Jez

*

Both young knight hopefuls fell onto their cots that night and were asleep almost instantly. Evan’s gentle snores pervaded the air only seconds before Jez drifted off into her own dream world. Her dream world, however, would not be as kind as his.

The day dawned just as the days normally dawned. The children were woken with swift kicks to the ribs, and some unlucky boys who had displeased the slavers were woken rudely with kicks to the head or, sometimes, to what would be known as their manhood - if they made it that far. The young girl was already awake by the time the men started their rounds, and she inconspicuously roused the other girls near her. It would save them a kick in the ribs or arms or legs and from a bruise for that day.

The thoughtful young girl was only eight years old on this day. And she knew that it was a day she didn’t want to have to face. There had been talk for the entire week of the village they’d been approaching. It was not a slave trade friendly village, so they were going to attack and kill the adults so they could take the children. Jezebel had seen many days like this in the past, though she fervently wished each time that it would be the last. Even as an eight year old child, Jezebel - she didn’t even know her last name anymore - knew that her fervent hope was fruitless, but it couldn’t stop the childish wishing. Although her hope was slowly diminishing as day after day, week after week, and month after month fled away beneath the chains of her slavery.

The day was just as gruesome as any.

The train of twenty-seven children, one of their largest, was led into town and kept under the guard of five men whilst the other thirty or so were cutting down the opposition and acquiring new children to sell. One of the girls of Jezebel’s own age doubled over and retched on the ground as a head, severed from the body of a man trying to protect his family, rolled to a stop at her feet. His unseeing eyes seemed to stare right into the very being of Jezebel. The girl who had retched was kicked forward by one of the men for her weakness, but luckily a boy nearby caught her before she could fall on the still bleeding body part. Jezebel watched the scene with a solemn disassociation to the world. She could see the grandmother at the end of their street riddled with arrows but still trying to reach for her grandson, a boy of around six being led toward the group of chained children. She saw the mother with triplets, too young to be taken with the group, hacked to pieces with a broadsword. But the memory was tainted with red; nothing was any other color but red.

It was a bloodstained dawn in the small plains village of Gildenon.

Jez was unsure how she managed not to shoot upright with a strangled scream, but she knew she must have remained silent because Evan just snorted and rolled over in his sleep. She sat up slowly, tremblingly, as her head swam with blood soaked dirt and unseeing eyes. The stained broadsword flashed across her mind’s eye, and everything she saw was stained in red, much like the dream. The memory.

And just with that one dream that depicted a true image from Jez’s past, it was as thought the dam holding back her horrible, bloody memories of those two years crumbled, and with a dry sob she pressed the palms of her hands against her closed eyelids. There was nothing she could do but wait for the episode to pass, but she would not cry. Not on this day. Tears were a sign of weakness, she had told herself time and time again, and she would not show them in the vicinity of any of Sir Kenneth’s knights or the trainees. Her shoulders trembled still, and her eyes burned, but she fiercely shot down the urge to release the tension by crying.

It was an hour later, nearly dawn, when she finally calmed down enough to lay back on her cot. She was afraid to close her eyes again, for the fear that she’d see another day that ached to replay and cause her another fit of hysteria. Slowly, however, she drifted back off into a blissfully dreamless sleep.

When they were woken three hours later by Sir Orwin, they were informed that the group of thirty soldiers sent by the king to take over had already arrived and that they were to head for Sir Kenneth’s station once the soldiers had been quickly briefed on where the bandits had been entering and how many that they had seen. He and the other knights had agreed that Jez and Evan were to help give the briefing, since they had been on duty when the bandits had actually appeared.

The briefing was short and to the point. The group of King’s Company knights and the two trainees left shortly after a quick breakfast insisted upon by the village elder of Synderwood, heading toward the town of Port Reginald.

“I’m only going to say this one more time, before we get any farther,” Sir Brennan suddenly spoke up as they wheeled their mounts to a halt just as Sir Brennan had. “The two of you did exceptionally well for the situation.”

“It’s a good thing that you insisted on your patrol, Jez,” Sir Reagan admitted, “else we’d have been of little use to the good people there.”

Jez felt her cheeks grow a little warm, but she just shook her head mutely, picking silence to be her best course of action at the moment.

“I’m just glad he thought of it,” Evan chipped in, stretching and scratching his horse’s neck. “It would have never occurred to me.”

“It didn’t even occur to us, boys,” Sir Paris admitted. The other knights agreed, and then Sir Reagan ushered them to continue on.

“We’ll say no more on this subject until we report it to Sir Kenneth,” said Sir Orwin sternly, but he grinned proudly down at the younger two. “But you did well.”

Evan chuckled good naturedly at the comment, but both of the younger people took it in stride and rode along in amiable silence with the older men. Occasionally a word or two was spoken, about changes in the wind and which way the scents would blow if, for some reason, the group was tailed. Also breaking the silence at completely random intervals were questions on strategy from the knights, testing the young trainees. Evan and Jez often had a different way of solving it, but the knights took this as a good sign that they weren’t taking their answers from the answer of the first to speak, and that they were at least mildly intelligent. It was a welcome distraction to Jez, for in the periods of utter silence, her dream of the past came back to haunt her by tainting everything she saw with at least some small sliver of a deep blood red.

It was, to the surprise of all involved, at the crossroads where they had split up where they met the first group to have left, farther back along the path. The ones who had gone to Myragard.

“Jez! Evan!” Don cried jovially, leaping up from his seat. They had a small camp readied. “Back to us safe and sound, I see! Did you run into any trouble? We weren’t really beleaguered by anyone. A small party of about five, it was nothing for them,” he nodded toward the knights with his group, Sir Cain, Sir Milton, Sir Bradley, Sir Meyer, Sir Arthur, and Sir Welks.

“You give yourself little credit,” rumbled Sir Bradley in his deep voice. He’d been paired with Don. He turned to the group that had just arrived and told them, “He did well. All three of them did well.”

“Don’s right, though,” Wesley, or Wes, said with a sigh. “There’s not much we can do wrong when it’s six of us, plus the village guard, against five bandits.”

The other boy, Isaac, nodded his agreement wholeheartedly.

“That’s all you were faced with?” Sir Marcus asked as he dismounted. Jez realized with a sudden lurch that he had been silent around she and Evan for the duration of the mission. She wasn’t sure whether to worry or not.

“Yes. Any reason you ask?” Sir Welks inquired curiously.

“These two,” Sir Paris jumped in, gesturing at Evan and Jez, “were on duty when over thirty came over the East Wall.”

“The East Wall that none of us thought to patrol, taking it for granted that they’d come through the gate,” Sir Reagan added, clapping Jez on the shoulder.

“What happened?” Don asked his father, eyes wide.

“Jez had thought to patrol the East Wall,” Sir Orwin supplied readily. “If it weren’t for him, we wouldn’t have captured the ten we did. He was over patrolling the East Wall when the bandits started dropping from the trees, the way he tells it!”

“Really?” asked Wes, incredulously, looking at Jez with new respect, a gaze under which she squirmed uncomfortable as she dismounted hurriedly.

“The two of them stayed atop the wall to fight,” Sir Marcus interceded again, securing his steed firmly with the others as Jez and Sir Orwin and Evan led theirs to another spot for better grazing. “Like true fighting men. Held their ground and did pretty good at it, too. They didn’t back down until I called for them to fall back.”

“Really, now?” Sir Milton sounded impressed and he clapped Evan on the shoulder, much like Sir Reagan had done to Jez moments earlier.

“They’re much too nice,” Jez told him embarrassedly. “I didn’t do half so well as Evan did. They were so much larger and stronger than I am that I was hard-pressed to hold them at bay.”

“And he gives himself as little credit as you say Don does,” said Sir Reagan. Jez found it ironic that Don’s father was the one sticking up for her. “But let’s save the stories until the entire group is together again. We don’t want to have to listen to it a hundred times, do we?”

“It wouldn’t be a hundred,” Don said cheekily, grinning impishly at his father. The tale-telling ended there, however, and the group of Sir Reagan, Sir Marcus, Sir Paris, Sir Orwin, Sir Brennan, Jez, and Evan pitched their tents in the empty spot by the road where the others had set up camp. They elected to also wait here for the remainder of the groups.

*