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They'd shadowed the strange foreigner for almost a mile. It was no easy task for them to judge whether the stranger was aware of them or not from such a long distance, but Juliembert had grown up in the craggy plateaus of the Highlands since his youth. To say they had changed much since then was understatement to its very extremes, but he still felt confident that he knew more than his share of how to stalk prey out in what the pampered city dwellers of Ishgard called the wilderness. He flattened his steps, streamed across the surface of the snow with whispering motions, careful not to let the bits of loose maille protruding from his ragged furs clink against one another too loudly. Juliembert even occasionally ate a loose handful of snow to hide his steaming breath, though he felt the extreme chill also kept his nerves primed. At the distance they had followed the traveler, however, that behavior was more affectation than distinctly practical.
The band of harriers had waylaid thousands of unprepared, would-be dragon-slayers about those parts, killing some and robbing others throughout his lifetime. Brigands though they were, the harriers had given their violence a sharper purpose. Juliembert blinked, eyelashes encrusted with snow nigh invisible against his blonde hair. He glanced over his shoulder to see his commander, Prosperlain, following slowly behind. The aging man, square face framed with a ruddy beard, cradled his cloth-covered spear close. Juliembert liked to think of his orders as suggestions, but Prosperlain was his spear master. Though his dreary, sleepy voice and shaded eyes gave him a more age-addled appearance than he deserved, the elder lancer's techniques, honed in service to the Inquisition, often made Juliembert ponder the weight of the heresy accusation that purged him from their number. Such accusations, that made a fugitive of even a dour and loyal subject like the old man were the erstwhile recruitment tool of the heretic militia.
Close behind him trudged Lunnie, a gangly, awkward woman with a left foot for every limb. It was worthy of praise that she'd managed to make it as far as she had away from their camp. Lunnie's arm swung carelessly by her scabbard and sword, her round shield leaving curved canyons in the snow as she let it hang low. Of wretched, peasant stock like Juliembert himself, Lunnie had only the most rudimentary of combat training, and swordsmen were easy enough to come by. Finding her a tutor had been the simple part; training her the nightmare. She was always the short straw left with guard duty when the other three foraged for food. It was hard for him to believe they'd been born in the same hamlet.
Her careless movements provoked a cruel hissing from Hobriaut, the quietest of their number, who held up the rear. Hobriaut said little of himself. The others from their band, when they had been more numerous, had characterized the scarred bowman as a former poacher, but no one was particularly sure where he'd come from. Juliembert did not care, so long as his arrows were pointed in the other direction. He dipped the things in his chamber pot, which only served to make him slightly more revolting than usual. At his spot on point, the blonde man brushed at his long ears beneath his hood and silently prayed in thanks that he did not need to stand shoulder to shoulder with his “colleague†once fighting started. He was reliable, to be sure, but the stench was certain to distract him. Juliembert had a sensitive nose. A childhood half-empty grew him into a man filled with hunger and wolfish thirst, not that he'd ever acknowledge such himself. Hobriaut shared his intensity, but could not even charitably be considered any more than a useful ally.
A stirring had begun within the great city, a tumult beneath its venerable pillars that Juliembert could not easily understand. The patrols from Falcon's Nest had gotten lax. Fewer and fewer hunters foolishly braved the plateaus looking for a drakeling or sickly aevis. In the encampments surrounding the highlands, where many of his brethren gathered to raid and plunder the Ishgardian hamlets and revenge themselves upon the ecclesiarchy, the conversation had turned to separating from the horde. True, Juliembert had admired the Dravanians. The vial at his belt, his most prized possession, spoke plainly of that. But had it been anything greater than the aching of his empty stomach that drove him against the city? He had no right to pass judgment upon the ragged men and women who left the harriers for putting up their spears. Juliembert simply did not envy their chances in the Brume. A life of hard-fought suffering was more satisfying to him than a life of suffering from paucity. Better to take than have nothing. His father and mother would not have agreed. Small mercy it was, Juliembert supposed, that they had perished in the Calamity rather than lived to reap the rewards of that belief.
The small figure trudged in the great white wilderness ahead, between a great chasm where once the river lay and terraced frozen cliffs. Their path was uneven and winding, either the telltale sign of a foreigner or someone already wary of them. Juliembert's sharply honed gaze was what allowed him to lead their party on such hunts, and he followed the gradually shrinking ant trail of her shallow footprints. It was when they'd closed to nearly a hundred yalms that the figure's shape was completely distinguishable. Small and childlike, her pigtails did her little favors. Juliembert had met perhaps one Lalafell merchant growing up in the hamlet, for a single solitary sun. He'd rarely been into the city, and given that he'd heard their race loathed the cold, they scarcely needed the added encouragement of Ishgardian isolationism to stay clear of the north. Countless questions reached his mind as to why she was out there alone, walking with mechanical purpose, when he gradually realized the trail in front of him was widening. She'd quickened her pace, judging from the depth and frequency of her footsteps. With such short legs, she would need to take many strides to outpace them, but she seemed to be doing so handily.
Prosperlain grunted, seizing his attention. The elderly spear man, his face pallid and deeply creased, motioned silently with his hands. She saw them, he seemed to say. The increased pace, the occasional wary turn of the head, her irregular, curving path of travel; all seemed to suggest increased awareness on the adventurer's part. There was no longer any reason for them to stay concealed. Juliembert felt naked beneath the wide sky, their pale clothing and attempts to shroud themselves in the frosted highland foothills accounting little for themselves. Delicacy's tenure expired and audacity stepped in. He favored the latter anyway, but trained for both.
Heeding his ally's counsel, Juliembert raised an open palm and ushered the others forward. Full speed. They'd hurry on towards their quarry, no need to alarm her, but she hadn't started fleeing just yet. There was no need to betray open hostility until they had her at pike's push. Juliembert puffed and spat the last of the snow from his lips. No matter what snowdrift the miniscule stranger tried to conceal herself in, no matter how far she ran, this was their home and had been for cycles. They wouldn't be given the slip. She had to have supplies, food, warm blankets in her pack. The lack of manpower amongst their encampment left their stores dwindling. Aside from that, its emptiness left all of them choked with an invisible nervous energy. They needed to be out there. In recent suns, even the brigands who hadn't forsaken their number seemed to disappear, as if they'd been of less substance than the ice collecting on their steel. Prosperlain and Hobriaut shared occasional whispers about the troops at Falcon's Nest, but the old man's countenance betrayed confusion. Had the Ishgardian patrols simply taken a different approach, rather than called back to the capital? The uncertainty between the two older men gave Juliembert chills, and he was a child of the cold. Ishgardian or no, they all had an unspoken instinct that to dawdle too long in camp each day, to stay stationary for any extended period of time, to even stop hunting prey was to fade noiselessly into the white emptiness surrounding them.
A thought came to him unbidden. Perhaps the others hadn't simply abandoned their posts. Perhaps the Ishgardians were out there, lying in wait, blued steel bare and smoked in the fire to keep the sun's glint away. The girl was a bait. Juliembert wanted to run, but Hobriaut was at his back. A festering unease seethed within him, without satisfaction. He couldn't run, not with that man's chastising gaze at his back. An arrow would be an unwelcome follower still. Surely the girl was alone. Then how should he account for the strange feeling of unease, the stare of unwelcome eyes upon them? Without thinking, Juliembert reached beneath his mail coat, finding those familiar, ragged folds of cloth, seeking out the concealed vial and tumbling its comforting shape between his fingers. Even in the darkest of nights and coldest of days, the contents swirling within felt faintly warm, but Juliembert thought perhaps it was merely his own.
“Steady lad. I'm with you.â€
Prosperlain was at his side. His mentor drew the shortened length of his lance to the ready as if it were a quill brush. Juliembert envied the levity in his motions, the tranquility that came with a life of killing. He could care less for the cause or thought behind it; whatever feelings lingered within Prosperlain towards his house could not have been present in such steady hands. That relaxed, slate gray gaze was one that only belonged to experienced soldiers who understood the flow of battle, who felt as much at home there as Juliembert did in the tundra.
Lunnie gulped loudly behind him, jarring their lead out of his focused pursuit. He and Prosperlain turned back to confront the woman, who cowered behind her shield. It had been the path of least resistance to endow her with the bare minimum of martial skill necessary to swing a sword properly, but the shield lent itself towards cowardice, Juliembert thought. It should have been every bit as much a weapon as her blade, a tool to help her create opportunities to triumph, but to a peasant girl with little experience in combat, it was the blanket for her to hide under. Particularly galling to Prosperlain in particular was her habit of obscuring her line of sight, lowering her head in a wince that left her blind behind the hefty round shield. He'd scolded her for that countless times, and her response was to naturally hide. Juliembert scowled at her, but for once Lunnie was not following them with her gaze, waiting for instruction.
Her pale blue eyes darted amongst the terraced cliffs behind them. From above they could be seen clearly now that they'd made no effort to hide their pursuit. Had Juliembert's suspicion proven correct, they had already long ago passed the safest window of escape. Somewhere within him, he felt his blood quicken.
A clump of ice tapped its way down the cliffs behind them, provoking a piteous flinch from Lunnie that Juliembert shamefully echoed.
“J... Julie? D'ye s'pose we've been … f... fol-.â€
Prosperlain hissed back at her. There was an odd vibration in his thick, astringent tone that didn't belong there.
“If we have then we've already no chance to make it out and to the camp again without a fight. What did I train you for if not for this?â€
“But... M'lord...â€
When unsettled, Lunnie resorted to bowing at Prosperlain's feet. It was self-preservation instinct. As a young girl, Lunnie had unpleasant dealings with the Temple Knights in the city, quite a few of them never too proud in their famous pedigree to torment the peasant girl, equal to the Brume rats in vulgarity. The display of subservience would have normally enraged the older man, but he held back the bile behind his steadily reddening expression.
“Keep your blade ready, damn you. It's just a single girl, but don't get careless. We'll circle her, keep close,†Prosperlain paused to lick his dried lips, “and being of sound mind anyroad, she'll see the virtue in simply giving up her pack. We'll take it and head home, and move camp a moon later than planned. That'll do nicely. Right Juliembert?â€
The younger man groaned. “Lunnie, it'll do, aye?â€
“Aye m'lord. But... but... methinks she's just a little traveler. Supposin' the knights are about, we could jus' let her go and split... M.. Maybe they'd show pity...â€
Juliembert forces a reassuring smile that stank of insincerity, the best he could afford her in such a tense moment. He swore a shadow passed across her face in that instant, and her eyes focused on something past him, rather than upon him, in a way that gave him pause. Lunnie had never been a smart woman, and the agitated man was certain she'd not turned her chin down in displeasure. It was a passing cloud that darkened her face. Surely nothing else.
“If the little morsel's bait, 'tis the most baldfaced one the like we've ne'er seen before. Back at the camp, right as a sunny day, we'll be. Methinks we ought t' consider supper this eve. Not yak again, I hope.â€
She nods, eyes wide like a scared doe. Her lips trembled, holding back her words. Not the slightest trace of reassurance had crossed her expression. Her lanky arms clattered the shield close to her chest. Even for a coward like her, Lunnie was beside herself with worry, a cut far above her normal fretting and endless apologies. Juliembert grimaced. Dragging her with them, even as undermanned as they were, was unquestionably a mistake, but neither did he relish leaving her alone at the encampment. He did not want to return to find her cook pot empty, the snowy dunes already blanketing the remaining traces of her existence. Lunnie was too timorous to leave the comfort of their tent on her own. If he returned to find no trace of her, then his mind would spin unwelcome questions about who or what dragged her away.
Juliembert exhaled deeply, his breath forming a thin mist he'd tried his damnedest to keep hidden since the morning. He hoped that Prosperlain's uncharacteristic optimism would prove worthwhile. Tightening his grip on his spear, he and the others sprinted forward suddenly, their boots slashing through the snow, gaining on their diminutive target and encircling her like the jaws of a bear trap.
The band of harriers had waylaid thousands of unprepared, would-be dragon-slayers about those parts, killing some and robbing others throughout his lifetime. Brigands though they were, the harriers had given their violence a sharper purpose. Juliembert blinked, eyelashes encrusted with snow nigh invisible against his blonde hair. He glanced over his shoulder to see his commander, Prosperlain, following slowly behind. The aging man, square face framed with a ruddy beard, cradled his cloth-covered spear close. Juliembert liked to think of his orders as suggestions, but Prosperlain was his spear master. Though his dreary, sleepy voice and shaded eyes gave him a more age-addled appearance than he deserved, the elder lancer's techniques, honed in service to the Inquisition, often made Juliembert ponder the weight of the heresy accusation that purged him from their number. Such accusations, that made a fugitive of even a dour and loyal subject like the old man were the erstwhile recruitment tool of the heretic militia.
Close behind him trudged Lunnie, a gangly, awkward woman with a left foot for every limb. It was worthy of praise that she'd managed to make it as far as she had away from their camp. Lunnie's arm swung carelessly by her scabbard and sword, her round shield leaving curved canyons in the snow as she let it hang low. Of wretched, peasant stock like Juliembert himself, Lunnie had only the most rudimentary of combat training, and swordsmen were easy enough to come by. Finding her a tutor had been the simple part; training her the nightmare. She was always the short straw left with guard duty when the other three foraged for food. It was hard for him to believe they'd been born in the same hamlet.
Her careless movements provoked a cruel hissing from Hobriaut, the quietest of their number, who held up the rear. Hobriaut said little of himself. The others from their band, when they had been more numerous, had characterized the scarred bowman as a former poacher, but no one was particularly sure where he'd come from. Juliembert did not care, so long as his arrows were pointed in the other direction. He dipped the things in his chamber pot, which only served to make him slightly more revolting than usual. At his spot on point, the blonde man brushed at his long ears beneath his hood and silently prayed in thanks that he did not need to stand shoulder to shoulder with his “colleague†once fighting started. He was reliable, to be sure, but the stench was certain to distract him. Juliembert had a sensitive nose. A childhood half-empty grew him into a man filled with hunger and wolfish thirst, not that he'd ever acknowledge such himself. Hobriaut shared his intensity, but could not even charitably be considered any more than a useful ally.
A stirring had begun within the great city, a tumult beneath its venerable pillars that Juliembert could not easily understand. The patrols from Falcon's Nest had gotten lax. Fewer and fewer hunters foolishly braved the plateaus looking for a drakeling or sickly aevis. In the encampments surrounding the highlands, where many of his brethren gathered to raid and plunder the Ishgardian hamlets and revenge themselves upon the ecclesiarchy, the conversation had turned to separating from the horde. True, Juliembert had admired the Dravanians. The vial at his belt, his most prized possession, spoke plainly of that. But had it been anything greater than the aching of his empty stomach that drove him against the city? He had no right to pass judgment upon the ragged men and women who left the harriers for putting up their spears. Juliembert simply did not envy their chances in the Brume. A life of hard-fought suffering was more satisfying to him than a life of suffering from paucity. Better to take than have nothing. His father and mother would not have agreed. Small mercy it was, Juliembert supposed, that they had perished in the Calamity rather than lived to reap the rewards of that belief.
The small figure trudged in the great white wilderness ahead, between a great chasm where once the river lay and terraced frozen cliffs. Their path was uneven and winding, either the telltale sign of a foreigner or someone already wary of them. Juliembert's sharply honed gaze was what allowed him to lead their party on such hunts, and he followed the gradually shrinking ant trail of her shallow footprints. It was when they'd closed to nearly a hundred yalms that the figure's shape was completely distinguishable. Small and childlike, her pigtails did her little favors. Juliembert had met perhaps one Lalafell merchant growing up in the hamlet, for a single solitary sun. He'd rarely been into the city, and given that he'd heard their race loathed the cold, they scarcely needed the added encouragement of Ishgardian isolationism to stay clear of the north. Countless questions reached his mind as to why she was out there alone, walking with mechanical purpose, when he gradually realized the trail in front of him was widening. She'd quickened her pace, judging from the depth and frequency of her footsteps. With such short legs, she would need to take many strides to outpace them, but she seemed to be doing so handily.
Prosperlain grunted, seizing his attention. The elderly spear man, his face pallid and deeply creased, motioned silently with his hands. She saw them, he seemed to say. The increased pace, the occasional wary turn of the head, her irregular, curving path of travel; all seemed to suggest increased awareness on the adventurer's part. There was no longer any reason for them to stay concealed. Juliembert felt naked beneath the wide sky, their pale clothing and attempts to shroud themselves in the frosted highland foothills accounting little for themselves. Delicacy's tenure expired and audacity stepped in. He favored the latter anyway, but trained for both.
Heeding his ally's counsel, Juliembert raised an open palm and ushered the others forward. Full speed. They'd hurry on towards their quarry, no need to alarm her, but she hadn't started fleeing just yet. There was no need to betray open hostility until they had her at pike's push. Juliembert puffed and spat the last of the snow from his lips. No matter what snowdrift the miniscule stranger tried to conceal herself in, no matter how far she ran, this was their home and had been for cycles. They wouldn't be given the slip. She had to have supplies, food, warm blankets in her pack. The lack of manpower amongst their encampment left their stores dwindling. Aside from that, its emptiness left all of them choked with an invisible nervous energy. They needed to be out there. In recent suns, even the brigands who hadn't forsaken their number seemed to disappear, as if they'd been of less substance than the ice collecting on their steel. Prosperlain and Hobriaut shared occasional whispers about the troops at Falcon's Nest, but the old man's countenance betrayed confusion. Had the Ishgardian patrols simply taken a different approach, rather than called back to the capital? The uncertainty between the two older men gave Juliembert chills, and he was a child of the cold. Ishgardian or no, they all had an unspoken instinct that to dawdle too long in camp each day, to stay stationary for any extended period of time, to even stop hunting prey was to fade noiselessly into the white emptiness surrounding them.
A thought came to him unbidden. Perhaps the others hadn't simply abandoned their posts. Perhaps the Ishgardians were out there, lying in wait, blued steel bare and smoked in the fire to keep the sun's glint away. The girl was a bait. Juliembert wanted to run, but Hobriaut was at his back. A festering unease seethed within him, without satisfaction. He couldn't run, not with that man's chastising gaze at his back. An arrow would be an unwelcome follower still. Surely the girl was alone. Then how should he account for the strange feeling of unease, the stare of unwelcome eyes upon them? Without thinking, Juliembert reached beneath his mail coat, finding those familiar, ragged folds of cloth, seeking out the concealed vial and tumbling its comforting shape between his fingers. Even in the darkest of nights and coldest of days, the contents swirling within felt faintly warm, but Juliembert thought perhaps it was merely his own.
“Steady lad. I'm with you.â€
Prosperlain was at his side. His mentor drew the shortened length of his lance to the ready as if it were a quill brush. Juliembert envied the levity in his motions, the tranquility that came with a life of killing. He could care less for the cause or thought behind it; whatever feelings lingered within Prosperlain towards his house could not have been present in such steady hands. That relaxed, slate gray gaze was one that only belonged to experienced soldiers who understood the flow of battle, who felt as much at home there as Juliembert did in the tundra.
Lunnie gulped loudly behind him, jarring their lead out of his focused pursuit. He and Prosperlain turned back to confront the woman, who cowered behind her shield. It had been the path of least resistance to endow her with the bare minimum of martial skill necessary to swing a sword properly, but the shield lent itself towards cowardice, Juliembert thought. It should have been every bit as much a weapon as her blade, a tool to help her create opportunities to triumph, but to a peasant girl with little experience in combat, it was the blanket for her to hide under. Particularly galling to Prosperlain in particular was her habit of obscuring her line of sight, lowering her head in a wince that left her blind behind the hefty round shield. He'd scolded her for that countless times, and her response was to naturally hide. Juliembert scowled at her, but for once Lunnie was not following them with her gaze, waiting for instruction.
Her pale blue eyes darted amongst the terraced cliffs behind them. From above they could be seen clearly now that they'd made no effort to hide their pursuit. Had Juliembert's suspicion proven correct, they had already long ago passed the safest window of escape. Somewhere within him, he felt his blood quicken.
A clump of ice tapped its way down the cliffs behind them, provoking a piteous flinch from Lunnie that Juliembert shamefully echoed.
“J... Julie? D'ye s'pose we've been … f... fol-.â€
Prosperlain hissed back at her. There was an odd vibration in his thick, astringent tone that didn't belong there.
“If we have then we've already no chance to make it out and to the camp again without a fight. What did I train you for if not for this?â€
“But... M'lord...â€
When unsettled, Lunnie resorted to bowing at Prosperlain's feet. It was self-preservation instinct. As a young girl, Lunnie had unpleasant dealings with the Temple Knights in the city, quite a few of them never too proud in their famous pedigree to torment the peasant girl, equal to the Brume rats in vulgarity. The display of subservience would have normally enraged the older man, but he held back the bile behind his steadily reddening expression.
“Keep your blade ready, damn you. It's just a single girl, but don't get careless. We'll circle her, keep close,†Prosperlain paused to lick his dried lips, “and being of sound mind anyroad, she'll see the virtue in simply giving up her pack. We'll take it and head home, and move camp a moon later than planned. That'll do nicely. Right Juliembert?â€
The younger man groaned. “Lunnie, it'll do, aye?â€
“Aye m'lord. But... but... methinks she's just a little traveler. Supposin' the knights are about, we could jus' let her go and split... M.. Maybe they'd show pity...â€
Juliembert forces a reassuring smile that stank of insincerity, the best he could afford her in such a tense moment. He swore a shadow passed across her face in that instant, and her eyes focused on something past him, rather than upon him, in a way that gave him pause. Lunnie had never been a smart woman, and the agitated man was certain she'd not turned her chin down in displeasure. It was a passing cloud that darkened her face. Surely nothing else.
“If the little morsel's bait, 'tis the most baldfaced one the like we've ne'er seen before. Back at the camp, right as a sunny day, we'll be. Methinks we ought t' consider supper this eve. Not yak again, I hope.â€
She nods, eyes wide like a scared doe. Her lips trembled, holding back her words. Not the slightest trace of reassurance had crossed her expression. Her lanky arms clattered the shield close to her chest. Even for a coward like her, Lunnie was beside herself with worry, a cut far above her normal fretting and endless apologies. Juliembert grimaced. Dragging her with them, even as undermanned as they were, was unquestionably a mistake, but neither did he relish leaving her alone at the encampment. He did not want to return to find her cook pot empty, the snowy dunes already blanketing the remaining traces of her existence. Lunnie was too timorous to leave the comfort of their tent on her own. If he returned to find no trace of her, then his mind would spin unwelcome questions about who or what dragged her away.
Juliembert exhaled deeply, his breath forming a thin mist he'd tried his damnedest to keep hidden since the morning. He hoped that Prosperlain's uncharacteristic optimism would prove worthwhile. Tightening his grip on his spear, he and the others sprinted forward suddenly, their boots slashing through the snow, gaining on their diminutive target and encircling her like the jaws of a bear trap.
ã€Œè’¼æ°—ç ²ã€ã‚’使ã‚ã–ã‚‹ã‚’å¾—ãªã„!
AV by Kura-Ou
Wiki (Last updated 01/16)
My Balmung profile.
AV by Kura-Ou
Wiki (Last updated 01/16)
My Balmung profile.