Yuragwyn: Ours

---Chapter 16

∞Kaitra∞

                The cacophony of spheres of granite splintering great wooden supports and great calcite bones is rather repulsive, and bile rises in my throat even as we strain and grind at another boulder.  Screams mix with terrible yells as Hiltraud storms up on the far side with centaurs and burly men baring their swords. 

                “Stop rolling!” I scream in efforts to make my voice heard over the din.  Injuring our own would be rather inconvenient. 

                Maxen speeds by me as he pulls his sword out of his sheath.  “Lead us on, oh Daughter of Yuragwyn!”

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                I moisten the crusted blood on my arm with a grimace and watch the stained water slip away downstream, diffusing into the general bubble and puddle of the mountain stream so similar to the one I used to watch trickle away between my mountains.  I ache for my tree again, for my life in peace and comfort.  I miss Rob and Adalynn and their warm hugs and hot chocolate cookies.  I long for the time when I wasn’t some country’s last hope of survival. 

                I get the last of the filth off me and crawl out of the small swimming hole as fast as one can with a saturated long sleeve shirt and cargo pants weighing them down.  Maxen gives me a lopsided smile and hands me a towel, “You are rather akin to a drowned rat.”

                I glare at him.  “Thank you for your kind words.”

                He laughs, “There’s that fire.  I knew you had to have it in you somewhere, buried under all that melancholy and self-pity.  Traugott did a good job.”

                The sound of his name is foreign and harsh, causing me to wince.  Traugott did nothing to help me except push and push and push until I was emotionally and physically splintering under the pressure. 

                “Oh come now; it’s no secret,” Maxen continues.  “You wouldn’t be half the soldier you are today without him.  There’s nothing like pure frustration to mold a person into something better.  I’m just surprised he thought of that tactic on you.”

                So was it all an act then?  Did he assume things of me, yell at me, and ignore me as part of a training technique or psychology project? 

                “You mean he did it on purpose?” I ask lowly.  I grip my scalp and yank out the trapped water and not a few hairs. 

                Maxen shrugs, “Oh I don’t know if he set out to do it.  Tough love tactics are inborn in some people.”  He looks up at a call from a centaur nearer to camp and motions towards me, “Come along then.  Dinner is ready, and there’s a fire, which you should probably take advantage of in your rather drenched condition.”

                He strides away, but I don’t follow, not for a while.  Instead, I sit on the shore and shiver with the fall frost in the mountains.  I simply want to be alone, to not be bothered with all this.  Can’t they see that I never was meant to be a soldier?  Can’t they see I am a shell merely of what I was when I came here?  I don’t want to close my eyes for fear of the faces who haunt me, faces I saw go blank when my blade, my arrow pushed the life straight out of them and ran their soul through.  How can they live with themselves and all this fighting?  Can they not stand the idea of peace?

                “That’s what we fight for, Lady Kaitra, and you know that,” Hiltraud answers.  He clops down beside me, arms crossed.  “I suppose you have a good excuse for sitting down here, unguarded, dripping wet, and alone in this wind?”  He holds up his hand to shush me, “Come, to the fire.”