Watery mud seeped through her shoes and she curled her toes to wring out what she could as she trudged through the swamp. Kia Min had heard the tales of bandits lining the trail between villages, and she had always assumed that merchants preferred the river to the swamp for that reason alone. Now she believed otherwise, and she waved her hand in front of her face to keep from inhaling gnats during her trek.
She firmly grasped her bamboo staff as she swung at the tall grass and cattails, keeping her ears open for any noise straying from the chirping of crickets. Her eyes scanned for any odd movements in the reeds. Already she traveled half a day and had not run into any bandits, and she was growing increasingly worried. Would she be caught in a third ambush in less than a week? Kia Min doubted her luck would hold. If she was to die, she would have rather died in Two Rivers.
But the marsh was too quiet, even if she had never heard of caravans getting robbed by thieves and bandits. She was alone with frogs and insects, and aside from the flies, none of them she could see. Their songs pierced through the gray air, but they were subdued, as though each were humming a lullaby or a hymn.
Kia Min thought of children shrieking as they chased each other through the village, their mothers and fathers shouting after them. She heard the grunts and yelps of the students within the school as they parried attack after attack, block for block. Merchant Fen Do yelled and waved down anybody who so much as glanced at him from the corners of their eyes, promising a very good deal if they would please just step this way. Metal clanked from the top of the stairs where Gujin forged a tool for a farmer who had broken his by striking a buried boulder. And laughter, she heard the laughter of Ni Joh as they walked along the outlook as they shared stories from their childhood. A farmer boy and a merchant girl, both aspiring to be something more...
Kia Min found that she had slowed her march to a stop, and she glanced at her surroundings helplessly. Her chest felt heavy, and she leaned forward on her staff and closed her eyes. A deep breath, and another, and she stood back up and continued forward. She had to keep going.
A little way further, and she finally heard something amiss. She stopped and heard faint shouts coming from straight ahead. A snide snicker and a piercing cry of, "Help!" broke through before Kia Min realized that there was never an ambush awaiting her. She was empty-handed save for her weapon, and merchants had carts full of food and goods, and silver, and they did not yet know Two Rivers' fate.
She took the staff in both her hands, and launched her feet out of the thick mud and dashed forward. Sure enough, men in tattered clothes and sharp fists lugged crates from a single-ox cart, as a middle-aged man cowered to the side, bloodied and bruised.
Kia Min did not stop her charge, and she jammed the end of the staff into the spine of one of the bandits. He dropped the crate he held and crumpled to the ground. As his comrades surrounded her, Kia Min quickly and silently counted the remaining thieves. Four. The exact record she had briefly held back at the school.
She would win this.
The man in front of her threw a punch, and she ducked and swung her staff in front of her to send him and another to the ground. As she stood, she threw her leg back into the man's gut behind her. She briefly wondered how on earth an outlaw could have extraneous fat.
"Little girl, you've messed with the wrong gang," the last of them hissed as he pulled a knife from his belt.
Kia Min rolled her eyes and stabbed his chest with her staff. He fell backwards. "And you've messed with the wrong merchant," she said.
The fat man had only stumbled into the cart, but he was still on his feet. Kia Min took the other end of the staff and gave him the same treatment as the one with the dagger. His reaction time was thankfully very slow and he toppled, and she turned her attention back to the ones she had tripped. Both were climbing to their feet, groggy and angry, but she gave them no time to attack. She swung her staff on one man's head, and the other suffered a knee into his side as she spun with the flow of her movements. She refused to give him the opportunity to stand again, so she slammed her staff fully into his back, rendering him unconscious.
None of the other bandits had moved from where she had left them, and she frowned. Did she really hit that hard, and at the right pressure points? That seemed... too easy.
The merchant staggered to his feet, but he did not approach her. "I, uh... I don't have anything of--"
Kia Min raised a hand and smiled. "I'm not a bandit, but you should get out of here quickly. I don't think I killed these men." She could not have. But then, Gao's mercenaries had not been that much more difficult.
"Oh," said the merchant, and he wrung his hands together. "Well, I thank you. I thought for sure that--well, thank you. Where on earth did you come from?"
After a moment, she replied mournfully, "Two Rivers. I'm on my way home. My name is Kia Min, by the way."
The merchant nervously grinned. "They call me Wayfarer Wei," he said. "Two Rivers, you said? Of course, you're wearing the school's uniform! No wonder you dealt with those bandits so quickly." He laughed, then, and relaxed his shoulders. "Tell me, young lady, did you run into any other bandits between here and there?"
She cringed. "Well, no," she said slowly. "But--"
"I know, I know, you're not traveling with a cart full of wares for trade, but I don't have that much further to go. Unless, well, you wouldn't mind backtracking? It is odd that these bandits would have attacked me as they did. I stayed on the path, and they have never bothered me before." Wei paused. "Young lady, are you alright? You look quite pale."
Kia Min realized then that her hands trembled and she had been holding her breath. She exhaled, and she closed her eyes and shook her head slowly. "Two Rivers is gone."
"What? What are you talking about?"
"Gone," she said. "Two Rivers is... gone." It was the first time she said it aloud. Gone. Hot tears teased the corners of her eyes. Oh please, not now.
Wei was silent for a moment. And then, finally, "Gone? As in... destroyed?" Kia Min flinched. "Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no. This can't be. This can't be. Young lady, please tell me that... that is... you're not the only one..."
"No," said Kia Min. "There are two others, but they left, too. There's nothing left there. There's no one left."
"By the heavens," the merchant muttered, and he fell into his cart. "What am I to do now?"
Kia Min scowled and fought back the urge to knock him unconscious and take all his silver and food for herself. It was merchants like him, and Fen Do, who made it very, very difficult for her to defend her family's profession. Caring more for their own profits than human lives?
She opened her mouth to send him on his way back to wherever it was he came from, unattended by her, but he shook himself out of his self-pity and weakly smiled at her.
"I'm very sorry to hear about your school, your classmates, your friends," he said. "You said you were going home? Where is home for you, if not Two Rivers?"
Kia Min regarded him for a long moment. "Why?" she finally asked.
"You saved my life just now, and I'd like to pay you back. My village is an entire day's journey from this point on foot, and it is the closest village to Two Rivers," said Wei. "At the very least, I could get you there, so you don't have to walk, and I'll provide you with food for both the journey there and to your hometown."
She raised an eyebrow. "And you'd get protection from other bandits, too."
Wei paused. "I... would be lying if I said that's not another reason, but please, it's the least I can do, unless it'll be too out of the way. In which case, I'll just give you whatever you need for your journey and let you be on your way."
She sighed. If she was able to put up with Fen Do for the past five years surely she could deal with Wayfarer Wei for a day. "One Stone," she said finally. "I'm from One Stone."