Kai
§
I'm starting to feel slightly uneasy when it comes to making plans with the girls, not because I feel outmatched, but because it so frequently ends up being me talking to my brother, who is frankly not so hard to convince, and the girls endearing themselves to my father and making him feel like their ideas are his own. The uneasiness comes from a sense that although we are all working towards remarkably similar purposes, I don't know for sure what it is that both girls want. That, and their cleverness, does not necessarily bode well.
I wasn't going to be able to go hunting until the next day, because it would look awfully strange to desert the harvest festival so soon, and because we had groundwork to lay with Father and Tyrys. I went to my brother and, after once again promising to get him into the good graces of another girl, I mentioned that although we were not looking to start a war at this moment, being prepared would certainly be a good thing. Armies would need to be gathered and drilled, a task most suited to Tyrys's abilities, and one he would readily agree to. That done, I spent my day enjoying the festival, and the pretty girls there.
Meanwhile, I gathered that Florie went to my father first, to tempt him towards making more social plays to strengthen the Gardener position amongst the neighbors who have remained friendly to us. Then Ravenka went to him and told him a pretty story about how she noticed at the festival the ways in which his bannermen were being seduced away from him, but that she thought it was like in Bravos, when the merchant princes would team up with other merchants to offer special deals to avoid losing customers. Surely, bolstering support with powerful families would help keep the allegiance of his bannermen stronger. It worked, they reported to me later, and my father had several important things to think about.
I caught Odette looking at me like I was suddenly interesting, a far cry from her usual glower. The sense of unease came creeping back. We all had the same goals, didn't we? And yet I was certain there was something that I wasn't being told. I went back to the festival to find myself some female companionship for the evening and to get away from Odette's strange examination.
Rula
§
We had one more day of the harvest festival before our noble patron took us hunting, so we all went off to do what we did best, which was having a good time. We watched Quaynlis sing in a bardic competition, and win. He got a sack of dragons big enough that I wondered why Mother didn't send us to some poncey performance school. Azeline had enlisted herself in an archery competition, in a way that wouldn't draw too much attention to her, since if anyone knew who she was, she'd be forced back into the company of more reputable people.
Her plan of not getting noticed would've worked a bit better if she hadn't gone and tried to give her winnings away to the saddest, poorest looking person there. Her opponent in the final match rounded on her furiously, demanding to know what she was doing – whether if she didn't need the money, she was just competing to humiliate him. Azeline looked astonished. “I was shooting,” she said in wounded tones. “It's not my fault if you were humiliated!” 'Course, that was exactly the wrong sort of thing to say to the gentleman, and I thought it might come to me and the others stepping in, but Arun came to Azeline's side and lowered his head, giving a low, menacing growl. The young man looked a little paler then and turned on his heel to go away.
We had a right good time of it with the festival, and Slaange and I decided to round it off with a good old-fashioned drinking competition. We can both hold our own, and he has a little potion he calls Meadthistle, which he says allows him to take his liquor more if he's not too picky about how he feels in the morning. Everything was going well and I was having a damn good time right up until the moment when there were three of us left. Leastways, I think it was three, though sometimes I could have sworn it was six. About that time at any rate, I could feel the beer churning in my gut along with what was in retrospect a regrettable arrangement of festival foods. I reeled away from the table, sick, and left my brother to outdrink the giant man who had been our opponent. They toppled at nearly the same time, making it a draw, but I wasn't there to see it. I think we owe Quaynlis for getting us back to our encampment, but I wasn't in proper form to thank him in the morning. Everything felt awful and I didn't know what had possessed me to drink like I had. Slaange was in even worse shape, and could barely manage to drape himself over his horse.
Kai joined us, and I tried to look a little better for him, but I don't imagine it worked much. We got out a ways into the forest and Azeline set up one of her beautiful campsites and left me and Slaange in a tent with Quaynlis standing guard while she took Kai out hunting. Really, I think she took Kai out to watch her hunt, because he doesn't strike me as a woodsy sort of gentleman. I was feeling well enough to sit out by the fire pit when they came back with a deer draped over Arun's back, both of 'em looking pleased as they could be and the lordling looking a little green.
Next morning, we set off towards the first cave Azeline had picked out for us to explore, and Kai was having a bit of trouble with his horse. Now see, that's me being kind, on account of his nobility, because if he wasn't noble, I'd say he rode like he didn't even know which horse was the front end. Azeline took pity on him and said perhaps he could ride with her, behind her on her horse. I believe she meant the offer in earnest, though from the flush of her cheeks I could also tell that any excuse to be close to Kai was good for her. We had no luck with the first cave, and we agreed to press on another day to get to another cave Azeline knew about, even if it would make this a longer-than-average hunting trip.
With the luck we've had out in the wilderness so far, I was really just waiting for some horrible creature to attack us.
Kai
§
Quaynlis went ahead of me into the cave. “Stay behind me, M'lord,” he said. “Wouldn't want something untoward happening to you.” I couldn't tell with his little grin if he was making fun of me or not, so I didn't say anything. This wasn't as spacious a cave as the last had been, and the twisting passageways through it allowed us mostly to only travel one at a time between larger rooms. We went down until the passage opened up on a larger chamber, but even before we got there, a foul smell assaulted our noses. There were holes in the floor of the chamber, and they were all... well, they were all clearly latrines. Someone had been using this cave for a long time, although there was no other evidence of any inhabitance. I almost wanted to turn back, but we had to find the mushrooms.
The others began making their way carefully along the edges of the holes, but Quaynlis put out a hand to halt my progress, and said that perhaps it was best if we hung back. We watched Rula's torch bobbing along after Azeline, who bounded through the room as if nothing bothered her. Slaange was picking his way along more carefully with his own torch. I saw them both get up onto a ledge and vanish into a tiny tunnel, the light fading away.
Then, Azeline screamed.
Rula
§
When Azeline slid down the tunnel in front of me, I managed to hold back enough to control my own descent and not end up splashing into the murky cave water on the other end. Poor Az weren't so lucky, though, and when I lifted my torch, I saw her picking herself up out of the water covered in little white cave leeches. She screamed fit to wake the dead at that, and I went about getting them off of her, but it was a slow process, and she went paler and paler as I worked.
By the time I was done, my brother was gallantly coming to our rescue by tumbling down into the water himself, though he managed to pick up a few less leeches. Quaynlis was up at the mouth of the tunnel though with a rope, and he fed it down and tied it so we could all use it to help get us up. Azeline couldn't budge though, just stood there like she was frozen, shivering with something more than cold. Once Slaange was up, we tied the rope to Azeline and pulled her up gently as we could, though she screamed again like we was trying to kill her.
We resolved to leave the cave, which was starting to seem oppressive, and I led the way out, which meant I was right in front as we stepped out into the cave mouth where someone was waiting with bow and arrows. I felt a sudden, sharp pain, and yelled, stumbling back into the others with an arrow in my thigh above the knee. I couldn't bother taking the time to get it out proper, but I couldn't have it just sticking there, so I broke the arrow off as we backed up. We got to where we could spread out, and I caught my breath while Quaynlis and I took up positions on either side of the passage. A big man came charging out, and Quaynlis immediately slammed his maul into the man's chest, caving it in. The next to come out was going so fast, he didn't realize he'd met me sword until we was face to face and his belly pressed against the pommel. After this, they didn't send anyone charging in, and we thought maybe we had a bit of time to account for the number of 'em.
Slaange slid forward, moving like a cat into the darkness, and came back with a report that there were five men near, and 16 of them out in the big cave room near the entrance. Those were bad fighting odds, and we knew it, and they had the advantage. These kind of men would probably, Slaange pointed out, use the materials at their disposal (or shit, if his lordship Kai were out of earshot) to drive us out with noxious gas.
“You must have something better than they do,” Kai said to Slaange, and I think I caught a note of panic in his voice.
“We can do it first,” Slaange said at last. “And worse.” What he was intending was that we set fires in their latrines, where the toxic nature of the smoke would be even worse. But that meant we had to go hide in the leech pit, which nearly had Azeline screaming again. My brother calmly put a little green vial to her lips and made her drink, and after that, Azeline wasn't much with us, but at least we could guide her along. Slaange did mysterious chemical things to the latrine pits as we passed, and we all went down our rope to the leech pit to wait. My brother helped get the rest of the arrow out of my leg and get it bandaged, and then went about collecting leeches for his kit. Kai cradled Azeline close, though whether out of real affection or hope of some kind repayment, I couldn't say.
Then, all we could do was wait until it was safe to go out again.
Kai
§
When we made our way out of that pit of a cave at last, I slid on the damnable rope we had to scramble up and gashed open my leg from knee to ankle. The wound bubbled and burned, and I hardly noticed the handful of bodies of fallen bandits as we went through the main room, limping and in pain as I was. I don't think I'll go into another cave as long as I live. The other bandits had fled, but they had fled with our supplies and our horses. We settled Azeline down to sleep off whatever Slaange had given her, though she didn't want to rest without knowing if Arun was safe. Soon enough though, sleep overpowered her anyway.
I sat down on the ground and let the poisoner look at my wound, which shows how desperate I was, and he said it would heal all right, and he gave me something to drink to ease the pain. Dejected at the thought of a wasted trip, I dozed. After a while, Arun crept out of the woods, having had the good sense not to try fighting a horde of bandits, and snuggled in beside Azeline. She awoke to him licking her face, and then her eyes went big and round and adorable, and she said she'd had the strangest dream. In her dream, she had been walking through a verdant forest with a leather glove on her left hand. A falcon came screaming out of the sky and landed on it, and she saw that although he had been hunting, had had not caught anything. She lifted her hand so he could launch himself into the air again, and he landed moments later with an enormous snow-white raven in his talons. Azeline walked over to pick it up, mesmerized by the red speckles of blood on its white feathers, and as she knelt, she found herself in two feet of snow. She picked up the raven, and woke.
It was a troublesome dream. I don't like to consider myself overly suspicious, but a white raven and signs of winter are never taken lightly, even in dreams. I remember snow, from when I was a boy. It wasn't a hard winter, and our stores had been full even at the end, so I remember it fondly. Still, I know enough now to know that winter's arrival always heralds hardships. Chilled by this, I didn't even realize that Quaynlis and Slaange had vanished into the cave again.
They came out laden with armfuls of things, saying they had found another big room where the bandits had kept their loot, and in a hole under one of the bedrolls, they had found the carcass of a fox, with little red mushrooms growing from it. Success, after all. Quaynlis harvested the mushrooms and they both loaded their packs with anything else of value they could find.
It took us three long days to walk back to Highgarden. When we arrived, we found everyone frantic and thinking we were dead because one of the bandits had tried to sell our horses, and the horses had been recognized. Father was furious. He called the trip a fool's errand and worse, and I let him give me most of the blame. I didn't think Azeline deserved it, and I wanted to make sure that Slaange didn't get too much notice. My father said that clearly I needed to learn how to better protect myself (never mind that even Tyrys would have had trouble against so many men), and ordered me to complete more practice with my brother.
Six days we were gone, and five of those we were considered missing, and I learned that Florie had spent those days crying in the sept. When Father dismissed us, she came running to throw her arms around me for a very pleasant – very close – hug.
The day after we returned, I was sitting and lunching with Father when our master of ravens brought an enormous white raven into the hall. Everything went silent. “Seven,” Father murmured at last, growing grim. “Damn the Starks.”
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