"Silver Phoenix Chaptre five" by Audrey Youko.Greywords M.

“Alright you! Come out where we can see you!” The soldier in front yelled at us. Maybe he didn’t know how many of us there were.

“Do you think we can bluff them?” I whispered to Gilga.

“And then what? I could outrun them easy, but they’d catch you.” He hissed back.

“That’s it! Come out or we’ll shoot!” The soldier raised a blunderbuss. They were awfully jumpy. Still, when someone levels a blunderbuss at you, you do what they say. I stood up with my hands in the air where they could see them.

“Just you, kid?” The soldier lowered his weapon as his comrades grabbed me.

“Huh?” I looked frantically to where Gilga had been. He was gone! The jerk had run off and left me! I looked quickly to my other side where Phoenix should be. He can’t run away! There was a long, unsheathed sword looped through my belt. He had changed back.

“yes.” I declared miserably. “I’m all alone.” I would hurt that dumb elf if I ever saw him again!

“Sure, we believe you.” The soldier jibbed, sarcastically.

“Why not?” I asked as his friends dragged me, unresisting, towards their caravan.

“Why are you carrying a sword around then?” He pointed to Phoenix.

“I found it.”

“Liar.”

“Believe me!” I begged. “If it were mine, I would at least give it a sheath.”

“More likely you stole it offov someone.” He sneered at me.

“Probably stole it off of a corpse.” His friend who had my left shoulder interjected.

The leader nodded, “A thief, just as I thought. Throw him in with the rest. And take the weapon.”

“I wouldn’t try it if I were you.” I threatened, brandishing Phoenix.

“Oh, so it’s not yours? You say you just ‘found’ it, but you think you can fight actual soldiers with it?” He sneered.

Darn! I had just proved that I was a liar. Still, what else was there to do? I didn’t want to fight anyone else after I killed all those bandits. Why did I keep getting into these situations?!

The lead soldier motioned to his comrades. I heard a thud behind me and then everything went black.

I woke up. When had I fallen asleep? My head felt as if it had been split open and sewn back together again by a drunken, one-armed monkey while it was being harassed by a flock of mockingbirds who all thought they could do a better job. Sitting up, I mused that they probably could have. I waited for the world to get tired of swaying around like a mirage. As it didn’t appear ready to tire of this at any convenient date, I started to pass the time by gently probing the back of my head in an effort to learn whether or not there really was a red-hot poker shoved into it, as the painful throbbing was telling me. I removed my hand from my head and held it close to my face in an effort to tell if it was soaked in blood. My eyes weren’t going to cooperate, preferring to shirk their duty to me in favor of swaying and dancing with the rest of the gay, careless world.

Everyone was against me today. Some voice piped out of the confusion.

“Hey, Boy! You’re up. Are you hurt?” It seemed a pretty stupid question to me at the time. I looked around for whoever said that. The speaker misinterpreted my slowly swaying head as a shake ‘no’.

“Good! Here, come with me.” There was a metallic jangle and clank, followed by the scrape of wood.

“…….Well, aren’t you coming?” The voice asked in annoyance when I just sat there.

“I will,” I rasped. “Just as soon as I can figure out where that voice is coming from.”

“Stop acting foolish and get out of there. Quick! Before the guards find out I’ve let you go!” The voice continued. The swaying had stopped, but only because there was now a black cloud right in the middle of my vision. I tried looking around the darn thing to see the speaker, but I gave up after it wouldn’t go away.

“Just out of curiosity, why are you letting me go? I’m grateful-of course!- but is a little strange, I would think. Unless this unit runs a kind of ‘catch-and-release’ prison.”

“Just shut up and get out of there.” The voice said flatly.

“I would, but I don’t even know where the door is.”

“Are you blind?”

“No, but one of those soldiers hit me on the back of the head and now I’m having trouble seeing.”

My freer gasped. “What kind of trouble?!”

“The usual kind?” I ventured.

“Come on,” the person squeeked. “You have to come with me!” A small hand grabbed my arm and yanked me out of my prison and around the camp. “Here, you can hide in my sedan until your vision clears up.” Wait…Squeeked?

I was shoved roughly into a carriage, but I landed softly on a pile of what must have been pillows. I could’ve sworn I heard giggling.

“We’ll have to hide you if the soldiers come looking, but you should be okay here.”

I know I heard giggling.