getting odd looks from the townsfolk, and hard looks from the guard, so I decided to drop off the horses at a local stable so it would be easier for us to disappear in crowds. In a huge merchant's city like Bulgar, horses are not exactly uncommon, but they do make people look up at you when you're riding them, and people don't like looking that far up to see faces. It reminds them too much of nobility, and the nobility stands out, something I most certainly did not want as I searched for a quiet means to reach my destination.
As it happened, I need not have tried to get a caravan at all. While I negotiated with my latest prospect – a woman that smelled of moderately priced perfume and looked older than she would have wished – Lyn got herself into trouble yet again. During my negotiations with the merchant, she wandered off to look at some absurdly colored garments that no sane person would ever purchase, and ran smack into a pair of Lycian knights.
"Oh my love, what a vision of loveliness you are! The noonday sun sings with every step you take!"
When I heard that voice, my Lyn senses (as I like to call them, any person with a drop of sanity in him gets it after a while) went aflame, and I whirled around to behold one of the aforementioned knights making eyes and goose-girl noises at my charge.
Lyn stepped back a pace from the man, and he urged his horse to cross the gap, reaching a hand out to and cooing obnoxiously.
"Oh my beauteous one, would you not favor me with your name, or better yet, your company?"
My "Lyn senses" exploded.
"Who are you that speaks so freely with a stranger?" she asked him, and I could easily imagine how hard her teeth would be clenched as she spoke.
"Why, from Lycia fair lady! I am a knight of Caelin, home to men of passion and high deeds!"
"Shouldn't that be 'home to callow men with loose tongues?'" she retorted, and the man jerked as if she had smacked him. He recovered with remarkable alacrity however, plastering a foolish smile on his admittedly handsome face.
"Oooh, you are fair even when cruel, milady!" he said, and she snorted her disgust. She stalked back to me and grasped my arm before saying to the man ahorse, "I have no more to say. Let's go, Josef." And proceeded to drag me back the way we had come.
"But my caravan!"
A few desolate hours later, we were walking back to the stable we had left Lyn's Windancer and my Peaches at, when we ran into a pair of horses in the road again. I was depressed from the fact that I had been able to find no merchant willing to hire us, Lyn's reputation as a prude had spread like wildfire, and every merchant had at least one questionable item among his legitimate goods. What this meant of course was that I did not realize that these horses looked very familiar…
"If you would be so kind as to move your horses, you're blocking the road." Lyn said gruffly.
"Yes, of course." Said one of the men. I looked up at him. He was not handsome, per say, but he was very clean and well-kempt. His armor had not a spot of rust to be seen, nor a stain upon his horse's barding or saddle. A lance was in the saddle's holder, and he wore a stout sword at his waist. The only aspect of him that made him in any way exceptional was his hair, which was a bright red-orange that was nearly blinding in the harsh sunlight.
"Thank you. You at least seem honorable enough." Replied the Sacaen, and something niggled at the back of my mind about that tone she was taking.
"Hm? Pardon me, but I cannot help but feel that we have met before…" said the red-haired man.
"Excuse me?" Lyn said heatedly.
Uh-oh. I swiveled my eyes around just in time to see the same knight from earlier in the day seated on the other horse open his mouth to speak.
"Hey! No fair!" The man fairly bounced in his saddle, resembling very much a young boy I had seen once, who had been playing at being a knight, and had been rejected by the local bar's serving girl to be his beautiful princess. "Kent, I saw her first!"
And I'd thought my Lyn sense had blown up before. Her expression darkened, and her fingers around my wrist were like claws. "It seems that there are no decent men among Lycia's knights." She growled bitingly. The knights' horses parted as she swept past them, whinnying softly in some fear, and the girl walked straight out of the city.
"May your fathers devour your eyes when Mother Earth embraces you, Lyndis of the Lorca!" I cursed when we were out of earshot of the gate guards. I finally summoned the presence of mind to break free of her handhold, and she stopped, blinking.
"What?" she asked, her looking like a startled deer, apparently surprised I knew that particular Sacaen curse.
"Did you even stop to think what we left behind inside the city?" I screeched at her. "Horses for one, our bloody supplies for another. And all because you can't bear a tiny bit of flirting!"
Her eyes blazed. "A little flirting? Josef, that was not flirting. That was an invitation to join him in the back room of some sky-forsaken inn in the The man was pawing at me, and his friend was no better! Fighting over a woman like they were boys not yet mastered of their own manhoods! On the plains, we do not let men ride horses until they are men!"
That little emphasis seemed immensely important, but I didn't much care at that particular moment.
"We're going back." I said, but then Lyn went pale suddenly and motioned for me to be quiet.
"Run," she said softly. As we ran, she forwent the subtlety, "We're being pursued!"
"We're WHAT?!!! Is it those knights from town?"
She shook her head, and that damned ponytail whipped me in the face. "No, these men are out for blood!"
"Slow…down…"
I ran out of breath and tripped over an errant root, falling promptly on my face. I heard a low, grating voice in a terribly uncultured accent try to speak Common as I attempted to rid my mouth of dirt clods the size of small cows.
"Hehehe, ain't you the pretty one?" the voice grated. It sounded like the equivalent of your dear old aunt Esmeralda crossed with a particularly hoarse raven. "You'll be Lyndis then, am I right?"
Lyn froze. "How do you know my name?"
I got to my feet, spit out a bit more sand and rocks, then looked at our pursuer. Another bandit, uglier even than the last one, and probably bigger. He had one of those chins that stuck out farther than an Etrurian's nose into foreign territory. He shook his big, ugly head and sighed ruefully.
"Such a frigging waste. Oh well. Too bad I won't get to have any fun with ya, girlie. The things I do for gold. What a bloody waste. C'mon boys, get out here!"
And then the bandits started to come out of the woodwork. The leader and a few of his lackeys hoofed it through the trees and across the river, leaving one to fight Lyn. That one was the ugliest bandit yet, missing an eye and some very basic hygiene. He spoke Common even worse than his boss.
"Come 'ere darlin', Jaral'll give ya a good time. Those pretty little lips o' yers were jes' made for…"
He didn't get a chance to finish that sentence, since six feet of good Lycian iron sprouted in his chest at that moment. One of the knights from town, the one with the red hair, wrenched his lance from the man's body ruthlessly and let it fall to the ground at my feet. The other knight, the handsome one with light brown hair and startlingly green armor, lifted his own lance into the air and shook it at the bandits who had made it across the river.
"Cowards! Such numbers against a lone girl! Taste the wrath of the Knights of Caelin!"
He would have charged, rather stupidly I must say, into the thick of the bandits, but his fellow reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. "Sain, calm yourself. You will do no good by going to get yourself butchered at the hands of these highwaymen."
Scowling, Sain lowered his lance and turned to us, though it was Kent who spoke.
"It looks as though they wish to fight you." He said wryly.
"That's true enough." I answered, taking a curious look at a bandit who was trying to hide behind a tree and failing miserably.
"You're the knights from the town!" Lyn's scowl made Sain's look like sunshine and spring flowers.
"There's no time for that now." Kent brushed aside the idea with a gesture. "You are in trouble. If it is a fight they look for, let them look to me!"
"Leave this to me!" Sain said, and the man looked quite ready to take on all of the bandits at once, despite his (obviously superior in rank) fellow knight's orders.
"No!" Lyn cried, and I caught my breath. This is my fight!"
Sain looked bewildered. "But we can't just sit her and do nothing…"
The other knight's auburn brows furrowed for a few moments, then he turned on his horse to face me. "I have a solution. You there." And he pointed at me. "Command us. Does that suit?"
"I don't have a problem with it."
"Very well. I am Kent, and this is my fellow knight, Sain. We will follow your orders in the fray. Does that suit, milady?"
Lyn danced around on the ground nervously, her sword in her hand. "Yes! Josef and I will lead! Let's go!"
And with that, she dashed off into the woods to pursue the not-so-sneaky sneaker in the trees. Kent followed her, and Sain started to, but I grasped the reins in hand. "Your horse can carry double and still charge, I hope." I told him.
"Of course! Thunder is a wondrous beast, fit to leap over the highest hedge and race the wind!"
I rolled my eyes. This guy would name his horse Thunder. "We're going to head back toward town slightly, then curve around those hills to cross the river and meet up with the others." He lent me a gloved hand up to the saddle, and I settled in behind him, the we were off.
Now, riding double is possible, but not exactly comfortable. The saddle we were both sitting on was made to accommodate only one person, not two. This made for a very, very uncomfortable ride. Still, my machinations were rewarded when we were nearly at the hills. One of the bandits was running at us; he had obviously been trying to use the woods to come up on us from behind. I grinned with satisfaction as we rode up to him, and Sain braced his lance for a charge. Riding double was difficult for horse and rider, however, and the charge was thrown off so that he only clipped the man on the shoulder, catching an axe blow in the torso on his way past. I braced him and kept him in his seat, but the blade had smashed through his armor to slash him across his belly.
"It's not deep." He said through clenched teeth, and in the next charge, he accounted for my extra weight and impaled the man properly. As he cleaned off his lance, I poured a bit of vulnerary into a cloth and reached around from behind him to slip it into the crack made by the bandit's axe. He twitched, but submitted, and weathered the treatment surprisingly well, given his excitable personality. When he was feeling more like human and less like hacked meat, we road up and over the hills, crossed the river, and found our companions already fighting the bandit leader. It was an amazing sight to see, riding up from the side. Though Lyn was afoot and Kent on his horse, the two flowed smoothly in and out of sparring with the bandit's big axe with their swords, never giving the man a chance to strike. He was down before Sain and I got there, with Kent meting out the final blow. When we got there, Sain and I dismounted, with Kent following suit. Lyn grinned widely at me as I came to her.
"That was excellent!" she gushed.
"You did well, Lyn." I told her, and it was true. Kent and Lyn both had made it through their bandits without taking wound to horse or human, and I was pleased. "Now, about the knights…"
"Yes, what of the knights?" she asked, as though they were not there. She turned to them and frowned. "You were going to tell me your story, were you not?"
Kent took off his gloves and tossed them into one of the saddlebags that hung from his winded horse's back. "Yes. We are messengers from the Lady Madelyn, of the Lycian state Caelin."
"Lady Madelyn is the daughter of Lord Caelin." Sain volunteered. Kent frowned at him, but continued.
"The Lady departed from the castle nineteen years ago to elope with her husband, a man from the plains. Heartbroken that his daughter would leave him, our lord eventually stated that he simply had no daughter." The knight's eyes were sad with what seemed to be genuine concern for his lord, and I was touched despite my skepticism. "But just this year, the good Lady sent word to us, saying that she lived happily with her husband and daughter on the plains."
Sain took up the reins of the conversation then, "The Lord was overjoyed to learn that he had a granddaughter! He sent us off posthaste to look for her, and we hoped that she would be so beautiful as to melt his poor heart and make him love again."
"Sain hoped that." Kent emphasized, with a scathing look for his companion. "We did not realize that the Lady Madelyn died a few days after writing that letter. That unfortunate news came to us when we reached Bulgar. Still, we also learned that her daughter yet lives, alone in the plains." Kent took a deep breath and met Lyn's eyes unblinkingly. "I knew that you were the lady Lyndis when I first saw you."
Lyn shuddered. "And why would you think that?"
Kent waved a hand as if to say that it was obvious. "Your resemblance to your departed mother is unmistakable, you even have something of her manner about you."
"You knew my mother?" I heard breath catch in Lyn's throat, and the sadness I remembered seeing in her leaped into my mind with a vengeance.
"I do not claim to have met her personally." Kent said ruefully. "I was only a boy when she left the castle. Still, there are portraits of her hanging in the gallery at the castle."
I reached out to Lyn and placed a comforting hand on her shoulder. She spoke, and pain was in her voice once again. "To my people, I was always Lyn, but sometimes…when I was alone with Mother and Father, they would call me Lyndis. This is all so strange. I was alone, and now I find that I have a grandfather." Her normally vibrant voice sounded almost dead, despite the joyous implications of the fact. I blinked.
"Wait. That bandit, didn't he call her Lyndis as well?" I asked, and Kent looked baffled. Sain was not.
"Well, he was a henchman of Lord Lundgren then, wasn't he?"
"Lundgren?" I tried to think back. "The heir of Caelin, right? The ruling lord's younger brother."
Sain nodded. "Not only that, but a blackguard of fiendish proportions."
"When the Lady Madelyn disappeared, she was presumed dead." Kent said, and the rest of us nodded.
"That meant that Lundgren was direct line for the throne, since the Marquess had no other children of his own, correct?" I asked, and the two cavaliers nodded again.
"To be frank, milady," said Sain, with an uncharacteristically sober expression, "you are an obstacle in his path the throne. Being who he is, he will do anything to remove you."
I exchange a look with Lyn, both of us knew no plainsman would ever take on a title, even if she was the granddaughter of a Marquess. Aloud, she said only, "I have no intention of claiming any title."
But Sain shook his head. "That doesn't matter to a person like your uncle."
"I agree." I piped up. "Lundgren will hunt you down no matter where you hide, Lyn. The only solution is to resolve the issue with him somehow."
"Then come with us!" Sain said, energy back in only moments. "We will protect our liege lady with our lives!"
Kent nodded, quite serious, and Lyn looked at me. After I shrugged, she said, "I suppose I have no choice. Give me a moment to talk with Josef alone, please."
As Kent wrenched Sain away (I saw the man trying to take peeks at Lyn as they rode out of hearing distance), Lyn led me over to the water, where it would disguise our voices. "I don't want this." She told me.
"You didn't want a lot of things." I retorted. "Being the daughter of a Marquess of the Lycian League isn't so bad."
"I don't like it, Joe. These men seem honest, and I want to meet my grandfather if I can, but what if this is a trap?"
I shook my head. "It doesn't smell like a trap to me, Lyn, and even though I'm not always right, I usually do pretty well if I listen to what my gut tells me. I'm one of the most suspicious people I know, and those two," who were apparently wrestling, armor and all, to show they weren't eavesdropping, "don't set anything off in me. I think we should trust them, at least. This is as good a track as any for us to take."
Especially since you lost us our supplies and any chance to get a decent way to travel 'cross country. "The thing I can't do for you, Lyn, is decide. This is your choice. I think you should investigate your roots before they get cut off, but that's just my perspective. But really, do you have anything better to do?"
She frowned. "No, I suppose I don't. Does this mean you're coming with me?"
"There was never a question."
We grinned at each other, and went to tell the knights to stop acting like boys just off their mama's apron strings.