[While on a rescue mission gone crazed, a holy warrior and a rogue fight bandits, demons, and the urge to rip each other's clothes off.]
The mission, rescuing a princess, could be going better.
Séa is an earnest paladin, honest and gullible. Tash is...
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Bruised gray and purple clouds gathered as the trio slipped across the east-west highway and paralleled a dirt track that shunted off to the north. Ghomarck dismissed the idea of using the path itself, citing the need to avoid watchers.
Mild curiosity stirred Séa. "Who's watching?"
"Well, I don't—" Ghomarck gestured aimlessly. "Conspirators in this kidnapping. Possibly."
Séa's romantic instincts flared up. "Maybe some gnomes? Wearing telescopes over their eyes?"
With gnarled fingers the wizard massaged his forehead. "Lady Séa, I don't know who and I don't know whether. I am merely being cautious, as seems merited by the situation."
Séa glanced right and left. Only conical evergreens populated her vision. "So ... nobody's watching, but we have to hide anyway?"
"It's all right, Séa," Tash said from behind her. "Let's let him be paranoid. We don't know enough to contradict him. I mean, I'd guess politics before religion, but if a god arranged this and the god needs spies, who am I to argue?"
"If there are spies, I hope they're gnomes with telescope eyes."
A splutter of amusement erupted behind Séa. Tash said, "I didn't know paladins were so goofy. Personally, I'm not sure about the gnomes, either. Kneecap wasn't face-to-face with them. There's room for doubt."
Séa might have continued to query them (what else was there to do, beside talk?) but an undulating line of butterflies painted an orange filament across their path. Filled with bright flashes of beating wings, the kaleidoscope flowed through the trees like weightless liquid. The sight drew a sigh of appreciation from her. Danger and beauty. This journey has both. "All right," she said.
Forging their own trail cost them in time and loose pine needles that burrowed into their armor and needled their way under the skin. The horses, too, grew less and less willing to climb and descend steep, rocky slopes. But before equine rebellion set in, and with plenty of daylight left to see by, they glimpsed black stonework through the conifers. They had arrived. Saddles came off the horses and bags of oats went in, after which all was forgiven. The humans, too, wolfed trail rations and rubbed at sore backs.
By chance, or, perhaps, by Ghomarck's design, they occupied high ground. Through gaps in foreground trees, they could chart out the elementary but daunting fortifications. Four tall walls enclosed a yard. Buildings might stand in the yard, but only a bird could directly see them. The tops of the walls bristled with dozens of war engines. A deep but dry moat surrounded the walls on all four sides. All plant life had been burned away from the jumbled, rocky terrain in which Buzzard keep squatted. The upward thrusting tongue of the drawbridge largely obscured the iron bars of the gate.
Sinuous green tendrils waved languidly in the bottom of the yawning circular ditch. "The moat bottom's alive," Séa said. She then returned to chewing her lower lip.
