Ralph and the Pixie

‘Maybe you’d better rest until you’re-’ Deborah said.

‘No! We leave, now.’ Theuli replied, angry that she couldn’t control the fearful quaver in her voice. She was still white and trembling from shock, but her resolve was unshakable. The two young women stared, looking indecisive, but Theuli somehow seemed to be able to maintain a hold on their feelings as well as her own.

‘How will we do that without being seen?’ Malina asked.

‘We will cross the grasslands by night,’ Theuli replied. ‘It will be hard . . . but we must travel cross-country as swiftly as we may. I pray the others have managed to flee to safety.’

The archers surrounding Pran, Doc, and Ralph didn’t fire, but those soldiers on foot bearing spears began a chillingly professional, steady and orderly advance. As the soldiers hemmed the three in, one Elf, riding a horse and clearly not a soldier, separated himself from his companions and rode forward, as if both to assert his authority in the matter, and to demonstrate that the three prisoners could present him with no personal danger; to reinforce in the minds of all present that they were wholly under his control. Doc guessed at once that this was Prince Cir, not from any description of the Prince, as he’d heard none, but rather from the Elf’s careless authority, if not the fact that he alone wore no livery, which under the present circumstances attested that his station in life was clearly above and beyond that of the military.