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Disclaimer: Narnia belongs to Lewis, my inspiration.

Chapter 11.

Aoife wasn't exactly sure what happened next. She had really meant to close her eyes, just to rest for a moment. By the time she realized she was asleep, it was sleep so deep she had no chance of dragging herself out of it even if she had wanted to, for this was possibly the best sleep she had ever had. She awoke a few hours later, uncommonly stiff and a tad stifled. She managed to open her eyes, and for a moment saw nothing. It was still the dark hours of early morning and her vision was limited. Feeling about her, she felt not sand but pricking, biting rocks so sharp she wondered she had been able to sleep at all. Upon looking upwards, and seeing the gray sky clash with the rock walls that reach high above her, she realized they were in a crevice or canyon of a sort. A few feet away from her, Galian was snoring softly, curled up like he were asleep on a king's mattress.

A saddle bag lay not far from her, and she moved to inspect them softly, for she did not want to disturb Galian. Inside was a half a loaf of bread, dried meat, and a lump of dry cheese, and some fruit, as well as a waterskin filled to the brim; evidently the soldiers anticipated a fair-sized campaign.

The cold steel of a knife was pressed to her throat. Turning her eyes slightly, she saw with a start that it was Galian, "Curse you, you ass!"she cried as she pushed his hand away.

"Language, my lady,"he said nonchalantly, settling himself against a rock, "you ought to pay better attention to your surroundings."

"I could do that better if I knew where we were,"she said dryly, handing him an apple and helping herself to one as well.

"Congratulations, Tarkheena, you've reached the foothills of the northern mountains. Just a few hours' travel, and we will be in Archenland."

The news excited her so badly she nearly choked on her food, "Well then, what are we sitting around here for? Let's go!"

He shook his head, "Not just yet. We're well hid but we're surrounded by Calormene patrols. They've been searching all night for us and I doubt they'll stop for daybreak."

"Where is the horse?"

"He's safe, in a cave not too far from here. I left him with a good bit of water and some oats the soldier had brought with him."

"These soldiers came prepared for a long journey, didn't they?"

"It seems so. I've only heard of them carrying food for the horse during long battle campaigns when they wouldn't likely be able to let them graze for long."

"Suruv and Shameth aren't keen on letting me go then,"she murmured, munching slowly on her apple.

"I think you're only part of the reason,"Galian said thoughtfully.

"What do you mean?"

"It's all just a power struggle, really. All politics. We'll turn up in Archenland, the Calormen government will accuse the Archenlanders of stealing us away or giving us subversive information and corrupting its people, or nonsense like that, and they'll eventually find grounds for attack. As long as it had existed, Calormen has wanted Narnia under its blanket of provinces. It wants to increase it's empire. We're just pawns in their game."

There was a silence between them for a moment as they finished their apples, until Aoife noted, "All the same, I'd hate to be the known as the woman who was the cause of a war."

Galian grinned"I shouldn't worry so much about that. You'll probably be known as 'the other woman who was the cause of war.'"

"What?"

"Your young man never told you the story? I assumed since you knew of the northwestern route that he had."

"No, he only told me of the road. Tell me about the story."

And Galian proceeded to tell the story of Susan of Narnia, and of how the untimely arrival of Archenland's lost prince thwarted a brutal Calormene attack. Galian was quite a good storyteller, and Aoife was throughly delighted and interested from start to finish, when the sun peeked into their little crevice.

Galian stood and stretched, "Well, I suppose I'd better check on that blinking horse. If would poke your head around that corner, easy now, and see if we still have any unwelcome guests?"

"Yes,"Aoife observed, "ten or fifteen of them, I would guess."

"That's no good. Those ten or fifteen guards stand in the way of our road home. Alright, sit tight and I'll be back in a moment."

While he was gone, Aoife periodically checked around the corner. To her disappointment, the number of guards grew larger rather than smaller.

"Where are they all coming from?"she asked herself.

"Perhaps they sprung up from the sand?"a voice behind her suggested, making her jump.

"Galian! Stop doing that!"she snapped, throughly peeved that he thought it so comical.

"I told you before,"he chuckled, "you need to be more alert. Well, we can't very well move until they leave. What shall we do until then? Another story, perhaps."

"Alright. Tell me yours."

"My story? There's not much to tell."

"I want to hear it, all the same. How is it that a Narnian boy grew up to be the most feared fighter in all of Calormen?"

"Very well. I was raised by a faun named Domus. He said he found me in a little rundown cottage a good distance into the Western Wild. He was a wonderful parent, very caring, very concerned for my well-being. He sent me to school and taught me the ways of being a Narnian and how to treat people with respect. The only problem was, I rather thought myself a free spirit. I didn't listen to a lot of what he tried to teach me, and I hated school with a passion. There were times when I would run away. Not far, really, I was never gone more than a week or so. I would always return, earn a thrashing, and be a good little boy until the next time society stifled me. One time, I ran away, came back, and Domus never tried to punish me. He was fed up, I think, with trying to discipline me. He only told me that he was finished trying to control me, and if I wanted to ruin my life it was my business. I managed to convince him that I would try harder, and for a while, a very long while, I was good. I did my schoolwork and obeyed his commands and things like that. But I wasn't happy. Finally, it really became too much, and I felt like I needed to see the country one more time. I promised myself that I would see Archenland, and that would be the end of it, I would return and do as I was told. As luck would have it, I was captured at the Winding Arrow."

"How old were you?"Aoife asked.

"Almost nine."

Aoife gasped, "And they still kidnaped you?"

"Little boys grow up to be strong men. If they survive."

"So you fought at that age?"

"No, I first worked in the fields, reaping the wheat. As I got older and stronger, my jobs got harder. Finally, someone thought it would be a good idea to use me as a sparring partner to soldiers-in-training. I remember the first time they put that stick in my hands, and put me up against the biggest man I'd ever seen until Hapeth. I knew nothing of sword fighting, the only fighting I had ever known was with my fists, and this man scared me to death. He swung his stick at me, and I blocked. He tried again, and I blocked again. He swung harder and faster, but I blocked it everytime. He finally got frustrated, grabbed the stick from me, and gave me the beating of my life. I learned my first lesson in sword fighting that day: Make my enemy come to me. Had I a real sword, his frustration would have been the end of him.

I continued to spar against the soldiers, and one thing I noticed. A certain series of blocks, an upward cut, and I would score a hit. In every military school and training camp across Calormen, they teach them the same method of fighting. If you've fought one soldier, you've fought them all. Your captain, he taught you to fight, am I correct?"

"Yes."

"And I'm sure if we had a friendly sparring game, I could hit or maybe even disarm you in three minutes."

"You're bigger than I am. And stronger."

"Strength has nothing to do with it. If it did, Hapeth would have crushed me. No, fighters like you and I must rely on our speed. When we're not in danger of being discovered, I'll show you."

"Do you think they can hear us now?"

"They might, but I doubt they could distinguish the noise we're making from the noise they're making. We're safe enough. I'd like to check, though, and see where they are."

He moved passed her silently, and poked his head around the corner. There was no one to be seen.

"All clear,"he reported.

"Really?"

"There's no one about."

"I don't like it,"Aoife told him cautiously, "if they know we're here, they might be somewhere hiding, trying to draw us out."

"You're probably right. Then again, this is a large canyon, and we could lose them easily. At any rate, we can't stay here forever."

"Don't you think they know the canyon better than us?"

"I doubt it. They don't come this far north that often, I would think. Stop worrying,"he added, noticing she still held a few reservations, "in a few hours we'll be in Anvard sipping on a well-earned drink."

"Aren't you being rather impulsive?"

"I'm impulsive? Just a few moments ago you were anxious to leave."

"That was before I knew there were a good thirty soldiers looking for us."

"Have you no confidence in me?"he asked her, squaring off against her, a little peeved.

"Galian, please, for once, just listen to me..."

"Your problem is you're much too nervous. Do you want to stay here forever?"

"Of course not."

"Then we've got to take some risks. I believe we can escape, now, while we still have a chance. Trust me."

"A lot of good that's done me,"she muttered, but not lowly enough.

Galian replied angrily, "Would you prefer to go along by yourself?"

"It's fine with me,"she snapped, "I suppose you'll be fine walking to Archenland?"

He threw down the bag he had been packing in frustration, "What do you want to do, Aoife? Stay here until the end of the world? Because that's the only time we'll ever have another chance."

She looked around, cautiously, and motioned him to come closer to her. Whispering lowly, so that even he could hardly hear her, she said, "Listen, give it three more hours. Just three, that's all I'm asking. If no one shows, then we can leave. I still think they're laying low somewhere trying to bait us. Alright?"

Reluctantly, he agreed. Resentment still settled between the two of them, however, and it was an uncomfortably long and silent three hours, with many trips on Galian's part to check on the horse and much peeking around the corner on Aoife's. The sun cast a long, eerie shadow over their hiding spot, and it grew slightly colder than it had been before. Aoife huddled underneath her cloak, praying the three hours would pass speedily, for something, she didn't know what, was bound to happen after then. Galian, when he wasn't visiting the horse, sat motionless, staring at the pebbles in the sand, trying not to let his impatience get the better of him. He had thought their time together had brought them rather close, but the old quarrels still lay under the surface of this new friendship.

Finally, the three hours were over. Both peered around the corner, and still saw nothing.

"Shall I lead you to the horse so it can be saddled and we be on our way?"Galian asked her, rather smugly.

"I still have a bad feeling about this."

"No worries, Tarkheena. You said yourself that after three hours, if there was no activity, it would be safe to go, correct?"

"I never said it was safe. I honestly don't know if it's safe, and neither do you."

They quarreled the entire way to the cave where the horse was stashed, as restless as Galian had been (in fact, Aoife wondered if he had been working the horse up during the moments he had visited it), and was stamping about, tired of its hole and ready to be moving again. They soon were, though Aoife still payed close attention to every rock, shadow, and grain of sand. She wouldn't be taken by surprise again, not if she could help it. Consequently, she was the first to see dark shapes moving about to their left.

"Galian,"she whispered.

"What?"he asked, jerked out of his reverie.

"Hush. Over there. To our left."

Galian looked, but didn't see anything, "It's just the shadows. You're being incredibly jumpy, Aoife."

"No, I saw something..."

At that moment, "something" jumped from behind the rock it had been hiding under. To their horror, it was the missing thirty guards sent from Tashbaan.

With not a moment to lose, and in fact all the noise the guards were making nearly frightened the poor horse to death, Aoife pushed on as if her life depended on it, which it might have. Arrows rained down upon them, and it was only by Aoife's timely maneuvering that no one was struck. The canyon zig zagged and got narrower, so that for a moment they were out of sight of the soldiers, but were still close enough that they could hear their attempts to navigate the passage. Their horse suddenly came to a fork, one road continuing the path they had been taking, the other leading up to the plateau.

"Which one?"she asked Galian.

"Damned if I know,"he swore, forgetting his manners in the gravity of the situation.

"We'll take the high road,"she concluded, really just taking a chance. She pushed the exhausted horse up the pathway as quick as she could . In all reality, she couldn't go as fast as she would have liked, for the path was covered in loose dirty and uneven stones, and there were several times when the horse almost lost it's footing. Their route finally leveled out, so they could move faster, though the footing was no better. They were flanked by the high wall of the canyon to the left, and the tall and large but broken rock faces on their right. As the rode, they could see members of the patrol speeding off, still searching for their quarry.

"Do you think we could-could slow down a bit?"Aoife panted, slowing the animal down without confirmation from Galian.

"We're moderately safe. I haven't a clue where this leads to though."

"You haven't gone this way before?"

"No, we stuck to the main road. I'm not sure, but I think the two paths intersect again. We can only hope it does, anyway."

Not reassured, Aoife nevertheless pushed the horse on, still on the lookout for any enemies, while Galian searched for a possible way down between the rocks in case the path they were taking turned out to be a dead end or else just led them higher up to the plateau.

"Galian, look!"

To their relief, the path descended sharply, and they recognized the original road. They dismounted and led the horse down carefully, and trying their hardest not to slip themselves. They finally reached the bottom, and remounted and continued on cautiously, for the guards were near, either right in front of them or right behind. As quickly as they dared, they rode fast, and Galian pointed out with relief that they canyon was getting wider, which possibly meant they were coming to an end. With that news, they joyfully topped the next hill, but their joy was halted when they saw what was in that valley.

It blended in nicely with the dull, tan color of the canyon, so that for a moment the two travelers wondered if it wasn't just their imagination. But, alas, it wasn't. It was a fortress, a straight, smoothly-walled fortress, stretching from one side of the wide canyon to the other. They could see the guards that had been pursuing them hail to a gatekeeper, and were presently admitted. It was an intimidating structure, and practically dared them to try and go around.

"What on earth is that?"Aoife asked, her voice high pitched and frightened.

"That,"replied Galian, deflated and defeated, "is our way home."