Greta was waiting for them on a corner, near the city gate. She was standing next to a striped canvas stall that a pastry chef was setting up to greet the day's customers. Her eyes were puffy as if she had been crying, and Elysia noticed a bruise showing on her neck, as if someone had grabbed her very tightly. She too had scratch marks, her hair was mussed, and her dress was ripped, as if someone had tried to rip it off in a hurry.
"What's going on?" asked the catgirl, who was still angry with the innkeeper and spoke the sentence in a gruff tone. She felt powerful in Frey's legendary black armor.
Greta looked at her as if she was about to cry, but her expression turned determined and hard.
"Nothing" she replied.
The streets were beginning to fill with free farmers, who came to sell eggs and other agricultural products; Those early risers stared at the imposing catgirl and the stricken-looking tavern girl. She rumbled past a nightly dung collector's cart, and Elysia covered her mouth against the stench. Frey just stared at the vehicle's wheels in fascination.
"Has someone attacked you?" asked the cat girl, who tried to speak in a more friendly tone when seeing how upset the girl was.
"No, no one has attacked me," she replied, her voice devoid of inflection. Elysia had seen similar expressions in survivors of the Fort Von Deyl massacre, and she thought that perhaps the girl was suffering from shock.
"What happened last night?"
"Any!"
The anger that burned within Elysia began to focus on Greta, for her deliberate refusal to communicate about her made her a target for the catgirl's barely contained fury. At that moment, she realized how upset she was by the beating she received. Not only her pain irritated him, but also her own sense of helplessness. She fought not to take her anger out on Greta.
"So what do you want from me, Greta?" Her voice had a hint of bitter anger. She wanted to mind her own business and have nothing to do with someone else's problems. Her pain and exhaustion and anger had overwhelmed her capacity for compassion.
"You're leaving town, aren't you? Take me with you." It was almost a plea, the closest thing to an emotional expression since she had started the conversation.
"I am going to the mountains to pick sunflowers for Kryptan. It will be dangerous. The last time we were there we ran into a horde of mutants. You can't come with me now, but I'll go back to get Frey healed, and then we'll head north. So, if you want, you can join us."
The truth was that he did not much like the idea of taking the girl with them on the long and dangerous route to Bergheim. She also didn't like the risk of her or the idea of having to take care of her on her way, but she felt that she owed him something of hers and she thought that she at least had to make him that offer, despite that she would be a burden to them.
"I want to accompany you now" insisted Greta, on the verge of tears. "I can't stay here anymore."
Elysia felt the slow burn of anger again and was surprised at her own callousness.
"Nope. Wait here. We'll only go as far as the mountains. We'll hardly be out for a day. We will come back to look for you. Having to take care of Frey is already going to be difficult enough, and the truth is that I can't take you with me right now. It's too dangerous."
"You can't leave me here, not with Wolf#," she said suddenly. "It's a monster..."
"Go home to Kryptan. He is a friend, and he will take care of you until we return."
She gave the impression that the girl wanted to say something more, but seeing the unyielding expression on the catgirl's face, she turned and fled. The sight of the young woman disappearing down the street made Elysia feel guilty. She wanted to call her, to tell her to come back, but when she made that decision, Greta was gone. Then, the catgirl shrugged her shoulders and headed towards the city gate.
♦ ♦ ♦
He was glad to leave the town behind. Once he found himself back on the rolling plains, with Frey shuffling absently beside him, he savored the clean air and felt free from the corruption and poverty of Freiburg. Looking at the peasants toiling in the fields, he was glad he wasn't like them, chained to the land and a lifetime of backbreaking labor.
Entire families worked on the long, curving plots. Women hunched over with babies strapped to their backs, bending over to harvest the crop. As he watched, he saw a man straighten up to rub his back; his spine seemed to be completely curved, as if years of working in the fields had permanently affected his posture. A swineherd was leading his thick-haired pigs down the road toward the distant city. From the fields where no one was working came the smell of excrement; they were fertilized with what they collected in the city during the night.
She looked up from the fields to the distant horizon. Beyond the farmland he could see the forests that stretched to the mountains, which, in the light of day, seemed beautiful and mighty towers, standing proudly above the plain, like a wall built by the gods to keep their human beings out of the divine realm and locked away in lands more suitable for them.
The peaks held a promise of silence and cold, of escape…to peace. At the top, a falcon was ascending with its wings open to take advantage of the thermal currents; he looked like a bright speck, free from mortal cares. It soared below the clouds, and Elysia saw it as a messenger from the mountains, as part of the spirit of the mountains, and she wished she could meet the bird high above, above the world of men, secluded and isolated. free.
As she watched, though, the falcon swooped down. Driven by hunger or perhaps simply by the desire to kill, she fell from the sky. A rabbit darted out of the undergrowth and ran madly at the catgirl, but the hawk caught it. Elysia heard the snap of the animal's back snapping and saw the bird, perched on her prey, look around her with bright, fierce eyes before it began to tear at the flesh.
Then she became aware of the horsemen, heedless of the damage their horses' hooves caused as they churned up the earth, galloping across the empty fields toward the spot where the falcon had landed. She had been wrong. The bird was not a messenger from the mountains, but part of the corruption that surrounded it, a wild animal trained to kill for sport.
With a shudder, Elysia saw that Wolf was among the riders, and that the others were the sycophants from the night before.
♦ ♦ ♦
The horse's jerky pace was almost too much for Wolf, who felt dizzy, and not just from a hangover from too much alcohol or dreamroot. He was almost sick with fear. What had the girl seen when he took off his robe? Had she seen the Mark of Lilith? By all the gods, if he had seen her and told anyone, the consequences could be just dire.
I wish she could remember more details! If only she hadn't treated herself to such a potent mix of alcohol and narcotic drugs! His head felt like an egg and some demon chick was trying to peck its way out. She expected Otto and Werner "for Lilit to take them both away!" come back soon with news about the girl. If only she could forget the awful moment when she woke up from a drunken blackout to find that she was gone!
Where had she gone when she wriggled out of the clumsy first attempt at a hug and left him lying on the bed? Her groin still ached from Greta's well-placed knee, and the movement of the horse made it worse. He would make her pay a thousand times over for that injury.
Where could it be hiding? She was not in the communal room of the tavern, nor was she in the private room she shared with three other barmaids. Had she gone to some temple to find a priest and denounce him? That thought made him shiver. Get a grip, she told herself. "Think."
Damn Heinrich! When would that fat fool stop prattling? Did he just close his mouth when he chewed? It had been a terrible mistake to go hunting that morning, for he had not distracted him from his concerns, as he had hoped, but only forced him to endure the torture of Heinrich's company.
The fat man had shown up at dawn with the sports offer. Actually, he hoped to track down the peasant girl, but of course she was no longer in the room. So he thought that Wolf wanted to keep it to himself and had hidden it somewhere in it. Wolf had had to put up with his inane innuendos and childish jokes all morning. His pride prevented him from requesting the collaboration of his accomplice to look for Greta, because he couldn't bear to lose prestige to a disgusting toad like Heinrich.
"Look, Wolf, there are those two bums you had kicked out of the tavern. Didn't the huge guy look stupid when Otto and Werner dumped him into the beer keg? Why the Feral is he wearing that armor? Come, let's play another sport.
Heinrich led the procession of horsemen towards the two strangers. By chance, the falcon, named Tama, had landed near them and was perched on the prey, tearing chunks of meat from it. "Typical of the fat man's birds, that of eating." Wolf thought. If the whole damned family had problems with their appetites, why shouldn't their birds have too?
He brought the steed to a stop as close to the black-armored catgirl as possible, and it gave her some satisfaction to see how he tried not to flinch from the massive beast towering above her. The stocky man stepped back, obviously intimidated by the bulky horse.
"Hello." Wolf said in the happiest tone he could muster as his stomach clenched spasmodically. "I see you have recovered. You must have lived nights as hard as the last one. I trust you are not as unsociable this morning as you were yesterday."
Wolf glanced at Heinrich's bodyguards to the left and right, just to let the worms know who was in control. Anger warred with common sense on Elysia's face.
"I'm fine" he answered at last.
Wolf heard in her voice the effort it took for him to control himself. It was obvious that she didn't like him.
"You also don't need to worry about the girl. Wolf takes good care of her."
"For Lilith! Heinrich is repulsive when he feels successful." Wolf thought. And then what the other had just said penetrated his brain. Yes, Greta had left the tavern just after the stranger had been expelled, and she hadn't seen her again until she showed up at her door. Maybe Heinrich wasn't so stupid after all.
"Which girl do you mean?" The catgirl in the black armor seemed genuinely puzzled, as she was frowning.
"Lovely Greta," Heinrich boasted. "You must have thought she liked you when she followed you out into the street. Perhaps you thought her tender peasant heart had taken pity on your plight. Well, last night she was warming Wolf's bed."
Wolf made a face. I wish it had been true! The armored catgirl's hand came to rest on the hilt of her sword, and she stayed there even though Heinrich's men had drawn their weapons. The stocky man had stopped watching the falcon, and now he was looking vacantly at the riders. He had the greatsword held carelessly in one hand, as if he didn't know what to do with it.
"We don't want trouble," Elysia said, her hand falling away from the sword.
The bodyguards guffawed, and Wolf wished his head didn't hurt so much, for he couldn't think straight. He longed to ask the girl if he had seen the bitch, but her pride prevented him from doing so in front of her sycophants. He tried to find a way out of the dilemma; however, he could not think of any solution. "Life can be very hard, sometimes." He thought he.
He consoled himself with the thought that the fox couldn't have gone very far. If he was still in the city, Werner and Otto would eventually find her, and if he had decided to risk leaving the city, he would have to traverse those lands. So a scan of the area around the city would soon reveal his whereabouts. And this hunting party provided a particularly good excuse for it.
"Besides," he reasoned. "They haven't come looking for me, so Greta hasn't told anyone yet." And even if she had, would anyone believe her? To a whore who accuses the son of the most influential merchant in the city? He allowed himself a smile. It was nice to know that his thinking could be brilliant, even when he was suffering from a simply awful hangover.
"Come on, Heinrich," he said masterfully. "Let these two clowns go back to their circus. It's too beautiful a morning to waste time in conversation with louts."
He touched his spurs gently to the mount's flanks, fighting the dwindling waves of nausea that still washed over him as he moved. Having settled down, he seemed almost at ease with the world. He promised himself that when the girl was found, he would make her pay for subjecting him to such excruciating and, worse yet, boring torment.