Chapter 5: Raid
“… …… ……..”
Someone was muttering unintelligibly in the pitch-black darkness. It came in a deep masculine voice that vibrated slightly inside of her eardrums.
And then there was someone else. No, something else? Voiceless voices—the Murmurs—slid into her ear canals, streaming through her brain to resound deep in her chest.
Unen wildly thrashed her limbs; they felt heavier than stones. Oppressive, claustrophobic darkness pounded against her surroundings like waves against the shoreline on a stormy night. Writhing in agony, she dragged herself toward the Murmurs as if she were wading through chest-deep mud.
Then, a faint light shone down on her from above. As if led by the light, Unen’s consciousness burst to the surface, out of the darkness.
Half a moon filled her vision when she opened her eyes. Hanging partially above the horizon, the incomplete moon slanted slightly to the right—it was a waning moon.
For a moment, Unen didn’t know where she was. The tepid breeze and smell of grass tickling her nose slowly helped her recollect the memories that had dissolved into the dead of night.
Shaking her hazy head, she restlessly sat up.
Light from the moon that had just risen in the eastern sky dimly illuminated the grasslands. Turning her head, Unen spotted Irena fast asleep beside her. A small distance away, she saw flames dancing in the stone hearth, and Ori’s back as he kept watch.
Was Unen still dreaming? She vaguely heard a deep voice.
But the indistinct mutters were, unmistakably, coming from Ori.
Is he talking to himself to stave off sleepiness? Just as the drowsy thought flickered in her mind, the Murmurs boomed in the depths of her heart.
A short moment later, a voice she doubted she even heard rode on the wind passing her ears. It was a distant, unfamiliar male voice different from the rumbling of Ori’s deep one.
Ori looked over his shoulder at Unen. “You’re up?”
Unen reflexively blinked. “…Were you speaking to someone just now?” she nervously asked.
He shook his head. “No.”
The flames swayed as a log crackled and crumbled in the fire.
“Aren’t you confusing the waking world with your dreams?”
He might be right, Unen thought. Or maybe, she considered, this is still inside my dreams? Perhaps it was the fault of the dazzling moonlight shining down on them that made the scene before her appear eerily surreal.
“I’ll wake you when it’s your shift. Get some sleep until then.”
“Okay,” she readily agreed and laid back down. Instantly, a sticky drowsiness came out of its hiding place and closed in on her.
Just before Unen closed her eyes, she thought she saw Ori’s blue eyes glowing silver in the moonlight.
✦ ✦ ✦
“FOUR degrees east, at a distance of ten meters.”
Ori mechanically jotted down the numbers Unen read off. Without having to constantly switch between her staff and her quill, Unen’s work sped up, and she was making better time than anticipated. At the rate they were going, it was plausible they’d finish the necessary series of measurements and return to camp before light vanished from the grassland.
Western winds began whipping through the grasslands intermittently right before noon, and dark clouds blew in without them realizing. The turn in the weather was worrying, but the temperature had dropped as the clouds blocked the sun, making it much more comfortable for their work. Wanting to keep up the pace to quickly finish the job, the group continued measuring along Baborak’s borderline without breaks, aside from a momentary pause they had taken to eat some hard-baked bread for lunch.
“4.5 degrees to the east at a distance of 20 meters.”
Irena effortlessly ran to the next location with one end of the rope in hand. She was astonishingly light on her feet despite the heavy long sword and full waterskin hanging at her waist.
It was evident that her exceptional physical strength was due to her daily efforts; Unen knew Irena never missed a day of her self-imposed training. This morning Irena woke up before sunrise to practice swinging and lunging with her sword.
Unen wondered how many words of thanks would be sufficient in expressing her gratitude to her friend, someone who, despite possessing such rare abilities, freely lent her highly valued skills and time to Unen. When would the day come where Unen could repay those closest to her, starting with Irena, for all they had done for her? Unen gnawed on her bottom lip.
What can I even do for them, when I failed to say anything to the one person I should’ve thanked most of all?
“Next: 4.5 degrees east at a distance of 18 meters.”
Unen watched Ori swiftly walk the quill across the paper. She had yet to see him swing his sword, but considering his skill with the quill, it wasn’t hard to imagine he also possessed extraordinary talent with the sword. Furthermore, not only could Ori read and write, he even seemed to understand what Unen was doing and the best way to record it as he took down the survey measurements.
“5 degrees east at a distance of 10 meters.”
Who in the world is Ori? The doubt that crossed her mind on countless occasions since they set off on this trip came to the forefront of her thoughts once again.
Ori was hunting down Hereh and had appeared before Unen in concert with the Murmurs. If the events of last night hadn’t merely been a dream, Ori was surrounded by the Murmurs again.
Ori’s muttering, which sounded like he was talking to someone, and the unfamiliar male voice that blew by on the wind were just the tip of the iceberg to the things she wanted to know more about. There were so many other things she didn’t understand either. For starters, there was so much she didn’t know about Hereh. Was he the man Ori was searching for or was it somebody else? Did Hereh really steal the so-called Book of Secrets? Where had he come from? And where had he gone?
Then there was the legendary mage Notsors. Unen wondered what silly fable the hunters from three years ago were raving about when they had mentioned that name. It was impossible for someone who fit the legend of Notsors to actually exist somewhere in the world…right?
“20 degrees east at a distance of 17.5 meters.”
Unen spotted a boulder as flat as a table two meters past Irena. This was the boulder that had been used to prove Baborak’s innocence against Chelveny’s charges that Baborak had illegally moved the borderline. The job would be finished once she measured the distance and angle from where Irena stood to the boulder.
Unen was trudging through the grassland while pulling in the rope, when she suddenly heard Ori click his tongue. Wondering what was amiss, she looked behind her and found his gaze grimly glued to the other side of the border fence to the west.
Noticing Unen’s stare, Ori quietly muttered, “Looks like things are gonna get messy.”
“What is?”
“Let’s regroup with your friend first,” he directed. He handed Unen her notebook and quill, simultaneously grabbed the rope she was holding, and then took huge strides toward Irena while skillfully coiling the rope around his arm.
Unen ran to catch up with him. As they neared Irena, it was apparent that she too was staring hard to the west with a similar grim expression tugging her lips down. Glancing once at Ori, Irena jerked her chin toward the other side of the fence.
“I count four. Same for you?”
Ori quietly nodded.
“Seems like they snuck around that hill over there. They make me sick.”
Unen strained her eyes in the direction Irena carefully watched, but she didn’t spot anything out of the ordinary, just the wind whipping around the blades of tall grass.
Then people began to rise from their hiding place in the grass where the three of them were staring. One, two, three, four. There were four total. Judging from their appearances, they were older men, somewhere between their late-twenties to mid-thirties. They slowly lumbered toward Unen’s group with swords and hatchets.
“W’at the ‘ell? I ‘eard it was supposeda be two ‘ittle girls. There’s only one.”
“The ‘ittle boy doesn’t matter, but takin’ on some full-grown bastard is gonna be a pain.”
“Well, it won’t be an issue if we take ‘em all out, yah?”
“Don’t ya forget to not kill the woman right away.”
The men said whatever they wanted with vulgar sneers plastered on their faces.
“Who are you guys? And what do you want?” Irena raised her voice as she demanded they identify themselves.