The Hardest to Kill

Chapter 4: Life on the Run

"Son of a- whoa!"

Walker swerved the wagon hard left to avoid the charging cavalier that was blocking the only path free from military roadblocks. The cavalier was unable to change direction quickly enough to pursue closely, but Walker could see two archers and two lancers standing at the ready behind the roadblock. Pressing farther north at this location would be impossible. He pulled the wagon around, and prepared for another charge from the cavalier as he doubled back the way he came. He was pretty sure he remembered a left turn about a mile back. The horse protested loudly as he guided it through a 180 degree rotation, then barely had time to raise his pauldron to block the strike from the cavalier's lance.

"Grr, can't you asses just leave me alone?" Walker demanded through gritted teeth as he egged the horse on to go as fast as possible. It wouldn't be long before the group pursuing him from behind caught up. After a few seconds, Walker figured the cavalier would be catching up soon. He veered off to the right side of the road to force the approach from the left side, and sure enough, not long after that the horseman's lance stabbed in from his back-left side. Having slid over to the right side of the bench to stay clear of the lance, Walker then grabbed the shaft just above the blade and jerked it toward him as hard as he could. A second later, he heard a satisfying "Waaah!" and a subsequent thump as the unfortunate rider was pulled off his horse and sent rolling to the ground.

A few moments later, Walker could see the west fork approaching. However, at the same time a trio of cavaliers, two with swords and one brandishing a bow, were bearing down on him from the south road. Walker could tell they were going to catch him before the turn, as they weren't burdened by a wagon. The Levin Sword was still in the sheath at his hip, but the steel lance from the fallen cavalier was now at his disposal. He held the lance in his lap, trying to keep it hidden from the oncoming soldiers. The archer cavalier let one arrow fly from afar, and it hit the ground concerningly close to the wagon. The sword cavaliers spread out, attempting to flank the wagon on either side.

Walker could see the turn approaching, so to make the turn easier, he began to bank left to make a wide turn. At the same time, he forced the left cavalier off the road and into the sand. The horse's front hooves hit the sand hard and sank in quickly, causing the horse to tumble forward and throw the rider off. There was a loud crack as the horse's leg broke from the impact. Meanwhile, Walker readied the steel lance, keeping his eye on the sword point of the opposing rider. I've got the advantage. Meanwhile, an arrow shot past Walker's head and embedded itself in the wood behind him. Aaaaand I may have just shit myself.

The right cavalier charged, ready to swipe, but suddenly Walker raised the lance and pointed it at his opponent's chest. It was too late for the cavalier to change direction; he rode full-speed into the lance, earning a massive chest wound. However, in the process Walker lost his grip on the weapon, dropping it to the ground. It was now time to pull the horse into the turn, but in the process he exposed his flank to the archer. With the precious seconds of lead he had, he drew his Levin Sword and readied it in his left hand, preparing for the archer to come up beside him.

Sure enough, the archer rode up on his left, arrow nocked and ready. However, she found that where she expected a head to be there was nothing. A split second too late, she realized he had ducked down onto the floor to avoid her shot, and was pointing his sword at her. Walker let loose a blast from the blade, not strong enough to kill her, but enough to cause her muscles to seize up, knocking off her balance and causing her to fall over, shooting the arrow harmlessly into the air just before hitting the ground. Satisfied that his enemies were sufficiently incapacitated, Walker rode onward to the west, dreading the next military checkpoint he would come across.

That night, Walker arrived at the outskirts of a small oasis town called Calina. He had pulled out the arrow from the wagon wall and had done his best to remove all signs of a fight, as well as removing his father's pauldron and storing it beneath the seat, but it proved mostly unnecessary. At the entrance to town, a lone soldier stood drowsily. He put up a nonchalant hand to stop Walker.

"Alright, I gotta check the wagon. State of emergency on account of the war and all, you understand," the soldier said, circling around to the back of the wagon. Walker waited anxiously, hand clenched around the handle of the Levin Sword. "Whozzat in the back?" the soldier asked.

"That's my fiancée, sir," Walker replied. "She's ill, so I'm taking her to the spring in town to seek remedy."

"Ah, good idea, that is," the soldier said. Walker could hear him rifling around a few boxes in the wagon. "The spring always does wonders for me and mine. Well, if that's all you're here for, I've no reason to keep ya. Go on then." He hopped out of the wagon and resumed his post.

"Thank you sir," Walker said, finally removing his hand from the sword. He rode into town quietly. Once inside, he pulled his wagon up alongside some others in the center of town and unhitched the horse. He led the horse to a trough of water, where it gratefully ducked its head in and drank deeply.

Leaving the horse for now, he returned to the wagon and climbed inside. The Exalt looked a little worse for wear, but overall she didn't seem to be in serious danger. He had gotten skilled over the past few stops at tipping water down her throat, and once that was done she looked a bit better. "How many days has she gone without food?" Walker wondered aloud. This town was too small to have a full-time healer, and he couldn't risk all the attention that going door-to-door asking around would draw.

Walker sighed. He was going to need to find a solution soon. She may not last the whole trip into Ferox without some food, especially if he kept being diverted westward like this. He pulled out a small loaf of bread from one of the canvas bags in the wagon and bit down on it grumpily.

Suddenly, a large black shape filled most of his field of vision, and something started pulling at his bread. Walker yelped, pulling the bread away and swatting frantically with his free hand. A second later, he realized it was a large crow that was attempting to relieve him of his meal. It cawed aggressively as it pecked at the loaf.

"Go away! Go on! Hya! Shoo!" Walker declared, punctuating each sentence with another swat against the persistent bird. "It's my gods damned bread!" However, soon another crow joined in, and then another. Within a few seconds it seemed an entire squawking flock had come to steal his bread. "I just want dinner!" Walker pleaded helplessly, clenching his eyes shut.

"There's no CAWs for alarm! Nya ha ha!" a voice called out from behind the sheet of black feathers. "I'll CAWll them off!" Then the distant voice let out several "CAW" sounds, and immediately the crows disbanded and flew over onto several nearby benches and rooftops. Walker cautiously opened his eyes to take a look at his savior.

"Henry?" Walker asked incredulously. "Gods, Henry, I can't believe it's you!"

The squinty-eyed white-haired mage cackled some more. "Well who else would I be? Never been anyone else. Or have I? Nya ha ha!"

"I just- They let you out of- Why are you here?" Walker asked, trying to remember how to talk to the lighthearted dark mage.

"Well, I was stationed here," Henry replied simply. "When I graduated from mage camp, they told me to come here to join the guard regiment. They told me it was an important post, but I'm starting to think that was a lie. There are only two guards posted here, and I'm one of them." Walker grimaced; he knew full well it was no "mage camp." Henry had been sent to a rehabilitation camp years earlier following an unfortunate incident involving the deaths of several recruits. Normally he would have been killed, but the higher-ups had deemed his talent too strong to miss out on. Walker did not get the impression that the camp had changed Henry much. Perhaps they had deemed him a failed project and sent him to this remote village where he couldn't do much damage?

"I think I understand," Walker said. "So… how goes the dark mage business?"

"Well, you tell me," Henry said with a grin. "Could you tell the guard at the gate was hexed?"

Walker's eyes widened. "He was? What did you do to him?" he asked incredulously.

Henry waved a hand nonchalantly. "All I did was change his demeanor. He's normally a real uptight guy, so I made him cool as a summer breeze. Now he wouldn't pick a fight with you if you killed his own mom right in front of him! Nya ha ha!" That explained a lot, Walker realized. "Say, speaking of, haven't I heard something about you lately, Walker?" Henry asked, head slightly cocked. Walker blanched. "There was a report or something… that's right! Didn't you kill somebody?"

Walker's hand, which had been resting nervously on the hilt of his sword, dropped to his side. "What, that doesn't bother you?" he asked.

"Not a chance! The rumor is you bludgeoned a healer's head in with a club! I'm jealous!" Henry replied. "I haven't gotten to kill anyone without getting in trouble for years!"

Walker shifted uncomfortably. "But I mean, if you know about that, then won't you get in trouble if you don't turn me in?" he asked cautiously.

"Oh, for sure! I don't doubt they'd execute me. But I guess I assumed you'd prefer I not turn you in," Henry responded cheerfully.

"Uh… yeah, that's a fair assessment," Walker replied, getting exhausted from the rapid waxing and waning of his stress levels. "So you and I are good, then?"

Henry gave a thumbs-up and a grin. "No prob, Bob!"

"That's not… yeah," Walker said.

"So what brings you this far west anyway?" Henry asked. "The word was that you'd probably be fleeing north, far as I had heard."

Walker rubbed the back of his head. "Well, that was the idea, but…" Suddenly, several weeks of being chased by the Plegian military came back to him. "It didn't exactly go as planned..."

Walker wiped the sweat from his brow, seemingly for the fiftieth time in the past few minutes. "Gods… take me," he muttered, quickly closing his mouth so as not to let the heat inside.

Some indeterminate amount of time later, Walker stopped the wagon. He hopped off the seat and entered the back of the wagon. He pried open of the barrels of water and snatched up a ladle from a rack. He forced himself to slowly drink deeply of the water, feeling a slight chill up his spine as it cooled him off from the inside. In that moment, he could see why former societies had worshipped gods of water. It truly was divine.

Now came the hard part. He stared at the Exalt, not sure how to go about getting water into her system. "Cripes…" he muttered, and pulled most of the blankets that covered her off and set them to the side. With a ladle of water in one hand, he held her mouth open and gently poured a trickle into her mouth. The water sat in the back of her mouth, unmoving. After a few seconds, he noticed she wasn't breathing anymore. "Shit. Shit!" he cried, turning her over and dumping the water out of her mouth. Thankfully, she began breathing again.

Walker slumped against the water barrel. How on earth was he going to do this? He wasn't cut out for this. If he couldn't even get water in her system, then what was the point of it all? He clenched his fists. Was it all for nothing?

"No," he said out loud. There was a solution. He just had to think. Fallon wouldn't leave him with nothing. He thought back to everything Fallon had told him. Fallon was a weird old man; he had a strong affinity for the cultures of long-dead societies. When he said he was old-fashioned, he had meant it. Walker scrunched his eyes shut, trying to remember all of what Fallon had talked about many times in Walker's youth.

He used to talk about how pre-medical staff societies would take care of their sick and wounded. Before a staff could instantly cure most maladies and injuries, medics had to care for their patients for weeks or months at a time. In particular, unconscious patients were particularly difficult. Caring for them was impossible for a long time, because giving them water would result in them choking and dying, but not giving it to them killed them too. It wasn't until there was a new innovation in medical care that comatose patients could be saved. But what had it been?

Walker rubbed at his temples. The heat permeated his headspace, making everything seem foggy and blurry. He wished more than anything for enough spare water to hose himself off.

"Wait! A hose!" Walker exclaimed suddenly, leaping to his feet. He dug through a few bags, until eventually he found a few feet's length of narrow hose. Then, he looked back at Emmeryn and blanched slightly. "Um…" He had no idea how to proceed. He made a few estimations, measuring about how far down he figured the hose would have to go. He cut the hose at that length, with a few inches to spare. Then came the gross part.

"Eww," he groaned as the hose slowly slinked down her throat. He felt a little bit sick to his stomach as the hose continued to work its way down to approximately where her stomach began. Eventually, Walker was tentatively satisfied with the hose's position. Next, he found a small funnel and poked the end into the hose. Now, the moment of truth. He slowly poured some water down the funnel, keeping the Exalt's head slightly elevated to make sure the water moved the right way. After a few moments, Walker allowed himself to be satisfied that Emmeryn was still breathing.

He sighed, slumping against the water barrel again. That had been a struggle. After a few moments, and another drink for himself, he peered outside of the wagon. The sun was dipping low on the horizon, and ribbons of orange and red were cascading across the sky.

"Gods, that took way too long," he muttered, looking nervously back the way he had come. He had not yet put a lot of distance between himself and Golonna, and if those soldiers had gotten anything out of Fallon, they would be in pursuit for sure. He hopped back into the driver's seat and rode off.

"Wait wait wait," Henry interrupted. "You have to feed the Exalt through a tube?"

"Uh, yeah," Walker replied, raising a brow.

"Hose idea was that? Nya ha ha!" Henry chortled. Walker pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes. "Anyway, I wanna hear more! It's so boring here sometimes, with only Allan to hex. Your story gets violent eventually, right?"

Walker nodded grimly. The pair resumed walking Henry's patrol route as Walker resumed the story.

"You know, I'm getting pretty good at this," Walker said to himself as he put the funnel away. As was his custom, as soon as Emmeryn was squared away, he peered out the back of the wagon for a minute to make sure there were no pursuers in sight. Seeing nothing of note, he clambered back into the front and rode off for what felt like the hundredth time. In fact, it may have been the hundredth time, now that he considered it. It was fortunate he had been able to restock on water in the last town, as keeping both Emmeryn and the horse watered was more taxing than he and Fallon had accounted for.

"Alright, we're coming up on the end of the day here, and then we can finally get some sleep. Sleep is good, even if it's with one eye open. Just keep it going," Walker reassured himself as he rode. He was talking to himself a lot more lately. That had started somewhere around the two-week mark, and concerningly had not abated days later.

"How are you holding up back there, Exalt?" he asked the unconscious body in the back. She didn't reply. Walker allowed himself to feel just slightly stung by her indifference. He chuckled. Maintaining a positive spirit was the only way to last out here, he had decided.

While the hours passed, he thought of his mother. He wondered what she would say if she were here now.

That night, he came to a stop between two massive dunes, setting up camp in a shallow valley not far from the road. Normally, he had a tough time falling asleep once the cold night air had set in, but tonight he was so beat he dropped like a rock and was asleep almost instantly. However, that didn't stop him from waking instantly when he heard a voice.

He sat bolt upright, hand already gripping the Levin sword he kept beside him as he slept. He rose, cautiously, as the voices approached on the other side of the south dune. Grabbing the black pauldron and strapping it on as he moved, he snuck to the front of the wagon and crouched in the driver's seat. Eventually, the voices cleared the dune and became clearer.

"Hey, I've got something," said a man's voice. "Small camp, covered wagon. Looks like it might be our guy." Walker listened intently as the sound of hooves approached on the road. When they had gotten close enough, they dismounted and approached on foot. Walker heard three swords draw from their sheaths.

Three on one, Walker thought. I don't like those odds. He looked intently at the Levin sword in his hand. He had taken a few practice shots the past few weeks, and he thought he knew the way the sword actually worked. However, he had no idea how powerful the bolts would be, coming from him. When he had watched the practice shots leave the sword before, they certainly hadn't looked lethal.

He heard one set of steps approach the front of the wagon, while the others split off to check the back and the small tent he had pitched. Walker positioned the sword point at approximately where he thought neck-height would be and tensed his muscles, ready to stab the moment he saw someone. Instead, a quiet whistle sounded out from the back of the wagon that Walker recognized as the signal calling for assistance. No doubt he had spotted Emmeryn. The footsteps approaching the front stopped, then turned and began walking back.

If Walker let them regroup he would stand no chance. He leapt down behind the soldier, and before the man could turn Walker planted his blade in the soldier's throat, blocking his voice. However, it wasn't enough. He heard movement, followed quickly by shouting at the man at the tent exclaimed, "He's awake! Not in the tent!" At the same time, the stabbed man fell to the ground, his equipment clattering loudly. "Linus!" the man cried as he ran toward the scene.

"Hold!" the other soldier shouted, but the warning didn't come in time: the moment the man was in sight, Walker let loose a blast from his sword. It hit the soldier squarely in the chest, leaving him convulsing and seizing on the ground seconds later. The remaining soldier shouted in anger and panic on hearing his comrade hit the ground. Wasting no time, Walker stabbed between two of the felled man's armor plates, sealing his fate.

The last man's voice shook as he spoke. "Stop, Walker. Approach the back of the wagon slowly." Realizing what the soldier must be doing, he slowly rounded the corner and looked in at the man standing in the wagon, with the Exalt's body leaned against him, his blade to her throat. "There we go. Now stand down, or else she dies."

A million thoughts shot through Walker's head at once. Was he trapped? A bead of sweat trickled down his forehead. Options, options... One more thought crossed his mind.

Returning the Exalt to the Plegians was as good as killing her anyway.

He laughed a low, insincere laugh. "Oh, please. You think you've got leverage now? Here's the real situation you're in. The moment you kill that woman, I'm going to kill you." He wondered if he could try something. He let a tiny bolt of lightning travel down the blade, crackling and flashing. The soldier flinched in fear. "Your comrades are proof that I'm no trifle. If you want to survive, I suggest you get that blade away from the only thing keeping you alive right now."

The soldier stuttered as he spoke. "W-we are prepared to d-die for our colonel! We don't make deals with traitors! Now put down that sword!" He pressed the blade closer to her throat, stretching the skin.

Walker's grip tightened on his sword. "Even if you kill her, you won't capture me. The traitor will walk free, and you'll have died for nothing. And what's your plan from here? To somehow ride all the way back to your colonel, holding her hostage the entire time? You're in an impossible situation, surely you see that. The only choice you have to make is how much you lose." He raised the sword and pointed it at the man. "You don't want to know what this feels like, trust me."

The soldier gulped, and very slowly lowered his blade. "There we go," said Walker soothingly. "Now put her down, and get out of my wagon." The man obeyed, and knelt on the ground in front of Walker.

"Th-there. I surrender. Please, let me go," he said. Walker considered for a moment. If he let the man go back, information about the supplies and weapons he had would go back with him, not to mention the direction he was headed. The moment he let the soldier go, there was no way to mitigate what he might reveal to his commandant. But to just kill him…

A thought occurred to him. He groaned inwardly in advance for all the trouble this was going to cause him. "Alright. Here are your orders. You will ride, without weapons or armor, northbound. You will ride ahead of me, but no farther ahead than fifty feet. If you get farther, even once, I shoot you off your horse. If you change direction, I shoot you off your horse. If you say a word to anyone we pass by, I shoot you off your horse. Understood?" The man nodded vigorously and wordlessly dropped his sword. While he removed his armor, Walker gathered some rope to tie him up for the night.

"So you were gonna let him kill the Exalt?" Henry asked cheerfully. "That kinda seems like the one thing you wouldn't want to happen."

Walker replied, "No, I wasn't actually gonna let him. To be honest, it was all a bluff. I was shaking at the knees the whole time. But if you put up the right resolve, that's half the battle if you can get inside their heads."

Henry grinned and said, "Well yeah! That's what dark mage hexes are all about! Messing with people's heads! Nya ha ha!"

"Er, right. I imagine your cheery demeanor would knock most enemies down a peg too, now that I consider it," Walker said.

"Is that why no one in mage camp wanted to practice with me..? Oh yeah! So what happened to that guy? I mean, obviously he's not here, unless he's invisible," Henry inquired. "Is he invisible?"

Walker sighed. "The next day, he tried to make a break for it. I shot him off his horse, so he flipped forward off the horse, making it panic, and in that panic it ended up stomping his chest in on accident. I sorta left him there."

"So much for trying not to kill people! Nya ha ha!" Henry laughed, lightly slapping Walker on the shoulder.

"I was just trying, alright? For Emmeryn's sake. When she wakes up, if she finds out how many people have already died to get her to safety, I don't doubt she'll be upset," Walker shot back defensively. He thought of what Fallon told him. "I know that I'm going to have to kill people. I already have. I just don't want to if I can avoid it."

"You sure are a weird one, Walker," Henry replied with a chuckle. Look who's talking.

"Anyway, I kept running into checkpoints and things like that the farther I rode northward, meaning I had to keep detouring west. That's why I ultimately ended up here…"

The colonel sat atop his horse, impatiently tapping his sword's sheath as the group trotted down the road. A gust of wind blew some sand across his face, slipping under the bandages and further aggravating the burned flesh, drawing a long, teeth-gritted groan from him. The first aid he had performed on himself might have staved off the worst of the damage, but his right eye was probably permanently damaged, and about two thirds of his face was plagued with burns and scars. "That damned old man," he muttered. He squinted with his remaining good eye up at the rising sun. One of the scouting squads had still not returned.

He called his troops to attention. "We are moving out, full speed. Squad B has been somehow waylaid, possibly by our mark. Considering it is the only route that isn't officially declared clean, we are following their path." The platoon rode off swiftly, closing the gap between the colonel and his target at breakneck speed. He clenched his fists tightly to distract himself from the pain in his facial wounds. "That traitorous slime will suffer for this," he said to himself as he rode. "There will not be enough left to bury."

"Of course, that wasn't the only time military scouts caught up to me. There were a few other times, and it was only with a lot of luck that I got even this far," Walker said. "It doesn't help that I could hardly stop anywhere without risking someone seeing Emmeryn."

"Well you gotta admit, it's a weird sight. Unconscious woman with a hose rammed down her throat and all," Henry commented.

Walker grunted in agreement. "And I'm going to need to find her some real help soon. As glad as I am that she's lasted this long, I can't risk putting food into her system. She's starving. She'll be in danger before long."

"There's not a healer in town, either. It's a small enough town that all we get is the odd shipment of vulnerary here and there," Henry replied.

"Vulneraries, huh?" Walker said a little absently as his focus returned to Emmeryn's predicament. "Vulneraries… Wait! That might work!" he cried.

"What might work?" Henry asked, equal parts confused and excited.

"I used a vulnerary to stave off dehydration by undoing the damage that dehydration was doing to my body. Maybe in a pinch, it can do the same for starvation!" Walker replied, already running for the center of town. "Where's the apothecary?" he called back at Henry.

"You're talking to him!" he called in response with a laugh. "Come on!" He led Walker to a short house near the town square. "I am equal parts patrolman and apothecary," he explained as he opened the door.

The inside of the house was surprisingly normal. Walker looked around a little warily as Henry led him to the back room. "What's up, Walker?" Henry asked.

"I dunno, I guess I just expected your house to be… more eccentric?" Walker half-questioned. "Like, a human skull, or black candles, or something. Isn't that what you dark mage types usually like?"

"Oh. Not really! Most of the time you just need some ingredients and a place to build a fire," Henry replied, gesturing to the small fireplace on the east wall. "Besides, where would I get a skull? I haven't been allowed to kill anyone in soooo long! Make no bones about it! Nya ha ha!" He ducked into a small space in the back of his room and returned with a crate with about a dozen vials of the healing liquid. "Think this'll be enough?"

Soon after that, a full vial had been fed through the hose and into Emmeryn's stomach. A few minutes passed, but soon a bit of color returned to her skin and her breathing evened out. Walker sighed with relief.

"You have no idea how thankful I am, Henry. This whole journey has felt like one massive demonstration of how ill-prepared I am to handle anything on my own," he said, clapping a hand on Henry's shoulder.

"You know, you may want to do something about that, too," Henry said, pointing to Emmeryn's face. After a moment, Walker realized he meant her Brand. "If anything is going to get you found out, it'll be that, don'cha think?"

Walker nodded. "You're right, but what can be done about it? It's not like you can just hex it off, is it?" A moment passed. "Is it?" He turned to see Henry grinning at him manically.

After about an hour of sorting through ingredients and preparing them, Henry called Walker back into the back room. "Ready to blast her face!" he declared with a cackle.

"W-well, don't actually blast off her face, please," Walker began, but Henry held up a hand.

"Kidding. This'll only be a recoloring of her face. When it's done, there shouldn't be any sign of the Brand. It'll be like she was never Exalt!" he explained.

Walker felt a sudden pang of guilt. He didn't doubt that her Brand and her family identity were an important part of who she was, and here he was getting ready to take that away forever. What would she say when she woke up? "Hey, can this ever be undone?" Walker asked.

"Welllll, probably not," Henry replied. "To be honest, it's a difficult enough hex to make all of her skin the same color. Trying to put a complicated shape like the Brand back on a person probably isn't going to be possible, at least not for someone at my level." He shrugged.

"There's no helping it, I guess," Walker mused. "Alright, if it's ready, then let's get it rolling."

The pair stood there for about a minute. "...What, did you already do it?" Walker asked.

"Oh! No, it's just that I don't like doing my hex work around others. Well, except maybe little animals, those are fine. But with people, I can't do it," Henry confessed.

Walker sighed, then nodded in understanding and stepped outside. He figured rather than waiting in the living room, he'd take a look outside and sort through some supplies. He stowed the remaining vulneraries in with the food, since they would have to serve as Emmeryn's meals for the time being.

After a few minutes, Henry's head poked out from his doorway. "Walker! It's done!" he shouted.

Walker, in a panic, shushed the dark mage. Rushing over to him, he hissed, "Don't say my name that loudly. I know you seem not to care, but the rest of the country is out for my blood, you know."

Henry giggled. "Right, oops. Anyway, come on!" He led Walker into the back room. Emmeryn's forehead looked a little bit empty without the Brand. He had gotten used to seeing it in the weeks he had spent taking care of her, but now she looked somewhat off to him.

"Thank you, Henry. For everything," Walker said quietly as he looked at Emmeryn's face. She did look healthier than before; the vulnerary was probably helping.

"No prob, buddy!" Henry said cheerily. "It was nice to get to practice hexing on someone else for a change."

Walker turned to Henry. "Hey, I'm going to be heading out as soon as I can. I can't stop here, even for a night. I'm sorry to bail so soon after getting all this help from you, but I don't have a choice as long as I'm being pursued. By now, hopefully the horse will have rested enough."

Henry waved a hand dismissively. "I getcha, no problem. It was good to see you again after all this time though!"

Walker smiled. "Yeah, it was. I can't thank you enough for the help." He turned to leave, but then stopped in the doorway. "Oh, and Henry? You can never tell anyone that Emmeryn and I were here. If word gets out that she's alive, all hell could break loose."

Henry saluted. "You got it, boss! Nya ha ha!"

Walker left the house and prepared to leave town, heading west and hopefully away from his pursuers. He let out a long sigh as he left town. Something about Henry just put him on edge, but he couldn't really explain it, even to himself.

"So what you're telling me is...you've known all this time that Emmeryn was alive?" Robin asked incredulously.

"Well, yeah, obviously. They came to my house, I took care of them, no big deal," Henry replied.

"YES big deal! Are you serious? This information could have helped us so many times, Henry! Why on earth didn't you tell us that she was alive?" Robin fumed.

"Well...he asked me not to tell anybody, ever. So I just did as I was asked. Don't you keep your promises, Robin?"

Robin pinched the bridge of his nose.

A/N: Hope you've enjoyed our foray through the Plegian desert! Got some good stuff planned for the next one. As always, comments and critiques are welcome. See you next time!