Cotton sprigs dotted the torture that was this slog up to The Ladi. Most other towns cleared crags and boulders and fallen trees from their thoroughfares; but not Ladi GruHas. There were no roads. Her crags and hard ways and steep stone slopes were principal in her defense from ne'er-do-wells and thugs.
"How is it..." A sapped Jayed Cashtiel drew in a panting huff. "How is it that The Ladi...has all these hazards...to keep out thugs..." One erroneously placed boot slipped on loose pebbles and one of her buttocks slid into the shoulder of the aging man at her rear. He propped her up by the brawn of that shoulder with little to no effort. She huffed once more, then continued the climb. "...yet...the city is still...so chocked full of thugs?"
"Man will go through great trouble for the promise of arse and gold, pup...mainly gold." The aged one replied with a dry ease to his words. He'd been here many times.
He pushed her further on by the backside up over the husk of a log. So long dead and so rotted out, the log was, that at the very hint of her weight it collapsed to crumbles; the tiny living things within it scattering in fright. Jayed panted, hard, as she recovered, hugging herself close to the rock by desperate snatches and cold frozen grips. There was not much in her youth she'd seen that would send her into panic but the thought of tumbling down a cold rocky slope to her broken death in a land she'd never been to likely to be left in a bloody pile by disinterested denizens unsettled her nerves to the core. There were bones of both animals and men who'd met this fate scattered all about the trek up this mountain. Dead things lay here for so many cycles, the sedge and frost-laden mosses had long since overgrown them and the path they were attempting to follow upward. She was not going to embarrass her senior, shouldering her weight, by dying on the side of this mountain.
So far the way up to the Ladi was. They had another forty meters still yet to scale until they'd see the gates of reprieve.
Sensing the frustration in the girl, the greying man planted her against a solid rock, climbed ahead of her, reached backward, and pulled her by the forearm to hoist her on upward. He was Veygornne. Vigilant, aware, present of mind, and matter-of-fact. A kin to the wolf, for certain; as was his nature.
Veygornne hailed from the royal forest city of her long deceased mother, Cashtiel. The capital city of one of the four kingdoms in the forested country known now as The CloseKings of Ashok. She'd only just left those deep woods and lush groves of Ashok a little over a cycle ago. Her den elders—Those Who Wear Old Helms—had bid her to travel, for her curious nature was becoming a choking impediment on her duties within the fluff and trappings of her royalty. They'd surreptitiously designated a new Hunter of the House, a new Weroance, to replace her, in the hopes she'd take to the road to satisfy her curiosities.
It was a welcomed boot. She'd long wanted to fill a higher station anyway. Something besides being a hunter for her den. Something all the CloseKings would praise her for. She had desired, nay, obsessed over climbing to a much grander tier. One the steadfast wolvkin hoisting her up had already achieved.
He was a Zadagen Agent. A Paragon and Prince. A King's Blade and adviser. A head-hunter. There was nothing higher. Nothing in all the world's military that could best being an Agent in the Service of Kings.
But Jayed felt no farther from this now, gravely clinging to the side of these crags, than she'd ever been. She wished she had his fortitude for he seemed to tolerate the most ridiculous of tasks, including this climb. His hands gripping the rock reminded her of toil. The beef of his thighs reminded her of power and might. The grey in his hair reminded her of Taphsel.
Poor Taphsel.
Taphsel cared so deeply for her rearing when he took her in. He didn't deserve to die. Alone in the shed. No one to defend his life. If she had been an Agent she would have surely saved him.
Jayed shook the memory from her mind. Rock and grass tufts needed to be fiercely tended. The greying man above her was a tough old fart and he kept an all too adept pace up this mountainside. How many times had he come here, anyway?
In her daydreaming she'd failed to notice that her half-gloved fingers had started to go numb as they sank deep into something cold. She looked to the slope. There was snow up here. When had the snow started to fall? Had they climbed into it? It appeared to have been falling for some moons now. She looked below her, they had certainly climbed into snow covered mountainside, given the distance of that deadly fall downward.
She looked up again. Jayed hadn't notice if the old man ahead of her had seen any of her tears that had welled over missing the man who raised her, but she choked down whatever old sorrow for Taphsel and drudgery of this climb had been tugging at her will. She swallowed that frown to regain some sense of scaling speed. Her adopted father would've been disappointed if she tumbled down the side of this mountain due to a lack of attention to the Now.
The greying one's gravelly voice broke the soft silence of her musings again. "Gru Gate."
Jayed looked up from her intense grip on the soddy crags to view his call to attention. A pair of crimson-orange banners waved long over the crest of the slope like two disembodied arms surely coming to rescue her from certain doom. As she climbed. she could just make out the grey wooden crossbeams they were strung from.
Her eyebrows shot upward. It was a gate, a large ornate one; almost the size and grandiloquence of the gates into Cashtiel. She never knew these folk held a sense of design. Hopefully, they also had a stylish inn bed close after those banners.
"Veygornne?" She huffed. "How lo--"
"Not far, pup."
The last fifteen meters were the worst as she stared at the looming grey gate into town both taunting and welcoming her tired distressed body. She desperately wanted to loose her hair, as it was dreadfully pinned into an intricate adorned bun her people called a wolaenki; the fabled mark of those dedicated to the path of becoming a Zadegan Agent. For a full cycle she'd worn this hairstyle everyday and only just now had she begun to hate the very idea of it. She could feel the pressure of her own blood vessels beating hard against all the metal pins holding it neat.
Veygornne, the aged one, must have been keenly aware of her limp grabs and struggle toward respite, for he chuckled as he pulled her body alongside him the last bit of the way.
"Aaahh, Aphsa-Cashtiel!" A rich valiant voice called over the ridge. The greying one cursed at him and threw up a palm for aid. The man calling over, slapped a strong hand about the forearm of the old wolf and hoisted him over the crest.
Jayed struggled and gripped and struggled yet more to reach the lip of the ledge, wondering where her greeting words and helping hand was. She pulled sod one last time to drag herself on to the snowy, rocky, cold, path near the gates. She collapsed onto her back and huffed a full lung's depth five times over before anyone even acknowledged she'd not fallen to her death.
"First time in The Ladi, huh?"
Still no hand, but his voice was as bold as the crisp air up here.
A slew of curses came to mind but only hastened swells of breath served as her irreverent answers to his mocking. Everything hurt. Every muscle still felt just as balled up as it had on the side of that rock, but from the looks of the two men hovering above her now she must have also been a sorely woeful sight. They twisted smiles and concern into chuckles and the shaking of their heads. She mustered up the strength to gesture a quite lewd curse to both of her seniors as they laughed away her pain.
Two younger faces poked in above her. One immediately handsome and the other familiar and welcomed. The familiar face spoke first.
"You're goin'tuh love the Goldcrest up 'ere. 'minds me of Kago." The girl said, happily, through a veil of messy pink braids. Her accent had always been an odd mix of influences from the cultures most of her people had descended from. It made her sound rude and classless most of the time, but Jayed loved the warmth in her speech. Loved it and missed it.
Jayed was moved to immediate scrutiny at the upkeep of this one's tresses, however. They were Agency Prospects; their wolaenki were supposed to be neat and pinned and adorned at all times. She sucked in a deep breath to begin her scolding, "Uh, you gonna fix your--"
"Wolaenki's on holiday up here, girl." The bright happy girl, clad in an equally messy collection of colourful wraps, cloths, and scarves, poured gobs of smiles onto her friend. "Everything's on holiday up here." She added with several twerks of her eyebrows.
The handsome one shoved a bluish-brown hand toward her and she slapped at it in a slack gable. Jayed was always keen to impress—for she very much liked the attention of males—but if this was to be his first impression of her, she immediately didn't care if he knew the truth. That stupid climb had taken the coy right out of her.
As Jayed was helped to her feet, the mess of braids and smiles and bright blue eyes brushed frost and sod from her wildergear. She'd always been the motherly type. "You remember Siin, right?" The girl began.
Jayed looked around once, then realizing she meant the handsome young lad she was leaning on, she shot him an appalled expression.
"Siin? Ynggrloch?"
"It's...aBn Ynggr now." The smoothness of his voice shocked Jayed so she almost missed the correction.
"Oh, you took the rites...well, wow." She gave him a stiff once over.
This was Siin? Siin's skin used to be oily and pocky and his nose was crooked and he used to wear holey trousers and ripped shirts. This Siin? Who had kept his hair in a matted oily wad on top of his head and had lost most of his teeth before any others had time to properly grow in. This Siin Ynggrloch, who was an immigrant urchin child with an incorrigible penchant for skullduggery? Talented in magecraft, yes, but a homeless waif who had forced friendship on her like some forlorn pup. This was the Siin she grew up with?
If he had sworn his talents to the Magi of the aBn Tera Villa, they must have seen something more impressive than being just some sub-kin on the streets of Cashtiel she played with.
Then the thought struck her of what it was that must have caused him to look this way. Magi drugs.
"Hm, no wonder you look so fetching. Hopped up on aBn-sauce."
There was a certain stink on her words and Siin rolled his grey-amber eyes. He huffed a half-irritated scoff at the three of them, pack-siblings reunited, flung her arm around his neck and dragged her toward the gate proper.