Blood Tempered: Book 1 of the Sword Monk Saga

Blood Tempered: Part 11

With little to tell them were the princess might be kept and no scout to guide them, Caida and Olvera had decided to make for the battleground where she'd been captured.

"That's where the scout would have started, and he may well have left sign for those following," said Olvera.

"Well enough." Caida couldn't fault the logic, but he knew that it would mean riding through the ruins of Myed. The ruins of his past. It wasn't something he looked forward to.

"I still believe you should turn back," he said to Olvera. "That thing we encountered only proves that the journey ahead is perilous."

"You won't be rid of me that easily, Andine. Who's going to stitch you up if I'm not around?"

"I'll just have to avoid being wounded, I suppose." But he knew that the only way to rid himself of the portly man was to knock him out. Not that that was necessarily a bad plan. But the creature's words had planted a seed of doubt in his soul. He now wanted Olvera to go along, if only to keep an eye on him. There was more to the man than met the eye. It remained to be seen if that 'more' was of a treasonous nature.

It was a cold camp that night, fireless and silent. Neither man felt the inclination to talk. Caida did not want to reopen his wounds, and so did no forms. Instead he meditated under the brilliant and impassive stars. His meditation afforded him no answers to the questions that chased each other through his skull, and so after a time he told Olvera to sleep and took the first watch.

He spent half the night listening to wind and wolf and owl, then woke Olvera to take the second shift. Sleep was long in coming, and fitful once it arrived.