Remnants

The Brothers Cooper

"Really, Brian? Tackling my apprentice?" Jack said with a chuckle as he hauled his sprawled apprentice from the forest floor.

"What? You said not to let her get away. Besides, I really just bumped her," Brian, Jack's larger and older brother said as he flipped up his night vision goggles.

"Bumped? If you call that a bump, I'd hate to see what actually being hit by you would feel like," Anya said, rubbing the spot that was likely still sore on her forehead.

"You two are both being way to rough with her if you ask me," Jack heard a voice from behind him say as the mechanical whirring sound moved towards the voice.

Jack's youngest brother, Henry held out a hand and caught the hovering drone in his hand as he joined his two brothers. He nudged Brian with his elbow, barely moving the large, friendly man.

The youngest Cooper brother also happened to be the smallest, standing at only six feet tall. He was lean like Jack and was quick on his feet, possibly the fastest in a straightaway sprint. His face was clean shaven, never seeming to be able to grow much more facial hair than a thin mustache and goatee of sandy brown hair. He had the same green-brown eyes of his brothers but had a paler complexion. He also had a special interest in gear and gadgets and had provided the drone and night vision goggles for this night exercise.

"You're just worried about your precious NODs," Brian teased his youngest brother, using the acronym for the night optic devices they wore mounted on ballistic helmets.

"Well it's not like you're one to fall gracefully," Henry said, his white grin flashing in the dark night.

"Hey, I did that on purpose! Well, mostly. I didn't want to squish her," Brian said with a shrug.

"And I'm sure she's very grateful for that right?" Jack said, putting an arm around Anya's shoulder. He felt her shoulders rising and falling and could tell that she was still panting from the dead sprint she made at the end. It was a desperate attempt to win the exercise, one that could have worked had Brian not been in a good position to run her down. In all likelihood, his older brother had probably slipped back into his football playing days and saw her as an escaping running back who needed to be brought down before they had a chance at scoring a touchdown.

"Yes, so grateful. Thanks for only tackling me and not also crushing me," she said, reaching out and punching the man in his broad shoulder.

Brian made a big show of staggering away from the punch and rubbing his shoulder, as if the significantly smaller Anya had struck him with near earth shattering strength. Jack rolled his eyes at him. Brian had all daughters and had immediately bonded with the green eyed magic user over bad jokes, wild stories of his brothers' childhoods, and the biggest thing they had in common, their broken noses and loud sleeping habits. Brian's had been broken during his time as a football player and he and Anya seemed to battle nightly in a contest of who could snore the loudest from their rooms in the inn.

"Ok, after that punch I think we're even," Brian groaned jokingly.

"I'm sure you'll never be able to recover," Henry said with a stinging pat on his brother's back and a laugh.

Without warning and with shocking speed, Brian whirled around and slugged Henry in the arm, causing the smaller statured man to nearly wilt to the ground. Jack found himself rolling his eyes again as he heard Anya giggle at the two brothers' sudden return to their youthful ways. Henry knelt to scoop up some slushy snow to sling at his brother but froze when he heard the authoritative clearing of a voice.

"Boys, can we act like grownups? Please?" asked a male voice over the clip-clopping sound of several hooves.

The master Journeyman turned around to nod at one of his closest friends, Matt, the preacher who had spoken at Chuck's funeral back in the fall. The man in his mid forties had agreed to follow along with the horses and a radio that was connected to the village guard's frequency. Henry and Brian both stopped their roughhousing and grinned up at the mounted man who looked down at them with mock severity.

"Really, acting like children in front of the young lady?" he asked, unable to conceal the smirk that forced its way onto his face.

Jack took his loyal mount, George's, reins in hand and swung up onto the gray stallion's saddle. "It makes you wonder why I bring them along at all," he said with a wink.

Henry took the reins to his paint mare, one that had once been Chuck's, and looked up at his mounted older brother and plainly said, "Because, Jack, you'd never catch her without us."

Brian took the reins to his and Anya's horse and politely helped the her into her saddle, despite the fact that she was a better rider and had significantly less trouble mounting a horse than the larger, older man. "Exactly, your apprentice would be out here on this cold early spring night making you look bad without Henry's drone and my...um...bumping skills," Brian said, giving an apologetic grin to the blonde young woman whose horse stood next to his.

"Next time maybe I won't go so gentle with the tree magic," Anya said, squinting at the man who had nearly crushed her.

Brian chuckled happily as the five companions began their ride back to the village. Jack and Anya took the lead as the other three riders fell in formation behind them on the moonlit path.

"You know, you're getting better," Jack said without looking away from the road ahead of him.

"Really?" he heard Anya ask. "It doesn't really feel like it. I don't think I've succeeded in a single one of these training exercises," she said with a not so hidden tone of exasperation.

"What better way to learn than failure? Back when I was in the police academy, they put us through training scenarios with actors, simunition guns, and big angry guys in padded suits. I don't think anybody ever did one of those scenarios right but each time we learned a hard lesson. And you have so much more to learn than we did back then. One day you could find yourself on your own again-," he said, trailing off and thinking of the body of the man later identified as Eric, torn into four pieces by the trees that the frustrated twenty-one year old who rode beside him. Thinking of her limp body on the ground, of the days of near comatose recovery.

"Right," she said with a subtle nod.

Jack looked over at her now. The camouflage paint on her face did little conceal her pained expression at the memory of her near death experience. Even in the dim moonlight, he could see her piercing green eyes as she met his gaze. Ever since that day, she had seemed so filled with sorrow. He had been too. She seemed to hide it better but everyone close to her could see that her experience in that pecan grove haunted her. It was likely that she truly believed she was going to die and that is an exceptionally difficult feeling to recover from.

The unsure master did his best to put on a confident front as he nodded at his apprentice, "We'll get there. I won't put you in danger again until I know you're ready."

The five weary riders rode through the steel reinforced gates and back into the safety and security of the well guarded village. Henry and Matt each left to ride to their homes as the three residents of the inn turned on their path home.

Jack winced when Anya spoke up as they neared the stable at the inn, the apprentice announcing, "I'm still telling Aly you shot me in the face."