Chapter Nine #3
“That’s mine!” Ethyr protested, trying to wriggle out of the hold on him. It only tightened until he could hardly breathe.
“Are you sure?” the man asked, crouching down and picking up a necklace. He looked it over. “A ratty brat like you owns all this? Fair and legal? I doubt it.”
“I do! It is!” he said loudly.
“Well, this sure seems a burden. And carrying all this only attracts unseemly types, you know,” he said. The man holding Ethyr chuckled. “We’ll take it off your hands for you.”
Ethyr stopped struggling, catching his breath and looking around. The third man watched from the side, arms crossed. Ethyr recognized them in the moonlight; they had been among the many tables staring at him in the tavern. He had no hope of besting one of them, let alone all three.
“F-fine,” he acquiesced. “Just… leave me one, please. One small jewel. You can have everything else.”
The man stood, dangling a belt off his finger. “I tell you what, brat,” he said with a smile. “You can earn one.”
“What?” Ethyr huffed. They were his in the first place!
The man stepped up to lay the silver belt over his shoulders. “If you’re good enough, maybe you can even earn two.” He gripped the back of Ethyr’s knees and pulled them open. Indignant fear turned to terror.
“Don’t!” he screamed, and twisted, trying to break free, but the crushing arms around him were immovable and the man’s fingers only dug more painfully into his knees to hold them in place.
“Faluut, grab his feet, why don’t you.”
“No!” Ethyr gasped. The third man grabbed hold of his ankles and yanked his feet into the air. No amount of writhing could get the man out from between his legs then. “Please!” Ethyr cried as the man lifted his tunic. “I’m the king!” That made them pause.
The assailant cocked his head and raised his eyes to the man holding Ethyr.
“Well,” that one said with a chuckle. “Good enough for the gods, good enough for us.” The other two laughed with him.
“Let me give you some advice,” a fourth voice called from farther away. The three all looked over in surprise. A dark figure stood in the marshes, holding the shawl of jewelry up to be clearly visible. “If you’re robbing someone, maybe don’t leave the valuables lying around.”
The two men in front of Ethyr looked at each other, then down at the ground. Only the loaf of bread was sitting there. They dropped Ethyr’s legs and sprinted towards the thief. He didn’t so much as blink, standing calm and waiting.
The men shouted and dropped out of view below the tall grass.
Time stood still for a second as the man holding Ethyr didn’t move. Then he shoved Ethyr to the ground and ran for the thief, skirting around whatever the others had fallen into. He had almost reached him when he screamed too, shriller than the others, and stumbled forward, clutching his leg.
“You three aren’t very bright, are you?” the thief said nonchalantly.
Ethyr scrambled to his feet and took off down the road. He ran as fast and far as he could, not stopping until exhaustion made him trip over himself and he collapsed, palms and knees jolting onto the packed dirt.
He sank to his heels, gasping for breath. When it didn’t feel like his lungs were choking him, he bent over his knees, pressing his fists to his face and fighting the well of tears.
A weight bumping his shoulder whipped his head back up. The thief stood over him, holding out the shawl-bag. Ethyr shuffled away from him in clumsy panic. “Don’t touch me!”
The man looked him over. “I wasn’t going to,” he said flatly.
Ethyr watched him, muscles tense as he tried to decide whether to jump up and run.
“Don’t you want your things back?” the man asked, still holding them out.
He eyed the bag. “You can keep it,” he muttered.
“I don’t want it.”
Ethyr looked back to his face, scared. “Then what do you want?” he asked, voice shivering.
“To continue on my way without running into any more naive dolts getting robbed.”
He didn’t know what to say to that. The man held the bag out further. When Ethyr didn’t take it, he sighed and dropped it to the ground.
“There are a lot more people like them than me out there,” he said. “You’d better smarten up.” He started down the road.
Ethyr stared at his retreating back, then the bag. He scooped it up and jogged after the man. “Where are you going?” he asked.
“Mahyria,” he said. Ethyr's heart squeezed. But he had no choice. Never mind other people, those three were still down the road he needed to go.
“How did you know there was a hole there?” he asked.
“There are pits and deep pools all over the marsh,” the man replied indifferently. “Locals know how to navigate them, but for others it’s a bed of traps.”
“So you’re a local here?”
“I didn’t say that.”
Ethyr pressed his lips together, glancing around. Night had fallen heavily by then, and the thin sliver of moon didn’t offer much light. Still, he could see that the man wore a cloak over his tunic and had dark, short hair.
“What’s your name?” he asked. The man exhaled loudly.
“...Kyarin.”
“Why did you help me?”
“Why shouldn’t I?”
“Be… because it puts you in danger, too.”
He shrugged.
Ethyr trailed behind him for another minute. “What happened to the third man?”
“Wolf trap.”
His eyes widened. “Why was that there?”
“Because I put it there.”
“What? Why? How?”
“You ask a lot of questions.”
Ethyr scoffed, tossing his hands. “When a mysterious stranger appears out of nowhere and saves you for no reason, it brings up a lot of questions.”
“It doesn’t have to.”
Ethyr opened his mouth, then closed it.
He followed Kyarin for hours. The man never said anything about it. They left the marshes behind and were walking through grassland when Kyarin veered off the road. Ethyr stood at its edge and watched him sit down in the grass.
“Are you going to sleep?”
“Yes.”
“Do you mind if I sleep, too?”
“You can do what you want.” Kyarin took off his cloak and laid it over his lap, then dropped onto the ground, hands tucked under his head. Ethyr looked around the empty road, then crept over and sat beside him.
“Kyarin?”
The man took a deep breath. “Yes?”
He looked down at the shawl-bag in his lap. “Thank you. You’re a good person.”
The man didn’t reply.
Ethyr lay down, curling up around the jewelry.
He stared at the silhouette of grass against the night sky and tried not to think about what had happened, or the imprint of fingers he could still feel under his knees, or how bad his feet hurt, or that he had failed after two days.
Deep down he knew he wouldn’t succeed, but he’d thought he would at least make it farther than that.
“Here.”
He looked over his shoulder. Kyarin held out his folded cloak. Ethyr stared at it, confused.
“For your head.”
“But it’s yours.”
“I don’t need it tonight.”
Ethyr hesitantly reached out. As soon as he touched it the man let go and Ethyr fumbled to grab it before it fell. Kyarin went back to looking at the stars with his hands under his head.
“Don’t you want a pillow?” Ethyr asked.
“No.”
Ethyr stared between him and the cloak. He slowly placed it down and laid his head on it. It was certainly more comfortable than hard dirt and sharp grass. “Thank you,” he said again.
“Mhm.”
He closed his eyes.
“Your Divinity!”
He jerked awake and away from the hands grabbing his shoulders, looking into the distressed face of a guard.
“Are you okay?” the man asked.
Ethyr glanced down at the folded cloak on the ground, indented where his head had been laying, then around at the fields and road. Sunlight slanted down on them from the horizon. Kyarin was nowhere to be seen.
“I’m… I’m fine,” he said, not sure if he even believed himself, but the guard seemed satisfied with that answer.
He stood, taking Ethyr with him by his armpits. “We must make haste, Your Divinity. Everyone is in a panic.”
Ethyr snatched the cloak and shawl off the ground, then let the guard push him to the horse standing in the road. He crouched next to it and laced his fingers together.
“Give me your foot, Your Divinity. Hold onto her mane.” He hoisted Ethyr over the horse’s back into the front of the saddle, then mounted with the stirrups to sit behind him.
He gathered the reins and swiveled the mare to face the other direction before kicking it into a canter. Ethyr hugged the cloak tight to his stomach and kept a steel grip on the horse’s mane as it thundered down the road.
When they reached the bridge into Mahyria, the endless lines coming and going had turned into stagnant seas of people corralled to either end, leaving the bridge free. The horse cantered straight over it before the guard pulled it to a halt.
“I found him,” he told another guard standing watch over the crowd. She took one look at Ethyr and ran off.
The horse continued to a little stone hut that was constructed beside the gate.
The guard dismounted, tied the reins to a metal circle in the wall, and held out his hands for Ethyr.
He sighed, reluctant, but he had never ridden a horse before and certainly not one so large, so he leaned into the guard’s arms and let himself be pulled down like a child.
Another guard rushed from the building.
“Your Divinity! Are you alright?” she asked him. He nodded and her attention turned to his captor. “Did you—?”
“Rasaf has gone up,” he said. “We still need to send runners out for those on the road.”
“I’ll tell Lyrian.”
Ethyr perked up at the name, but didn’t have time to ask anything before the woman had taken off and he was being herded into the building with a hand on his back and a polite but firm, “It’s safer in here, Your Divinity.”
It was simple inside, just stone walls and floor, furnished with two wooden benches. Was it safer, or easier to keep him captive?
A guard stood at attention when they entered. “Your Divinity,” he said with a low bow. “Thank the gods you’re safe.”
Ethyr eyed him. He didn’t know what kind of reception he’d been expecting, but surely one more irritated than this. Or curious, at least. They were acting like he’d been kidnapped, but he’d left of his own will and no one wondered why?