Beasts and Blades [ON HIATUS]

Chapter 9 - The Whip and The Wolf

She was silent for two days until they stopped in a village to stay overnight.

The nights before, they camped on rocky patches or slept on thin pallets, but it seems tonight even Kellian missed a proper bed.

It was a tiny, nameless village that no one could have any hope of finding on a map. A low key place for a Solarian general and his captive assassin to stay unnoticed. They stopped along the outskirts, where the torchlight couldn't reach them.

"I'm removing the chain," he said, already sifting through the ring of keys fastened at his hip.

He took the chain hanging between them, half the width of her wrist, and unfastened it from his belt, now worn and sagging where it was attached.

She picked at the hem of her stinking shirt while he came closer to unlock the chain from her shackles. "Why bother?" Her first proper conversation in two days, aside from asking for water, food and privacy.

"It seems like a bit much right now." The lock clicked. He coiled the length of metal, slinging it over his shoulder. He nodded to her wrists and ankles. "The shackles will have to stay."

"I'm not surprised," she said, wincing as rolling her stiff shoulders, relieved from the loss of weight. "And it would be a shame if you got hurt if they were removed." She threw him a silent threat.

He snorted. The action made him seem younger somehow, despite the violence she implied. "You can try."

She nodded towards his shoulder, where her knife had carved its mark. "Then what's that, general?"

"Something that won't happen again." He stared hard at her. "I assure you."

And with that, her proper conversation was over.

They made to a tiny inn located in the center of the village. If it could even be called an inn. It only had three rooms, not even a ground floor tavern.

They earned a series of looks and murmurs on the short walk there. The village people had probably never seen anything as interesting as the scene before them. A shackled, bedraggled seventeen year old girl escorted by a man of military work. Little did they all know everything that was interesting about them.

But none of those looks compared to the one she received once inside the inn. A man, rugged in every sense approached her and Kellian. She glanced at him from the corner of her eye. Burly, with the body structure of a tree trunk from the waist up, but with legs so thin it was comedic. His squarish face was pocked with craters; scars of blemishes. Dark coils of hair were tied behind his head, rebellious wisps escaping around his face, adding to his scraggly appearance. Keys chimed on his belt. Keys for unlocking shackles, as she learned from her time with the young general.

As well as the keys, a whip was coiled at his hip.

She had met men like this before. Brutish, arrogant people who worked with whips and fear. Slave drivers.

She kept her eyes downcast, allowing her limp hair to veil her face. She knew about the slaves, and the Queen's fondness of having them toil in Solaria. And the slaves, every single one, were all Therian. Like her. And she would have been as slave too, if she hadn't escaped all those years ago.

"She's a pretty one," the slaver said to Kellian, and she shuddered involuntarily when he peered through her hair. She squeezed her eyes shut, making it seem as though she was merely shaken. Though all she wanted was to keep her eyes hidden. "Very pretty."

"Good evening sir," Kellian said, evening his voice to sound painfully monotone. She didn't miss how he was avoiding starting a conversation on Maja's prettiness.