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New chapter! I hope people are enjoying the series. The lack of comments is a bit worrying, though.

Please feel free - I accept all commentary, good bad or indifferent. Consider it a way to motivate us lazy bum writers to put out more free work for you :)

Chapter X - Friends in the Forest

Tomasj wasn't a cavalrywolf, and he knew it. The pony shied away from him, whickering, its eyes wide and ears backward in a display of defensive threat. He growled in annoyance, low in his throat, and shifted the deceptively heavy dead weight in his arms. His lungs were burning and felt half-full of blood, and he knew it wouldn't be long before the effects of so much of his wife's sorcery caught up with him.

Behind him came a crashing from the trees, the sickly thud of unloving bodies crashing into the impenetrable trunks of ancient pines. The wolf spat blood and angrily strode towards the horse, tossing caution to the wind. The creature shied away again, then began to rear, only to have Tomasj grab its reins and yank its head down hard enough that it nearly fell.

The pony yanked him right back, and the laden wolf stumbled forward, nearly dropping the little priest he had over his shoulder before he could dig his boots into the muck and pull back, throwing his tall lanky body's leverage into the battle of wills.

"Let me get on you, damn stupid beast!"

In a moment that it slowed its backing, Tomasj managed to spin around its side and flop the unconscious priest over its back, like a potato sack, before it pulled away from him again, staying near only thanks to its reins.

A hard voice barked out behind him, as Cel and Vanyal emerged from the trees, filled with grit and command.

"Grab both rains with one paw. Put your left foot in the stirrup and swing yourself up. Try not to drop the priest."

Tomasj growled under his breath, caring little for being ordered about, but grabbed the reins as instructed, seated his booted footpaw, and threw himself upwards with all his battle-fueled strength. The unconscious brother Timid flopped when the wolf fairly landed on him, his head hitting the saddle as Tomasj managed to seat himself on the shivering shying creature, and the wolf grabbed him by the collar of his habit to the pallid, barely-breathing priest from falling.

With Vanyal's help under her arm, Cel grabbed one of the ponies, yanked its head down towards her with certain strength, and glared into its eyes while whispering something the wolf couldn't catch through the rain and chorus of groans echoing ominously in the darkened forest behind and to their sides.

The first shambling creature stumbled through the trees, its rotting arms outstretched, and for the first time Tomasj had a moment to look at it while working out how to draw his sword, stay horsed, and keep Timid from falling on his neck all at once.

It was a fox, its brown and red fur dull and drooping and falling out entirely in places to expose green-grey flesh with the luster of beef gone sour. Bites, probably of its own brethren, had torn away chunks of its face and arms, exposing ripped muscle and chipped bone beneath that shifted unnaturally as it came on towards them, bulging and bubbling with rot.

"Damnit! Vanyal, shoot that one!"

He wrenched the pony's reigns in a futile attempt to make it turn, causing it instead to kick and twist, backing away from the horrible thing as it opened its mouth to release a sonorous groan, answered by a hundred rotting throats in all directions of woods.

The warden had mounted while Tomasj had been caught up in recognizing the type of undead they were facing, and let loose an arrow that zipped past the wolf's floppy-brimmed hat to shatter the monster's teeth and blow out the back of its skull from the force of the hit. It teetered and fell, and Tomasj blew out a breath of tension when it failed to do what he had expected.

Then he laughed, when its mouth opened and it belched out a cloud of greenish-blue gas. Somehow, knowledge that the more dangerous kinds of undead were here was comforting. It meant these things were at least somewhat a known quantity to him.

Next to him, Cel planted her left foot into the stirrup and tried to leap, only to have her knee give an audible pop, and for her body to go rigid as she fell awkwardly away from the pony grabbing at the swollen joint with a soundless shriek of pain frozen on her lips.

Tomasj twisted, pulling his reins with all the strength one arm could give him, and managed to yank the pony's head about and away from the gas-belching creature. Without a whit of concern shown for the fallen knight, he let the thing bolt with him into the dark woods, ducking his head down to keep from losing it to low branches.

Vanyal cursed, firing another arrow into the darkened forest and used his knees to turn the pony as he shoved the bow down over his head and across his chest, then leaned down out of the saddle reaching for the thrashing warrioress.

"Grab on damnit!"

Her gauntleted paw clenched onto his, and the pony turned, as dozens of the dead began to show themselves, stumbling through the underbrush with ceaseless purpose. Vanyal was not a massive fox, or a bearer of maddened strength like Tomasj, but he heaved on her arm, dragging her upwards with both of his own until she was able to grab his saddle and throw herself bodily atop it, legs dangling off one side as the pony tore through trees and leapt over underbrush.

Her voice came out strained, pinched with agony, and dizzy from shock.

"Riding through the forest...We'll be torn to bits..."

Vanyal grinned and patted her head.

"Just hold on, dear guest. The forest cares for its own you know!"

She awoke to the sensation that her muzzle was chilly and wet, and that water was dripping uncomfortably under the breastplate that covered her chest. Around her waist, she felt the light pressure of a pair of arms, and beneath her rear the rolling jostles of a pony picking its way at a trot over rough terrain.

Cel turned her head, bleary eyes registering the gentle trickling of water falling from the tall trees in an area of woods more spacious than what she remembered from before the darkness came back to take her.

To their left, she saw the tall-hatted black wolf, slumped and tied into his saddle, the priest tied across the pony just behind him, and noted that his reins were tied to the saddle she was sharing with whoever had his arms around her middle.

With a twitch and a stiffening of muscles, half-awake, she bent an arm and aimed an elbow back at the fur whose arms were around her, only to have it ducked, and her midriff squeezed in a fashion that made her grunt from bruises being pressed on.

"Whoah, calm, lady knight. Holding you in the saddle so you don't fall. Hadn't enough rope for everyone."

With a dizzying turn of her head, Cel answered by retching up off to the side of their mount, causing the pony to shy to their right. Vanyal's arms kept tight about her, making sure she wouldn't fall.

When her muzzle cleared enough, she spoke, though her own voice sounded far-away in a fashion that made her think the fever had returned.

"I apologize...For a moment, I thought I w-was...That you were..."

Vanyal's momentary silence told her the warden was no idiot. He listened to more than her words; her voice, her shiver that wasn't from the chill, her slight stammer. The fox gently pressed her back against his chest, sitting more upright in the saddle so she had something firm to keep her back straight.

Her first impulse was to strike him for the temerity. Then, she realized, her anger wasn't at him, but at the ones who had made her so furious just at being touched.

"No need to apologize. You didn't actually hit me. Nothing to forgive."

She nodded, somewhat listlessly, as the world bobbed around her in ways that made her feel nauseous and drained.

"Besides, I'm a married fox you know."

Cel looked up ahead of them, as Vanyal pointed, and blinked as the warm sun streamed down through the trees and onto her face for the first time in what felt like years.

The ponies were carrying them at a weary, flight-lathered walk through the forest edge and into a massive clearing that sloped down and away from them, rivulets of water running down the hillside from the sodden forest that gathered into branching streams, gurgling over scattered ancient boulders and percolating through fields of brown loamy soil.

She blinked away the lights in her eyes, and fought hard to focus. At the center of the rolling meadow, a hill rose like a pregnant belly, and atop it perched a colorfully-painted palisade wall. By the slender trails of smoke that danced up to the sky from behind the wooden wall, she guessed a town of a thousand or more went on with its business in this heavenly valley, tending the farms that lay dotted about.

With a wrench of her gut, she whispered to Vanyal.

"We've led death to these people...Our flight will bring the undead here..."

The warden shook his head and looked behind them, while keeping his arms tight around her middle.

"I doubt it. We lost them halfway through the night, not long after your wolf friend passed out in the saddle. Thought he was going to die for a bit there, with all the bleeding from the muzzle."

When she didn't respond, he continued.

"They seem to track by sound and sight. The forest at night's no place to track by either of those. Too many other things making noise, and you can't see past maybe ten or twenty paces most times."

She was starting to shiver again, and he pulled her closer so that he could wrap his forest-green cloak around the both of them.

"Besides that, if we don't live long enough to stop all this somehow, everywhere will be attacked eventually. Sundertown is better-suited than most to handle it, trust me."

Cel's shivering slowed, though the tension in her body seemed to be inexhaustible. Her muscles felt like coiled wire, in what areas weren't covered by the unyielding steel back of her breastplate.

"How is...How is the priest?"

Vanyal looked over, seeing the two unconscious forms on the other pony, and clucked his tongue.

"The wolf will probably live. As for brother Timid, there's nothing physically wrong a night's rest wouldn't cure. My wife will see to him when we get to the town. If it can be healed, she'll heal it."

Cel simply nodded, and quietly fought down the urge to scream, to fight, knowing the fox was trying to be comforting and keep her injured body warm. Her mind fought her instincts, who told her it was Toryen and Royval, fondling her as she was bound and unable to fight. She clenched her stomach against the roiling nausea the memories brought, and lowered her head to feign sleep and silently pray that the specters would leave her.

The noonday sun shown overhead around billowing, bruise-colored clouds that had nearly caught up with the companions by the time Vanyal trotted the two exhausted ponies through the palisade. Above him on either side, green-cloaked wardens had strung bows at the sight of a brother clearly in distress, and now he was inside were waving and calling down to him.

"Van! Where's your uncle and nephew?"

The fox put a paw to his muzzle and whistled, and three teenage foxes rushed up to help him lower Cel from the saddle.

"Sent on to Duke Casso to warn him," he called back up, "The dead have risen! I lost them in the forest, but they may come any day. Call the wives, we must speak!"

The two wardens on wall platforms looked across at one another, exchanging looks of shared dread and purpose. The younger of the two nimbly grasped the edge of the platform in his paws, flipped down, then hung and dropped before sprinting off into the town.

Vanyal stepped away from the firelit long-hall, as Sir Cel seemed not to need his help addressing the gathered wardens and wives. He'd worried she would balk at their odd and motley assortment, given that wardens were generally the same sort of rag-tag castoffs of society that ended up in bandit gangs if they were unlucky. The town had been lucky to have an old forest folk clan to organize them.

Fortunately, she seemed to have no such difficulty. The woman warrior's poise was impressive, especially given the pain she was no doubt suffering, and the worry he'd seen in her eyes for the little priest who still lay insensate under the village womens' care.

Birds had been sent near-immediately after the meeting had begun, to warn Casso in case the two other wardens had never reached the Duke. Nonetheless, he couldn't help but worry about his family and whether or not the arrogant aristocrat would believe peasant stories spoken by mysterious forest folk, no matter how loyal they were to him.

None of that, though, could dampen the joy he felt at clasping paw with his wife. She'd come to the door of the great hall covered in her long all-concealing robe as she always was in public, and in moments the other wardens had reverently guided her to Vanyal.

Now they were walking, the two of them alone together again, his soft-furred paw clasped in her wool-gloved one, as the petite silhouette spoke to him in the same dulcet musical tones that had led him to her for the first time in the deep forest more than a decade ago.

Even here amongst the more understanding souls of remote Sundertown, she had to hide her features from all but the wardens themselves, and among those it was only his extended family that truly knew of her origin. To do otherwise would have drawn the witch hunters to her long ago.

Her words were mystical, soft, like flowing water given voice.

"My husband, the land groans in agony. You have seen the dead walking, have you not? What of this do you understand?"

He shook his head, and raised their clasped fingers, kissing hers tenderly as they turned onto the cobble street that led to their modest yet sturdy brick and thatch home.

"The horde that heads toward Castle Amarthane and the ducal holdings around it numbers in the thousands...Maybe ten thousand foes, all said, and not all of them are raised dead of mortal shells. Some are ogres, or other things. Worse, the road rumors make me think this plague has hit us later than others. We've heard nothing from the Svalich in a while now, and only frightening rumors from the northern baronies."

She listened in silence to his words, drinking them in like soil taking water, before running her tiny delicate fingers along the back of his paw, sending the fur upright from the tingle of energy she carried with her always.

"Stay with me tonight, my love. You and yours will reach Amarthane in time to meet old man fate, I promise it."

Her words made him swallow trepidation, as he leaned down to capture her fingers and rub them against his forehead, enjoying the warmth that radiated from them, lighting his soul like the sun on chilly stones.

"You fear for me, my darling?"

It was not out of romance that he asked. She often saw things that came to pass, and given what she was, he knew to listen closely to her portents.

"I fear for all of us. Everything living. This is like no threat you have faced before. Like nothing that has been fought in a thousand years."

The words chilled him, and he pushed the door to their home open with his shoulder while tugging her gently along inside.

"Then come with us. I won't leave you here in harm's way."

"If you take me with you, I will be killed. As will anyone not part of your quest."

Van frowned and drew her along with him, both paws wrapped around her fingers. The home they kept in town was quite modest, a single room with a warm hearth, a bed, and a few other minor comforts. As he led for the bed, her fingers wrapped around his paws and she pulled back, her slender slight frame stronger than it looked.

"Do you wish me to help the wolf? The priest is a good heart, and I will help him regardless. But the witch hunter..."

Van shook his head as he followed her lead, folding his legs to sit on the bear fur rug that lay splayed on their floor. She settled in front of him, still holding his paws in her gentle, firm grip. Finally, she tilted her head back far enough that he could see her strange almond eyes, glimmering under the hood like gemstones backlit by torchlight.

"The priest's name is Timid. He's had a vision of how to save the world, or so he says. According to his vision, he needs the witch hunter. And despite his...Insanity...He's a powerful fighter."

She finally released his paw, and brought her slender-fingered furless hand up, pulling her hood back to reveal her strange yet beautiful features. Van marveled every time at her silk-smooth, pale, unfurred skin, flawless and slightly angular, with a face centered by a button nose and framed to either side by back-swept pointed ears. Her headfur was kept long, a silvery tone that shone in moonlight, and braided down her back.

Her smile was a sad one, and her eyes held the depths of a thousand roiling seas. Van felt he could sink into them forever if he gazed too long. He broke the spell of them as he did most times, by leaning in and pressing his thin black lips to her smooth, soft, sweet-tasting ones, tasting her tongue as it slid against his.

When she drew away from the kiss, his wife's face was slightly flushed, tinged pink in ears and cheeks, and her large almond-shaped eyes were closed. The slight side-to-side sway of her body told him she was channeling, her word for listening to the woods and life forces of the earth, and he drew her slight form into his lap. She was small and warm, and for all her unknown age and mystery, she had the shape of a young teenager just blossoming into womanhood.

"The wolf suffers because he draws from his own life force to power that awful weapon of his. It hates and loves him, and he hates and loves it, and the two will one day slay each other."

She shivered, and settled into his lap, curling her slender arms around his chest and nuzzling into the ruff at his throat as his paws traced along her back, caressing her through the woolen robe.

"The snow leopardess was born with a warrior's soul, and she is crippled by a clash in her mind between the idea of womanhood and the idea of being a warrior. Yet her strength is great, and her honor stronger still. She will never fail you in battle."

Her hands slid down his back, and around his front. Van leaned back to give her room as she let go of their embrace and sat back to begin undoing the leather ties of his breeches. The ancient girl opened her eyes again, and they shone with a deepness he'd never seen before. His shaft was growing, hardening even as she pulled it from his opened pants, and as her delicate fingers enwrapped and stroked it, he saw tears building in the diamond depths of her eyes.

"The priest...He is too intelligent for a simple fur's faith, and that is his weakness. He doubts. He fears. He knows what is right and wrong, and that is his strength. That and the sorcery he carries in him. The Finder has found a good champion this time."

He gasped as her tender lips found the crown of his pointed shaft, and her hot, smooth tongue slid around its tip. Van brought his paw around and gently grasped her hair, feeling it slide between his fingertips like spider webs and wind.

"To heal them, I will need life force. The forest can no longer afford to provide it, with the undead coming. They drink the life force to stay alive, and it destroys anything that is weakened."

He nodded, looking down at her with his muzzle open, softly panting. Her eyes caught his, seized and bound them, as her lips descended over the head of his cock, descending as her talented tongue swirled on him, dancing over the prominent veins that pulsed inside her mouth.

"I sw...swore to you, years ago...My life is yours, my love, take of it what you will."

Her smile had so much youth and her eyes so much age, when she gave it around the steely red shaft, that he nearly lost himself to gazing on her once again. A gentle tug on his furred sac brought him back to the world of pleasure and life, as he felt more than heard a giggle from the strange creature he'd married and shared his life with. She knew just the triggers to get him straining, and she was playing them, mischievously, the tears suddenly gone from her eyes as she began to work magic with her lips and tongue, channeling it out from him and into her to gather for the working she would do.

In moments he was shifting, grunting, holding her hair in his fingers as he thrust between her lips, until she squeezed his delicate bits and held them back, forcing him to stop as she pulled off his cock, lapping at the leaking tip as she smiled up at him.

"Take me my love."

As if a dam had broken, the flavor of their lovemaking changed. He laughed aloud as he pounced her, and she giggled, wriggling, play-fighting against him as he nuzzled her cheeks, licking at her face, his paws sliding under her robe to roll it up and away from her beautiful body.

With a jerk, the robe came over her head, and he dove in to tackle the soft blue cotton dress she wore beneath it, nipping at her delicate cream-pale fllawless flesh and eliciting giggles and a yelp of pleasure from her as his teeth pinched at a nipple when his paws exposed it to the air.

All she wore now was the cotton shift that was balled up unceremoniously around her slender waist, and he reared up on his front paws to look down at the gently squirming creature beneath him.

She was beautiful, fae and strange, her skin smooth and entirely hairless except her eyebrows and the hair of her head. Her breasts were gentle swells, peaked with pink-tinged nipples that stood shivering on her chest as she breathed heavily, flushed and reddened with playfulness and need. Her limbs were long and slender for her frame, the alien smoothness of her body matching the strange ancientness of her eyes.

Between her sleek legs, he glimpsed the damp pinkness at her core, and dove down to lap at it, delving into the spring-like sweetness that put him in mind of fresh fruit and green grass and new life in potentia.

She shifted under his lapping, gasping softly as her fingers traced through his headfur, combing and tugging while his tongue rolled and slithered over the tiny pink nub just above her entrance. It pulsed under his tongue, and she sucked in a breath, her nether places shivering, leaking, calling for him.

His paws slid under her rear, and she let out an impassioned yelp as he flipped her over, shimmying forward until his knees were pushing hers wide, and he thrust at her rear, his hot tip trailing dribbles of his juices on the pert cream-skinned globes of her rear.

Lost in the growing magic, his bestial nature made him hump and thrust, wriggling as he tried to align himself. Then those blessed clever fingers of hers slid up between them and guided the pounding shaft. When he felt the hot, sweet core of her pressed against his tip, his hips shoved forward, and in an instant she was impaled on his throbbing staff and he was biting his lip against a triumphant mating howl.

The first great pulse of magic from her cleared Van's head just enough for him to realize she was working her spells. His muzzle was down, next to her ear, blowing hot breath across her face as her eyes were clenched shut, her mouth open and wriggling in some combination of passion and incantation. He saw her fingers dug into the dirt floor of their home, and where they touched ground the soil looked fertile, loamy, moist and ready for seeds.

Her legs were splayed wide, knees bent, her tiny body strained around the thickness he'd shoved into her body. He ground against her, feeling the swell at the base of his cock growing, and her slick powerful walls clenching around him in potent flutters as her bucking ceased, her concentration trapped in the spells too far for her to control her own movement.

They had worked these magics before, and he knew what to do. Van's paws gently pushed her shoulders to the floor, and she laid her cheek against the ground as if it were a down pillow. His paws then went to her hips, pulling them up so her rear was hiked, at a perfect angle for him to pound her, balls slapping into her loins as he began the pistoning that would bring them both to the point of release.

A feral growl built in his chest, as he roughly fucked the softly grunting girl beneath him, every thrust lending to the pounding, earthly strength she wielded and worked through the earth. Green plants began to sprout, uncurling from the earth around her hands, as he ground his half-grown knot against her pouting lips, quickly spreading to surround them both in flowering buds of a strange silver rose.

As the flowers reached the apex of their growth, she spoke again, in a hoarse and husky whisper that rolled along his body with a surge of energy that left him tingling and panting, hunched and clenching her hips hard enough to bruise a normal fur.

"Tie me, husband. Life unto life, earth unto earth..."

She was chanting now, low and quickly, in time with the shaking of her breasts, jostled by each breath and each rhythmic thrust.

Van felt the roses grow, their petals trailing along his fur with the lightest touches, as if a spring breeze were growing from the earth next to his skin, rippling his fur.

With a growl, he lowered his lips to her shoulder, parting them, and bit against her cream-pale smooth flesh. It parted under his sharp canines and she sucked in a hard breath, as the piercing of her flesh was joined by the piercing of her deepest core, his knot slamming home with her lips spread obscenely wide around it before clamping shut just behind.

Van yelped into her shoulder with the force of his sudden release. His knot squeezed hard by her clamping walls, he yipped as his hips hunched, and his balls pulled up, blasting hot seed up and through his cock as he felt the surges of pleasure and energy roiling through him, radiating out from his balls with liquid fiery heat.

She joined him but moments later, groaning out and pushing her rear back against him, fingers digging spasmodically into the soil. Her moan shifted, changed, as the blazing seed entered her, spilling through her body and into her womb in a copious wave. Her passion-sounds were a song now, a moan of ecstatic orgasm gone into a delicate paean that echoed about their simple abode and rolled through the earth with growing, primal force.

Outside, the grasses of the town's meadowlands quivered, standing to attention as their mistress called to them. Then, as one, they began to pulsate, in waves like pond water with a stone thrown in to ripple them. The trees of the wood swayed in answer to their grassy cousins, breezes rising to rustle their leaves as fresh rain began to fall again from the bruise-tortured sky.

Beneath the earth, ancient passageways blocked by fallen boulders groaned, resistant and stubborn stone refusing her call only to be grabbed by quickly-growing and mighty tree roots, roughly hoisted away to open the ancient causeways they sealed.

Throughout the forest, the undead horde seeking Sundertown that had dogged the companions' heels was struck with blustering winds and sudden deluge that turned the ground quickly to sinking muck, halting their wandering motion as moans of anger and hunger rose from two hundred throats as one. Roots and branches exploded from the trees all around, coiling about the slower monsters, squeezing them to fetid pulp and so much fertilizer in but moments, as the speedier undead senselessly swung corpse-mighty limbs at the unyielding forest.

In minutes, as the little ancient girl and her husband came and yipped and panted, exhausted in the magic-heightened, exhaustingly long orgasm, the undead host threatening to discover Sundertown was annihilated, crushed and buried by the mighty wrath of the ancient forest.

Simultaneously, the storm she had called sought the second, far greater host, and preceded it, muddying the ground to slow the progress of the hungry dead. As she faded in and out of pleasure-drenched unconsciousness, the ancient hoped she hadn't won the attention of the thing leading their horde.

"Soon, my husband, you will journey far from here, and I will not see you again for a long time."

His arms curled around her, and he licked at the bite in her shoulder, soothing the pierced flesh with affection and apology. She could feel, through the vibration of his body, as his tail wagged behind them, and could feel his knot keeping her sealed tight, his wet release a fulfilling pleasant stickiness deep within. Van's words made her skin shiver, oversensitized by the fleshy spike that was still milking little quivers of pleasure from her.

"Do you know how long a 'long time' might be?"

Van felt her shift underneath him, quivering, weak from the magic and the explosive lovemaking. He grinned and nibbled her neck, relishing her soft gasp and the clench of her passage around his trapped shaft. He shuddered and gave another spurt of hot cum to her aching depths, as he wrapped his arms around her in a loving embrace.

"I swore never to lie to you, when we wed. So I will instead say that I do not wish to say."

Van shook his head, and rested his cheek against her neck.

"Then I will stay. One of the other wardens can go. Of all my many duties, you are the first oath and the most important."

His little ancient wife laughed the musical tune that had, long ago, trapped him deeply in love with her, and still thrilled his heart with joy.

"Van, my people have few things left. Our oaths and honor comprise most of that. If I let you give up one oath to defend another, I would one day lose you, and thus lose all I have left to me. Your loyalty and decency are what make you the fox I love."

The thought made him smile, yet also troubled him. He knew that his oaths meant he should turn Cel over to Casso. Yet he'd guessed what they had done to her, and it made him sick to think such a thing could happen again because of his own actions. He sighed against his wife's soft skin, which while radiant from their lovemaking was near sweat-less and smelled of spiced apples and springtime.

"I will make the roses into medicine. It will help the knight heal, and should wake the priest. As for the witch hunter, you will have to find ways to give it to him without his knowledge. He will not accept my help."

Van nodded again, brushing his soft-furred cheek against hers.

"It will be as you say."

Cel was exhausted. Her head ached, full of the questions she'd been asked after her short speech, and still feeling over-hot from the stubborn fever that dogged her, nevermind the constant itching and ache from the stitches in her scalp. The rest of her body was a patchwork of bruises and pains, and she felt more made of stitch than flesh.

Throughout the moot, she'd been offered, by the sympathetic and attentive villagers, the harsh grain liquor that the farmers brewed in their hay lofts. Repeatedly, she'd refused it, despite the pain it would dull for her. She needed to be ready, in case the horde had followed them. Her duty was to defend these people, regardless of how remote and rustic they might be.

Finally, the lady knight having answered dozens of questions about the coming plague, most of them with "I do not know", the villagers had filtered out of the meeting hall and returned to their homes or the town walls. Cel gazed at the still-open door and the night sky beyond and sighed, feeling a painful clench in her chest at the fact that she could not even stand and go walk under the stars to ask guidance of her ancestors.

A creak told her that the sole closed area of the longhouse was being opened, and she curiously turned her head despite the ache in her muscles. The door had opened as the town midwife, the closest they had to a real doctor, exited with a sheepish look on her elderly face.

Someone had been kind enough to remove the breastplate for her and put her in a rough tunic that was far too large for her, then cover her with a blanket. She still felt somehow naked despite that, and looked forlornly at her sword where it rested against the wall, at least ten paces away from her. The villagers had put it there without asking, and she had not the heart to demand it, given how awkwardly kind they had bee at her insistence in not being lent a dress.

That even such a non-threatening person entering a room could set her hackles rising made Cel feel even more vulnerable. She curled up in the cushioned chair she'd been sat in, and closed her eyes as the woman walked gingerly towards the noblewoman who'd become the talk of the town.

"Ah...'Scuse me, milady..."

"Please...Just Cel will do."

She could hear the trepidation in the midwife's voice, and sighed, raising a shaky paw to gingerly touch at the bandages over her face. Cel wanted to rub the headache away, but to so much as disturb the bandages might send her into another pain-seizure. That these good commoners were so afraid of nobility pained her. Love, Callian had told her, was always more a sign of good leadership than fear.

"Miss Cel...As hurt and sick an' all that y'are, you canno' be meanin' to travel..."

Cel kept her eyes shut, though she heard the woman move around in front. When the midwife took her paw, Cel grunted and snatched it back, eyes flaring open in time to see the woman flinch as if expecting to be hit. The knight sighed and reached for the old mousewife's paw, taking it despite her own shaking.

"We have no choice. The pigeons will warn Casso, but we cannot be certain he will listen. Father Timid insisted we do everything we can to spread word, and I agree with him. Your village should defend its own. Let us who have no homes or families take the danger."

The mousewife bit her lip, but nodded, and gave a gentle squeeze to the noblewoman, before withdrawing her paw and skittering off to tidy the longhouse.

"Yore cat-friend looks much better. Should be 'wake soon. If'n you like, I can 'ave the menfolk move you in there..."

Cel sighed and shook her head.

"No, goodwife. I will move myself or not at all."