30. Caspyn
Chapter 30
As the sun was setting they pulled the wagons around in a giant clearing similar to how I had seen that morning before we had set out for the day.
The horses pulled themselves around without me even guiding them, the large sweaty beasts moving through the actions they had clearly done a thousand times. Each wagon pulled into place behind them, the animals in the center of what became a wall of painted and rickety wagons. Only then did everyone begin moving at once, pulling out tents and unpacking wagons, the men setting camp while the women built fires, children already cutting and prepping for the evening meal.
In a matter of minutes they became an active village, chatting and laughing and working. All within what I quickly realized were the protective walls that the wagons had built. Security for a traveling village that so many fear, and perhaps hated.
Ryndle had insisted I drive the wagon, but now my body ached and screamed in protest of the day spent sitting and bouncing along the unkept road astride the forest. Every turn of the wheel had sent more pain through my body, the agony ripping and grinding as I was left alone on that seat in pain. The more I hurt, the more that rage that had been so prevalent in me grew, until now I was left a snarling pained mass. I moved to stand, everything from neck to knee screaming as I forced myself up.
I was sure I should take it slow thanks to the pain that was screaming in my abdomen, even though I wanted to run from them all. I was done with this place, and these people. Done with their songs and their smiles, and done with Ryndle’s nonsense. I wasn’t sure if I could take another day of this. We couldn’t be that far from the temple, perhaps I could find my blades and leave. I would leave now, but those blades were irreplaceable, and I had no interest in losing them.
“You are going to rip your wound open,” Lyani came up beside the horses, helping some of the younger boys remove bridles and straps to leave the horses to wander toward some tall grasses where the other horses and a few goats and sheep had gathered.
“Then I rip it open again,” I snapped as I moved between the wagons, pulling and tugging at my clothes in my need to find relief. When sitting my need to pee was manageable, but the second I stood it had become an agony. I needed to take a piss, and bad.
“You rip it open again and I’m going to have to heal you again.” She came up right behind me, that calm harsh reprimand I had heard from her before coming right back.
“Then you’ll heal me again.” She was right behind me now, as though I had not been darting between wagons in an attempt at privacy.
“Do you mind?” I hissed, turning as much as I could to glare at her and shoo her away.
“Mind that you will ruin all the work I did? Yes.” Her eyes were like fire as she placed her hands on her hips.
“No!” I tried to angle myself at her, careful to keep myself still facing between wagons. “Do you mind giving me some space while I take a piss.”
She rolled her eyes, “No, I don’t mind. I’ve seen hundreds of cocks in my life, either pissing or doing more enjoyable things. Sorry to tell you, yours is not very special.”
She grinned, and any attempt at relieving myself vanished. She leaned against the wagon, looking directly at me as if daring me to continue. As if I could.
“What do you want, Lyani?” I tucked myself back into my pants. Like hell if I was going to be able to take a piss now.
“I want you to take care of yourself and perhaps not jump down from wagons when you are still recovering from something having cut its way through you.” Those bright eyes bore into me, daring me to challenge her, to snap back. I just froze, even that fury boiling underneath my skin was trapped underneath the fury of her gaze.
“I’m fine.” I was snarling.
“You are not. You are going to ruin what the Goddess gave you–”
“The Goddess gave me nothing but a shit life, honey. I don’t need to take it easy, I need to get out of here and finish the job I spent my life training to do.” I was fuming, all of the heat of my magic rippling off my skin, stronger than it had since my injury. I was sure she could feel it, but she didn’t even flinch, she stepped closer, her own fire flashing in her eyes. Except hers was pure rage; there wasn’t a drop of magic there that I could tell.
“I don’t care how strong you think you are, Caspyn. I will put you on the ground if you discriminate against the Goddess in any way. She gave you this gift and I will not have it–”
“Stop with that nonsense,” I tried to push her away; she didn’t budge. “I know you believe it, but I don’t need you forcing that shit on me. The Goddess has done nothing for me. Nothing.” Nothing but ripped me from my life and what was important. Again and again. Nothing but killed those who mattered. Again and again. I bit my tongue. I had no reason to share that with her, not even a whisper of desire. “Your Goddess means nothing to me.”
“You may feel that way now, but I have seen her power, and I see her power in you. Some day you will discover what she has done.” Lyani leaned closer, all of that gold in her eyes flickering. “I just hope it’s not too late.”
“Too late for someone else to die?” I laughed, the sound loud and heartless as I leaned over her, letting all of that anger pour into her. Her and her stupid Goddess. She pressed her palm against my chest, her hand tiny against the breadth. There was barely any pressure, but she still shoved me back, my back slamming into the wagon. She was so small, breakable. Somehow, she made me feel as though I was the breakable one.
That may have been due to the giant hole in my gut, however.
“Don’t try me, Caspyn. You aren’t the first man who’s thought themselves stronger than they really are and found themselves in need of help.” She pressed that tiny hand against me again, it was clearly supposed to be a threat but I barely felt anything before she strode off. She didn’t look back.
She left me there snarling as I watched her vanish between the wagons, that too-big dress of hers swaying and dragging against the grasses and dirt the wagons were set in.
“Damned woman,” I growled and turned, thankful to at least relieve myself in peace.
Or, almost. I had barely finished when a thunder of tiny steps came up behind me. I didn’t need to turn to know who that was.
“Are you one of the Queen’s warriors?” Ziah’s over-excited whisper drifted over to me as I turned.
It was a simple enough question, but it took me back to all the wrong places. Not just to the snakes I had seen at the gates of Turin, but of the Fae who had destroyed my home. The King of Fae.
“Excuse me?” I hissed, trying to finish as I quickly reclothed and turned.
“Well, you’re a warrior, right? I saw your swords, although they don’t look like any swords I’ve seen before, they are all curved and twisted. I didn’t even know they could make blades like that. What are they anyway?”
“They were made for me, after I took…” I hesitated explaining the heads and trials that were required to earn those blades on the Isle of Dám would give the boy night terrors. “After I completed a task.”
“I saw your scars…” he continued, “and that wound… you are clearly a warrior.”
“Something like that,” I pushed my way past him. I needed to find some place to hide in this rotten place, or to find my blades and leave.
“So, if you aren’t a warrior, are you one of her guards?” Great, Ziah was following me now. Shaking him was going to be harder than dodging Lyani. Was there any kind of peace or privacy in this Goddess damned group?
“Isn’t there some cutting or milking you need to be doing?” I snarled as I darted back over to the main wagon. Perhaps I could find a small tent I could disappear into for a time, if only to rest and not be hounded by pain and questions.
“I’ve done my chores. Lyani sent me to make sure your wound doesn’t need to be cleaned again since you tore it.”
“I didn’t tear it!” I roared, turning toward him and the damned woman who was standing at the far end of camp, watching me with a smile.
The woman. Could she not leave me be?
“It’s fine,” I snarled and turned, grabbing a small canvas bundle out of the back of the wagon and moving toward the outskirts of the makeshift village where thankfully no one was pitching any tents yet.
“She said you would say that, and then she told me to tell you that she will be by to change the bandages after you get the tent out of your–” He stopped mid-sentence and made a sound that was almost a snicker.
I rounded on him, canvas roll dropping to the ground.
“Get the tent out of my what?” With the way he was giggling and blushing I already knew exactly what Lyani had relayed to him.
“If I say, Ryndle will have my tongue.”
With a snarl I went back to my tent. I had no patience for this, for these people and their glee and prayers, and songs which were once again filling the air. I needed sleep, and perhaps a salve for the sores on my ass that were thankfully not caused by a tent.
That woman!
I laid out the canvas carefully, pitching the small tent the way I had seen them do. Or at least trying to, not that the boy was any help. Even after I had finished pinning the stretch of fabric to the ground, Ziah was still standing there staring.
“What is it boy, you’ve delivered your message, now be on your way.” I didn’t even look at him, but he still didn’t move.
“I can’t. You didn’t answer my question.” He was bouncing on his toes now, still watching even as I tried to place the last pin in the ground. I must have hit a rock.
“What question?” I pulled the corner of the tent with too much zeal, popping the other pin out of the soft soil. It took everything not to throw the damn thing across camp.
“Are you a warrior or a guard?” That awed look on his face was back, the hero worship that I wanted so much to squash beaming into me. Well, if I wanted to end his misplaced adoration, now was my chance.
“Neither,” I stomped the pin back into the soft soil with enough force it bent. “I was a hunter.”
“A hunter?” He actually seemed disappointed. Good. “What did you hunt?”
I paused, foot still firm against the bent pin as I stared at him, any disappointment already replaced with a look of beaming awe.
I hesitated, so many in the Realm thought that the Fae had been destroyed in that war with the sister. The histories say that they were eliminated in that last battle that formed so much of the religion that these people followed. I wondered if they thought the same, that the Goddess had decimated the Fae and saved this world from their scourge.
Or if they knew it was a lie.
“Fae.” I said simply, grabbing the corner of the canvas and preparing to secure it to the side of the wagon. I waited for some shock or confusion to cross Ziah’s face, instead he went very pale, his eyes wide in an unmistakable horror.
I hadn’t expected that. But, at least the hero worship was gone. Perhaps I should have not been as callous with my disregard of his beliefs, but the boy would find out soon enough when the Fae guard started stomping village to village and killing any child with magic. Best prepare him now.
“You hunt Fae?” He was barely able to gasp the words. “For the Queen.”
“Something like that.” I really didn’t want to get into it. Besides, the way he was looking at me was more than a little concerning. I had expected a barb about them being gone or something about The Goddess, sure, but that look was more horror than I anticipated.
“Ziah?” I asked, actually growing a little concerned. He didn’t seem to be breathing. “You alright?”
He nodded once before he turned, his grubby little face only looking back once before he took off across the camp at a sprint, running right for Ryndle who had been talking to a few others with far too much animation.
Ryndle froze as Ziah reached him, both of them turning to face me.Horror lined Ziah’s face, but there was only joy in Ryndle, that wide smile of his stretching uncomfortably.
That was not a reaction I would expect from the leader of a religious faction that worshiped a Goddess that had eradicated the Fae. If he thought the Fae were supposed to be gone, he would have been as horrified as Ziah. Yet he looked at me and smiled as though he knew something I didn’t; as though he knew something about the Fae.
I nearly bolted over there, demanding answers to what he knew and what I was clearly missing. But before I could take a step he turned, vanishing into the group of his zealots who swallowed him as though they were hiding him from me.
Hiding whatever it was he knew.