"Knights of Belarel ~Chapter One~" by Ly M. Frick

Chapter One - An Innate Sense of Direction?

There was but one thing worse than a continual drizzle upon one’s head: mud. Come Hell or high water, when there was rain, there was mud. Currently, the young woman attempting to trudge her way down a sodden country road stood ankle deep in the thick, nearly black substance. A hood of dusty brown material, oiled heavily in a pitiful attempt to keep the wetness away, obscured her features, the rest of the cloak pulled around her soggy body so she looked much like a wet burlap sack.

The hooded head titled up momentarily as the woman scanned the sky above, squinting and blinking often as rain splattered into her eyes. If one had good enough hearing, a low growl could be heard vibrating from her throat. The sound itself was better than a mimicry of a mountain lion’s. To the most trained ears, she could have been mistaken for such a feline. If they had seen what she actually looked like, however, it would’ve explained how she was capable of such noises.

Now was not a good time to doff her cloak, though. So, no passerby would be privilege to gaze upon her features. She was wet, tired, and not at all pleased with being either of those two things. Shifting the pack strapped to her back underneath the quasi-protective cape she wore, her ears picked up the soft clink of her weapon tied to the frame. Normally, that sound pleased her and made her feel safe. Now, however, she worried about how the two blade halves of her swallow, now dissembled for easy travel, would fair in such weather.

She flexed numbed fingers encased in surprisingly thick gloves for one her size and shifted again. Shaking her head, the woman lowered her eyes to the horizon and the small speck that she hoped was the town she was heading for. Or it could be a rock. Yet another really, really big rock.

“They’re all rocks, aren’t they, Tanna. Every speck on the horizon is just one big, blasted rock,” she grumbled under her breath, recalling the last few times she thought she was about to hit Telshook and it turned out to be a large, rocky formation leading up into the mountains that loomed close on her left. Walking in the foothills was frustrating sometimes. The only upside seemed to be an abundance of food in the thick forest on either side of the road.

Now, though, her path was turning away from the mountains so perhaps that really was Telshook looming in the distance, beckoning her to pick up her pace. She wasn’t going to move any faster than she had been throughout the last couple days, regardless of how much she wanted to get back to the town she has been raised in. Her boots were constantly sucked down into the mud as she started moving again and such an encumbrance made traveling quickly near impossible.

Shooting a quick glance at the sky again, she judged the time the best she could without being able to see the sun. Perhaps she could reach that speck before darkness took over and made navigating the sink hole of a road far too treacherous, even for one with night sight as well developed as her’s.

Nodding a bit to herself, the woman prayed her boots would stay on her stockinged feet as she squelched her way along a path that started to slope downward away from the rocky giants that towered over her back. She would miss those mountains and all the memories they held. She had spent a good deal of her adolescence in them, after all.

Tanna had left her native Telshook when she was barely older than eight, burning with a strange desire to travel far over the mountains and into the midst of the giant, rocky land masses. Her reasons weren’t as far fetched as some thought and she hadn’t gone alone. Victoria, the girl’s adoptive mother, wouldn’t have let her.

Thus, Tanna latched onto the hand of a tall, stern looking man who assured Victoria that the child would not only remain safe, but would get exactly what she wanted: A chance for Knighthood.

Tanna smiled now at the thought of how she had yearned to become one of the Knights that often came into town during the better traveling seasons for provisions, and some for entertainment. There were all sorts that used to stop by her mother’s house, calling on various members of their extended ‘family.’ Those Knights, however, Tanna didn’t want to be like. Those were normal Knights, or dark Knights. Tanna had wanted to be like the humble Knights that always treated her fairly, even with her differences from everyone else who lived in her town. Tanna wanted to be a Holy Knight.

A servant of the Goddess Alstra, vanquishing evil, rooting out chaos, and serving those who needed her most! Ah, what a disillusioned little girl she had been. Now, Tanna realized how much hard work she had needed to gain her Knighthood in the Holy Knights’ mountain stronghold Northwest of Telshook. She had gained very little glory and had become just as humbled as the rest of the lot. Yet, reflecting on the past eight years of her short life, Tanna had no regrets. She had done what she always wanted to do: become a Holy Knight of Alstra, the patron goddess of women. Now that she had done so, she was ready to return home and become of some actual use, working for her mother as a body guard for the rest of their ‘family.’

A normal person would have called what Tanna dubbed ‘body guard’ as ‘bouncer’ if they knew what exactly Tanna’s extended family consisted of, and what exactly Victoria did for a living. The young woman’s adoptive mother was a Matron, owning the most successful and clean brothel in the whole of Telshook’s red-light district. Victoria cared for what she called her girls, taking them away from the streets and starvation. Tanna had grown up around the brothel lifestyle and saw no real wrong in how her mother ran the place.

The girls were fed as much as they wanted, bought their own clothing, and stayed well bathed. They had no real money of their own, but if they wished for anything, Victoria would get it for them or would give them money to purchase it themselves. If one ever wished to leave, she would let them go. So The Crimson Rose had always been, for generations previous. Victoria had inherited the family business from a long line of Matrons and treated her girls no different than she’d seen her mother do so. The girls were like daughters to her, but none so much as Tanna.

From the moment Victoria had laid eyes on the pitiful Tanna huddled on a doorstep in the town’s vast slum, she knew this girl would be no Lady of the Evening if Victoria took her in. She would be her daughter, legally and without question. The Matron had seen something in Tanna that showed she would be so much more than a simple Courtesan.

Knowing that Tanna’s exotic look would draw other lesser brothels to take her into their houses in an attempt to win more customers, Victoria had quickly taken the child with her. Tanna had been sickly and unable to leave her bed for many days after, and Victoria had feared for the child’s life. Yet, something had been stronger than the sickness, and Tanna grew healthy under the Matron’s attentive care. Soon after leaving her bed, the girl had managed to enchant the entire Brothel. She was too sweet and far to innocent to become what they were. No, Tanna was bound for better things.

But right now, all Tanna wished to be bound for was a warm bed and perhaps a large bowl of hot soup and an equally large glass of milk. She was weary of the road and all the ‘fun’ she’d had along the way. “Soon,” she murmured to herself, barely hearing her voice for the sound of the rain and the hood obscuring her ears. “I’ll be home soon.”

* * *

Darkness had crept across the sky, chasing away the last lingering fingers of light gripping the horizon when the downtrodden Tanna reached the outskirts of Telshook’s slumland. She grimaced as she walked through ramshackle neighborhoods, mud still clinging to her boots as nothing was paved. She thanked the weather for being as poor as it was. Such wetness tended to deter cut-purses, as well as cut-throats, from coming out of their leaky shelters to bother a single passerby. Plus, Tanna was cloaked from head to toe. People tended to not bother cloaked strangers when they wandered into town at dusk.

Shaking her head to herself, Tanna resisted the urge to chortle. She felt so clichÉ at that very moment, thinking about all those old legends of heros striding into town in the midst of bad weather, at night, fully cloaked, while the towns people watched cautiously from behind their curtains or through what served as windows. She wondered briefly if anyone was watching her in timid wonder. She doubted it. She had, after all, made no fuss about her arrival and she didn’t expect a crowd to show up merely because yet another wanderer walked into Telshook: the largest town in the northen lands of Belarel.

Right then, Telshook seemed too large to the young woman. She wanted to get out of the mud and onto the streets she knew from heart. The slums held too many bad memories of her earliest childhood before Victoria’s kind hearted ways had swooped down upon the hapless creature and took her in. Tanna had been extremely lucky to be found by Victoria first. She hadn’t realized just how different and ‘exotic’ she had seemed until she was older and a bit wiser. After all, Cattailains were not native to Northern Belarel. How exactly one of Tanna’s species had ended up that far north was still a mystery. Regardless of her origins, Tanna would’ve been a great commodity to anyone looking for something new to impress others with and, when she was old enough to know her differences, she shuddered at the thought of what could’ve become of her.

She pushed such thoughts far from her mind and concentrate on remembering which paths she needed to take. It had been eight years since she’d seen Telshook and she despaired to see it had grown a good deal in such a relatively short time. Even when her booted feet hit the cobble stones of what appeared to be a lower market place, Tanna did not recognize her surroundings.

Many would panic if faced with an unfamiliar area in the night, but Tanna refused to let the strange tingle that attempted to worm its way up her back reach her mind. She couldn’t possibly get overly lost in a city she’d grown up in, now could she? All that was different was that the town had gotten bigger. She ignored the fact that the last time she’d been through the part of Telshook she now stood in was eight years ago and Victoria’s home was only a few streets down from the courtyard fountain that served as the central most point of the town. It had been longer than eight years since she’d even gone near the slums, or any of the areas in close proximity.

Rolling her shoulders to adjust her pack, the young woman started down a street that she believed to head in the general direction of the town’s center. It was no use standing indecisively in the rain when she could be moving toward a dry target. Trusting what she dubbed a natural sense of direction to lead her home, Tanna concentrated on not tripping over any of the uneven stones that made up the poorer part of town.

The road was a hap-hazard creation that very little money was spent on to build. The local government claimed they had better priorities than to fix roads used by people who didn’t pay their taxes in a timely manner. Tanna sneered at the thought of such self-centered officials and thought that perhaps she could have a word with them about how to treat people with compassion once she got herself settled back into the town. They would, after all, listen to a Holy Knight. Why wouldn’t they?

Tanna’s imagination went through various scenarios full of long speeches and impossible negotiations in which she always ended as the unquestioned victor as she walked, causing her to smile at her own cleverness. She would convince them to see things her way! They’d listen to her if she had to talk all day! Perhaps the young woman was still somewhat delusional, or perhaps it was just her natural naiveté about the true natures of humans that caused her to think such things. Either way, she was convinced she could make them see things her way, and she was happy with that.

So happy was she with her thoughts of great deeds for the less fortunate that Tanna didn’t realize how unfortunate she was at that moment until she looked up and found herself standing in a dead-ended alley. Frowning, the woman turned and looked around at the rather unfamiliar scenery. Walking back to the opening of the alley, she looked either way down the street that ran perpendicular to the dark corridor she’d ended up in. Which way had she come from? Her frown deepened and, taking a guess, Tanna turned to her left and struck off down a somewhat narrower alley that seemed to go through to another street.

Emerging from the side street, Tanna surveyed her surroundings, trying to decide where to head next. What she needed was directions and some daylight. Sadly, she knew she would have to settle for a nearby inn, if she could find any.

Cautiously, Tanna pulled her hood back just enough for her ears, formally flat against to top of her hair to keep twin triangles of cloth from popping up and causing unnecessary attention, to perk forward. The duel listeners swiveled slightly in the nighttime air, moving to catch small snippets of sound that managed to make it through the muffling nature of the rain. Far too her right, somewhere past where the road curved up, were the sounds of multiple people.

Yanking the hood back into place and laying her catty ears flat against the top of her head once more, the young knight made for the noises, hoping what she’d heard really was an inn and not just a private residence throwing a party. She followed the curve in the road and picked up her pace as, ahead, swinging in the light of the street lamps, was the sign of a pub. Pubs, however loud, had rooms for rent, and a room for rent meant that she could at least wait for light to head out again. If there were no rooms free, she would merely get directions, or wait the night out in the stuffy common room, stuffed in a corner like a good, little traveler.

Craning her neck and squinting against the rain, Tanna surveyed the sign that hung above the door. It swung slightly as the drizzled pattered against it. “The Night Owl,” she read slowly, barely making out the faded wording. Frowning, Tanna turned toward the door and hesitated. She’d never been in a pub before and her uncertainly was starting to get the better of her. Yet, as she turned to go, the young woman gazed out at the unfamiliar street before her and her feet refused to return to the lost path. With a sigh of defeat, Tanna spun slowly to face the doorway to The Night Owl and placed a heavy hand upon the latch. Hopefully, she wouldn’t draw too much attention to herself.

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AN: End Chapter 1. Okay, so I’m not fully happy with this chapter but it’s not half bad. I’ve done worse. Questions/Comments/HELPFUL criticisms are always welcome!