Death's Warrior Chapter 2 (Part 2)

~*****~

Something was wrong.

He had felt a part of energy go out from him; an energy he hadn’t realized he had had or had needed until now.

Something was wrong. The blank existence he had usually felt in the back of his mind had vanished and left him feeling partly empty.

“Riderrrr” The wind spoke into his ears, impossibly stirring up the water-logged leaves at his hooves.

Rider. He repeated and nodded to himself. That was a word he hadn’t heard in over three hundred years. But a rider who was now nonexistent? Something was wrong.

“Gooooo to her,” the wind persisted, pushing his mane and tail forward with its frigid air.

So it is a she, he thought. However, he could do nothing for he was forbidden to interfere before he was called. The wind kept on.

“He says to gooooo,” it said, and when the black pegasus took a step backwards an impossibly strong gust of wind shoved him forward and out of the shelter of the trees on the edge of the castle grounds where he was once again standing.

He snorted, showing his dislike to the wind, but proceeded to walk his way down the long and winding hill that led to the valley below. He didn’t worry about the people because none could see him unless he deemed it so. No, he worried only momentarily about the wind’s instructions. If He had indeed told him to go then there must be something underfoot. However, if the wind was only lying to him- No, he thought. The wind would never lie.

When he reached the messengers’ cave and saw there was no one awake, he spread his great wings and took flight, covering the distance to the forest in a mere few minutes.

He could not tell where he was supposed to go, except that the forest called to him in a different manner than the last. There was a small lake ahead to his left with a wayfarer’s cabin and a small stables. He snorted again at the latter. Peasant horses, he thought disgustedly.

However, as superior as he may have felt, he was unprepared for what he might find inside his beloved forestry home.

~*****~

Something small and cold dropped onto Kastia’s forehead. She wiped it off and realized that her hand was now wet. When she went to roll to her side she heard a sudden loud crunch and froze, her eyes flying open.

She was lying on a leafy ground inside of the forest. Looking above her, she noticed an opening in the leafy green through which the sky was still letting loose raindrops. Before she could wonder about how she had gotten here, she heard something approaching from her left. Kastia quickly moved to get up, but the world turned and she fell to her side, knocking the breath out of her lungs.

Someone’s hands grabbed her shoulders from behind and before she could scream a hand clamped over her mouth. She saw the outline of another’s boots to her left. They must have been the ones tramping around, but then who was behind her? Her vision went blurry and she could barely make out three other pairs of boots and legs to her right. One of them moved in front of her as her world spun even faster. Kastia struggled against her captor’s hands, but to no avail, and then panic began to overtake her.

“No. No. No. Princess look at me. Look at me.” It was the man in front of her, wearing one of the royal guard uniforms and kneeling to her level. “Breath in and breath out. No, not like that. We need deep breaths. Come on.”

The hands that had held Kastia had released her and she had fallen onto her back, vision blurry, world spinning, and unable to breathe. Suddenly she felt her stomach notify her that something was going to happen and so she rolled to her side and retched. Unable to hold herself up anymore she lay down again on her back and tried to calm her breathing and to get her body to quit shaking. Someone pushed her up and put a blanket around her shoulders and handed her a wine flask filled with water which her hand promptly dropped to the ground, unable to hold anything.

She felt her mind go black again only to awaken as she was being carried by someone. Too weak to do much, she did her best to hold her head up as she was placed on a bedroll beside a small fire. She couldn’t process anything that went on around her and so she just closed her eyes and waited for the earth to stop moving. At some point, she fell asleep or unconscious, unable to tell the difference as they both covered up minds in darkness.

It was the sudden realization somewhere in the back of her mind that she could be in danger that woke her up. Kastia bolted straight up and flung the blankets off of her. The world was still for now and her sight seemed as perfect as it had always been, but she had caused all of the eyes of the men to fly to her and now she had been spotted. Looking around her, she noticed a pack of horses tied to a tree on her far left. She bolted and they all ran after her, but her intention was not to leave, for surely she’d be caught. No, her attention was something else.

Kastia easily reached the horses before they did and she grabbed the nearest weapon she could find. Yanking the sword out of its saddle sheath, she swung it around to face her captors who now faced her back in a semicircle.

They all wore the royal guard uniforms of black everything except for dark grey boots and sword sheaths. They all had somewhat short brown hair, except for the last man on the right whose hair was black. They all stood open handed, showing that they meant no harm. The man in the middle with a thin line of beard on his bottom jaw and up to his temples, outlining his face, suddenly spoke. “Do you not recognize us Princess?” He asked, taking a small step towards her while still holding his hands out to his sides, almost questioningly.

Kastia steadied her hands on the sword, still pointing it at them, but it shook none the less. She said nothing, only gave a small imperceptible shake of her head. The man spoke again. “Here, perhaps this will help,” he said, striking a pose very much like the way the guards would stand in the shadows. A smile spread across her face as something clicked in the back of Kastia’s mind. She recalled seeing him guarding the throne room doors.

“Damian,” she whispered, very much relieved. However, she dropped the sword and unexpectedly felt her knees weaken and her vision unfocus again. As she began to sag to the ground his arms caught her and held her up while another guard picked her up and carried her back over to the fire where they placed her on a tree stump and wrapped a blanket around her shoulders again.

Kastia gratefully stared into the ever changing and twisting flames as she felt the warmth slowly push its way through her clothes and into her body. The other four guards all settled back into their spots on their own logs and stared into the flames as well while Damian fetched something from his saddlebag and brought it back.

He shoved a wine flask into Kastia’s hands and sat back down across from her, in the middle of his compatriots, again. “Drink,” he said, pointing to what he had given her. “It will make you feel better.” Kastia did as she was told. The liquid felt like freezing ice going down her throat and burning coals in her stomach, but her world seemed to center and her vision become sharper and her body finished thawing out. The tremors that had shook her before were nonexistent now and she gratefully wrapped her hands tighter around the flask.

No one spoke at all and Kastia’s mind had cleared, therefore too many questions waited to be asked, but the guards did not seem inclined to talk at the moment and so she mastered herself and remained silent as she had been taught so long ago.

“Princess,” Damian said, finally breaking the silence and immediately capturing Kastia’s attention. “Do not play the bureaucracy here. We well know that there are many questions you want to ask and here, we expect you to ask them.” He inclined his head towards her and picked up a long stick, stoking the fire.

Kastia shook the hair out of her eyes and leaned forward, still staring into the flames, unsure of what to ask first. “Very well,” she said. “Where are we?”

“Spoken like a true diplomat,” Damian responded. “Not only concerned for herself, but perfectly aware of others as well. We are in the Spiral Forest of the Aged Soldier, the forest which so indolently surrounds our whole country and whose center lies somewhere in the lands of the unknown. We are residing in the very tip of one such tendril that we so gratefully take shelter inside, the one that is looked down upon by the people it protects.”

Kastia blinked a few times while taking in his well educated response before asking another question. “How did I come to be here? I only remember the flash of lightning in the storm and-” she suddenly gasped. Before she could get the word out Damian interrupted.

“Pax is tied with the other horses. We found you where you had fallen off, lying in the mud and pouring rain. We brought you as far into the forest as possible where we stopped to make camp. We did not want you any closer to us or the fire for fear you would have injured yourself if you woke without our notice. We did not want to stay at the lake in case our unusual company be spotted.”

“What time is it now?” She asked, looking up above her at the heavy white sky.

“Not yet noon,” Damian replied.

“Then what are you doing down here?” Kastia questioned

“Now there is the question that I have been waiting for,” Damian said as he stretched his arms behind his head. “We came to warn you.”

“All five of you followed me down here to warn me of something? You couldn’t have just given me a message in the corridors or something?” kastia stammered out in disbelief.

“Princess, you are widely unaware of our world in the castle. There are too many spies and too many things to hear or see what we might have told you then. Also, yes, all five of us had to come down here to warn you of something. One is pathetic, two cannot defend against three, three are suspicious, four cannot defend against five, and five can do almost anything in a small and precise manner,” he said almost indignantly. “Secondly, we did not simply, on a whim, follow you down here. Every action that has happened in the past day and a half was carefully and thoughtfully planned out.”

Kastia was perplexed. “What do you mean by that?” She asked, finally looking Damian in the eyes across the dimming fire. He only met her stare for a second before returning it to the stick in his hand with which he so deftly pushed logs and embers back into their original blazing grace.

“There is never a good place to start with these things, but I shall do my best,” he said, sighing. “To begin, the letter from the Brink Wall yesterday was forged and absolutely fake. The conspirators knew that by presenting the king with that kind of catastrophe that he would send you away and that you would become upset and run off to here like you usually do. Thus, this gives way for the king to declare war on Incardia-”

“Declare war! Why would he do that? We’ve had peace in this land for over three-hundred years and he is choosing to break that?” Kastia exclaimed.

“As I said,” Damian continued. “The letter was forged, the messenger given a hefty bribe, and the plans drawn out carefully. He believes that the Brink Wall was breached and that we have been invaded by Incardia. He sends you out and now you are out of the way. The king is in danger and I can tell you that by midnight tonight he will be dead and the queen will sit on his throne. We had heard of this plan many months ago and finally managed to correlate our duty schedules to allow us to be on break on the same day to warn you. Albeit, we are late and not all things are going as planned, we still may have saved you a bit of time.”

“A bit of time!” Kastia nearly shouted, abruptly standing up in shock. “Someone is going to kill my father and you're saving me ‘a bit of time.’”

“She will kill you if you go back today. She expected you to die in that storm last night.” Damian tried to reason.

“Who is she?” Kastia nearly shouted at him. Damian refused to look her in the eyes, he simply continued to stare down at his own hands and rolled the half burnt stoking stick between his palms. “Answer me,” Kastia demanded, glaring at him while he continued to hold out the oppressive silence.

“It will not do for you to be upset, Kastia,” he said, all manners dropping when he had used her name. “You have fairly asked me a question and I will justly answer it, but if you choose to run from your troubles now, your life will not be the only one put at risk. There are not many ‘shes’ in the government, If you cannot draw those conclusions yourself then I don’t know why we are here.”

Kastia sat down as the realization washed over her. Although her world had stopped spinning, the inner workings of her whole thoughts seemed to come to a halt as it all crashed and burned about her. “Say it,” Kastia demanded of Damian, not wanting to do so herself, unable to accept it. Damian sighed and his fellow guards looked up at him expectantly before he spoke.

“The first and foremost, closest person to the king,” he began, speaking slowly and drawing out every word so that they could not be missed by anyone. “The person that no king can live without,” he continued, throwing his stick into the fire and standing up while Kastia waited, now patiently, for his final words.

Words which were whispered by all five men together, seemingly echoing back and forth within the campsite.

“The queen.”