Only Cowards Stay While Traitors Run


When Last We Met: True to his word, Cain has brought DG to the halls of the eastern guild, where she hopes she may yet be told where the guardian, Glinda, has hidden herself away. Not all roads, however, are so easily found.


Chapter Eighteen: True Bearing

The garrison was little more than a swinging rope bridge, on either side of the narrow stretch hung near a dozen cages total. A squat, mean-looking guild fighter stood guard, his back to his prisoners.

"Bluesire sent me to take my two friends off your hands," Cain said, wasting no time.

The guard looked skeptical. "The general sends an outsider, why does he not come himself?"

"I think he's worried the girl might bite," Cain said with a smirk. "Now if you'll release them, they've got a meeting with the general, and he didn't look to be too patient this evening."

The guard craned his neck to size Cain up, which he tolerated merely because it would be counter-productive to do otherwise. When the guard seemed to have his fill of the underside of Cain's chin – which, Cain realised with a twinge of annoyance, was in need of a shave – he stood back, knocking the butt of his spear down on the platform once.

"You may pass," the guard said, and then after a moment of contemplation, added, "if you can answer me one thing."

Cain raised an eyebrow. "What." He was in no mood for games.

"What is," and here the guard paused to look around for others who might be listening in, "what is a," and he dropped his voice low, "a hobbit?"

Eyebrows knitting together in confusion, Cain took in the odd and unexpected question with the full intention of being able to understand, but after a few seconds, he rolled his eyes and settled his features. "The girl call you that?"

A curt nod from the guard.

"Better off not knowing, I'd think. Nothin' but nonsense out of her mouth most days." He worked to sound unimpressed, angry, when inside he was sure to crack his jaw while suppressing a smile.

The guard, though less than sated, allowed him to pass. He was followed closely up the narrow, swinging way; though it was unflappably secure for even one of his size, it became all too obvious that balance and solid ground were dear friends he'd taken for granted.

"Release the prisoners," the guard said to another, this one lean and painted a lurid yellow.

"Is that so? This one and I were just getting acquainted," the other said, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder at DG, sitting sullenly in her cage, legs hanging down through the gap in the floor. She said nothing, showing little interest in the guild fighter's jeering. She hadn't yet looked up to see Cain, and it set his heart to sinking; it was most unwelcome, that brazen disappointment.

"The girl and the beanpole are to be taken to the guild hall," the 'hobbit' said, shouting his orders from behind Cain's back. "Bluesire wants to speak with them, directly."

With much sneering and under-breath cursing, DG was released. The guild fighters laughed at her as she nearly lost her balance clambering out of the hanging cell and onto the suspended catwalk. Cain put out a hand to steady her, but she swatted him off. He didn't try again.

"Listen –"

Her hand shot up between them, as if she were marking a barrier – which with her magic skill could be entirely possible. "Don't," she said, her voice tighter than he'd ever heard it, "don't you dare."

"DG –"

She interrupted him again, her words cutting his excuse to the quick. "You set me up."

A dire accusation, blunt but wholly and undeniably true. "I –" And here he sighed, clearly knowing the futility of bothering, "I sent you out on a limb."

"No pun intended, I presume," Glitch said, breaking in a moment too late. DG had turned away, her face red. "Well, we are in a tree, aren't we? And might I add that I'm not too fond of these, these – these trees?" He gestured about him, at the spanning bridges and rigging and staring guild fighters from levels above and below. "Hey, did I hear that General Bluesire is here?"

Cain gave a stiff nod, noticing that their garrison escorts were beginning to look a bit itchy with impatience. "Our dumb luck," was his only reply.

The news seemed to reinvigorate Glitch, at least more so than his two companions. Together, they traced the paths back to the guild hall, where Raw and Tutor would be waiting for them. The silence that accompanied them through the village – not pure silence, with the breeze in the canopy and the creak of the rope and gentle murmur of village life, but the unnatural coldness of words unsaid, of chosen solitude, that had settled down upon the trio, though all in all Glitch seemed the only one unaffected.

Wyatt owed her an apology, but for the time being, it would have to wait.


Custom dictated that the five outsiders were not permitted to sit in the guild hall; it was a right possessed only by members of the guild, be they fighter, smith, or apprentice. Even a princess of the Outer Zone, to whose family the guild had sworn their allegiance, could not take a seat at the long, low table to meet with the guild leader.

DG towered over the general as he sat, stroking his chin as he stared up at her.

"You are a long way from Central City," he said; these were the first words he had spoken to her since she'd been ushered inside by the guards at the door. Only her strict insistence had gotten the others inside. Now, Wyatt stood by the door, Glitch and Raw at his side, trying their best to melt back into the shadows as he. Toto was curled near Glitch's feet, and seemed the only one at rest in the situation.

"We left from Finaqua," DG answered the general, her tight-cinched throat loosened up some since the issues at hand had distracted her from her anger. "So we've come a lot farther than you think."

"Your sister knows you wander the wilds?"

"Yes," she said, "it's my sister who sent me."

The general smiled, a show of white teeth in his brown, weathered face that Cain could see clear across the dim lit hall. "She sent you here?"

"No, not exact –"

"My men inside the city have told me a great deal of late, princess," he said, waving off her weak words, "but not a whisper of your departure until you were stumbling over our borders. I wonder what it is the sorcering queen seeks, to send such a valuable envoy in such secrecy."

To Cain's right, Glitch started at the dark slight toward Azkadellia; he'd opened his mouth to say something before Cain was forced to nudge him sharply in the side. The aggrieved exhale was easily hampered and went unnoticed.

"My mother is dying," DG said suddenly, wiping the smile off Bluesire's face; slapping it away would've been less effective than the drop of that heavy and unexpected truth. "I want to know what you know."

The general seemed hard pressed to recover; perhaps he'd taken the news of Lavender's illness out of hand, had barely taken the time to measure the full repercussions of what her death could mean. Or maybe, just maybe, as one who'd stayed loyal to her, fought the insurgent's path throughout the long annuals of the Sorceress' reign, he was actually knocked speechless by the news; after all, Lavender was loved by many, oft times unjustly so.

"What I know," the general said slowly.

DG raised her chin. "There are powers in this world yet that could save my mother," she said, so utterly confident. To seem anything less wouldn't help her cause; she knew she needed to be strong in her resolve, to act the part of her great blood. "The witch who took my sister –"

Bluesire interrupted her, unconvinced as he laughed from his gut. DG's shoulders slumped, and she took a step back at the unexpected outburst.

"Oh, how the Fates mock me," the general said, still chuckling. "Go back to your shining city and spend your mother's last hours at her side, girl."

It was at this that Glitch finally stepped forward, with such a vehemence that Cain would've been a fool to try stop him. As it was, he watched uneasily as Glitch and DG stood side-by-side, united against one cynical guild general.

"Does she need the slippers on her feet to prove to you her sincerity?" Glitch demanded. DG glanced up at him, uncertain if he were helping her cause or not, but the half-smile tweaking at the corner of her mouth showed that she was appreciative no matter what the outcome.

"It's not her sincerity I doubt," Bluesire said. "You wear your determination proudly, child; you have the mark of a warrior. You are no spell wielding Gale, are you?"

"Give me time."

The general smiled. "You will need far more than resolve to seek the guardian, Glinneth."

After the naming, the room fell silent; for all his annuals, Cain had never heard anything spoken with more reverence. The shiny gloss that had been painted over history during his school age had long since begun to peel away; what he'd been taught and what he'd recited ever faithfully, what had faded in his memory as his life and mind had given way to more consuming things. The blood-stained annuals of the Sorceress had been only a start to the revelations of a past more great and terrible than any fairy tale fabricated since to hide it all away.

It was the end of the road for his hope, however short that journey may have been; holding out against the faintest chance they weren't chasing after ghosts and legends had done him nothing but harm, as now he knew, for solid and for certain, that he knew nothing.

If he was the only one so affected, he would never know. The world went on, as it always invariably did.

"Where is she?" DG asked; she seemed to Cain smaller somehow, watching her now as he did with more scrutiny than she deserved.

"Before you ask that of me, and of my people, ask yourself this: is saving your mother truly your greatest wish? For all the good such determination could bring your country, is your mother's life so important?"

"It is to me." DG's answer was immediate. If she'd taken time to consider as he'd asked, then she'd done it while the general's lips still moved.

The general smirked.

"Please," DG said, laying out bare and honest her resolve to do this impossible thing, "can you tell me where to find Glin–"

"Where?" Bluesire's did nothing to hide his incredulity. "You'd like me to draw a dotted line on your map, perhaps? Scrawl a great red 'X' to forge toward, blindly and at all cost? Princess, that knowledge was lost, long before the purge of the Sorceress."

"You must have some –" Glitch began, but the general cut him off.

"I can tell you to head south, back the way you came," the general said, with a smile that was neither inviting or encouraging. There was a certain amount of pleasure being derived of making DG squirm before him, it was obvious to Cain and it was beyond him why.

"South? To Finaqua?" DG asked; poor kid had no idea.

The general's reply settled over them all; Raw slumped back against the wall as the hammer fell, even Toto's head lifted up off his paws to pay his closest. "Beyond the Ruby Mountains, to the sea of sand; where along those shores you might find what you seek, I know not, nor can I tell you which road will lead you there. They say the Old Road led to her gates, once."

"The Brick Route stops near Finaqua," Glitch interjected.

Bluesire nodded. "Aye, it does at that, but that's not what I said."

Glitch's shoulders stiffened; he was making to argue but DG tugged quickly at his sleeve.

"Thank you, General Bluesire," DG said, overly polite now that she'd squeezed as much blood out of this stone as she was apt to. She seemed eager, that twitch in her fingers that indicated she was readying herself for... well, something. Cain stepped forward just as the general stood from his chair.

"I've already arranged lodgings for the night," Bluesire said, "and we'll resupply you best we can come morning."

DG nodded again. "Thank you, sir."

Suddenly finding themselves dismissed, Glitch and DG turned to leave the guild hall. She scooped up Toto on her way past, so distracted by new revelation and all entailed that she barely looked Cain's way as she went out; though their eyes met briefly, there was nothing in her blues that mirrored, or even shadowed, the anger she'd thrown his way less than mere hours before. She disappeared out the door and into the quickly falling dark, led by escorts who were not he. Glitch, at least, tossed a hopeful smile his way as he shuffled out, Raw on his heels with eyes nor smile for no one.

"Captain Cain," the general said as Cain himself turned to leave.

Bristling under the intention, Cain stopped. "Sir."

"I will be leaving for Central City tomorrow," Bluesire said, his tone kept low for the guards were still outside the door, which stood wide-open to the cool twilight. "With luck, an audience with Queen Azkadellia will see that she's informed as her sister has been."

"I'm sure DG would appreciate that, sir."

"Use great discretion when moving south; the farther the reach of Central City, the greater the influence of this new resistance faction. There may be places where the rule of the royal family holds very little sway."

Cain sighed. "And here in the east?"

"There are always whisperings, especially in the human villages beyond the Midlings, but the north under Andrus is yet ferociously loyal to Lavender and her daughter."

"Which daughter, I wonder," Cain mused with no uncertain amount of disdain.

Bluesire frowned. "She is a curious child. Keep her safe, Captain."

"I will, sir."

There was little other choice.


Hours later, in the encompassing darkness of the forest, Cain walked the beaten paths under the trees in solitude. While the others rested, or lay awake with worry or wonder, he had chosen to forsake the too-small bed beneath a too-low roof; his feet had led the way and his mind had simply allowed it.

He had no wish to dream.

Long, long days ago, each a lifetime in its own right, he'd been given a vision, one that had told him what was expected of him. She cannot go back, the apparition of Lavender had whispered to him in tones of unsung trust. The price that was being paid was high, to keep DG out of Central where she might, however unintentionally, make the same sacrifice her own mother had almost sixteen annuals before.

Alone with his thoughts was where Cain feared to be the most. Here, the truth was a sword, and it was by his own hand that it was buried and twisted cruelly in his gut. His love and loyalties were dragging him down roads he'd never intended to walk, with the only consolation being, well, that the company was good.

Who was the fool in all this, really? DG and her damn hope, or Cain himself, with his hangdog loyalty?

South, beyond the mountains, to the sea of sand.

Was he really going to have to admit to Glitch, worldly as the bastard had been before his headcasing, that he was one of those rural boys who'd never seen the desert? Both his momma and daddy had died without seeing it. He wondered, had his sister crossed it; had she gotten out?

These roads led to dead ends, empty places where the heart could no longer reside. DG, and that hopefulness, would serve a better guide, he knew that right down to his marrow.

South beyond the mountains, he'd keep her safe, keep them all safe. To the sea of sand, he'd follow.

But for now – and it was with purpose and surety that he walked now, ever careful, watchful – he was the one being followed. Steps might tread in shadow, but it was upon earth they moved, and the earth had given her up; under the trees and the stars, he would find out why.