Marcus Thunderhammer was a man out of a dream: strong, tall, a head of hair like a storm cloud, with a full beard to match. As a Paladin of the Holy order of Ca'talls, he was my hero. He was everything I always wanted to be, everything that was good, right and strong in the world; compassion and hope all rolled into the god I had simply called my Father.
One day, he left me and my mother to fight against those who would seek to destroy Ca'talls' Holy Order.
That was the last I ever saw of my personal god, they said he died saving us all.
Yet in return for his dedication, his sacrifice? The church he had spent so many years defending let my mother die and threw me into an orphanage. In that place, my first taste of hell and how uncaring the gods were, I found a man that thought children should be put to work as slaves. He was the priest in charge of us.
So, I ran away.
Years later, I helped a bunch of Nuns kidnap others from that same orphanage, sending them upriver to live with a clan of Dwarves. Later still while trying to gather evidence about the evils going on within its 'sacred' walls, my father's church took the hand of my best friend and refused to help her when she took ill from the wound.
Rather than see reason, she continued to rely on her faith and went to one of their work camps, telling me, "They'll make it better."
Damn it! Her devotion to the lies told to keep us in line really pissed me off with her.
So, everything I cared about was gone, all of it. Every last bit taken by evil men pretending to be good.
As the final act of kindness from them and their false Gods, I nearly starved to death in the streets of a city that claimed to love and worship the same Gods my father died for.
Then, like a miracle, a follower of a different God, of a completely different way of looking at the world, came in on velvet wings and took me away, he, a barbarian, saved me.
The girl that once fled everything she had rather than be a slave, found herself slave once more. Only this time I chose that fate and was respected for it.
After my new family, my owner and our friends, stopped a man who had been selling people to the Children of Am'met as food, I received the greatest shock of my life. A shock far greater than my mother's passing or watching a friend trade her life for my own.
I learned that Marcus Thunderhammer was alive.
Alive and living well in the Largest City in the world. He had become The Lord Paladin of Five Rivers and Captain of its Guard.
My father was alive, and he was living luxuriously, while he left his family to rot in the South.
Now, here I was, a day away from his city and answers. The only question I had left was, would I be strong enough to both ask and hear them?
Chapter 1
Ymuno 23rd 397 AFU
We had been traveling for almost twelve solid weeks, not staying in any town for more than a day or two. Dragon's Rest and That Kiss was more than a month behind us.
Each of us had gotten outfitted in Cliffport before we left, once the dust settled on our first foray into adventuring. I had gotten what the trader had called a buckskin. She was this cream-colored thing, and her sweet temperament suited me just fine. I had broken both of my small blades off in the thighs of a knight that had gotten too close to me, so they had to be replaced. Since one of them was my slave gift, Alabaster insisted he buy the replacement for that one. His people considered it customary to arm all slaves, and as one of the two I broke had been the one he first got me, he paid for half of the matching set of daggers with black walnut handles I now carried.
They were nice.
Alabaster rode to my right, and as always, he was great about all the turmoil I was going through. Whether it was the crying, the raging, the pouting and belligerent-ness, or the general emotional turmoil of this trip and its destination. He smiles over at me, a quick gesture of understanding. How this wild man can know me so well after such a short time is beyond my understanding. His armor was the same that we had bought with our first windfall, a breastplate of good steel modified for his LeatherWing physiology as well as his breasts. The sun exposure had not darkened him; instead, it had made him whiter somehow. That still seems odd to me. For a weapon, he got himself a nice light mace; at least, I think that is what the club with the flanges on it is, it is what I always called them anyway.
Behind us rides Arwen. The patch gives our paladin the rakish look of a scoundrel, but that couldn't be farther from the truth. He and D'arren are both of noble blood, and though D'arren forsook his to be a simple guard, Arwen embraced his. With the help of Rowan, he has grown into the knight of a heroic story. Our story. Arwen in his Gothin Plate looked good. The symbol of his god was beaten into the chest plate in gold and silver: a dove on the wing, with a broken chain link in its mouth, the symbol for freedom from bondage. His armor isn't so shiny now, but then, none of ours are. Dings and dents that could not be completely hammered out show on him and the armor. Seeing him makes me ache in ways I don't understand.
Shaking my head, I once more thought, "Those two boys are going to be the death of me." His stallion also had barding and was a warhorse, the poor beast had finally gotten used to the extra weight. Still, in this heat, the sweat was rolling from under the cloth that kept metal from rubbing flesh.
Before you think the boy cruel it is only light barding, and we had had a run in or two with bandits. Arrows in your horse are not fun to remove, for you or the horse, so it was for the best that Angkor took to the barding well enough.
Then of course, there is the problem with my father.
He isn't dead, and yes, that is a problem.
To Arwen's left rides Rowan. Even bare-chested she sits with more dignity than any noble I've ever seen. The sun has darkened her to a deep crimson and the heat has her skin shining with sweat. Rowan also had her breastplate, or what was left of it, but for a weapon she had taken a leaf out of her slave's book. She now carried a sword longer than she was tall. It looked good on her, and both had them strapped to their horses or when not mounted, carried them pommel in hand with the blade resting on their shoulder. Her armor is stowed due to an incident with a Rattlescale, the little creeper attacked while she was on watch. It's built-up electrical charge scored a hole in the chest plate knocking her flat on her ass. The pain of the jolt loosed a scream that warned us of the danger she was in.
The blasted thing's little legs scampered, making the scales on its back rub together and rattle their warning. With every step it built up another of its deadly charges.
Honestly, according to Sliverleaf, it only attacked because Rowan had scared it. They aren't generally aggressive enough to go after something as large as a LeatherWing. Its panicked run through camp, with its tan scales sparking wildly, is funny as hell as a bar room story, but at the time, we thought we were going to lose our Red.
A nice new scar on her chest showed where the scorched metal dripped onto her skin. She was quite proud of it and loved telling the story over and over, what she could remember of it at least. She prompts us to fill in the rest as she goes. The drinks we've gotten out of the retellings make it almost worth the panic that ran through me seeing her lying motionless while the rest of us chased a wingless dragon-kin the size of a rooster through the clearing we'd stopped at.
Both she and Al now had good horses under them; not war horses, as they would take flight with trouble, but good sturdy ones. Alabaster's was a light gray with dappling on its hindquarters. Rowan's was a chestnut with a white blaze on its forehead.
On the cart was Sliverleaf with David still at its yoke, while we had horses now, the mule had been good to us. Besides, both the Elf and I liked the gentle creature, so we kept him around letting him pull the cart with our last member on it. The beast had a calmness about him that made me feel better. Sliverleaf, of course, was nose deep in her book and musing to herself, trusting David to follow us. She said she was on the verge of understanding enough of the math to make the next ring of spells work. What math had to do with magic was beyond me, but she swore that it did.
Sliverleaf had bought inks and an iron bound staff; other than that, I found out she was a clothing hound. While we bought practical, she got dresses; red ones, blue ones dyed with ink made from beetle shells, even a gold dress that hugged her frame and was scandalously short, showing off thigh on one side and knee on the other. I know it's a popular assumption that all elves are like that, but she assured me they aren't. I'll take her word for it. As it was, she was wearing this bright blue silk wrap thing she called a sari or some such.
D'arren Lanshire is the man on my right; he is talking to me and trying to help, trying to encourage me and lift my spirits. Spirits that seem to get lower and grimmer with each passing day. He is an older man, whose flush of health has finally been restored to him after his ordeal with the slavers. His dark skin and kinky hair had a shine to them once more that made me happy to think about.
D'arren was also sporting new clothing and armor as the slavers had taken his and the winds only knows what happened to them. He, like me, preferred plated leather. His was basic brown in contrast to my dark blue and gray, and his sword lay at his right hip. It wasn't until I saw that that I realized he was off handed just like Piper.
Over these last couple of months our time with him has been wonderful.
At least until he gets on his favored subject. "You have got to realize Chloe; he talks of you and your mother often." His hands made gestures imploring me to understand. "It pains him, but he does." The steady trod of the hooves drone on as he continues a narrative that I had long ago grown tired of. "You and she have been his driving force, you two keep him going." Every time he spoke of my father, a look crossed his face. It was an admiration usually reserved for the heroes of children. Not grown men. "You and your mother are a large part, I think, of why he helps people." D'arren was so earnest that it was hard to be mad at him.
For more than three months, he has been traveling with us and telling me how great a person my dad really is. If only he could understand that's not the problem. Each day, we get closer to this warm, wonderful, and honorable man who left me and my mother to die.
Finally, our last member was on the back of the cart. She ate and said nothing, but her presence was the only reason I was still going anywhere near where my father was. The hope was to bring her back or lay her to rest. That, and to fulfill the promise to pounce a younger sister. A sister she had never met. In a way, Ba'call had become my reason to go on, to face him.
With what he had been through and his earnest enthusiasm and care, it was hard to be mad with D'arren over this. Hard, but after three months of excuses, reasons, and everything but demands that my father was just another victim, I had long since had it. So, with different steps to the dance, we carried on with a song long exhausted.
"Damn it, D'ar. He could have come. He could have come and seen if we were really dead." My words were only filled with half the pain I had inside. I was getting better. Maybe by the time I faced him, I could do as Alabaster had made me promise, hear him out.
"He says he did. Said he saw your graves, Chloe. Don't you understand? He was lied to, just as you were."
Old roads. We had had this conversation too many times.
I shook my head. "I knew he was alive." Glaring at him I continued but tried to keep things in check. D'arren was a friend and for that I wanted to spare him my anger. "I waited." I could feel my voice trembling, I needed to get a hold of myself. "I didn't give up hope until I had been on the streets for years."
Piper knew, Piper saw. She knew I was hurt; only later did I learn she knew who I was. "I saw his statue and memorial. That stupid fucking thing. Most people don't even remember who it's for and never knew my father, but I knew he would come for me."
"Only, he didn't." I snarled, "His 'god' should have told him I was alive." Fatigue and sheer bitterness that my father chose make-believe people over me welled inside. I was losing to my own pain and fury. So much so I said something that I normally leave unspoken. "Oh, wait. That would mean his god existed."
D'arren dropped it, he knew I didn't believe; that my faith had died. That it had been killed by the same man who lied to me and my father. A man whose name I didn't even know. A man simply called His Holiness. The death of my infantile faith was the only favor that monster ever did for me.
Alabaster reached out with one of his white wings and wrapped it around me. He was my friend and my owner, I was a LeatherWing slave and proud of it. Slavery for them is this strange kind of adoption ritual. I had been collared now for nine months and can honestly say, I have never been more supported nor so free in my life.
The road was straight and wide, a swath cut through the grass and flatland. I always thought a flat plain would be boring, but I watched the green grass with its golden seed heads dance in winds, unseen and unfelt, far ahead of us. It was a sea in its own way, with ripples and waves running from one end to the other.
We had been in this odd sea for a long time with only the road, a few small towns and farms, and occasional islands of trees to cut through the waves. It was an endlessly hypnotic landscape of almost desolation, and full of loneliness. The herds would soon be coming back south now from the hotter lands of the north. Miles of grazing beasts eating the bounty of these endless fields. For the last two weeks, that landscape had been all there was to see.
Yesterday brought us within sight of a shadowy scar far off in the distance, a cut along the land. D'arren told us it was the river known as Joyful Greetings. The Grass Lords, he said, had their own name for it. They called it the 'Oh! Hi!'. It was one of the rivers for which the city of Five Rivers was named, the most westerly of them to be exact.
Today, we had farms in the distance; and with that I knew we would reach the outskirts of the city tonight. All the farms around here belonged to the city or to farmers and landlords who sold their goods to keep the city fed. As such, they enjoyed the protection of her armies, armies my father oversaw.
Tonight, we would stay at the inn known as Adventurer's Rest. A place every mercenary was welcome, and fights were sorely frowned upon. It was a Guild Inn, and as such, you were expected to carry yourself properly. They didn't care if you were a member, only that your coin was good. Granted, members did get discounts; it is one of the reasons we were stopping there if they had the room for us. The other was that there would be a runner. D'arren needed to get word to his command as soon as possible.
I half suspected he would also be sending word to my father that I was alive. I am not sure if that excited or terrified me.
Either way, and no matter what I felt, D'arren was still going to have to report. After all, it had been over a year ago that he disappeared trying to uncover a slavery operation within his city. He needed to know if it stopped or was still a problem, as well as warn that one Lord Corbin Shale was declared outlaw by his home city, Cliffport, and was wanted for deportation. Whether Five Rivers was where Shale ran to or not was unknown, but it wouldn't hurt to be sure.
Over the next two days we would be making our way to the city proper. The report would be there by tomorrow evening.
Right now, I, the animals, and probably all my companions only cared about a few simple things: a warm bed, good food, and an end to the day's travels in a place where we all could be comfortable.