Fate - First Reply Of Sacred Things

[Alphonse Duyarte]

SAALIM

The sun came from over the horizon like some avenging god, wrathfully banishing the dark in its wake with a flood of dizzying hues and blanketing the landscape in its nigh forgotten embrace. Even a little bit of the chill fled at the onset of the new day, thankfully.
​

Saalim's first thought as he awoke was how his hands ached, and he remained unsure of what to be thankful for when the cold made his numb fingers disobedient to even simple commands. This was hardly uncommon when sleeping by the wayside and he should have become accustomed to such discomforts after so many miles on the road, especially in the manner that they travelled.

There was certainly no reason why he shouldn't have, for they had done it for the past several grueling nights. Finding whatever sleep they could under trees and hedgerows in the absence of a tavern. If one could grow sick of nature, one could definitely grow sick of a bedroll under the stars.

He also somehow doubted that this would be the last time, even as the city was only a few hours' ride away.

Only a taste of civilization, a mere nibble that'd only serve to whet an appetite before stealing into the wilds once again. His previous thoughts and comments about the nature of their departure made it apparent that if the stoicism of his partners did not bring back the bedrolls, then the necessity of concealment from the authorities probably would.

He thought about griping and groaning, then thought better of it.

Not because someone had gotten to it first, but due to the sheer absence of protest from the others. His present company went about the routines of the day without complaint, orderly and methodically, their sleep was just as restless as his. They possessed the strength to continue on with little more than a few curt commands to tie this up or to get the horses saddled, and so would he.

Not to mention that the looks on their faces did not necessarily invite any easygoing quips.

Saalim ultimately kept his silence, picked himself up on legs made unsteady by the same chill and proceeded to help break camp. What was he to say, anyway? He probably knew how they would reply, Alphonse or Liesjte; that his lordship should have found a tavern to his liking, though good luck finding one on this road within a day's ride.

"I find it a better morning view than any tavern's walls."

The western sky was an almost endless blue now, leaking into the skyline and streaking the early morning with the occasional cloud, suffusing at last the red of dawn. Alphonse seemed to have read Saalim's mind as he watched the changes with eyes made clear by the long overdue rest, wafting a hand over a steaming flask as Saalim spoke,

"There is nothing wrong with the occasional creature comfort."

"Perhaps not, but even so I will not complain for lacking them." Alphonse took a ginger sip of what must have been some leftover tea, but Saalim could see no remains of the fire now. They stayed like that for a moment longer before he gave a generous shrug of what was presumably assent for the younger man's view, for he pointed in the direction of the city. "All that's left is a few hour's ride, if that? There will be beds and some proper stew there and I wouldn't have you say that I am unmerciful, so do feel free to avail yourself of all the creature comforts you can. By tomorrow we'll be prowling amongst the lambs and the wolves alike, and I doubt we'll be granted the time later to enjoy downy cushions."

"May we get this business over with swiftly then, it's been some time since I've seen... home. And enjoyed a bed without time constraints."

"Then get the bloody horses saddled, and do wake up that elf by the time we're prepared to leave."

He did as he was told, first by dealing with the horses, uncertain of whether she was awake or not and therefore deciding to leave it last. He tripped and fell on Liesjte's multitude of bags, tugged and grunted at the leather straps holding the saddles in place, then finally did he turn to where the four of them rested for the night with mail on one shoulder and a personal satchel on the other. He was still hardly awake, but the ride was to be short and he was equally pacified by the chance of finally sleeping indoors.

Then it would be the streets of Oban, and then? They could only see. He called out a polite greeting to Liesjte after untripping himself from her bags of tools and poultices, and went to where Hahnah last laid her head. He called out prematurely around the bend of the tree, clumsily striding the rest of the distance with short, awkward steps. "I hope you've slept well. The ride may be short but nobody ever likes doing it in the early morning, and there is no way to avoid it, so we must simply strive to tolerate it."

Soon they would be on their way to throw their mission upon a gamble. All he could do was let the dice fly.

 

[Hahnah]

Hahnah had fallen into a deep sleep. Perhaps pulled down into it by the weight of the wounds suffered at the hands and feet of the corrupt soldiers. By the light of the morning she had come to curl up in the typical fetal position, her green cloak over her (mostly over her) like a blanket.

Some stirring as she heard the voices of the others, these at first simply incorporated into her dream, seamlessly stitched into the tapestry and the spell of the dream unbroken. But with daylight on her eyelids and with Alphonse and Saalim's continued conversation, the dream began to fall apart and give way to reality. Fragmentary pieces of awareness. Where she was. That she was an elf. That Menura happened. The sound of her true name. The resurgence of the aches in her beaten body.

And then, at last, the awareness that someone was near and speaking to her. Her eyes opened slowly, groggily, and she turned her head slightly to look. Saalim. She smiled, a small and slight gesture.

"I slept as well as I could."

Hahnah slowly rose up to sit upon the bedroll, brushing strands of her hair aside from her face.

The ride may be short but nobody ever likes doing it in the early morning, and there is no way to avoid it, so we must simply strive to tolerate it.

"I may not complain of pain, nor of suffering. I must never."

It seemed to her entirely appropriate to exclude herself from giving voice to such lamentations. In her path she had left a trail of mothers without daughters, fathers without daughters, and others who were loved stolen from the world. She was her own killer, taking away the Kylindrielles and the Elurdriths that Arethil was so blessed to have, leaving elves and humans alike who were as her without them. The suffering of her beleaguered body paled in comparison.

She stood, her nose wrinkling with the effort to hold in a wince and a grimace.

And then she asked of Saalim, straightforward and with no hesitation, "May I ride with you this time?"

Alphonse Duyarte

 

[Alphonse Duyarte]

SAALIM

"I may not complain of pain, nor of suffering. I must never."

"You mustn't? My master would have said otherwise, for vows of silences and flagellations are pitiable in that they only serve to create another victim of one's actions."

He frowned for a moment.

"It's satisfying only to those you've caused harm, but it does not, I think, bring balance to any scales."​

Saalim was not certain if that was what Hahnah had meant by her comment--in which case he looked like the fool--but with what he witnessed from this elf so far it seemed like he was probably right. Her actions continued to haunt her, quite possibly for good reason, and he doubted the vague reassurances he made would help overly much. Though he spoke the words anyway.

His attempts at being conversational would at least help to pass the time. To keep his worries at bay.

And who knew? Even if his words did not come close to reconciling Hahnah with healthier ways to deal with her past, then they might assist in bringing the elvish girl a little more out of her shell. He did not intend to push her to it, though, and his words were spoken almost dismissively; certainly not in any way that he imagined would make them sound deep or profound. Merely advice to be proffered in the hopes that she take it.

It was difficult to take the advice with any gravity anyways--as nothing in this scene called for it, for the half-disassembled camp and the bedraggled and disheveled state of the party moving about in rote monotony was not particularly picturesque, nor very moving.

Indeed it looked to be far too early in the morning to be making grand statements. Saalim's eyes were half-lidded, whatever hair he didn't have shaved was tangled in the night due to their rough sleeping arrangements, and his boots were splattered with mud, their shine concealed by lumps of churned grass left in the puddles made in the wake of their horse's hooves. He was already half-turned to return to the others before Hahnah arose.

Then she made her request, he paused, permitted a careless shrug to accompany the smile he finally returned. "I don't see why not." Saalim, watching the elf's unsteady ascent with some sympathy, spoke again. "To Oban, and to your Mina, then?"

* * *
​

They made better time than he dared hope, and he was almost surprised by how quickly the city suddenly appeared in front of them when they at last reached Oban's boundaries. Not quite like a mirage, but instead the land quite suddenly discovered from an ocean's voyage. They, however, were not riding upon any ocean, merely a series of gently rolling hills and a gradually thinning cluster of forests as they reached the coast, until they finally came upon the towering walls of citadels and battlements.

Oban, Alphonse admitted to Hahnah and the others, was looking its best. He noted to Saalim the state of its massive fortifications and the ever imposing presence of the Beaufort castle, it was a city unable to disguise the prosperity behind many of the newly plastered buildings and tiled masonry adorning the architecture visible beyond the wall's crest. Not to mention the strength of its bulwarks and how, despite being a trade city, its crenels bristled with armed men aimlessly patrolling the firesteps.

They were still minutes away from those crowded gatehouses, yet the noise of a hundred peoples rang clear.

As the morning transitioned to evening, Saalim welcomed the languorous warmth of the coast, the smell and sounds of the sea and the people, along with all the other familiarities that he knew by heart from his own city. This place would not be his home, yet he could not help but appreciate the sight. Their horses were at a dismally slow walk, allowing his idle eyes to wander from one place to another with a mixture of curiosity and a healthy degree of apprehension. Beautiful, but dangerous by all accounts.

Maybe it was like a mirage in some ways, he thought.

Then he noticed Liesjte fiddling with one of the bags presumably holding the travelling papers they were able to get their hands on in the last town. He watched her for a moment longer before finally turning his head to the side as if an afterthought had come to him, craning over to glance at Hahnah's bruised face.

"I don't imagine we'll have any trouble, though they might ask questions of your... situation, but they'll doubtless waive any thorough inspection if it's a busy time of year for travelers," he shrugged. "I could not truthfully claim to know."

"People are curious creatures and you will, without a doubt, give them another reason to be. I sincerely suggest that you try not to tell them the details of our actual purpose here, since it's likely that they will ask." Liesjte spoke with folded hands in her lap, reins slipped through open fingers.

"It shouldn't be too unbearable, and after this we can have your wounds properly mended, rest for a while, perhaps even find something edible. Then we will see if we can't find these guardsmen of ours."

He turned back to stare at their destination, fidgeting in his saddle. "Shall we?"

Saalim directed the last query to Alphonse who had seemingly tried his best to look presentable in a newly brushed and slightly less wrinkled cloak, and who was currently busy with studying what lay ahead with an air of impatient scrutiny. Now that they were finally here, their work could finally begin, but where to begin? There were no tracks to follow here--at least not any that were visible to the naked eye, and the city was, now that they've finally witnessed it first-hand, an imposing one. Where to begin indeed?

They were close enough now to penetrate the sparse crowds upon the road leading to the gate, to the guards they were just another party of travelers. Not even the oddest looking ones at that, Saalim noted with some satisfaction, hoping it meant that this would be simpler than they had originally imagined.

 

[Hahnah]

THE GATES OF OBAN​

To Oban. To Mina.

Only, as the Widow Woods gave way and Hahnah looked upon the gargantuan walls and the reaching spires of the city behind them, the sheer scale of it viewable from a distance was staggering. It had been her experience that in Alliria she'd not the faintest idea of its sprawling size until she was well within it, up to her knees in the proverbial mud of the city. Her resolve to rescue Mina was absolute, but the how of it was the part in which now crept uncertainty. The utter complexity of the approaching city of Oban was daunting.

"They are like the redwoods," Hahnah said breathlessly, staring at the spires and towers and the battlements of the Beaufort Castle which peered effortlessly over the wall.

And there was a smell. A smell which Hahnah had seldom encountered. As she sat behind Saalim, her gaze trailed and sniffed audibly, as if trying to track down the source of it. "The sea..." she whispered. Struck again by that awe when she for the first time had witnessed its seemingly endless expanse. "We are near to the sea."

Still ahead, at the arching gates of the city, the crowd of people on foot, on horseback, on wagons and among caravans were queued to enter. The waning hours of the day oft saw the busiest time at the gates, and this was no exception.

The proximity to the city sparked conversation between Saalim and Liesjte. Saalim was reassuring and Liesjte, with clarity, spoke of a practical matter in plain terms. One Hahnah understood all too well from her time walking among them.

Her tongue moved faster than her reticence. "I will be untruthful where it is necessary." Immediately afterward she blushed with embarrassment, realizing how her own words there, and how readily she had said them, could well be reframed. She had not wanted to lie to Saalim, to Liesjte, to Alphonse, but...there were some things that she had been afraid to tell them. Things, in her mind, more incendiary than her outright confession of murder. Because murder, at least, was familiar. Mundane and of this world.

The thought of her wounds being mended, rest after the long day of travel, and food (her stomach had twisted horrendously upon itself in throes of hunger) was a welcome respite from her gaffe, and she nodded enthusiastically in response.

And forward they went.

Forward toward the gates and the crowd of arrivals before them.

As Saalim had speculated, there wasn't too thorough of an inspection process going on ahead. The guardsmen were stopping and talking to everyone, but it all seemed scarcely above routine. The queue was a touch slow-going at first, but after a particularly petulant merchant at the head of a caravan, whose shouts could be heard all the way to the back of the queue quite clearly (he was complaining rather vocally about how much he preferred dealing with bandits and raiders over taxes and inspections), had been waved through, the gateway he and his large caravan had clogged opened up and the queue flowed much more smoothly. The general idle chatter of the travelers, merchants, citizens and all the rest waiting to get into Oban died down considerably as the queue shortened, but still a din among those waiting.

Eventually, one of the guardsmen waved Alphonse's group over to the rightmost gateway arch. A group of four guardsmen were posted at this particular entrance. They awaited the approach of the group.

Casual, if a bit weary from repetition, the head guardsman addressed Alphonse and the rest, "Welcome to Oban, travelers. What is the nature of your visit to--?"

An interjection from another of the guardsmen. At Hahnah. "Velaeri be good, what the hell happened to you?"

Hahnah glanced to Liesjte. To Alphonse. To Saalim in front of her. And then to the guard who had interjected. (The fourth guardsman had stepped away, yawning, and entering into the gatehouse as this was going on.)

And she said to the inquiring guard, "I was introduced to a drink called beer. I became dizzy and stupid after too many of these foul-tasting drinks, and I said and did some things which earned me swift ire. That ire resulted in what you see."

Hahnah hoped that her excuse was good enough, that she had not misunderstood crucial details in her observations and relayed them incorrectly. Beer was like ale (so she thought), and ale she had tasted while in Menura, and it was foul, foul enough for her to spit it out immediately, so that was probably right. She knew about taverns, that people drank copious amounts of beer and ale in them while they spoke with each other, and she knew that the people who drank a lot of these ales and beers did, by her reckoning, become dizzy and stupid. So she couldn't be...too off?

The two lower-ranking guards looked at one another.

A beat passed.

And then they broke their composure and chuckled, laughed outright, one of them covering his face with a hand and shaking his head. The head guardsman, with pursed lips, struggled to contain his own mirth.

"Had your first drink, huh?" said one of the guards.

"Elves," said the guard with his face in his hand, barely managing through his laughs. "Why is it always elves...?"

The head guardsman cleared his throat. Waved his hand back at the other two a mild, get-it-together sort of gesture. Then finished his question to Alphonse. "Alright, alright. So, then, what is the nature of your group's visit to Oban?"

* * * * *​

The fourth guardsman, the one who had who stepped away and into the gatehouse built into the wall, walked past his comrades inside, they who sat on their leisure time, they who were donning their arms and armor for their shift, they who were doffing their arms and armor at the end of theirs. The fourth guardsman walked to a closed door and knocked upon it.

"Enter," came the voice from within.

And the fourth guardsman did, shutting the door after himself. The office of an officer of the guard, well-lit by lanterns, and Investigator Laython sat at his desk, scrawling away with a quill upon parchment, not lifting his head to regard the man who had just entered.

"Sir," said the guardsman. "I believe we may have one."

Investigator Laython looked up. "Oh?"

"A group of four. Two men, two women, one of whom is an elf. This elf has quite clearly been beaten by someone recently."

"And they are travelers? Not soldiers?"

"Yes, sir."

Laython rubbed his chin. Tracking down smugglers, traffickers, they who would despoil the streets of Oban by covertly dragging innocent men, women, even children, off to the very harbor that was the lifeblood of the city, this was the domestic duty by which Laython had distinguished himself. But there had been whispers and reports most concerning, about the very soldiers of Oban's military also participating in this vile trade. Some small unscrupulous handful of them likely, but just one corrupt soldier was one too many. Laython was determined to see them hang. Not just because this would likely mean a promotion from lieutenant to captain for him, but because his blood boiled at the thought of Cerak At'Thul, of Molthal, profiting directly from Oban's fair ports.

Laython pondered the situation for a moment. Then said, "I doubt that they would be involved directly, but it is possible that they may know something, if they are indeed working for slavers."

"Shall I alert our asset? Tangir?"

Laython pondered a moment more. "Yes." A pause. "Yes, do that. If that oily scoundrel wants to stay out of a cell, he'll not muck this up."

The fourth guardsman offered a salute. "It will be done, sir."

Alphonse Duyarte