Rated: Fiction M - English - Romance/Adventure - Chapters: 208 - Words: 492,526 - Favs: 1 - Follows: 3 - Updated: Mar 30 - Published: Jan 8 - id: 14315791
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The Longest Road, Part 16
Moving carefully, you work you way closer to where the freckled, teenaged girl is chatting with the caravan workers, remaining unobtrusive as you take a position where you can observe them more closely without being noticed. She's looking up at the men eagerly as she asks them about the places they've been and the things they've seen on their travels. The workers seem pleased to have an admiring female audience, and they're more than willing to indulge her.
Disappointingly, it all seems fairly innocent and aboveboard. And yet... the more you listen, the more suspicion starts to nag at you. It's nothing overt, nothing obvious. But you are long practiced at deceit, familiar with all the tricks. And with each passing minute you become more convinced that this girl is putting up a false front of some kind.
You raise your eyebrows a little. Has your hunch paid off? Is she really connected to the sniper in some way?
Your suspicion only grows as the topic of their conversation shifts toward the caravan's current trip. Soon the men are talking about when the caravan is planning to depart here, whether they think they'll make good time, when they're scheduled to arrive at various places. It could still be innocent... but you're sure that the red-haired girl is guiding the conversation to those topics. She seems particularly interested in learning when the caravan will cross something called "the Burn", which you gather from context is the next place of note after Eckenburg, just before you hit the Great Forest.
And then the conversation shifts to Khaytala.
The girl maneuvers the conversation to talk of anything unusual that happened along the way. She gasps in shock when she hears about the sniper, and when she's told how that turned out, she inquires in more detail about how Khaytala is doing, with a particular interest in subtly fishing for just how badly the poison affected her.
It's still nothing conclusive... even if she's asking the exact questions your hypothetical spy would want to ask. She hasn't done anything, after all. Certainly nothing that would convince the rest of the caravan that she's a danger. Indeed, even if she were a spy, and you somehow convinced them to capture her, you don't know for sure how much she knows about the larger picture. If she's just someone that the assassin hired to gather information, you might not learn much from an interrogation.
On the other hand, if you could follow her surreptitiously...
Eventually she says farewell to the caravan workers. You use all your supernatural stealth to shadow her as she wanders down the length of the caravan, keeping your distance while not letting her out of your sight. She greets several people as she walks by, keeping a sunny demeanor.
Then, when she reaches the middle of the caravan, the girl pauses. She leans back against one of the wagons, eyes drifting lazily across the area. Then, when she thinks no one is watching, she slides down into a crouch, then rolls underneath the wagon. Everything is still for a minute or so. Then she rolls back out, and continues briskly on her way.
Your eyes narrow. Hurrying forward, you approach that wagon from the other side and crawl under it yourself. It's a tighter fight with your significantly larger frame, but you quickly see what she had been doing. She left a small leather pouch tied to the wagon's undercarriage.
Licking your lips, you carefully open it to see what's inside. It's... not what you were expecting. The pouch is packed full with an odd greenish-brown plant that you don't recognize. You frown, puzzled, but with your quarry already on the move there's no time to ponder. You untie the pouch and take it with you, tying it to your belt behind you so it's hidden by your cloak. Then, moving with haste, you manage to catch sight of the girl again, just as she leaves the area where the caravan is camped.
She heads out toward the main road, walking as though she were headed back to Hikeliar. The area is too wide-open to follow her directly without being seen... but if she is meeting someone who is stalking the caravan then you doubt she'll be going too far. You recall a grove of trees a ways down the road in the direction she's going, probably the best spot for such a clandestine meeting anywhere in the vicinity. Taking off at a run, you try to circle around toward it from the other direction.
The route to keep you out of sight ends up being very indirect, but your inhuman speed and stamina help make up the difference. Even so, it's a near thing. As you approach the grove, you catch a glimpse of her entering up ahead, and you increase your pace to catch up. Soon you're within the cover of the grove yourself, slipping from tree to tree as you close in on your quarry.
You quickly catch up to the girl again, following her as she walks deeper into the grove. You're not just watching her, though, but rather keeping your senses alert for anyone else. You don't intend to be so focused on following the girl that you get jumped by the sniper. But you detect no one else, just the two of you moving through the calm peace of the small forest.
Then, finally, you notice movement up ahead. But it isn't a human you see, once you get close enough to see between the trees. Rather, tied to one of those trees you see a familiar-looking horse grazing unattended there... with a familiar-looking hooded cloak and red scarf draped across it, and a familiar-looking crossbow strapped to the saddle.
Shit. This girl isn't working for the sniper. This girl is the sniper.
As the girl walks toward her horse, you hurriedly consider your options. You could just slip back to Eckenburg without alerting the girl to your presence, and focus your efforts on learning more about the pouch she left behind. It would, of course, mean that she would be gone long before you could send anyone else after her.
Or you could announce your presence to her, see if you can coax out some information about why she's doing this by engaging her in direct conversation. However, that would reveal that you were following her. She might even suspect that you saw her plant the pouch she left under the wagon, giving her more information to work with as well.
Or you could try to capture her right here and now, taking the horse and weapons as evidence. That might be your best chance to simply stop the attacks, and figure out what the reason behind them was. After all, the only thing she's technically demonstrated so far is an aptitude for marksmanship, and you're pretty sure you can grab her before she can reach her crossbow, let alone load it.
It wouldn't be playing to your strengths. Far from it. But then again, even though you're a terrible combatant as demons go, you'd like to think that you could at least overpower an unarmed human girl who can't be older than, at most, sixteen... right?
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