Neither of his hoped-for targets were at the armory, so he decided to go to the stables next, to meet Arlen there, and he was fortunate to find his teacher with his horse already saddled. “I was beginning to think you weren’t going to come today,” Arlen said.
“I just got new orders to return to Center Trunk,” Kestrel said breathlessly after running to reach the stables quickly.
“Center Trunk?” Arlen looked at him quizzically. “Kestrel, what are you going to do in Center Trunk? They don’t have any trainers there, and you’re not ready to go out on a mission.
“Don’t get me wrong, you’re doing very well. You’re one of the best students I’ve had, and with just a few more weeks you’ll be ready. But you’re not ready to go out now,” Arlen said intensely, his hand holding onto Kestrel’s.
“I don’t know what my orders will be, or why they’re bringing me back to Center Trunk,” Kestrel said. He wondered how far he was from being ready in Arlen’s eyes; he felt that he had made great progress in the past several weeks, and was possibly able to compete with humans using their own weapons. “I’ll let them know what you said if they give me an assignment,” he assured Arlen.
“There’s been a human attack out west, past Elmheng,” Kestrel told Arlen. “The humans burned a lot of forest and killed a lot of our guards. You may see more students coming up here for training if this turns into a nasty war.”
Arlen’s eyes widened. “All the more reason for you to finish your training before you do anything stupid. We’re going to need well-trained agents — you come back here and finish up,” he squeezed Kestrel’s hand. “Now I suppose you’re going to tell me you won’t be cleaning out the stables your next turn either? This is tragic!”
Kestrel smiled at Arlen’s reversion to his typical comical persona. “If I come back here, I promise I’m taking my turn cleaning out the stables,” he pledged, then departed to go to the depot, hoping to find Casimo. The commander was not there either, and so Kestrel went to see his language tutor.
“You can’t pass as a native human with your accent right now, but you could make yourself understood if you had to,” the man told him. Artur was considered the best human-speaker among the elves at Firheng, though Kestrel had sometimes idly wondered how that compared to elves who traveled to Estone and spoke the human language as a matter of trade.
He doubled back past the office building, where Casimo was still not present, then at last he returned to his own quarters, where he was relieved to see Vinetia fully dressed, and ready to go. He took time to pack his meager belongings, then joined Vinetia in the doorway as he looked around his apartment for the last time. “Let’s go by the commissary and get some food to take with us,” Kestrel suggested.
They went and gathered bread and fruit, then left the base and walked through the city, neither of them saying anything to the other. Kestrel’s mind was whirling with thoughts of Lucretia; he wanted to ask Vinetia more about the missing guard, but the hardened attitude that Vinetia had displayed in his room deterred him from raising Lucretia, or any other topic.
They passed through Firheng, and Kestrel reflected on how little he knew about the city where he had just spent so many weeks living. He hadn’t met any civilians, and only occasionally ventured off the base to buy food from the street vendors. He couldn’t call Firheng home, but he felt like he was leaving home, compared to Center Trunk, and a future that might or might not be there, and that might expect him to become a spy, something he would have never planned for himself.
He might be assigned to return to Elmheng, he speculated, walking along the forest road with Vinetia without paying any attention to the world around him. He might once again see Cheryl, and he could ask if she had ever received any of his letters.
He could see her father Mastrim again, and he could ask the commander if his message had specifically told Colonel Silvan to consider Kestrel as a candidate to become a spy. That message, those adventures, had been so long ago, it seemed! His life had become nothing but one continuous training session in Firheng, and it was hard to believe that he had been touched by the human goddess, conversed directly with the elven goddess, rescued and talked to Dewberry the sprite! That brief episode of life filled with adventure was one that had disappeared, buried under the layers of language and combat and horses that had been pushed into his life.
The sun had nearly set, he realized with a startled assessment of the world around him. The road ahead was dim, particularly for his eyes, which were not as sharp as those of a full-blooded elf like Vinetia. “How much longer would you like to travel tonight?” he asked.
She stopped and sighed. “We’re not going to make it to a village tonight; we started too late.”
“We could climb a tree and settle in for the night,” Kestrel offered, suggesting the traditional elven resting place.
“Perhaps we should,” Vinetia agreed, and in her voice Kestrel heard less of the afternoon’s hard edge.
He let her select the tree they would climb, and then they ascended the elm, reaching a level at which the forking branches were high above the ground but still sturdy enough to support their weight as they settled into two forks close to each other. They passed a few food items back and forth and grew comfortable as a glimmer of moonlight filtered through the leaves above.
“How did you do in the archery tournament after I left?” Kestrel ventured to ask, when he judged the time might be suitable for conversation.
“I lost in the qualifying round in the morning,” she replied. “I was up against tough competition.
“But both the champion and the runner-up were the two you beat in the last round you shot in. You could have been champion if you had stayed,” Vinetia told him with some enthusiasm. “And everyone in our squad knew it, and the top two finishers knew it as well. The second place archer came up and told me that himself after it was over.”
“There was quite a little stir you know, you showing up for one day out of the blue, burning through the competition, then disappearing,” she went on.
“Lucretia tried to maintain her cool exterior, and no one really figured it out, but I know the two of you had something you shared. You got to hug her goodbye in a way that wasn’t just polite that morning you took off; she didn’t warm up to strangers in a hurry or give out hugs randomly. She knew you were leaving before anyone else,” Vinetia told him.
“We talked over the midday break, when she took me back to the armory to get more arrows,” Kestrel replied. He didn’t want to lie to the girl in the tree with him, but he couldn’t tell the whole truth, the truth about how Lucretia had discovered him talking to Dewberry the sprite. “And then we were having dinner together when Colonel Silvan’s guards came and found me and took me away to receive orders, so she knew about that. That’s when I was ordered to come up here to Firheng, something I never expected,” Kestrel explained.
“Isn’t that something,” Vinetia said. “An elf like you is attractive to her, after all the really good-looking elves busted their backs trying to get her attention, and failed.
“You’re not really that bad looking,” she added. “Just different. You’re an elf all the way through; no human could handle a bow the way you can.” She yawned. “I miss her. I never really said goodbye because we thought she was just on a short training mission to Elmheng; no one dreamed she was going off to war.
“That’s why I want to get to the front, so I can kill as many humans as I can and get revenge,” she said, then yawned again.
“I’m sorry,” Kestrel said softly. “I’m still getting used to the idea she’s dead. I know it must hurt you to have lived with it for all these days. Go to sleep Vinetia, and tomorrow we’ll make some progress towards getting you back to Center Trunk and on your way to getting revenge.” He listened, but heard no reply except the very gentle sound of Vinetia’s breath, as she fell asleep in her fork in the tree. He let his own head rest against his part of the trunk, and slowly fell asleep as well, thinking about Lucretia, the lovely maiden elf guard who had sought adventure and escape from predictable boredom. He hoped she had been exhilarated by the action in battle, and had died a quick, painless death.