The duelist 3, p.15
The Duelist 3, page 15
“My brother and I are quite practiced with a staff, milady,” Mel answered.
“I’m afraid staff weaponry is out of my set of skills and resources,” she said and tapped her lips with one finger.
“Not to worry, milady.” Mel half-bowed to Zoie and then reached for two shovels attached to the cart hitched to the back of the carriage.
“I’d wonder, but I’ve seen the damage you and Bodin can cause with those things, so well done,” I said as I rested my hand on the large pommel of my sword. “You guys take the front then, and Zoie and I will take the back.”
“What about me?” Shay asked.
“Yeah, what about us?” Rylan piped up. “We can patrol, too.”
“Um, first of all, I’m not sure how well you can use your sling with your injured hand, Shay,” I said with my arms crossed over my chest.
“Oh, blast that creature,” Shay said and scowled down at her bandaged hand. “I sent him back to Horus already. Good riddance.”
“And Rylan, we talked about you catching up on your rest,” I added. “I was kind of hoping you would take this opportunity to sleep on our way there. You’re going to have to be the man when I’m occupied with the Trials.”
“But I’m not tired,” the stable-boy said and then contradicted himself by letting loose a huge yawn. “Okay, maybe a little.”
“How’s this, once the sun comes up and we aren’t so blind, then you can join the rotations,” I bargained.
“And me,” Shay insisted.
“Yes, you, too,” I conceded, and I felt thiiiiiiis close to pulling the ol’ Don’t Make Me Turn This Carriage Around even though we hadn’t even left yet. “Okay, are we all properly assigned and present and accounted for?”
“Yes, it appears-- oh, wait, where is Arvid? Arvi!” The koala-butler tried to stand up on the cart, but since he was so short, it didn’t really help him see over the carriage.
“Heeeeeerrrrrreeeee,” the large sloth-man rumbled and loped his way toward us with his trusty hearth cauldron in his shaggy brown arms.
We all then proceeded to watch Ithaca’s slow-moving resident chef walk his cauldron to the cart, slide it to the corner with a drawn-out scrape, and then seat himself on the back.
All at the speed of cold molasses.
“How ya doing, Arvi?” I asked, and the only response I got from the gentle giant was a sleepy blink before he flopped back like a falling redwood and immediately began to snore. “Looks like I’m not the only person who’s not a fan of early mornings.”
“Let’s go, already!” Rylan hollered.
“What about the manor?” I asked as we began to roll out. “Will the walls be enough to keep everything protected?”
“Fair question,” Jenner said as he climbed up to the driver’s seat and adjusted Prosper’s reins. “When you fixed the lanterns, you used some of Mercedes’ Blessing inside you to fuel the protections, and thus, anything malignant or with intent to harm those who fall under your protection cannot pass the barrier.”
“I’d love it if the wall could extend around the entire estate,” I said after I closed up the carriage house.
“If only, my boy,” Jenner sighed. “You witnessed first-hand the effect of over-expending your will. There is a limit to the lanterns’ power. For some reason, the broader the perimeter, the weaker the protection.”
“Good to know,” I said and fell back with a slight frown.
Being told I couldn’t expand the wall didn’t sit well with me, and I wondered if this could be a potential herald core situation that a little research and not taking ‘no’ for an answer could fix.
It turns out it was a good thing Zoie suggested the patrols because the forest was always creepier when it was dark. My cat-wife’s ears kept twitching like mad at every little sound, and eventually I started to hear the telltale sound of another carriage trundling behind us.
“Do you hear that?” I asked and drew my sword for good measure.
“Yes,” Zoie said and armed herself with a handful of throwing knives. “They keep trying to catch up with us.”
Before either one of us could do anything, a familiar voice called out in the dark followed by the sparkling lamplight from another carriage.
“Brightwood!” Asher Redburn called out and waved a hand from where he was on top of his own manapillar-drawn vehicle. “I had hoped you would be on this road.”
“Hello, Dreadful!” I said and waved a hand. “Would you like to caravan with us to Gatetown?”
“I would be much obliged, sir,” the jackrabbit-man said.
Traveling seemed to be a lot less ominous now that we had our little troupe who watched each other’s backs, and when the sun finally rose, I was even allotted sometime in the cab to meditate here and there.
All in all, it was a pretty smooth road trip all the way to Gatetown, which was more than I could say for the last time we took a carriage ride together. Even Vel-Rala helped a little by helping steer the carriage so Jenner could take a break every so often.
The city itself looked the same from what I remembered of it the last time Zoie and I passed through this place on the way to the Ruins.
As far as general architecture went, Gatetown was a combination of a sea shanty-slash-trading port and a booming steampunkian metropolis. The name was also apt for the town given it was literally the town by the massive gate that let ships in and out of the island during the day and remained closed during the night.
However, the main thing that stood out was how packed with people towing their own carriages and anchoring their ships in Gatetown’s large lake harbors.
“Goddess, it’s packed,” I commented from my place in the driver’s seat along with Bodin and Jenner.
“Usually, there are designated campgrounds for the event, but since the venue changed at the last moment, I’m not sure where the magistrate plans to host us all,” Jenner said.
“What about up there?” Bodin asked and gestured to the large hill in the distance where everyone was directing their caravans to.
“Do you know where we go?” Asher Redburn rode up next to us on a manapillar separate from his carriage.
“I think we ought to just follow the crowd,” I said as I pointed to the grandiose estate perched on the top of the impressive hill.
From our position, it looked like there was only one winding road up to the palatial manor, and it appeared as if people were parking along the switchbacks and setting up their camps just on the side of the road.
“I guess we just find any old place,” Shay said with her head poking through the little window behind the driver’s seat.
“We might as well join the line,” I said as I scowled at one of the worst traffic jams I’d ever seen.
I certainly didn’t miss that from Earth.
But like all horrible traffic jams, it eventually eased along until we came upon a relatively people-less bend in the road that had an amazing view.
“Let’s set up camp here,” I suggested mostly because my ass was starting to go numb from sitting in the hard seat. “I know it’s not closer to the top, but this is good, right, gang? Hey, Dreadful, wanna combine camps?”
“Good idea,” the jackrabbit-man said and directed his carriage to park next to ours. “Then you and I must be heading up to Asher Vane’s estate for the Preparations.”
“Sounds good,” I said and hopped down so I could stretch my legs for a moment before joining the bustle of unloading, and I walked toward the edge of the switchback so I could admire the vista.
Multi-colored pennants and flags flapped in the mild morning breeze, and bits of confetti swirled in the air and sparkled like glitter. Music and laughter could be heard as caravan after caravan continued to snake up the winding roads of the Magistrate’s private mountain, and a small smile spread across my face.
Because we banded together, we took up enough space to where we had the ledge all to ourselves which was really nice, and I took a huge lungful of fresh air and stretched out my back.
It was a perfect day.
But I was restless.
“I have a bad feeling about this place,” someone said next to me and popped my little bubble of serenity.
“Somehow, I get the impression you mostly have a ‘bad feeling’ about pretty much everything,” I snapped at Vel-Rala who, as usual, had taken herself away from the group to avoid work.
The cockatoo-woman arched a thin eyebrow and exhaled a stream of pungent smoke from her lips.
“You feel it, too, then,” she said instead of being offended by my waspish attitude, and then she tapped the ash off the end of her reed-like cigarette.
“You shouldn’t smoke that, you know,” I said instead so I wouldn’t have to respond to her oddly perceptive comment.
“It’s my last one, anyway,” she said and dropped the long cigarette on the ground so she could crush it with her heel, and then she turned to walk away.
“Vel,” I said and felt a little chagrined in the face of her empty sorrow. “Hey, just because we might not get along, you do realize you’re a part of this group now, don’t you?”
The blank expression the cockatoo-woman had mostly been wearing since she came to live with us finally fractured some, and she looked at me with her coal-like eyes.
“I’m not really sure what that means,” she confessed and hugged herself as she looked out over the lake. “I-I see how you all interact, and it doesn’t make sense to me. I don’t know how to be ‘a part’ of your group.”
“Well, the good news is, you don’t really have to try, you just are,” I said. “I know you’re unused to experiencing anything but cruelty, but all I can do is show you otherwise. I am good on my word because that’s all I came to Aventoll with, so you can trust when I say I will never hurt you or shut you out unless you do something that warrants that. But we already had that discussion.”
“Yes,” she murmured and seemed to mentally chew over my words.
“You could make more of an effort, though,” I said but then nudged her a little to take any sting out of my words. I didn’t particularly like her, but I didn’t want to be a dick, either.
It wasn’t her fault I was feeling more and more on edge the closer to noon, or mid-epoch, it got.
“I hardly know where to start,” she said and then turned to look at the organized chaos now increased two-fold by Redburn’s brood.
Dreadful and Jenner were chatting about some old book the jackrabbit-man was holding in his hand, while Rylan and the two familiar-looking farm children set up troughs of water for Prosper and Redburn’s manapillars.
Arvid, it seemed, had also ‘jumped’ into action and was already cooking something over a fire one of Redburn’s young maidservants was feeding logs to, and the rambunctious raccoon-brothers were continuing to unload while Zoie took inventory and gave instructions like a proper first wife.
“You just gotta jump in,” I chuckled and then led by example by waltzing up to the revelry and clapped my hands once. “What can I do?”
“Husband, I demand your help with this frustrating tent!” Shay immediately commandeered my services as she popped up from a tangle of canvas and cords.
I laughed and went over to my aggravated phoenix-wife and observed how much of a mess she had made of the poor tent.
“What did the tent ever do to you?” I teased and helped her with the guy-lines she was trying to unknot with her gimpy bandaged fingers.
“It’s this stupid hand,” she growled and huffed when she finally gave up the task. “It’s making things difficult. Once Horus has no need for the disagreeable creature, I rather think we should let Arvid cook Igoric in a stew!”
Her cheeks were flushed with rage, and her crest looked a little fuller due to the heavy feathers on her head that wanted to puff up, but even though she was furious, the whole effect made me think of a pissed-off baby chick that fell into a rain puddle.
It was kind of adorable.
“Let me see,” I said, and between the two of us we were able to split the work where she organized the parts of the large three person tents, and I popped them up one by one.
“I didn’t know we had these,” I said as I finished erecting the last tent.
Each one of the colorful three person tents had three rooms separated by additional panels of cloth, and I could tell based on the other campsites around us that our tents were of a far greater quality.
“They came from Icarian,” Shay explained. “Bala always hated staying anywhere that didn’t have an Inn, but when the occasion called for it, he insisted on the best money could buy, the arrogant man.”
“Well, here’s to our benefit, then,” I said, and I tugged her into the tent after me and then undid one of the straps holding up the flap for the doorway. It furled down just in time for me to dip my phoenix-wife and plant a large kiss on her lips as if I was some sort of Casanova.
“Daaaaad,” I heard a long whine, and I straightened up and glanced behind me where the tent’s ‘backdoor’ was still open. Rylan was glaring inside with a teasing grimace on his face. “Ewwwwww.”
Brat.
“Don’t you ‘ew’ me, or I’ll throw you off this mountain,” I said and rushed at my unruly trouble-maker so I could sling him over my shoulders and spin him around to the sound of his startled shrieks of delight.
“Don’t! I don’t wanna dieeee!” he hollered through his belly laughter as I marched closer to the ledge.
Suddenly, a loud fanfare of trumpets made everyone on the mountain freeze.
I set Rylan down and glanced at the top where the sound came from.
“Come, Alex Brightwood,” Redburn said as he turned to me. “We must commence with the Preparations.”
I swallowed hard.
This was it.
Chapter 11
“Maybe I should have suggested a campsite closer to the top,” I huffed to Redburn as we both trekked up the hill with our shields held high above our heads.
“Maybe,” he panted and then shot me a good-natured grin. “But that’s the purpose. Consider that from this point forward, the Trials have already begun.”
“But what about… the Preparation?” I asked as I adjusted my sweaty grip on the shield.
“If you think of everything as the Trials, then what better Preparation is there?” he said in his optimistic roundabout logic.
I appreciated his outlook, and for some reason, it made the shield over my head feel a tad lighter.
“How many times have you done this ceremony?” I asked him as we rounded another curve.
“I have been partaking in the Ceremony since my seventeenth season after I took over my father’s Asher Legacy,” he said with what sounded like a mixture of honor and sadness.
I recalled from a conversation I had with Mec about how this so-called ‘Legacy’ was passed down from the Duelists to their children. Because of the way the Duelist Stones worked, you were either divinely Blessed by the Goddess on the night of the supernatural comet, Bhraya, or you had to inherit it through killing another. No exceptions for blood relations, so that meant Redburn had to have killed his father when the time came in order to become the Asher of his estate.
“I’m sorry,” I said on reflex.
“What for?” came the puzzled reply.
“Well, it’s just, where I’m from, er, children of ‘lords and ladies’ don’t have to have to kill their parents to inherit their blood status,” I said.
“Oh, I see,” the jackrabbit-man chuckled. “Usually, when fathers and sons enact the Passing Rite, it is at a moment in the father’s life when he is ready and willing to greet death. My father, Fearsome Redburn, was plagued with a bone sickness that robbed him of his swiftness of movement and his eyesight. For these reasons, he determined to die with honor at the hand of his beloved son instead of wasting away without his dignity.”
“When you put it like that, I guess I can see the appeal,” I said and blinked through the sting of sweat falling in my eyes. “Any signs of the Magistrate’s place, or what?”
The jackrabbit-man laughed. “I think it’s around the next bend.”
We saved our breath to make the last push up the mountain along with dozens of other Duelists doing the same with their own shields above their heads.
It looked like everyone was congregating in the large plaza outside of the imposing manor that was actually carved into the side of the mountain like fucking Gondor or something. The magnificent Lord of the Mountain Hall, Gella Vane, was standing in the front of the steps with his own imposing black shield raised high.
“Fellow Ashers!” the owl-like man boomed out, and the ram-lord broke away from the crowd so he could walk up next to Vane with his own burnished copper shield. “Welcome to Gatetown, and to Monger Estate!”
A cheer rang out from all and sundry, and all the gathered Duelists lifted their shields toward the sky three times in rapid succession.
“Gratitude to you, Gella,” Mec thundered. “Now, let the Preparations begin!”
Another loud blast of the fanfare blared out as several beautiful women in sheer flowing gowns poured down the steps, and I startled and almost dropped my shield completely.
Before I could make that disaster of a mistake, one of the women whisked my shield away.
“Just go with it.” Redburn nudged me and gave me a genial smile as another gorgeous woman carted off his shield as well.
Maybe there should have been a preparation on the Preparation, because I felt like a fish out of water just like during Blue Night.
I really needed to talk to Mec about informing me of all the details, especially since I was doing him a favor.
For reasons.
I still.
Didn’t.
Know.
Oh, yeah. Me and the big guy were definitely going to have a little chat. For now, I was glad I made such an ally in my pal Dreadful to take my social cues from.
“Do not fret, my friend,” Redburn said with his hand on my shoulder as we followed the flood of other Ashers into the Magistrate’s castle-like manor.
