From Ashes and Snow

A Word of Warning

Chapter Fifteen: A Word of Warning

The smell of the burning bodies was putrid. Everything about them just seemed un-natural. Their sooty bodies, the pure empty hunger in their eyes that flashed with foreign cruelty. The most basic instincts in my body screamed that they were wrong, that they shouldn't even be walking on the land of Cadelith.

And yet here they were.

I resisted the urge to chew on the inside of my lip. A childish habit that I had kicked many years ago, but, with the weight of everything pressing down on my shoulders, I found myself turning to it again. The enormity of what had happened with those men wasn't lost to me.

Humans had pledged themselves to me. The creatures with soft-rounded ears and loud voices. Creatures who had formed such a bitter opinion inside of me from what they had done to me and my family when I was a girl. I wasn't the kind of person who Elves rallied to, never mind humans.

I had always done my own thing, with a stubbornness that had frustrated my mentors, but I respected them wholly. There was nothing inspirational about me – I didn't do dramatic speeches; I had the tact of an ox, and fumbled my way through most deep conversations, managing to insult people along the way.

"Oh Kendon," I said his name softly. "You always said that I was too hard-headed to be as tactful as an Elf. What would you say now, with these men pledging themselves to me?"

I knew what he would say. I could see him in my mind's eye. How that shocked, brilliant smile would break across his face. He would laugh – not at me. He never laughed at me in that mocking way I had become so used to as a child, but he laughed at the jokes I had said, the dry humour in my voice and the situations I always managed to get myself in.

"There you are," A voice, too merry for the scene before me, called out. I turned to find the Magister picking her way towards me around forlorn stumps of once mighty trees. She spotted the empty bowl I had left beside me, from when I had eaten my supper. Her mouth tightened, and I wondered if she considered it rude that I did not eat with them.

"Do you need something from me?" I said shortly. Thinking about Kendon so freely had loosened something in me, and I didn't want to be around any of these humans encase I unravelled.

"I was worried about where you had gone. It's getting dark again, and you were on your own." Her voice was dripping with concern.

My brows knitted in confusion, but I curbed another cutting comment. The Magister watched me closely, her lips pursed. A burn had singed the top of her ear, barely missed her tightly cropped hair. Did she keep her hair short, so she wouldn't burn it?

Fyr sighed and her shoulders loosened in defeat. "The Captain has posted Paladins in Abeth for a short period of time to oversee the defense of the village and to begin training the villagers. We can train the men who pledged themselves to our cause and bring them to Haaling."

"Abeth doesn't appeal to those with an adventurer's heart. But I think they'll find that Haaling is no more exciting." That sounded like a lie. Especially when I looked back to the ashen bodies in front of me. More would come, and we would need those soldiers who pledged themselves.

≻≺

Our little party stayed in Abeth for three more miserable days. I was used to the snipes, so the abuse the villagers hurled at me didn't bother me, but it amused me all the same to see how the Magister recoiled at their vile words. The Captain had witnessed a verbal sparring match between myself and a drunken man who had called me a 'feckin- tree hugger'.