The Fall of a Kingdom

Even One Is Better Than None

Xavier woke to birds chirping and his head feeling like it might explode. Looking around he saw he was in the small clearing they had stopped at the night before. Taking a minute to get his bearings he finally remembered the events that occurred the night before, and began to look around frantically for Polaris. He had managed to kill one of the men when he had been struck from behind, if something had happened to her the other kids at the church would never forgive him, hell he would never forgive himself.

Struggling to his feet he began to walk back into the forest to look for clues that may tell him where she had gone.

"You should not be up yet, I did not take care of you all night just so you could wake up and do more harm to yourself." He had never been so happy as he spun around a little to quickly to face Polaris, causing himself to feel dizzy.

"You are alive!" he exclaimed, "They did not hurt you did they, where did they go?"

With a sigh she walked closer to Xavier, taking his arm into her hand and started puling towards camp. "I will tell you if you come back to camp and stop walking around. You took a nasty hit to your head last night."

She was worried to tell him, but seeing as how they survived that should be all that mattered. As they reached camp she had him sit back down and began o recheck his wounds.

Sighing she started to tell him all that had happened the night before. He was shocked to hear that she had taken care of the other two bandits herself, as he did not even know she was capable of fighting.

"Once they were taken care of, I dragged your lard butt back to camp so that I could clean your wound and get a fire going to keep the animals away. Then after I knew you were safe I drug them away from camp, and stayed up all night to keep watch. I would say that the animals have already got ahold of their corpses, but I relieved them of whatever useful items they carried on their person." Polaris spoke as if it was just another normal day, not as if she had killed two men and taken stuff off of their dead bodies.

Looking at Polaris he could see that she had muscle, but he never asked why. Hell he did not even know what it was that her and Niles did for work. He had only ever found out where she lived when he had followed her home a few years ago because he had wanted to ask more questions about the princess and the dragon.

Before he could think to ask any more questions about the prior night Polaris spoke up again, "We will have to hurry and finish our trip, I need to get home and warn the others about the bandits. I would say that they are responsible for quite a few of the missing girls. They mentioned selling me to the King until they had seen that I had a scar."

All Xavier could do was nod, he felt like he was meeting Polaris for the first time. This was not the girl who had came to the church to play and read them stories. This was a woman who had seen too much and was a warrior in her own right.

Having finished their conversation Polaris handed him some bread and gave him some water. "After you are done eating, help pack up the camp. We should leave in the next 20 minutes."

Polaris could feel his eyes on her as she went about packing her own stuff, but she did not have time for all the questions that she knew he wanted to ask. If the bandits were involved then it would be easier for the King to get girls even from the most remote parts of the Kingdom without ever having to send his guards to do so.

*4 hours later*

Having rode as fast as they dared push their horses, they made great time. They took a couple shortcuts as well and skimmed a good 2 hours off of their estimated time. Polaris knew they were almost to their destination as she could see the rolling hills with crops and animals grazing.