By the next morning, we had come to the last place I was expecting to be. The area surrounding the city was gray and desolate, yet it was still being put to use as farmland and lower-class housing. The exterior of the area was vast, but it was the city that truly stood out. Towering in the distance were gray walls, black if there was no sum. Their number and height made the place look like a prison, and the overcasting clouds were only helping the scene look much more darker.
“Welcome to Mentings,” Valen said in his grim tone. It was the first thing he said to us that day as the four of us got out of the carriage. Sleep was difficult when the whole thing was shaking all night long, so I wasn’t the most receptive person that morning. Then again, neither was anyone else. Even Valen, who looked significantly worse than yesterday seemed like he was on the edge. Any moment, he would snap. I did my best not to tick him off. Especially after yesterday. I could only imagine how hard it must be to lose two of your kinsmen on the same day.
Then there was Thomas and Caroline. The girl was old enough to understand what was happening, but too young to really understand. Thomas was aware and he was taking it out on Elena and I. But now was not the time for me to speak my thoughts. Elena had put her foot down. Thomas and I would have to keep our issues to ourselves. Fine by me. It was just him that had to be worried about.
“Thomas, Caroline,” Valen said, gesturing for them to come forward. He turned and pointed at the gray city of Mentings that stood in the background. “This is where your journey ends. You two will go down and walk up to the front gate and tell them your name. If they were expecting you to arrive through some convoy, tell them you were attacked and fled.”
“This is really it, isn’t it?” Thomas asked vaguely. Valen gave a grim nod, then glanced over to Mentings. “Then this is the part where I thank you for being an excellent protector and wish you well on your journeys.”
There was an awkward silence between Elena and I when Thomas shook hands. They then descended down the road. Valen wasn’t much for goodbyes, so he was already back up on the carriage.
“Lets go,” he said. We went back through the woods for a day, stopped in the middle of the night to rest, and continued on for another day. We had been traveling for a couple of days now and were already starving. This wasn’t so new for me, but the experience was never something I looked forward to. Being an orphan, whether or not I was protected by the law, I still experienced starvation from time to time growing up. Sometimes the harvests would not do so well, so the excess had to be sold in order to cover costs.
In times good, I was able to scrap off of the Daunderfell’s unused food. Things spoiled relatively quickly, so whatever was not consumed was tossed aside or used for another means. For food, it was often given to livestock or used to enrich the soil. In some ways, their waste helped feed the food cycle in Crossroads. But that only worked with a smaller population size. Mentings looked much bigger than Crossroads on the outside. I could only come to think of how much bigger it really was on the inside of the of those massive gray walls.
Elena had grown ill from the starvation. Valen urged her to keep it together just a little longer. Right after that, we stopped. Elena was too weak to get out of the carriage, so I went out to be her eyes. She looked terrible with her face paled and her eyes cloudy. She hardly spoke and the only noise she did make was the sound of her stomach moaning. It was not pleasant being in the cramped carriage for over a day with her. But I went through with it regardless. If I wasn’t going to be the resilient one, then who was?
Getting out, I saw Valen talking to men who were dressed identical to him. I thought they were more of his kinsmen and the way they gave me the same grim looks that Valen did, my suspicions were confirmed. One of them whistled and a rider emerged from the nearby woods, a second horse being tugged by the reins accompanied the rider.
“Get Elena,” Valen ordered. I didn’t want to jeopardize her welfare, so I did as he told me and went back to help her out. She had a very hard time standing on her own, so I decided to just pick her up. She was light enough from her illness and I was used to carrying around bales of hay as heavy as her. Valen came over and picked her up from my arms. He then got her loaded onto the vacant horse. The ranger atop the other mare then guided her and her mount back into the woods.
“Where are they taking her?” I asked. I had basically handed her over to someone I had known nothing about. I had a right to be suspicious.
“She’ll be riding ahead,” the ranger said, crossing his arms. “My kinsmen will take care of her while we head over there by foot.”
“And where is that?” I asked, continuing my inquiry. “Where exactly?”
“We’re near Ravensfell,” Valen said. He spoke another few words before walking off into the woods. “The home of rangers.”
