Season's Change Winter's Plight Book 1

35 Found

Katana sat on a branch of her own and leaned against the massive trunk of the tree. She was much higher in it than he was, but she could see the ground clearly. After she forced her eyes away from him, she scanned the horizon for any signs of danger. They were still far from the trade route. The sun was behind them. It had already peaked and was making its descent into the western horizon. Soon they would retire to their cave. They would eat and then either tell stories or train. He had become relentless on the training floor, but every move he made was calculated and precise. He developed counters to counters and attacks that she had never seen before. He had effectively combined his fighting style and knowledge with hers, mixing things up and giving him the ability to block a weapon with his hands rather than a blade and to pull his opponent into a fight without out one, then bring his blades right back into the mix. It was often dizzying, but very effective. She felt pride swell. She closed her eyes. She could see him moving through routine after routine. His execution was flawless but untested. That sent a shock of fear there her. Would it work on the battlefield? She took a slow deep breath. Of course, it would.

He often trained in only his breeches which left his strong torso bare. He had a scar on his back from the denizen attack and one on his ribs from her blade. The other marks she had left on him had faded to nothing as they healed. Perhaps that was an answer to her prayers, perhaps it was not. She would not ever know. He was not hairless, and she could not understand why he was not. She saw no purpose for the hair on his chest or at the nape of his neck and not between his hips either, but it was there. In fact, she did not understand why humans had hair anywhere other than the tops of their heads. His arms and legs were covered in it. It was even on the tops of his feet and the backs of his big strong hands. It was soft. That much she knew from the few times she had woken up with her ear over his heart. She enjoyed listening to it beat and feeling the rise and fall of his chest while he slept. She did not understand that anymore that she understood the purpose for his body hair. She shook the thoughts and images from her mind. She was not supposed to think of him that way. They were, what did he call it? Friends, not lovers. She did not really understand that either. She knew she would give him anything and halfway understood the look that would occasionally fill his eyes when he looked at her. She knew the way he made her feel but did not understand that not so little pull she felt in her heart and belly when he looked at her that way. She only knew that she would die to protect him and would never betray him. That was all that she knew.

She looked down on him again as he sat relaxed a few branches lower in the tree. He looked up at her and smiled. Some unseen force hit her in her chest and made her heart flutter there then her knees feel momentarily weak. She smiled back. He moved his legs as he sat up and she landed neatly in the space where his knees had once been with her back to him. She knelt as he moved behind her. He leaned gently on her shoulder and pointed to the horizon. Smoke. She turned her head to face him. He was looking at her. Their faces were inches apart. They didn't make a sound as they moved in unison, standing and walking to another branch in the tree. He moved to one, she moved to another. The came back together and wove a silent pattern through the tree until they reached the edges of the tree. They stood on two different outer branches, knowing that the branch would not likely support both of their weights, and looked closer. They skipped easily into the next tree and then the next, one of them going low and the other going high, running on the thick branches and moving without a sound. Neither said a word as they moved gracefully through several trees, yet they were communicating on a level that only an experienced team of warriors ever could. He knew her as well as he knew himself and she knew him the same. They were tightly tuned to one another, one an extension of the other as they moved. They were shadow and light as they flitted through the dense branches of the trees near the trade route.

The camp was still too far away for either of them to see whose camp it was. They scanned the ground below them, looked to the horizon and estimated the time it would take them to return to the safety of the trees. They looked at each other and leapt from the tree as one. They hit the ground running. Carrying the momentum of the fall with them they raced to the nearest outcroppings of rocks and waited. They moved about the large rocks broken from the mountain above and scattered throughout the valley to their destination. Avriel never once questioned his movements, he just moved, hunting with Katana out of site but nearby. They arrived at another stopping point and looked to the east. They could see the light from the fire. Avi shook his head. That was pretty stupid out in the open unless you had a large force with you or thought you were one. If the camp belonged to the one he was seeking then hopefully the later would ring true. They held for a moment made eye contact and then sprinted off out from the cover to a new cover which brought them closer still to the encampment.

From the vantage point they finally settled on, they were able to clearly see the encampment and its occupants. Avriel scanned them quickly looking for the tall large blond that Katana had described. That man, if he could be called a man, was the terror in Katana's dreams. It took all of his strength to hold his anger in. He lightly rested his hand on Katana's back as they both looked for her nightmare. Contact between them had become so commonplace that under his hand, she was relaxed and comfortable and she would have felt odd if he was that close to her and didn't touch her. Suddenly, her muscles tensed and her jaw clenched and the tiniest sound escaped her lips. Avi pulled his eyes away from her rigid form to look at the encampment though he did not need to see who was there. Her reaction told him all that he needed to know. They had found her former captor and his band of marauders.