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Chapter Six During the days following Cecil's talk with Kain, Kain began to make the effort to visit his friends more often. He continued on the night watch - he wasn't about to tell Baigan that he'd changed his mind - but stopped hiding away in his quarters during his time off. Instead, he went into town. At first it was just for the lunchtime meetings with Cecil and Rosa, but then he began going there after his shift at well. Walking along the stream in the stillness before dawn seemed to ease his mind. He had plenty to think about, what with Cecil's recent confession, but he'd thought them all over from every angle. He had yet to come up with a definite answer. His friend Cecil was completely different from him, in ways he'd never realized. Even though everyone saw him as a hero, Cecil saw himself as little more than a murderer. Kain couldn't comprehend why. Cecil had never been one to brood... in fact, he used to tease Kain when a dark mood would overtake him. Not that it was obvious that there was anything wrong with Cecil. Rosa seemed to treat him the same way she always did, smiling and laughing, and he responded in kind. Every time Kain looked at his friend, though, he saw the guilt hidden just below the surface. He hoped it was his imagination, but he suspected it wasn't. It was painful for Kain to see Cecil that way. On the surface, he acted like the same person he'd been before, the child Kain had played with when they were younger, but Kain knew there was a difference. Cecil had grown up. Kain had grown up some himself, he figured. But how soon would it be for Rosa? There was no doubt in his mind now that Rosa was still the same little girl that had looked up to the two of them in those days back in the nursery, despite what he had said a few weeks before. Her innocence showed in her smile, and in her eyes. It showed in the way she thanked him when he walked her to the hall of learning some mornings, before he went back to the castle to sleep. Kain enjoyed seeing that. In the face of her goodness, his problems seemed to shrink into insignificance. She was not haunted like Cecil had become, or tainted by jealousy as Kain himself was; she was sweet and good, and she felt safe with him. She smiled at him. She thought of him as a friend despite his dark moods. She was perfectly innocent, and she liked him. Kain wished with all his heart that nothing would make her grow up in such a painful way as Cecil had. He didn't want that to change. It wasn't long, though, before he learned his wishing had been in vain. In the weeks after Cecil and his band had returned to Castle Baron as heroes, they rejoined the other Dark Knight cadets on their search of the forests, but a month went by with no more sightings of Eblan's ninjas. Finally the king called off the search, though the battles overseas were still raging. In Baron, the days were getting shorter, and the nights colder. If they hadn't found any more ninjas by this time, it was likely none were still out there. Surely they couldn't hide for weeks in an unfamiliar land, with native troops combing the area for them. The search was abandoned, though the local patrols still went a bit further out from the perimeter of the city than they would have done in a more peaceful day. Kain was awakened one morning after only an hour or so of sleep. There were shouts coming from the direction of the sickroom, and he quickly threw some clothes on so he could go find out what was wrong. When he arrived, he was greeted with a grisly sight. White wizards were frantically tending to three soldiers who were covered in blood and crying out in pain as other soldiers carried makeshift litters to the beds. Most of those carrying the litters were wincing in pain as well, some even limping or clutching a wound in their side. Other soldiers who had probably been relaxing in their quarters only moments ago rushed to take their burdens from them, and the wounded men accepted their aid gratefully. Kain hurried to take up a corner of one of the litters, relieving a soldier who was limping horribly, bleeding from a deep gash in his thigh. "What happened?" Kain asked him. "Are we under attack?" "Not any more," the man gasped painfully. "We fought them off... got most of those blasted ninjas. The rest turned tail and ran." "Ninjas?" Kain exclaimed. The man nodded, pride seeping through his pain and exhaustion. "We were all out at the furthest watchpoint on our patrol, when they just jumped up from the brush. They'd apparently been watching our patterns for awhile, and they'd laid an ambush. About eight or nine of them, I'd say. And we got all but four, and those four are on the run now. Not bad, for ten of us." Kain glanced around, but saw only seven wounded soldiers among the flashes of white magic energy. "Casualties?" "They got three of us," the man admitted. "Not without a good fight though. The south patrol can't be stopped easily, even by the fabled ninjas of Eblan." Kain's heart froze in his chest. "You're the south patrol?" "Yes sir," the man said wearily, sinking down on one of the beds under the direction of a white wizard. Kain took another look around the room just in case, but he didn't see the man he was expecting to see. "Where is Josef Farrell?" "He's one of the three, I'm sorry to say," the man muttered. "He was a good man, I counted him as a friend... he took a bad gash in the neck, bled to death before we could get him back to town. But not before he told me to tell his wife and daughter he loved them..." Kain stared at the man in a daze. This simply could not be happening. "You know his daughter Rosa?" the man asked. "She's a bit younger than you, a lovely girl..." Kain couldn't wait for the man to finish. His heart pounding in his throat, he headed out of the castle and into town. © 1999 by Andrea Hartmann. |
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