Bloodsword: War of the Leaf

Knocking on the Door

Which it did, much to Tev's relief.  And the Mardish rebels' chagrin.  The camp was awakened by the bright sounds of hunting horns and immediately the rebels began their preparations to penetrate the temple wards.

Also awakened by the horns, Kora's team groggily stirred in their makeshift beds.  Joran was the first from his blankets, looking up blearily as soldiers bustled by their small camp.

"What?" he began with a frown, rubbing the sleep from his eyes with the back of a hand.  Then realization poured through the Kensarthi.  The rebels were beginning their assault on the temple wards!

Looking around, he found their human swordsman closest.

"Tev," he husked, reaching out to give the human's leg a shake.  "Wake up, Tev.  Looks like the rebels are about to make their move on the temple."

"Wha?" Tev mumbled, pulling the blankets away from his face.  "The rebels are about to enter the temple??  By the First!"  Scrambling to his feet, Tev grabbed one of the rebel uniform tunics Treven gave them yesterday, ran his fingers through his hair them sprinted off towards the temple, the S'ia sword clutched tightly in a hand.

"They're not going in there without me!" he shouted over his shoulder.

Joran watched the human run towards the massive S'ia structure for a moment before looking away with a shake of his head.  Despite knowing what he knew about what Tev was attempting to do, the human still mystified him with some of the things that he did.  Mentally shrugging, the Kensarthi freeholder then began carefully waking up the rest of their small camp.

by the time they were all awake and in relative good shape, they joined Tev where he was watching the proceedings just outside of the main gate.  All around him the rest of the camp anxiously waited the rebel soldiers throwing anxious looks at both the preparations and  the temple.  Several paces on the other side of the entrance from where Tev stood, Treven and his officers silently waited, arms patiently folded as they too watched the proceedings unfold.

By the time Kora and her team had joined Tev, the rebels were well into their preparations.  No less than three robed sorcerers were present, all mumbling under their breath as they prepared their magic from where they stood a pace away from the beginning of the broad flight of stairs that led into the temple's interior.  The big human stood, arms crossed and sword leaned against his thigh, watching the sorcerers work with narrowed eyes.

"What's going on?" Kora asked in a whisper as she came up beside the human to add her own curious gaze to his own.

"Nothing, as yet," was Tev's almost curt reply.  Kora glanced up at her powerful swordsman.  There was no mistaking the note of frustration in his voice and a great deal of impatience.

"You think you can get in there by yourself, don't you."  It was more a statement than a question.  And it earned her a quick snort from the big human.

"A blind, deaf and dumb child could walk in there with less effort than these fools are exerting," the human rasped before looking down at his Ajanti team leader.  Then abruptly he smiled.

"But I'm not going to be the one to tell the rebels how to run their circus.  I am, after all, just a human."

Kora smiled wryly at that, despite everything that was going on around them.  The human's blunt statement underlined yet again the reason why humans and Mardish didn't get along.  As long as the Mardish had existed, they thought the only creatures that were actually worth the effort the Creator and His Seven Dragons had gone through to create were, . . .the Mardish.  

That arrogance had quickly relegated Humanity to the bottom of that ladder of importance when they first appeared two millennia ago.  The irony, of course, was that Tev now possessed more education, skills and knowledge than most of these rebels put together.  If anybody could penetrate the temple without the theatrics and drama, it'd be the human.