Check it out! Another chapter. I'm gonna work to get a lot of chapters typed up during the summer to make up for the slow down that is inevitably gonna happen when the school year takes off again. Yay, I'm done with school. Anyways, enjoy ~~~~

" Do you know who these people are, that are after this message from your master?" Gilan prompted later that night, once the sun was setting. Aaron took up a guard position somewhat out in front of the camp. Glancing back, he shrugged his shoulders while he looked on, slumped against a tree stump.

" Not sure, exactly," he said, then added, almost to himself, " but they follow the orders of one man in particular among them. His man is Urosia," he mentioned when he realized that Gilan was listening in on his thoughts that he was speaking out loud. Smirking slightly Aaron added, " but I prefer to call him 'asshole'." he said, and Gilan frowned at him.

" Your master wasn't one to scold you for bad language, was he?" Gilan asked, not really needing a verbal answer to know what the answer was. Aaron laughed a bit.

" Nope, why? Does it bother you?" he asked, wondering if maybe he'd offended the Ranger in some way by using undiplomatic tongue around him. Gilan shook his head at Aaron.

" I've just never known someone to use it so blandently in conversation." To this Aaron couldn't deny Gilan ha a point.

" Yeah, most people do usually mutter such curses under their breath, or when drunk," he laughed again, thinking nothing of the idea, " or, if one is a knight, is denied full right to say such words from the start, or so I assume here in Araluen." Stretching out slightly he said. " I'm no such person, so I cuss pretty openly. My Master never minded in the least, so nobody usually mentions it to me." he shrugged, and went back to watching the ground around them once again. There were a few moments of silence between the two of them.

Then, Gilan realized something. " Urosia? I've never heard of a name like that before. Is it another language?" he asked of Aaron. Aaron frowned at Gilan a moment, his brows frowning as much as his mouth as he thought this over. Slowly, the boy shook his head slightly to him.

" I've never thought about it. I'm really not sure, it's a good question." Gilan didn't quite believe Aaron this time.

AH! He knew a way to expose the lie.

" Your horse has a rather unusual name too. Is that something you've never found strange before too?" Gilan asked, and Aaron visibly stiffened at this one. He turned to glance over his shoulder at the Ranger. In turn, Gilan cocked an eyebrow at Aaron, expectantly. Very clearly,Gilan showed he didn't believe what the boy had said. Aaron pouted at him, and pointed at Gilan.

" Hey, you don't believe me, do you?" he asked, sounding, actually, somewhat annoyed at the idea that Gilan was actually figuring him out. Gilan tilted his head at the boy now.

" Not in the least bit, boy." he answered, being blunt with Aaron. " After all, you've lied to me before, and I don't believe in coincidences like that." Aaron frowned again, but it looked rather funny, and so, Gilan chuckled a bit to himself about it.

" You make me sad." he told the Ranger, who could only grin to the boy in turn.

" Really?"

" You're totally never going to let me hear the end of this whole, telling a lie to you thing, are you?" Aaron inquired of Gilan, who only kept grinning to him.

" What gave you that idea?" he asked, rather amused by the turn of this conversation.

Aaron snorted, saying no more to him, turning back to his watch of the land around them. Gilan came and joined, watching with him. Then he took to just watching Aaron, and rather curiously at that. When looking Aaron's gaze fell all around the ground, only moving his head on an occasional glance over his shoulder. The rest of the time he allowed only his eyes to scan around, never resting for long on anything in particular. Gilan noted that Aaron didn't even bother spending a lot of time on patches of ground that moved.

" What was that moving there?" Gilan asked, pointing, wondering how Aaron would answer.

" Not what I'm looking for." was the simple answer given to Gilan.

" How do you know?"

" The same way you do." Aaron was unhesitating to reply. " It's not big enough to be a person, that's all I need to know."

" So, you don't know?" Gilan said. A rustling behind them drew his attention, and he looked over his shoulder.

" I do know. Don't insult me like that." Aaron said, and Gilan twisted back toward Aaron to give him a weird expression as the boy talked normally. Aaron had been unperturbed by the sound, and went on as if the noise hadn't been there at all. Gilan had been alert to it because it had sounded so close to them, and he found it curious that Aaron made no move to inspect it.

" You didn't notice that?" he inquired, looking at where the noise had come from.

" The noise? I heard it," Aaron became irritable with Gilan, " what the hell is with you anyways? Are we playing 20 questions or something? If we are, I quit." he said, but now Gilan was sincerely interested and not just testing the boy's abilities out of boredom as he had been before.

" Then, why didn't you move?" he asked, turning to Aaron again. Aaron looked at him, rather unsure of what Gilan was getting at this time, as he had been with the arrows when Gilan had first commented on his abilities.

" It wasn't anything we needed to worry about." he responded, with a shrug of his shoulders. Aaron just kept watching the terrain, as if that was all there was in the world.

" How did you know?" Gilan persisted. Aaron only shrugged again.

" It was close to us, but small. Too small for a person to make. It was a squirrel or rat, something like that." Aaron just kept brushing off the shock Gilan was throwing his way.

Gilan hadn't heard of such a thing as identifying a potential target by ear rather then sight. Another sound drew Gilan's eyes once more.

" It's just Rurin. He moved a little closer to graze on something. I heard his hooves clop." Aaron explained. Gilan found it was true, the black stallion had come a bit closer and was chomping on some tall grass near by.

Yet Aaron remained, still as ever, simply scanning the terrain as he had before. He noticed that Gilan was staring at him, shifting slightly with discomfort of Gilan's long lingering gaze.

" It's all part of the training my Master gave me. He was the one who taught me everything I know, simple as that." Aaron insisted, and Gilan nodded just as something caught Aaron's eye. He straightened up, alert, looking, searching around them.

" What is it?" Gilan murmured, lowly. Aaron jerked his head diagonally toward his right, and got to his feet.

" Oh, shit." he cussed, wheeling around on his heels, and Gilan followed not far behind. He saw it too.

" We have to hurry." Gilan jogged over to the camp they'd set. Aaron quickly doused the fire, and began to scatter what little ashes there were. Gilan threw together what lay on the ground or off to the side, stuffing it into one of his sacks as he leaped onto Blaze's saddle.

" Let's Go!" Aaron had disappeared, so Gilan shouted to be certain he heard. A few moments passed, and no sign of Aaron appeared, which got Gilan nervous until a shout came from close by in the trees.

Aaron came running and shouting out of the trees, Gilan felt relieved for about a second or two until another few forms came out behind the boy.

" GO!!" Aaron hollered, throwing his arm out at Gilan. Sprinting like a cheetah, Aaron ran fast as he could, and was very agile, avoiding a spear by ducking, and ended up stumbling onto the ground. The boy rolled right back onto his feet as if nothing had happened, quickly turning on his heels and charging off in another direction, toward the trees again.

Still being pursued, Aaron grabbing hold of a tree truck and pulled hard, forcing a hard spin round the truck that his chaser couldn't manage to do himself. Then Aaron grabbed on to the sharpest thing he could find, a log about at thick as a rode that was dull on both ends. Spinning, he slammed the log into the head of the oncoming man, that fell back and down. Still whirling, Aaron hit the gut of another man whom was trying to sneak up on him from behind with the opposite side of the stick, sending said person flying for a foot or two.

Aaron dropped the log then, and streaked for Rurin, leaping onto the horse so that his limbs were still dangling on the sides of the horse as it started it's cantor away, Blaze already a good few strides ahead with Gilan. Struggling for a moment, Aaron got upright on Rurin's back before he began to usher the horse to a faster pace.

They quickly lost the attackers, as the attackers in question didn't seem to have come with horses. Gilan led the way through the trees and such, moving the horses through a low stream and went onto the opposite bank of it and into the trees on that side.

Aaron followed without a question, at first. He looked around, on edge, as he was the target of all of these attacks thus far. Then he began to relax a bit more, and take in what it was that Gilan was doing. He observed, simply, and followed along after the older man very quietly until Gilan had the both of them stop.

Sliding down to the ground, Gilan let Aaron crawl into a hollowed out tree truck before following after. They left their horses to tend to themselves in the mean time. Aaron even allowed his to go off on it's own to be sure that there would be no suspicions of what lay where they were.

" We'll have to be more careful," Gilan murmured to Aaron," taking turns at watch and covering our tracks especially, else they won't leave us alone. Or that's what I'm assuming." he looked to Aaron for confirmation. Aaron gave said confirmation, solemnly to Gilan. Then, the boy sighed and got to his feet.

"I'll take first watch then. You can go ahead and sleep." Aaron said, coming up along the side of the truck to peak out from the side of it only enough to see around the opening of it.

Gilan was a bit taken aback at this request to go first.

" Are you sure?" he asked, kindly of Aaron. " I was going to let you sleep first." Aaron shook his head at this proposition of Gilan's.

" I won't be able to sleep very well after all of that. Besides, I'm wide awake now, I might as well do watch while I'm up." Aaron insisted, stubbornly to Gilan. To this Gilan could only sigh, as once again he found the similarity of Halt and Aaron.

Still, this sudden sad mood change worried Gilan. So, he sat up for a bit, crawling up on the opposite side of the hollow trunk and sitting down, looking over at Aaron. He kept a scrutinizing gaze on the boy, who shifted slightly under the critical gaze.

" What?" he asked, finally annoyed with the way Gilan was looking at him.

" Want to talk about what's bothering you?" Gilan now said with a sly, smart sort of tone. Aaron scoffed at him for this question.

" Hell no." he said, out right. Gilan was unconvinced, cocking his head to the side and still looking determinedly at Aaron. Aaron scowled at Gilan now, turning his frown out onto the ground outside the whole in the tree, focusing on the work to try and ignore Gilan's prying into him." It's got nothing to do with you." he said after a long silence.

Now it was Gilan's turn to scowl at Aaron.

" I'm involved because of you now, so it is my business now." he replied, continuing to try and get what he wanted out of Aaron.

Aaron glared a Gilan a good minute or two, then looked away again. His face was set, straight forwards, determined to keep Gilan out of his personal bubble that Gilan only prodded at out of curiosity.

" I can't help wondering who you are now that I'm involved," Gilan decided to speak his mind aloud. Aaron glanced over at him as he went on," and why it is you feel you need to hide whatever it is from me. After all,
I've done nothing to harm you, despite what's happened. I'm only trying to help, you know?" He looked over at Aaron, thoughtfully, then sighed and shrugged.

" And that only makes me wonder why you would want to help me to begin with?" Aaron replied, blunt. Gilan was quite taken aback by this.

"You're," Gilan spoke slowly, to be sure he was getting this right," suspicious of me?"

Aaron glared out of the corner of his eye, then looked away again, putting his hand on his hip in a very un-masculine like mannerism.

" So you go picking up every stray person you find laying on the side of the road?" he inquired, smartly. Well, that was very true, Gilan couldn't deny that one. " Not only do you lend me clothes and give me food, you put a weapon in my hand." he holds up the bow in his hand, cocking an eyebrow high as he looked at Gilan again, questions in his eyes.

" You don't know anything about me, and know that I've lied to you before. How do you know I haven't lied every step of the way here, so far?" Yet another excellent point brought to light by Aaron.

" I don't." Gilan answered, very simply, and Aaron nodded to this stated fact.

" That's right, you don't. You barely even know me." Aaron paused, trying to regain control as his voice filled with emotion. Finally, after a minute or so of doing this, he'd regained the composure to go on. " Why is it you're really coming along with me, Gilan?"

To that Gilan had to force himself to appear calm, though he gave a jolt of surprise at the suddenness of the question. Aaron only sighed, gazing out from the hiding place again. Then he shook his head, and sort of smiled at Gilan. The smile didn't reach his eyes.

" Don't seem so surprised. It's not that hard to figure out. You're nice enough, Gilan, but not so nice as you've been to me thus far. There's some other motive for you coming along with me, and I'm well aware of that."

" Really?" Gilan leaned fowards, closer to Aaron. " How are you so sure?"

To this, the false smile turned to a sad one instead. His shoulders sagged slightly, and he gave a half sigh to Gilan.

" Because no human heart is so kind or good." he replied, sullenly.

Now Gilan began to see at just what cost it seemed that Aaron had for being so full of knowledge. For all the very clever and intelligent conversation told to this young boy, Gilan noted from that day on, that it had come at the cost of the childish idealism that were so natural to most young people.

And from then on, Gilan never questioned why Aaron appeared so abnormally wise at so young an age. To this comment of Aaron's, Gilan could give no comfort nor reply. ~~~~~~

Another chapter with a bit of drama at the end there. As always, I welcome reviews, so please send them Thanks very much for reading!