In Which Justina Joins the Resistance and Xanaria Gets Muddy
Justina and Bale walked in silence. She watched the passing scenery and tried not to look as lost as she felt. Bale seemed exhausted and it wasn't long before Justina realized he was avoiding looking at her. After a tricky bit of trail that zig zagged down a steep slope, Justina finally decided to say something.
"I'm sure Marcus will be okay."
"I know." Bale muttered. "But I can't help worrying, you know?"
"Yeah, I do. It's always hard when loved ones get hurt."
Bale looked at her, startled. Worry flickered across his face before being replaced by stubborn pride. "Yes. It is."
Justina smiled at him, not sure whether to be sad or amused.
He nodded firmly, opened his mouth to speak, but then closed it. Justina waited, focusing on the ground under her feet.
He watched her skirt the edge of a puddle and when he did speak his voice was quiet and uncertain. "I think… it was partly my fault he got hurt."
"Hmmm. I find it's usually best to blame the people who used the knives."
"It was a sword. But the soldier wouldn't have known who we were if I hadn't been talking about poaching before we left town. I thought we were alone. And it was dark. We're lucky there was only one soldier and that he was off duty and drunk coming out of the tavern."
"Still the soldiers' fault. Not yours."
"Yeah?"
"Definitely. Who knows? If you had made it into the forest before talking, one of his buddies might have been out there. You never know what's going to happen. He was the one who made the choice to attack you. That makes what happened to Marcus his fault, not yours."
"Thank you."
They lapsed back into silence. The patches of mud grew bigger as they continued down a shallow incline. After an hour or so Justina stopped trying to avoid them.
"So," Justina asked, "What is going to happen? Lyrian implied you could put me to use."
"First, I have to take you to meet Lupe."
Justina stopped walking suddenly. "I'm sorry. Who did you say we needed to talk too?"
Bale looked back at her grinning. "Ah! So you've heard of her! Trust me, she is even more brave and clever than people say."
Justina nodded slowly and started to smile. "I'm looking forward to it."
Bale led her though an increasingly muddy patch of forest. The muck sucked at her shoes and soaked into her socks. She held her skirt above it and grimaced. Bale kept making weird turns and curves almost at random.
"This is taking forever. Isn't there a more direct route?"
"Only if you know how to breathe mud."
Justina sighed but kept slogging. After another few hours the ground rose steeply and the trees thinned out. Bale paused and whistled a short tune. Someone whistled it back. Justina looked around but she couldn't see anyone.
As the ground became solid under her feet again and she began to see tents scattered throughout the trees. The tents grew denser farther up the hill until they reached an open space at the crown of the hill that seemed to be a general community area. There was a big pot over an open fire and it smelled good.
The young woman who seemed to be keeping an eye on it waved at them.
"Hey, Bale. Where's Marcus?"
"With Blessed Lyrian. He was hurt but the Blessed says he'll be okay, she just doesn't want him walking for a couple days. She did ask me to introduce this woman to Lupe though. Is she in?"
"Well, shit! Uh, yeah, she's in. She's planning something, but I don't think she would mind the interruption."
Bale nodded and led Justina on toward a big square tent made of pale oiled canvas patched with colorful cloth. He rang a bell hung by the door and pulled open the flap.
"Lupe?" He said. "Blessed Lyrian asked me to introduce you to someone."
"Bale?" Came a voice from inside. "Where have you been? I expected you back hours ago."
"I had to take Marcus to the Blessed. It's a long story, but he's going to be fine. Can I bring her in?"
"Of course, of course."
Bale held aside the flap and Justina ducked inside. She blinked, her eyes adjusting quickly as the pale cloth let through a surprising amount of light. There was a woman standing up from a wooden chair in front of a table covered in papers and a big map.
Justina recognized Lupe, although she was less radiant and more rough around the edges than she had been in the dreams she had picked up from Xanaria. She was tall and lean and she never seemed to be completely still. One of her long light-tan rabbit's ears ended in a short sharply angled stump of scar tissue. The scar continued across her left eyebrow and down her cheek, ending just below her nose. It gave her a serious look that only accentuated the brightness of her eyes and made her smile that much more sincere and welcoming in contrast. The dress she wore was blue and green, elegant and practical. It had tan leather stips sewn around the sleeves where the cloth changed and the same tan leather hearts on the ends of the sash. It made Justina think of Xanaria. Justina held out of hand.
"You must be Lupe. I have to say, I thought you would be shorter."
Lupe laughed and shook her hand. "That's a first. I hope you aren't disappointed."
"Not at all. Since you're alive and not dead, everything is good."
"Dead? Who told you I was dead?"
"Xanaria. She didn't come right out and say it, but I got the impression that she thinks you're dead. And she blames herself."
Lupe's grip grew painfully tight and Justina tried not to wince.
"Xanaria? Where is she?"
"I don't know how to reach her. I'm sorry, we got separated. But I don't think she has a way to get back here right now."
"Was she in the shipwreck with you?" Bale asked, confused.
"Yeah." Justina said slowly. "But I'm not sure where she is now."
Lupe's face fell and she dropped Justina's hand.
"Then she might be gone to the Sleeping Goddess."
"No." Justina said as firmly as she could. "She is still alive, she's just with a friend of ours who got hurt in the accident."
Lupe's eyes narrowed. "What aren't you telling me?"
Justina shrugged a little helplessly, "Only what I don't know how to explain."
Lupe did not look satisfied with that answer. The silence stretched out longer than was comfortable.
Finally, Bale blurted out. "Blessed Lyrian says she's a witch." And fled the tent.
Justina tensed, expecting a bad situation to get worse, but once they were alone Lupe seemed to deflate. She sat, looking younger.
"Please." She said with a bone-deep weariness that made Justina's heart ache. "I spent so much time searching for her after I was well enough to walk again. If you know anything, anything at all that can get me closer to finding her…"
"If everything goes well I hope I can get back to where she is in a few weeks. Or possibly months. Time is tricky. I can show you where it is, but if the door isn't opened from the other side then there is nothing I can do."
Lupe's eyes narrowed and she made a motion with her head that was neither nod nor shake. "We'll talk more about this later."
"I really wish there was more I could do to help."
"You told me she's alive. What more could I ask for?" But there was an edge in Lupe's voice that told Justina she'd opened a wound that wanted a lot more.
"She's doing well. She healed. Um. I can tell you all about the adventures we went on but I would need some time to get my thoughts together."
"Really?" For the first time since Justina had met her, Lupe truly looked young. Justina's heart ached as she realized that, like Xanaria, Lupe was still only in her twenties.
"Of course. Gladly. Especially if you could spare me some paper, I wasn't able to grab any of my notebooks before I got washed up here."
"Wait." The commander washed back over Lupe's face as she stood suddenly. "You can read and write?"
"Well, I can in English. And enough Spanish to get by."
"That's great! I'd like your help with something. I can read well enough to run a farm but all this…" She gestured Justina over to the paper covered makeshift desk. "Well, some of their handwriting is really bad and I just can't work each page out fast enough for it to be helpful."
Justina looked at the map and scattered papers on the desk. "What am I looking at?"
"We've managed to intercept reports from some of Grayson's messengers. The supply list is clear enough and implies that they are outfitting a team for something in the forest and I'm pretty sure this letter here is complaining because something happened to some tents and now the men are having to double up. I think they might be looking for us but I'm not sure if they are looking in the right place. Can you take a look?"
"Alright." Justina picked up a couple pages at random and scanned them. "Wow, their handwriting is terrible. Okay yes." She picked up a couple more pieces of paper reading in silence for a while. "Yes. So this letter I think is trying to ask for more money and food but without coming right out and say it." She moved to the next page "Hmmm. Ah, in this one they are talking about the beach so it sounds like they are somewhere near the ocean… No mention of a swamp in this one. I don't know the lay of the land here. Is the beach near the swamp?"
"Not especially, but nothing around here is far from the sea until you get back into farmland."
"Well, that's something. Although they might not stay by the sea when they realize you aren't there."
"Why don't you sit down." Lupe guided her to a chair. "We might be here for a while."
Xanaria had lost the path four times. Gathering clouds dimmed the sky and the air kept getting colder. She was muddy and hungry, cold and damp. She swore as her foot sank farther than she expected and slid, sending her falling on her ass again. She grumbled as she struggled back to her feet and wiped her hands on a tree trunk since her dress was slick with mud. The tree did little to scrape off the mud and it left bits of moss and bark stuck to her palms. She looked around.
I lost it again, didn't I. I lost the path. If there even is a path. Shit. The mild expletive felt good so she tried saying it out loud.
"Shit. Shit!" She glared up at the canopy, and though she felt a little better she was still cold, hungry, sticky, and damp. Standing here wasn't doing anything for those things.
Alright. New strategy. Go as straight as I can to try and get through this Goddess drowned mud hole and then I'll see if I can find some sort of trail on the other side. And if I can't… Well at least I won't be here any more.
Within five minutes she had sunk to her waist in mud. It took much longer to haul herself back to only ankle deep and she seemed to have lost one of her shoes. She started swearing again. She slipped and stumbled and hauled her way through a swamp that seemed more willfully malicious with each passing second. To keep herself moving she started daydreaming about coming back to set the place on fire and all sorts of ways she could have her revenge on a soggy scrap of wilderness.
She should have heard the swordsman long before she saw him but she was too busy scowling her way through a patch of thick marshgrass doing its best to slice open her bare foot.
"Who goes there!" He half shouted at her as she yanked her skirt free from the bit of thorny brush trying to keep her from clearing the grass.
She whipped around, snaring her skirt again on the same bush to see a tall man heavily scarred for someone who didn't look much older than her.
"Put that thing down before you hurt someone." She snarled.
"Who are you? How did you find us?" He raised the sword.
Xanaria stomped toward him and was pulled up short as the thorns yanked on her skirt.
"Sleeping Goddess drown it!"
She ripped her skirt free with one hand and stomped forward.
"Look. My friend was taken this way and I am not," Dani's instincts helped her duck his first clumsy swing, "Letting you or anyone else get in my way."
She grabbed his wrist, squeezed and twisted until his sword fell and she caught it with her other hand.
"I refuse to let some asshole with a sword," She felt his bones creak against Patience's borrowed strength and dropped his wrist, "Keep me from the people I care about."
He made a grab for the sword and she shoved him back. With a surprise squawk he fell and slid 3 feet in the mud as she snarled, "Not again!"
Xanaria turned her back on him and stomped up an incline toward the blessedly drier ground. Behind her the man seemed to have decided not to follow but began to blow a horn in a crisp pattern. Xanaria picked up her pace, figuring it for a warning call. The ground had grown more solid and the trees were thinning out when the first arrow grazed her shoulder. Xanaria ran.
Don't stick to a straight line. She reminded herself as more arrows flew by. She felt panic rise up but she pushed it aside by clinging to the anger and frustration instead, refusing to let herself drown in memory.
Pain exploded in her leg as an arrow lodged there she stumbled but kept running up the hill. I bet I couldn't have done this before I met my avatars. The thought was distant as she focused on keeping from making a target of herself. One grazed her head sending blood dripping into her eyes.
Xanaria saw some tents ahead of her. A girl stood by the entrance of one, staring with wide eyes at the blood covered deer woman clutching a sword and charging right at her. The girl dropped her laundry and ran herself. One last bolt of pain jolted through Xanaria as an arrow punched into the muscle just over her hip. She screamed; half anger, half pain. As she passed between the tents the arrows stopped flying.
She ran through the tent town until she found herself in an open area with a big pot over a fire. A dozen motley people with assorted weapons stood there, warned by the comotion and prepared to defend their home.
Xanaria glared at them and shouted, "Where did you take my friend!"
