Jez

Jez started off around the wall pretty much immediately upon reaching the top, going slowly and treading lightly so she wouldn’t miss any sounds of the forest. There was nothing to be seen or heard on her first trip around the village, and Evan nodded mutely to her when she returned to her post by the gate. Still, though, the girl in disguise had a terrible feeling about the watch of the gate. If they had been coming through the gate the entire time, how had they not been seen sooner?

Jez couldn’t understand it. If they’d been coming through the gate each time they had attacked Synderwood, then surely the would have been seen - so then, didn’t that automatically rule out the possibility that the enemy would come from the front? They had to be coming from an alternative route, and Jez was determined to catch them at it. Sure, she may not want to come face to face with bandits, especially after her encounters with them while she had been with that slave caravan as a child, but she didn’t want to leave these people so vulnerable to the same sort of encounter. She knew from experience that the bandits worked in conjunction with the slavers, and that once the village seemed weak enough the slavers would come in and burn and slaughter, taking those they could beat into submission - such as women and children.

She took a deep breath, trying to calm herself. Knowing that her breath had shaken, she pointedly kept her gaze out on the forest so she wouldn’t meet the eyes of Evan. Jez knew that her friend would ask her what was wrong, and she was not in a disposition in which she wanted to tell him her fears, for they related to her complicated past. The days when she was a girl, not only in gender but appearance, which she so desperately tried to forget.

The sounds of the forest surrounding Synderwood echoed around them, but none of them were unnatural or suspicious. The hoot of an owl - and it wasn’t a signal, because the owl sat within Jez’s limited line of sight, and each time a hoot sounded the beak of the bird moved. The wind lightly breezed through, and the rustle of tree tops was added to the nightly symphony of the forest. The sound of crickets echoed endlessly, an occasional nocturnal creature creeping just beyond her line of sight. In this manner, the remainder of that first hour passed so slowly that it agitated Jez, whose anxiousness had only grown.

When the second hour finally rolled around, Jez said stiffly, her back rigid with her misgivings, “I’m going to check again. I’ll be back soon.”

Also stiffly, Evan nodded. She knew he didn’t like to let her go, but also probably understood that she would fight him in order to go. He knew not to go against her when she felt so strongly about something.

And so, Jez set off swiftly around the wall, slowing her pace once out of Evan’s line of sight so she could listen more closely for those horrible sounds that she was dreading, but expecting all the same.

“They won’t do that here,” she said softly to herself, memories of her days as a child slave in a caravan of sorts running through her mind. No, she wouldn’t let these children get the same fate as she. Jez - Jezebel - was a lucky girl to still be alive. She was even luckier to be free, as free as she could have possibly hoped to be while she felt like a foreigner within her own skin.

She thought of all the children she’d seen die at the cruel hands of uncaring men, and she shuddered, pausing briefly on her walk of the wall. Children she had known, had grown to think of as siblings - before she hardened herself to be numb to pain or emotion, that is - had died right before her eyes because they were ill and their tattered rags weren’t enough to fend off the chill. The older girls were often sold to old men who she knew would have used them for pleasure, and abused them. Boys were sent off to work their lives away, and Jez knew that they would have been whipped and hurt and perhaps died from exhaustion.

“It won’t happen here,” she told herself firmly, resting her hand on the hilt of her sword decisively. She started off around the wall again, listening carefully for any sounds that sounded out of place, or even for a distress call from Evan at the gates.

The routine continued for another hour. Two. Until finally, the fourth hour of their late vigil, when the few days of riding started to catch up to them, Jez stepped away from the more well lit area to walk around the walls again. Her misgivings had increased; her apprehension was tantamount to that of Sir Kenneth’s fears that she would be discovered and revealed. And Jez felt strongly that, either this walk or the next, something would turn up.

Jez walked more slowly this time, pausing every few steps to listen closely. Her heart rate would speed up, her tension high, as she stopped to listen ever so closely to the surrounding sounds. The night’s ambient noises pervaded her senses, and she struggled to hear through them and define something - anything - that might help her ascertain why the bandits were never caught and where they really entered Synderwood from. Her palms grew sweaty with anticipation, and she gripped her sword tightly. She wouldn’t be caught of guard if something happened; she couldn’t be. It would be the end of her charade if someone were to surprise her and grab her from behind.

For all she tried to bind her womanly bosom, there were still slight bumps to betray her.

As she slowly inched down the final three hundred yards until she was, once again, back to the gate, she froze as an owl, spooked, flew by her with a shrill hoot. Squinting in the moonlit night, she saw movement and she held her breath. Could it be that her stubbornness had paid off?

Silently, she inched closer and crouched against the wall, making sure she was below it.

“We have to just missed that guard who’s been walking around and checking,” a gruff voice said confidently, but in such a soft voice that it was hard for the girl in hiding to hear. He continued, “He’s been walking around every hour, on the hour. Must have some sort of internal clock or somethin’ to be so on-the-dot about it.”

“Maybe he has a pocket watch,” another voice deadpanned.

No, Jez didn’t have a pocket watch. She had just been distractedly, impatiently, counting down the minutes until she could leave on her next walk around the place. And it had paid off.

“Let’s just get down there,” a third voice said as a heavy thud sounded. The new person had dropped to the walkway from the tree branch that hung just overhead. Following him were at least three others, and Jez frowned. A few more leapt from the perch, and the group started moving toward her…toward the stairs that met the walkway not six feet from where she crouched.

Her resolve fixed, Jez swept to her feet, striding forward and drawing her sword in graceful, smooth movements.

“You’ll have to go through me,” she said darkly as the group of a dozen men stopped in front of her. Knives flashed at their belts as the men drew them, and again her decision was made. They weren’t afraid to kill - they just hadn’t yet because no one had gotten in their way.

Jez grit her teeth, then took a deep breath and shouted, “East Wall! Intruders at the East Wall!”

Her voice took on that accursed higher sound of a woman’s voice, and the men charged at her with fierce aggression, angry that they’d let her open her mouth and shout a warning to the village.