* * *
Late in the afternoon of the same day, two warrior girls rode out of Blyst and headed along the old road to the north. Trusting their strength and endurance, they forced their horses to a constant gallop. The path to Blyst was well maintained and perfect for urgent travel, opposite to the southern roads, destroyed by countless army boots and wagons that crossed over them.
Dlora immediately noticed a big difference between the landscape in which she traveled in recent years and this on which she rode now. Tenen, who had lived her entire childhood in the seaside town Nellen, where one could not feel the war, and who trained in Ahleyn capital which was so far intact, took all this beauty for granted. Vast plains were in front and on the left, and a wide Clean river, one of the largest natural inspiration for the poets of Ahleyn, followed them on the left until they got to the intersection. The road to the right lead to the cities Derryel and Urryel, which were lost in recent, very bloody battles. Further ahead to the north was a dusty road toward Rheyn.
At first glance, it seemed that the war did not disturb in any way the idyll of villages located along the road, but closer observation, for which the girls did not have much time, revealed the actual situation. On the farm and on the surrounding lands all elderly women and very young children did the work. All male workforce and stronger women the war had embraced in its arms.
They rode all night, did not even think to rest until the morning. Then the horses, well loaded with military equipment, just had to take a break.
Dlora used this rest to bathe in a nearby lake. Her younger colleague, while preparing breakfast, could not resist staring into the tight, yet the visibly bruised body of the experienced warrior girl in the water. She did not feel concerned that her skin will surely one day look like that. On the contrary, she sensed a slight jealousy at all the battles that left those signatures. She felt a full sense of pride and was grateful to the All that she got the chance to belong to the great Ahlea warrior order and to serve the proud and unique Ahleyn society. It was her dream since her youngest days.
The will to prove herself as Ahlea was particularly strong because she came from a noble family. Although it was quite common for members of the aristocracy to join Ahlea warrior girls, people always believed that they could not be as good as the girls who came from lower layers of society. Rich woman's life, according to the majority opinion, shaped them too fine for all the hard challenges that life brought to warrior girls. Tenen struggled hard to prove the contrary, and she was quite successful in it. This task was the final award and a proof that she defeated all the prejudices, which she struggled with through the years, spent in warrior school.
Dlora tried at this same time to remove thoughts about the investigation, at least while enjoying the coolness of the water. She wanted to provide the greatest amount of pleasure to the body that had deserved it for so long. But in this way, she could only free the space for concerns about what was happening on the battlefield.
They passed already two-thirds of the way from Blyst to Rheyn, which was no more than four hours of the ride. They believed that the robbers did not worry about already been discovered and therefore were not rushing. Possibly, they have not even reached the city at the north of Ahleyn. Dlora also relied on their further peace of mind upon arrival at Rheyn, that is, that after a long time they would decide to take refreshments in one of the city's pubs. Riding further after breakfast, she thought, two Ahleas should arrive up to two hours after them. She hoped that they would be quick in finding the thieves in one of the bars before they would disappear in the dark city. Rheyn was known mostly for its high crime rate and people could very easy hide in it, especially those who found crime as their lifestyle.
Tenen was also familiar with the nature of the city in which they were headed. Soothing rebellious habits of that isolated place was one of the most common tasks for Ahlea warrior girl interns. She remembered how much she was looking forward to any news about the new rebellion or to the case of larger armed robbery in Rheyn. Its citizens could be compared with the ones in suburbs of the capital. However, the city from the north felt much more independence, showed a much greater willingness to resist the laws, government, and even the Ahleas.
Such behavior managed to awake small doubts in otherwise enduring convictions of a young warrior, that the social order existing in her country was closest to ideal and perfection.
“It would be nice to have this task shown actually easy and to immediately find Dlenn” Tenen started a conversation as soon as Dlora got out of the water, and showed that her thoughts are much like her older partner’s, “otherwise the investigation could become quite a stretch.”
“Yes. Although I do not look forward to meeting the damn figurine again.”
“Yes, you had a quite turbulent joint past.”
“I personally wore it out of Yaraelen to the queen in Blyst. And also, five years before that, I participated in the rescue of that... that... freak of the Queen's sister.”
“At that time I was just a child and I do not remember those events.”
Dlora’s memories were still fresh. Those moments came back to her, detailed and clear as if they had just taken place yesterday.
“It would be the smartest thing to forget how one spoiled and arrogant princess managed to offend one king and his people so hard. So much that they wanted to decapitate her just two weeks after she married the king's son.”
Dlora could not find words to describe and explain the extent to which those times were different from the ones that the girls were living in now. She was not sure anyone would believe that only fifteen years ago there was no sign of all this anger and hatred, worn inside the hearts of Ahleyn and Waeryehen people every day. It was hard to believe that these two nations were once considered brothers and that their two countries were closest members of a large Continental pact.
She also did not dare to use the ugliest part of her vocabulary for a member of the royal family, who she held the most responsible for all the evil that occupied her world. Although she fully believed that, there was no bigger and more complete fool than the queen's sister Trupya, in all known world. If she herself had not spent a short and very uncomfortable time with that woman, she would not believe that there could exist such an arrogant, selfish and wicked creature.
“Our Queen made a tough decision then. She sacrificed a powerful military and political alliance while remaining faithful to the ideals of loyalty that we all learn in our society. She sent Ahleas to save her sister from captivity in which she herself turned her married life, and to return her to her native country of Ahleyn, with a price of war against Waeryehen.”
Tenen knew the story, but it was interesting to listen to the tone used by a direct participant in these events. Each new generation at Ahlea warrior school inevitably studied tactical simulation of queen's sister rescue operation. It was a truly brilliant action. Queen's sister was not a popular figure among her colleagues, but not for the same reasons that Dlora could not stand her. The whole school of Ahlea warrior girls was considered endangered by ambitions of queen’s sisters to take control of the institution. The only person superior to Ahlea warrior girls out of their ranks was the queen. Princess Trupya wanted to adjust this rule a little bit, to control new generations of warriors who had just formed their skills and knowledge. It was assumed that this way she wanted to create her own faction of loyal elite warriors, if not to try to take complete control over the order.
Such efforts, of course, were not even the least well received within the Ahlea order. Their loyalty to the Queen was absolute. However, there was an ongoing concern that the queen is blind by her love for her sister and could finally give into Trupya’s requests.
“Waeryehenians had no room for forgiveness for our insolent act” Dlora continued, “That was the beginning of the war. A war in which we were, at first, fighting with honor, winning battle after battle, and in four years, won their capital city.”
; “And then it all went wrong ...” Tenen added.
“Exactly. Madness reached its peak. Every war brings out the worst in people. An initial string of successes drew out arrogance from us. And it seemed to have grown with every next victory. Thinking about it today, I believe that it was not possible that we became so mad, that it must have been something supernatural. The evil forces that war inevitably awake, inviting them to create bigger and bigger madness…”
She fell silent for a moment, sinking deeper into her thoughts, and then realized that her companion was waiting for her to continue the story.
“After winning their capital, a kind of mass insanity came over us: We looted everything there could be looted, set fire to everything in the city that fired our jealousy for its beauty ... and among other things, we stole that damn Tarlaeth. Then it all went downhill. We lost capital, unprepared to the first counteroffensive. A stroke of defeats came around the entire front; we even lost some battles which seemed completely impossible to lose.”
“One of the reasons was that the Waeryehenians had military reorganized themselves,” Tenen said what she herself knew about the course of the war, “Among other things, their prince personally took command of the army. He demonstrated superior combat and leadership qualities.”
“Oh, nevertheless, in spite of all sorts of other reasons, our series of unfortunate failures I consider completely unlikely, even to say impossible. In the following eight years of war, we started to lose parts of our own land. We are lucky that all those years of fighting made them also tired and now they want peace as much as we do.”
“But for this statue, they are willing to continue the fight.”
“Yes. Although it is only the size of two fists and does not look very special, it is a symbol of their nation’s power, the reminder of the old days when they were the first people who drove the mages outside of their land” Dlora explained what she knew about the story of Tarlaeth to her young colleague.
Stories of moody and evil wizards who had complete control over the entire life on the continent in very ancient times already belonged to Tenen’s generation to fairy tales used for educating disobedient little children and it was not easy to find too many adult people who believed in them.
“The king did not dare to tell people that the statue was stolen, and that was what the Queen especially enjoyed, a sign of great humiliation of Yarael Twenty-Seventh. The nations of both countries all this time believed that all this blood was shed for honor. Their honor was violated by the behavior of the queen sister, and ours was violated by her capture. I find it hard to believe that people can fight for such reasons so many years. But human feelings of honor and respect for their sanctities were always easy to be manipulated with.”
Tenen was a little disappointed with Dlora’s words. She had a high opinion for the ideals that older warrior mentioned and believed that the honor of her country and people, and all those things that society held sacred, needed to be defended with full power. In her eyes, the blame for a series of military defeats of Ahleyn army laid in the loss of faith in Ahlean values in the minds and souls of warriors on the battlefield. She thought that fear overcame these noble sentiments among the soldiers just after two or three defeats. Dlora’s reflections, and even more the tone which she used to present them, were a confirmation of Tenen’s fears. That was why she craved to appear on the battlefield as soon as possible, and with all her strength to try to renew people's faith in the struggle for the highest ideals of Ahleyn.
“And now, the statue was stolen again” Tenen again directed the conversation to their task.
“That is right. And I have no idea who might be the organizer of the robbery. I cannot think of many people who benefited from the continuation of the war. Both countries were devastated, resources are quite exhausted, overstrain by war is at its peak. And I do not think that Waeryehenians would do this, and then dictate peace by returning the statue because there is no benefit by this behavior. Unless there is some reason which we do not know.”
“Maybe they want to totally submit us to their government, to fully conquer Ahleyn?”
“I doubt it. That would bring them only long-term instability. It would double their territory; it would become prone to frequent rebellions that could not be controlled. Anyway, we will probably find reasons where we find the statuette and the organizer of the theft.”
After breakfast, for whose preparation Tenen received praise from her senior colleague, they hurried on toward Rheyn. Chances of reaching robbers before they arrived in the city were already insignificant, but they still believed it was important to get there as soon as possible so that they could find the robbers quicker and easier.
The fog that stubbornly refused to lift off from the road heightened the chill of the gloomy, completely overgrown Zal forest that stretched itself at the left side of the road, since the last intersection. These woods were the main reason why the majority of honest people avoided this area in the far north of the Ahleyn kingdom, including the city of Rheyn. Everyone knew that the creatures, which hid among these trees, could not be found in other parts of the world that people inhabited.
After three hours of riding, just when the fog finally started to rise, they saw the city in the far distance. From far it looked like all the other major cities in the kingdom, but both Ahleas knew that the differences in appearance, and even more in a malicious atmosphere that prevailed in it, would appear when they would get close to it, and especially when they would enter it.
However, the scene that they saw only a few meters in front of them, intrigued them more than their distant destination. In the middle of the road, where the trees grew closest to the road, two bloody human bodies and three dead horses laid on the ground. Traces of wild struggle and footprints larger than human were found everywhere around.
“What the hell is this” Tenen wondered, while quickly getting off her horse. She observed the mangled body of a man in front of her and very quickly she came up with an answer to her question. She learned in Ahlea warrior school that only claws of Zals leave wounds of that kind. And the forest, which stretched out from here all the way to the wild mountain land of Ro-oth, was named after these creatures.
“Damn... beasts …” they heard from the left side. One of the attacked men was still alive.
“What happened?” girls approached him. Dlora examined the wounds and quickly concluded that there was no hope for him.
“They watched us from the forest... dared not to attack because ... they saw that we were armed.” it was clear even from the voice of the poor man that he reached his last minutes, “but then they saw the devil statue because it peeked from Dlenn’s bag... and you know how those beasts are crazy for shiny objects…”
Ahleas looked at each other. They found people who they pursued, much sooner than they expected.
“Tarlaeth,” Tenen said.
“They took Dlenn and dragged him into the woods. They will ... They ... will …” a man grabbed Dlora’s shoulders and raised his head, sending a desperate look right into her eyes “eat... him... aliiii…”
His head fell to the ground. He died.
“Oh, damn,” Dlora said angrily, “we need to go to the worst forest in the known world. The Zal forest.”