“Ah, there it is,” Athan announced as they crested the next hill. Stepping out in front of them, he gave a dramatic bow before extending one arm out towards the valley below. “Welcome, Lady Thorngrove, to Lee’s Mill.”
10
Nestled in a low valley, with the Axe Blade Mountains looming like distant ghosts to the north, the Maiden’s Lake to the west, Maiden’s Veil River to the east and once fertile fields to the south, Lee’s Mill seemed the perfect spot to grow a prosperous town. It had been a safe place, far from the blight enveloping the western lands. People had come and built their mills to grind their corn and wheat, and then more people had come to build shops and homes and taverns and a temple. When the first signs of blight were spotted in a field of wheat, they built walls of wood around the town to keep the blight out. Within a year, Lee’s Mill changed from a welcoming town into a gated fort, its people frightened and desperate. But, wooden walls and hope could not keep the blight away. It found its way inside, destroying the mayor’s garden first, then the temple’s apple orchard. In the end, the people of Lee’s Mills had to learn how to live with the blight, just like everyone else.
Athan told Dnara the town’s history as they joined the line of people waiting to get into town through a large lifted gate of felled trees whose ends had been sharpened into earth punching spikes. Dnara craned her neck back to gaze up at those dangerous looking spikes as they passed under them, only to realize another gate of the same waited just a few horses ahead. Once in the inner gate, they stopped for a moment within the shadowed chamber, its stonework and armored guards offering an imposing welcome.
Dnara’s head filled with questions, having never been to a town with such an impressive gate system. Well, she’d never been to a town at all that she could remember, and that opened a further set of questions she wished she’d thought of sooner when Athan had patiently asked if she had any back at their camp earlier that morning. Now, it seemed too late, and she held her tongue as armored guards began their inspection of the large wagon in front of her.
The wagon looked like a house on wheels, decorated in bright paints and fabrics, and it even had a window box with flowers. Pulled by two massive oxen, the wagon had a smaller cart hitched to the back on which were loaded a pyramid of barrels. The owner of the wagon, a man with a beard as large as his stomach, spoke to the guards with a few laughs passed between them before stepping up into the high bench behind the oxen and giving the leather reins a loud crack.
When the wagon cleared its inspection and moved forward into town, Dnara pulled her cloak hood up, made sure her bandaged arms were covered by the cloak’s front, and stifled the nervous desire to hide behind Treven’s backside. Athan reached over past Treven’s head and pulled her hood down. He gave her a subtle shake of the head along with a calm smile, once again giving her the feeling that all would be well. His own hood, too, rested back against his shoulders, giving the gate guardsmen a clear view of his face. Her eyes locked with his for a moment before he faced forward again, then she stared at his profile. Even road weary and dust covered, Athan presented the figure of someone she may deem handsome, if ever thoughts of men and their appealing features had been part of her thinking before just two days ago. More questions sprung to mind, and ever tighter did she keep her mouth shut.
A guardsman approached, dressed in leather armor with metal rivets and a cotton cloak dyed light green. A burly, barrel chested man with a red beard and red hair braided back into a ponytail. At his hip swung a sword much too big for most men to wield, but what Dnara noticed most were the man’s eyes, for they smiled even if his beard-hidden lips did not.
“What business have you in Lee’s Mill?” he asked Athan.
“Same as always, Beothen,” Athan replied in a harassed tone. “To make some coin, sleep in a soft bed and fill my stomach with as much corn stew as my cornsick tongue will allow.”
Beothen leaned down, his height towering over Athan like the mountains looming over the town’s northern border. One bushy red eyebrow slowly raised as he eyed Athan like he were a sack of potatoes to be inspected for blight and contraband. “Since when do there be soft beds at The River’s End?”
“A man can dream, can’t he?” Athan replied on the cusp of a chuckle.
“Aye, that he can,” Beothen replied, a smile breaking apart his beard. “Welcome home, forester. What have you brought to-” The man’s words stopped as his gaze passed over the other side of Treven’s head to where Dnara stood as silent and still as possible. “Well, now, who’s this, then?”
“Dnara,” Athan replied quickly, saving her from answering. “My uncle sent her as a favor to a friend. She’s to be my apprentice.”
“Oh? Apprentice, eh?” Beothen stepped closer to her, his hand resting on the pommel of his sword, more out of habit, she hoped, than threat.
Athan let out a long sigh and scratched the back of his head. “So far, she’s proved better at picking mushrooms than
