Iron and Wood #Wattys2017

Chapter Six

In the early morning, light filtered down through the tree leaves, shining a circle of sun onto the grass and ferns in the middle of the clearing and mottling the rest of the ground in gold and green. A woodpecker started drilling on a nearby tree, and squirrels rustled in the branches.

A droplet of cold dew fell on Shal's forehead. She sat bolt upright.

"Lady Ella?" She looked around frantically. "Ella?!!"

"I'm over here, Templar," Ella's voice said from the other side of the grazing horse.

Shal ran her hand through her hair. She ached all over from sleeping in full armour, slumped against the tree. The blood should have given her enough energy to stay awake-

The blood! Shal scrambled to find the bottle. It was lying on its side next to her, empty except for a few teaspoons. She emptied it out into her mouth, shaking it down to the last drop. All the sustenance she had, wasted.

"Why didn't you wake me up?" Shal hurried over to where Ella was putting a brush back into the saddle bag.

"I figured that if you're to protect me, you should be rested," she shrugged.

"I was keeping guard, you airheaded brat."

Shal's mood had taken a turn for the downright foul. At this rate, the Trackers would be on top of them by noon.

Ella blinked.

"Now, I know you're only in this for the money," she turned and began her retort. "So shouldn't you show more respect for the one whose grandfather is going to pay you?"

"I've never had much respect for girls who never learned what the world is like outside of castle walls." The horse snorted as Shal roughly tightened his girth.

"I know plenty about outside."

"Whatever you learned from the inside of a carriage doesn't count, especially considering you'd be surrounded by guards."

"Considering I never had a choice but to be treated like a lady, I think my knowledge is valuable."

The people of Ceyose were always much too frightened to argue with a Templar. Shal stopped herself from reminding Ella of this fact.

"But consider this," she snapped instead. "I'm not being paid to treat you like a lady, I'm being paid to cart you like a sack of potatoes from one end of this godforsaken kingdom to the other. Now get on the horse."

They stared at each other, the girl unfazed, her blue eyes meeting Shal's defiantly. Ella blew a strand of hair out of her face.

"I would never treat a horse the way you did last night," she declared, stroking the horse's neck. "His poor mouth is probably torn to pieces."

"Had I been gentler, he wouldn't have run fast enough for us to escape," Shal told her, feeling her irritation rise. She could already tell the next few weeks were going to be painful. "Did you eat?"

"I had a piece of the bread from the backpack."

"Fine. We can get moving right away," Shal untied the horse's reins, motioning for Ella to climb up. She did not.

"What's your name, Templar?"

"Does it matter?"

"I think it does."

Ella talked down to her like one commanding a slow servant. Shal closed her eyes for a moment.

"My name is Shal Sung. And you are Ella Avaldottir," she said impatiently. "Now please, get on the horse before the trackers come and rip us apart."

"They wouldn't rip me apart," Ella mounted the horse. Shal climbed up behind her. "They want me alive for the Turning."

"First of all, if they don't find us soon enough, they will choose a noble maid from the crowd, and bite her instead, and when they do find us they will rip you apart," Shal took hold of the reins. "Secondly, the trackers definitely plan to eat me no matter what they do with you, which is something I want to avoid."

Shal kicked off the horse at a fast, bumpy trot, and Ella was silent for a minute.

"I knew a Dangyongese man named Sung," she said as the forest thickened. "Lok Sung, a navigator. He had a little half-Ceyosian daughter, too. I played with her on my father's ship."

Shal's heart dropped.

"Really?" she forced her voice to sound disinterested.

"Yes. She was a little older than me. We played make-believe on the decks and got underfoot until the sailors threatened to throw us overboard. They didn't mean it, though."

Shal could not see Ella's face. Her gauntlets tightened on the reins.

"I was five," Ella continued. "So you must have been... seven?"

"I doubt that was me," Shal said firmly.

"She was half-Dangyongese and named Sung, and so are you. You're the right age, too."

"I seriously doubt this." Shal's heart was beating fast and light on the inside of her chest.

"I remember it," the girl continued. "You always dressed like a boy, and once you found one of the sailors' rings that had been lost on the ground, and you got down on one knee in front of me and-"

"I think you're thinking about someone else," Shal spoke over her.

"Do you really not remember?" Ella asked. "It's not like we were tiny babies."

"I don't remember anything before I was sold to the Templars," Shal said. "I was nine then."

"Why not?"

"They used a spell to wipe my memory," Shal told her exasperatedly. "As they do to all new Templars. I found a note in my pocket that mentioned he was my father, and that he sold my siblings too. I guess it was left there by accident. But if I played with you as a child on your father's ships, I don't remember it."

"But you were on the ship?" Ella pried.

"All I know is that my father is a called Lok Sung and that he's scum," Shal said with increasing defensiveness. "There wasn't much on the note."

Ella paused.

"That must be terrible, not being able to remember any of your childhood," she said softly.

The horse was walking precariously down a steep bank. Shal was anxious to get on the flat ground where they could canter or gallop again, and then maybe Ella would shut up.

"It could be worse," she said reservedly. "My friend Felix knows nothing."

"Why would they do that to you?" Ella sounded shocked.

The girl was too soft. She definitely knew nothing about the world outside of the bright halls of palaces, where everything was clean and pretty. Shal urged the horse forward, down the remainder of the hill.

"Because our entire lives are devoted in service to the Emperor," she said as patiently as she could. "At least mine is- was. All Immortals have Templars guarding them."

"What are you going to do when you get your reward for saving me, then?" the girl inquired.

"I'm going to find my father and kill him for selling me to the Templars," Shal said bluntly. "After I make him tell me who has my little brother and sister. Then I'm going to find them and free them, one way or another, and then we'll go further east in Dangyong and disappear."

"Oh."

Ella didn't have much to say after that. They had reached the bottom of the hill. The trees were sparser here. Shal sent the horse off at a gallop.