"Penny the Brave" - Preview

[Norwind1986]

This is one short chapter from my finished novel, An Eislian's Tale: Penny the Brave.
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“Blast. Sun or no sun, I’m still bloody cold,” Royce complained.

Alomar snorted. “Yeah? Try being in handcuffs, mate.”

Royce knelt by the river and swished his hand around in the current before washing his face. Alomar was pacing this way and that, taking stock of the area. I had noticed that since we left the city the man had been extremely observant, making a complete sweep of our surroundings at periodic intervals very often. I found myself glad that he had been a soldier once. It wasn’t the first time since he’d returned from Dekka that I appreciated the skills and experience he brought back with him, but now I found it to be incredibly valuable to have an ex-member of the 2nd Cavalry in our midst, handcuffs or no.

I strode over to a tall ash tree and knelt low under the reach of its leaves, making my way to the base of it. Yawning loudly I sat down on the dirt beneath it and pressed my back to the trunk. It felt good to sit, especially after all the traveling we’d been doing. Between running about in the Northroe backstreets and escaping into the wilderness to continue south, we’d traveled for nearly half a day in all.

Resting my head against the ash tree’s bark, I inhaled deeply. The fresh forest morning enveloped us, and I realized the air here seemed much more fresh than that of the city’s, as if we had it all to ourselves. I stretched out my legs the best I could, and they felt notably stiff. As I did so, the burlap material of my pack rubbed against the tough fabric of my trousers audibly, and my eyes wandered to it.

Well, then. Here I was, day one of our journey, in the beautiful Kovald Forest. Wasn’t this was writers did? Real writers, I mean? They traveled the world, saw the sights and met new people, learned of it and what new lands had to offer. They wrote incredible stories inspired by what they’d seen, or would bring back writings and journals telling of others peoples and the like.

Kovald Forest was right next to Northroe, but it was a start. I gingerly opened my pack, scooped out my quill, blank parchment and uncapped my jar of ink. A smile played across my face, and I felt a surge of excitement. This was what I would do. This would put me on the map the world over. I would document our travels, our adventures!

That is, if we didn’t get captured by bandits. Being sold off as slaves or killed and left for dead in the wilderness where no one would ever find our bodies didn’t strike me as appealing, but more importantly, that would prevent any good stories from being written.

Perhaps I had my priorities a bit mixed up.

It was then that I remembered my writing hand was out of commission, at least for a while. I sighed and took the quill in my left hand, testing it out as I scribbled words into the air. It felt terrible and foreign, but it’d have to do.

“Right. Okay then,” Royce was saying. “So you’re suggesting what, we live off berries and leaves for a while, mate? Shall we hunt for deer as well? We could sharpen Penny’s quill over there. That could bring us some dinner, for sure.”

Alomar was shaking his head. “I’m just saying we need to stay off the roads is all. Even traveling here by the river is a bit risky.”

Royce took off his tunic and the shirt beneath it before wading knee-deep into the water, then up to his waist. He dipped his head into the cold river and brought it back out, rubbing the dirt off his face. His breathing was rapid as the man tried to shrug off the chill of the water.

“Gods,” Royce muttered. “Aye, pretty soon we’ll we bandits, yeah? We’ll start starving, since I haven’t seen any berries or fruit since we entered the woods. Who would have thought.”

Alomar laughed, making his way to the river’s edge. He sat and was able to awkwardly kick off his boots before letting his feet dangle into the current. “Aye. We could do that. Start robbing commoners on the road.”

“Rob them unarmed, at that.”

“Didn’t think about that. Suppose weapons would help.”

“Don’t bloody have any, do we?”

While the two men talked, I was relaxing in the shade and taking in the forest. The scent of earlier rain mixed with pine and dirt was intoxicating. A slight wind passed through our tiny thicket, rustling leaves overhead softly.

The hell would I write, anyway?

Here I was, a Writer-in-Training, off in the woods in a beautiful clearing surrounded by nature in all its glory. Wasn’t I supposed to be able to write something? Anything?

“-thinking of becoming an inventor.”

I looked up to see Royce coming ashore and kicking back in the grass near Alomar.

“Eh?” asked Alomar. “An inventor?”

“That’s right,” replied Royce. The man snatched a blade of grass from the earth and chewed on it as he spoke. “For example, I was thinking of well, you know inventing this thing. A thing where you hold a wide brim over your head while it’s raining, and it protects you from getting wet.”

Alomar mulled over this. “What is this...brim? Is it like a hat?”

“Aye. You could hold it by a stick or something while you walk.”

“A brim on a stick.”

“That’s right,” Royce said again. “It’d be made of...cloth, or some fabric. Leather hide or...or something.”

“So a wide circular leather-or-cloth-or-something brim that you hold on a stick over your head while you walk in the rain to prevent you from getting wet. Why circular?”

Royce thought for a moment. “Well, I dunno. Suppose it doesn’t have to be circular. Maybe it could be like a rectangle, or pointed like a triangle and all that. We could sell them in different shapes. And actually I didn’t say anything about it being circular, anyway. The hell?”

I tried picturing this, and watching Alomar’s face I could see he was giving it serious thought as well.

“No, mate,” Alomar finally concluded. “It’d never catch on. Why carry a big...brim to protect from the rain when you could just wear a hat? Or a hooded cloak and the like?”

His face seem to fall for a moment in defeat, but Royce shrugged after a minute. “Eh. Guess you’re right.”

I left my writing tools next to my pack at my perch under the tree and got up to join the two men next to the water. “Well, Royce, I for one think it’d be a great invention.”

Royce craned his neck to face me. “Yeah?”

“Aye,” I said, reaching the river’s edge and stepping out of my boots. The grass and dirt felt soft beneath my bare feet. “I think people would go for it.”

“Well thanks, mate.”

I gingerly made my way into the water, gritting my teeth in response to the shock of the cold water. Ignoring the chill washing across my body, I looked down at my reflection in the river’s surface. It was more of a shadow in the current than an actual picture of me, but I could still imagine details of my face and put it to the shadow Penny that stared up at me. It danced in the ripples, and I found myself wondering if this was truly real, actually happening; had we really struck out from Northroe and embarked on a journey?

Scooping two hands into the water and dashing my shadowy silhouette from the river, I splashed it about my face. We’d left the city indeed, but it wasn’t exactly on our terms.

I washed the cold water about my skin, closing my eyes as I did so, trying not to shudder with the cold. It was at this time that I felt a weight of some kind bump into my leg.

Opening my eyes I looked down and saw another face staring up at me from the water.

What?

I froze. Wiped the water from my eyes and blinked twice before looking again.

A face was gazing back up at me; a man, wearing an expression of absolute terror. His blue eyes peered at mine absently and his mouth was open. I quickly realized there was no life left in his face.

His throat had been cut.

[Conal]

That was violent.

[Norwind1986]

At 12/20/13 12:46 AM, Conal wrote: That was violent.

Blood and guts...everywhere!