The Journey's End
Authors: Kelly Lucille
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Romance, #Paranormal, #Science Fiction, #Fantasy
The Journey’s End
Kelly
Lucille
Text
Copyright 2013 Kelly Lucille
All
Rights Reserved
It wasn’t a bad planet compared to some they’d hit on
‘Lara’s quest for adventure.’ It could be worse, Nori assured herself. It was
broad daylight. Agricultural, so at least it was green and abundant. Good
weather on this side of the divide. So far everyone had been, if not friendly
exactly, at least not openly hostile. The people she passed seemed more
curious about her bicycle than anything else. Since it was the only form of
transportation welcome on every world, high tech or low, it shouldn’t be that
strange a sight.
They were helpful enough when pointing the way her friend
had gone. Everyone, it seems, noticed the beautiful dark haired off-lander on
the fancy two-wheeler.
Lara had less sense than a bag of sand, leaving the tech
side without her. Gallivanting out past the border guards, as if entering the
dark ages, was a walk in the park. Though having seen much of the people the
last few miles, she had to believe that the technologically advanced people on
the Wosite side were full of it. This place was low on technological wonders,
but they all seemed clean, happy and well fed. Whereas, the Wosite, were all a
bunch of over-teched snobs as far as she was concerned. On the other hand,
maybe the Nobles were the problem here and she just hadn’t met any.
So far, it was nowhere near the backwards hell described to
visitors, probably as a way of keeping them out of this Province. So maybe
Lara would be fine and she was chasing after her over rutted dirt roads for
nothing.
Just as she was ready to breathe easy and keep a more open
mind about the place, she left behind the open fields and lush farmlands to
begin an upward trek onto a heavily forested winding lane. There were no signs
posted to warn away the unwary. No obvious fencing or trap wire if they even
had that here. Despite the lack of obvious danger, Nori felt very much the
trespasser.
Where the hell is Lara?
It had not been her wish to travel to unenlightened worlds.
Though, most worlds could trace their original settlers to a common ancestor
planet, few of the worlds developed along the same civilized lines. With so
much diversity of resources and climate, and so many hundreds, if not thousands,
of years to develop separately, it was a wonder they had held on to a common language,
let alone anything else familiar. Nevertheless, Lara was determined to hit
every backward province and uncharted world in the universe. She had no
conception of the danger she invited.
Nori tried hard to forget what she came from, but at times,
especially in situations of danger, she could feel that old cold wind brush her
neck. Fear, more than anger or any other emotion, brought about a
transformation she was not proud of, and could only blame on her legacy.
Lara was a Hetian. She thought the whole universe was like
Heti, and was completely unaware that nightmares could come true and monsters
were real. Nori had assimilated that truth from the cradle and only had to
look in the mirror to be reminded, lest she forget.
Lara was not around the next bend, but there was a stream
peaking out of the dense trees beside the road and a well-trod rest area. A
group of women stood beyond a line of horses at the water’s edge. They were
beautiful horses, long limbed and spirited. A step up from the farming breed
she had seen so far.
The women too were of a different class. Dressed in leather
and silk with sword belts and ornate handles showing, their hair was long and
in elaborate braids, ranging from lighter shades of blond to coal black. They were
an odd combination when compared to the rest of Kenosha, mostly simple farmers
in homespun britches and tunics. This was more in the line of warrior meets
princess, and from the tension she could read from where she had stopped on the
road, all kinds of bad news.
There were five leather and silk clad women forming a ring
around two in the middle, one dressed as simply as any she had seen today.
That one dropped before the others and prostrate herself in the dirt.
"Please, my lady. I issue no challenge. I am not noble."
"You think I cannot see your class stamped across your
forehead?" The 'lady' spoke above the woman, her face scrunched in
distaste as if she smelled something rank. "But you will fight me or you
and your family will pay the price."
She was beautiful, Nori had to admit that. Blond hair
closer to true gold than seemed possible, cold blue eyes, long and slim, she
was easily six feet tall and wore it well. The flowing silk of her blouse
showed off perfect cleavage over a leather bustier, leather pants, and steel
tipped boots rounded out the look. The only thing she lacked was any kind of
human warmth.
Nori had seen her kind before. The spoiled rich, selfish
and disdainful, of that which is less by birth and distinction. Clever in a
mean backstabbing way, on Nori’s home world, she would have been the ruling
class.
Though, here it seemed her kind at least did their own dirty
work. On some of the planets they’d visited, the Nobles were beings of sloth
that directed the lives of others like moving game pieces on a board. In those
places, the lady would have been getting a massage, and eating sweets while the
innocent died at her order. At least on this world, you got to look your
killer in the eye. There was also another difference; the tall regal lady
moved with a fluid grace that bespoke training. Not what you usually saw in
the idle rich. Here the landed could fight.
Nori could tell after about thirty seconds that this was not
some noble’s idea of a play date. Whatever these women hoped to accomplish,
they were in deadly earnest, and Nori didn’t want to draw their attention. By
some miracle, Lara wasn’t involved in this trouble. The prudent thing to do
was move on.
She did her best to move the ridiculous little bike quietly
into position, but it caught on a branch and the crack was loud enough to wake
the dead, or at least draw the eyes of six women. The farmer was too busy with
her face buried in her skirt to hear anything.
"You there!" The blond Viking yelled,
"Halt!"
Not bloody likely,
Nori thought, still attempting to
get the bike untangled. Somehow, with incredibly bad luck she wanted to shake
her fist at, she managed to get the tire caught up in the branches on the side
of the road. By the time she cleared them, there was a circle of leather clad
warrior women surrounding her. The farmer, forgotten for the moment, took the
chance to flee into the woods.
Smart Farmer.
The blond looked her up and down, taking in her obviously
foreign bodysuit. Plain brown with no adornments, along with knee boots,
though of high quality, well worn and scuffed. Her hair was long and dark
brown, nearly black, and braided as simply as most of the women she had seen
today, straight down her back. She was slight of build and had a delicate face,
dominated by slightly slanted grass green eyes. It was a face and build that
everybody underestimated. Always a mistake.
When Nori had taken off after Lara, it was with the
knowledge that she might need to fight her way out of any predicament. So
while it looked like she was unprepared to fend off an angry mob of mean girls,
in actuality, not really a problem.
The fabric of her custom body suit was synthetic body
armor. The only thing better was nanite armor, but she didn’t wear it on
low-tech worlds because it tended to move at the wrong time and draw
attention. Strong enough to take a knife cut or blast without tearing, it
allowed her a freedom of movement that natural tanned leathers could never
match, no matter how many servants this backward world had gumming them down to
make them supple.
The women seeing only a poorly dressed 5'3" female, unarmed,
and unescorted, thought mistakenly that she was easy pickings.
"I accept your challenge." The blond smirked, her
nasally voice grating. "You will be my third and final battle."
"No thanks," Nori said, leaning her bike against
her thigh so she could hold up her gloved hands in the universal sign of
surrender. "I'm just passing through."
The blond pulled her gloves out of her sword belt and pulled
them on, delicately pushing one finger down at a time.
"You will fight me or I will pass you through," she
said in what she clearly thought was a clever play on words. Her friends
giggled, the woman actually looked smug.
Nori was tempted to kick her ass on principle, but she, more
than anyone, knew fighting was the very last resort. Already she could feel a
building pressure behind her eyes at the challenge. She choked it back,
spreading her hands wide.
"I am not armed, and believe me when I say, you do not
want to fight me." The first part was a lie but the last was true enough.
"In that, you are correct," she grouched,
flinging away her sword and belt and presenting her knife to the sun, watching
the diamonds in the elaborate handle sparkle as she turned it this way and
that. "But the law says I have one more battle to win and you are going
to fight me, so that I can end this farce and return to the palace." She
smiled coldly, "I'm getting married tomorrow."
"Best wishes. I'm not going to fight you." Nori
said it even as she dropped the bike and stepped away, placing her feet on more
even footing.
The Ice Lady shrugged. "Then you die and I win
anyway." By the time she was finished speaking, she was already in
motion, the knife coming down with a powerful thrust that would have caused
damage if Nori was still standing where it landed. Which, she was not.
Instead, the knife moved through empty air and with the ark and power behind
it, managed to skim a bloody line down the ladies own thigh. She screeched in
pain, looking at her leg as if she couldn't believe she could bleed.
Nori felt a shove from behind that sent her back towards the
lady, who by now was screaming mad, and coming at her again. The shove would
have been bad, had Nori not used the momentum to somersault her way over the
swing of the flashing knife. She rolled into the legs of yet another gasping
debutant and knocked one into the other so that they were sprawled together in
the dirt, shrieking.
Nori jackknifed to a fighting position before the next wave
came. The smell of blood was high and her adrenalin was kicking in such a way
that she feared the beast just below her surface calm. No more play. She
needed to finish this fight right now. If she didn't, there would be hell to
pay.
When the lady came at her this time, she didn't move out of
the way, but caught the knife on its decent and turned into it, striking the
lady in her perfect nose with an elbow. The shattering of bone was satisfying
in its way, almost as satisfying as sweeping her feet out from under her. Nori
road her falling body down and buried the knife in the meat of her right shoulder,
pinning her to the ground.
The woman went down screaming and stayed down. Nori was not
even breathing hard. She looked at the remainder of the women, all of which
had gone completely silent at the viciousness of her attack. "Anyone else
want to take on the new girl?"
No one did. She dusted off her pants, patted her hair into
place and pulled up the little red bike. She got on and headed down the road,
wondering if Lara was having as much fun with the weird customs
. Seems a
silly thing to have to fight strangers before getting married.
It was a relatively short time later that she made a turn
into the next village and ran into a warrior patrol on horseback. Big, fit men
in leather and black on battle steeds was not a sight to forget any time soon.
She biked around them, aware of the many male eyes taking in her slight form.
She pulled her bike over to what looked like a common pub. She could smell the
bodies inside, along with the yeasty smell of alcohol and food.
While outsiders were not usual for this side of the planet,
there were generally enough every year around market time for one to be not a
completely foreign sight; but all eyes turned to her when she walked into the
room, and every sound stopped. Why was it, she wondered, she had that affect
on people? Lara walked in a room and within five minutes had twenty friends.
Nori walked in and right away people were checking their purses and shifting
away from eye contact.
"Hello. What have we here?" a hard masculine
voice said from her right. Of course, there were exceptions.
She ignored the voice and headed for the sweaty man behind
the bar. "Hello," she said, smiling her best smile, which
admittedly was not all that friendly. "I'm looking for another woman who
might have come through here on a bicycle. She’s tall, beautiful and really
friendly with black hair?"
The man looked from her, to a soldier across the room, then
back to her. He shook his head and backed up, cleaning the bar with a dirty
towel farther down.
Not a promising sign.
"I can help you find what you’re looking for pretty,"
the obnoxious voice said. He was a farmer by apparel and not the threat that
the silent guards at the back of the room were. She looked back, counting them
as they held up the wall. Three in black and one in shiny burgundy and gold livery
standing with his back to a second door that probably led up to a second
floor.
What is going on?
S
he ignored the smelly, obviously drunk man sliding
up beside her. He didn’t take the hint. He placed a sweaty hand on her arm
and she shifted in a move too fast to see and slammed his wrist on the bar. He
screamed, falling down and holding his broken wrist to his chest as he
blubbered.
She didn’t take her eyes off the guards. Studying them, it
was obvious the ones in black were the truly dangerous ones. Expressionless
and hardened, they reeked danger; the other man just reeked, his cologne almost
as bright as his gold ornamentations. The scent was strong enough that Nori
could smell it from the bar. He was looking her over like a piece of meat he
was thinking to buy, and wasn’t quite sure it was up to his standards.
Wonderful.
This day continues to bear gifts.
