A Girl and Her Monster (Rune Breaker) (5 page)

“I imagine that it did kill everything, Ms. Taylin.” Ru observed. “But life is resilient and there has been ample time for it to recover.”

Taylin turned to look at him so quickly that it made her neck ache to do it. “Ample time? Ru, I thought you said you weren't able to keep me asleep that long.”

“Indeed.” he nodded. “The attack that did this occurred less than a month after I put you to sleep and the moment I regained my senses, I was forced to release you from that state.”

“A month isn't long enough for these trees grow back.” She pointed out, then in a flash of realization added, “Or for air to go dead. Or even for the hound corpses to rot and dry like they did.”

“You are correct, Miss Taylin.” The emotions in the link suddenly became evasive in response to her own mounting anxiety. When he realized she could sense this, it dulled entirely.

“Ru.” She said forcefully. “How long has it been?”

“From the condition of the sleep spell, I would estimate three hundred and eighty years. With some margin of error.”

Aside from the crash of waves and the calls of seabirds, silence followed. It seemed that despite previous evidence, Ru had either the sense, or the compassion not to comment on the swirl of thoughts that filled Taylin's head. And there were a great many thoughts, more than she expected to have on the subject.

Every cruel master, every traitorous or uncaring shipmate, possibly even every cold, uncomfortable ship she ever called home for the last six years of her life, were gone. The war too, was probably a memory only the chroniclers could tell. No more soldiers, no more orders, no more punishment. She might have been panicking and voicing a fantasy when she asked for it, but she was free.

Far more free than she had been when her only plan was to hide in a cave until the ships gave up searching for her and left. Now, her escape was more complete than any in history. An unbridgeable gulf of time separated her from anyone who wished her harm.

Suddenly, she was laughing again, and jumped to her feet, enjoying even the breeze through her ruined clothes. “Ru, do you know what you've done?” Before she could stop herself, she grabbed him out of the air and pulled him into a tight hug, causing a kaleidoscope of surprise, confusion and other, minor emotions to riot across the link.

He didn't return the embrace. Didn't even move except to speak. “I can assume that it is pleasing to you, Miss Taylin.”

Taylin released him and took a few steps back. She hadn't meant to do that anyway. “Yes, Ru. I didn't mean to ask for this, but it's exactly what I wanted.” Turning back toward the beach, she took in a deep breath. “Maybe I can really have a life here. Maybe they don't even know what a slave or ang'hailene is!”

Still brimming with new vigor, she ran down the hill and onto the beach. The sand was unforgiving of her stiff soled boots, so she got only two steps before stumbling. Skidding to avoid a fall, she turned and looked back up to the hill.

Ru was silhouetted against the blue sky between two trees, floating just above the hill's peak. She asked him through the link if he was going to join her on the sand. He replied that he didn't see the point. It wasn't worth fighting over, so she unbuckled her boots and partook of the simple pleasure of sitting on the beach, gripping the sand with her toes.

“Remember that house I was talking about?” She called up to him. It was better than using the link; she was rather getting to enjoy the sound and feel of her own voice. Ru preferred the opposite and acknowledged her mentally, using no words at all. “I think I could just build it here. Right on the beach. I know how to fish, what fruits and things you can eat. I learned from being in the foraging parties. So I could probably be just fine here. Of course, I've got to take what you want into consideration, though.”

Me?

Taylin glanced up at him. He looked as stoic as ever, but he sounded as if the world wasn't making sense anymore in her head. It was as if he'd never encountered basic decency before. Even she had witnessed the good in people, and she spent her life as a slave.

“Of course you.” She replied with a forced laugh. It wasn't funny or amusing, but Ru needed it made clear to him that she thought the idea of treating him as anything less than a fellow demi-human was laughable. “As long as you can't go more than a few leagues from me, it's my responsibility to make certain that you're comfortable within that distance.”

Turning fully around, she offered him a friendly smile, which she tried to compound by directing the same feeling through the link. It had the effect of making him flinch.

“So... would you want to build your own little house on the beach?”

Ru surveyed the natural wonders around him and held each in turn with disdain. He was used to stone and cobble. Dust, even was preferable to grass and weeds. His wandering eyes roamed the landscape for something more palatable and found it in the distance.

If required to make a choice in the vicinity, I would prefer the village, Miss Taylin.

Village? Taylin shaded her eyes against the afternoon sun and scanned the bay's coastline. It raced away from her to the west, meeting the mouth of a river as it arced gracefully north to the top half of the crescent, which even to her sight was just a thick, brown line on the horizon. There were no villages there. Not even boats.

You cannot see it from your vantage, Ms. Taylin.
Ru supplied.
It is not far beyond the river's mouth, on an artificial hill on the floodplain.

Taylin gauged the distance to the river's mouth. “Is that where you want to go?”

It isn't my choice to make.
Nonetheless, he disappeared from the hill and reappeared a few yards behind her.

“Yes, it is.” She insisted. “Ru, I can tell now that you don't like the outdoors. If you want to go to the town, just say and we'll go to the town... though it's far enough that we're probably not going to get there by nightfall.”

“We could travel more swiftly if I took the form of a horse, or other creature of conveyance.”

Taylin made a face. “No. I am not riding another person, no matter what they transform into. It's a matter of dignity.”

“You cared not for my dignity when you manipulated me to escape the chamber.” He was quick to point out.

“That was only fair.” She reasoned. “You wanted me to treat you like a slave, so I treated you like a fool, because only a fool would want to be a slave.”

Ru growled, deep in his chest and turned away. “You do not understand, Miss Taylin. None of my previous masters have balked at issuing orders before. Why is it so difficult for you to accept?”

“If I had the food to wager, I'd bet a handful of ships' crackers that none of them have ever experienced it from the other end.” Taylin folded her arms definitively. “No one is going to feel the way I was made to feel because of me; magic or no.”

Whatever Ru was thinking was lost in the more general buzz of his mixed annoyance and frustration. Suddenly, those were lost in a spike of alertness.

So quietly that she wouldn't have heard it without her enhanced hearing, he whispered. “We are no longer alone, Miss Taylin.”

Military training kicked in. An ambush had been spotted. The key was to prepare in such a way that it looked as if you were going about normal activities. Her boots wouldn't be much use if the fight started on sand, so she ignored them.

Report.
She shivered when the cold, slithering feeling in the back of her head told her that the link considered that an order.

“Three medium sized animals, possibly large breeds of dog. One is larger than that, almost certainly a horse. Three demi-humans on foot, possibly human children. They emerged from a woodling cloak three hundred feet to the south and west.”

“Sorry.” Taylin said, unhappy with herself for the slip, however accidental. She stood with the pretense of stretching. “How did you know that?”

“The cloak. I wouldn't have known even that much if they hadn't disturbed it by leaving its range.” There was a beat as he got a full sense of how little that explained things to her. “I am very sensitive to magic.”

Taylin let it go with a nod. “Alright, so it might just be children. It's probably children.” The last thing she wanted as a fight. After all, to her, the battle with the hounds was only a short time ago.

Hopes of this not being the case dwindled as the horse gained the hill right where Ru had been standing earlier.

Its rider was a human dressed in the gray hide of some large lizard worked into a vest and matching greaves over thick, brown wool. Beneath the vest, he wore a collared shirt of the most vivid blue Taylin had ever seen. His eyes were hidden by a flat brimmed straw hat, which was adorned with metal plates along the crown.

He was carrying a length of hollow metal, gripping it by the center and a complicated handle of polished wood and brass. It looked as if he were carrying some shaman's ceremonial maul the wrong way around.

Within the first few moments, it became clear that they weren't who he was expecting. In the next, it was just as clear that he had decided they were as good as anyone.

“Don't move. Raise your hands!” He ordered, brandishing the strange object he was carrying.

“We don't mean any harm.” Taylin tried to assure him. It was no easy task, being just under seven feet, covered in blood and battle damage, and traveling with a broken sword, which, even broken, was longer than the newcomer's leg. She held her hands up and out, as she'd seen surrendering troops do. “We're travelers, nothing more.”

Ru made no such attempt at making peace. Instead, he stared with all his belligerence. “Is that a weapon?” He scoffed.

“Lower Chordin Armory repeating rifle.” The other man replied. “Considering it can drop a riding spider at thirty paces, I'd call it a weapon, yeah.”

“Hmm...” His interest was piqued and Taylin got the tail ends of a number of equally terrible thoughts through their connection.

“Ru.” She said firmly. “Just put your hands up so he knows we're not here to hurt anyone.”

I exist to hurt people.
He pointed out and she was thankful that he had the decency to only say that in her head. Reluctantly, he also spread his arms above his head.

“Alright,” The man steered his horse cautiously down the incline with his knees while not once losing his aim with the so called rifle. “Now where are the others?”

Taylin blinked at him. It was hard not to feel nervous with Ru mentally constructing a legion of possible horrible fates that awaited people on the nether end of the 'rifle'. “Others?”

“The ones you brought through the telegate spell.” He replied; voice calm, calculated. “If you give up the others, you have my word that the village will be most forgiving for what you've done to them.”

“I'm telling the truth.” Taylin said, trying to meet the eyes hidden by his hat. “It's just us. “We aren't here to hurt anyone.”

A long moment went by, then the man with the rifle nodded and lowered it. “I believe you.”

Ru arched an eyebrow and replied to this news with a flat, “What?”

For once, Taylin was in complete agreement with Ru. A beat behind him, she echoed his 'What?'.

The stranger smirked; not a cruel sneer, but a playful 'I know something you don't know' expression. He dismounted, remaining careful never to let them out of his sight. His soft boots did well on the sand and though he would have been a few inches shorter than Ru, if he ever stopped hovering, he didn't give the impression of looking up at either of them.

The rifle dangled down by his hip on a leather strap and one hand dipped down to hold it steady. The other reached up to tip the hat out of his eyes.

He was younger than Taylin had first thought. Possibly, she was fooled by the rasp in his voice from travel dust, but now that she saw his face, he couldn't have been that long out of his teens. Laughing blue eyes told of a soul that found joy and wonder. However the hollows and bags around them, coupled with the wilted, uneven cut of his dark brown hair suggested he hadn't felt that way in the more recent past. Still, when he offered them a neighborly smile, it definitely touched those eyes.

“The short answer, Madame Traveler, is this: I can't tell when you're lying, but I know when you're telling the truth.” The smile turned back into the smirk from before. “You can lower your hands now.”

As they did, he cleared his throat and spoke again. “I am Keese Kaiel Arunsteadeles, a son of Novrom by way of the College of Harpsfell. Chronicler. Currently on walkabout, hoping to become a named loreman and follow the third philosophy.”

Ru laughed uproariously in their shared mental space. Taylin silently wondered if he remembered his own introduction. Perhaps not so silently, as he suddenly ceased laughing and shot her a cold look.

It must have also shown on their faces because Kaiel laughed self-consciously. “I know. It's a great many words to simply say: 'I'm Kaiel, a student from the Bardic College'. Everything else is useless detail, I suppose. But it is tradition.”

Taylin relaxed. “No, that's fine. I'm Taylin and this is Ru. We're... not from nearby and we were going to try and reach the town before nightfall. Did you come from that direction?”

Kaiel considered for a second, then shrugged. “Not directly. As part of my walkabout, I'm traveling with the Clan of the Winter Willow. The town of Emisdaal on the northern arm of the bay is part of their usual caravan route, but when the clan's Grandfather heard of the troubles out here, he decided his people could help. As the guest of both he and the clan's Grandmother, I thought it was only right to help.”

Taylin looked around at the idyllic setting she'd so recently been so enthusiastic about. “What sort of troubles could there be here? This place looks like a paradise.”

An incredulous look came to Kaiel's face. “Where exactly did you think that telegate landed you? This is south Taunaun. If there's a place on the continent where the Age of Tragedies isn't over, it's here. The Thirteen Nations Accord meant nothing here; a few old dukes took cities on the coast, the cults took the desert, and the rest is left to whoever wants to squabble over it.”