Avengard: The Fall of Senvia

Chapter 14 - The Deacon

It was midday when we caught up to Jenny. She hadn't taken a side road, as Eskir had loudly been theorising, but horses only walked a little faster than people, and we had stopped already for Eskir's meditation.

The wagon bumped as it struck a pothole that Jenny had jumped over. They were common in these parts. We were well past Ghost Lake, but the humidity still remained, and the river ran alongside the road. Frequent freeze and thaw cycles in the winter had water finding its way into the gaps in the cobblestone, then turning to ice to force it apart. Even filled with bramble and dirt, it left a permanent scar on the road. But our wagon wobbled down the cobblestone anyway. It was easier than the rutted dirt cartways designed for wagons, now muddy and hindering from the last night's storm.

"My my," snarked Eskir as we rolled past. "Look at who it is."

"Fuck off," she spat.

"Oh!" said Eskir, "And she's spicy, too. I didn't expect that from a pacifist."

She stopped in her tracks and spun to face Eskir. I reached over to pull back on the reins, signalling the guidance charm to stop the horses.

"I'm not a pacifist!" said Jenny. "And we're not terrorists either. That's bullshit the empire sends out in the papers. I'm just sick of war."

Eskir grinned. "Pacifist."

Jenny leapt for the wagon, climbed up its side, and decked Eskir in the head. He fell over with a "Aah!" half laughing and half shouting from pain.

Jenny straightened up and demounted from the wagon's sides. She brushed off her coat, still wet from the previous night, that she'd wrapped around her waist like a belt. "Just because we're not the ones fighting, doesn't make it right," she lectured. "Just because Kindred are basically gods on a battlefield compared to the rest of us, doesn't mean they should have to be. War should never be waged as a business, and that's exactly what the the guilds are. That's exactly what Kindred are."

Eskir shouted a mock wail. "Hurry Xera, we must flee! Flee for our lives! The pacifist is gonna get us!"

I couldn't stop myself from grinning. With a signalling motion, the horses resumed their march, leaving Jenny scrambling to reach the wagon to hit Eskir again.

"Oh, don't be like that!" said Eskir. "It's better than being a terrorist, right?"

She leapt, catching the wagon and climbing on board. She fell into Eskir, but the tone of rage she had carried in her voice was half gone now, and she was hitting him repeatedly with a thin, sarcastic smile.

"Bite me."

"Not my type, my lady. Sorry."

I let out a sharp huff of hair from my nose, then turned my head to look at the road ahead of us. The mud was clearing to dirt. We were reaching the edge of where the storm had passed by. I signalled the horses to move to the cartway, where the dirt would be easier on both the wagon's wheels and the horses themselves.

There was a figure in the distance, who had been obscured prior to that by the horse sitting in front of me. Whoever it was still had a ways to go before reaching us, and it was only one person anyway, but by habit and instinct, I expanded my senses and took a look.

A soft crunch greeted my ears before anything else. He was walking. His boots were probably soft, not clad in metal or any true measure of armour. Not an ambush, probably not even Kindred, just a lone traveller.

"Xera, help me!" said Eskir, splitting my ears in pain. "She's hitting me! The pacifist is hitting me!"

I squinted my eyes, straining for a better look through a lingering fog. At my signal, the horses stopped.