Night Frights

The others beamed with pride. Laffy and Kline just seemed to nod at the compliments. “It was just team work, nothing special, training, that is all.”

“Come, come, Captain, you're being far too modest,” Kalena said, smiling and playing to the rest of the men.

“If you want to take a watch,” Kline said, indicating the farthest wagon, “you can post up and down there, keeping an eye out for anyone else who might be coming along.”

“I'll do that,” she replied, smiling a little at the unnecessary instruction.

She saw their camp was pitched just at the side of the road. She still wasn't quite sure where exactly they were located as one lonesome dirt road in Dalen tended to look a lot like any another. Finishing her meal and passing the plate to Van who was collecting them, she carried her saddle over to where the horses were tethered, and where she was quite surprised to find Enyo among them.

“What are you doing here? You should be home with your foal,” Kalena blurted, frowning and having cause to wonder just how much of her memory might have been lost courtesy of that knock on the head. “And since when do I ever travel with so few weapons?”

She discovered the hilt of her trusty sabre sticking out of a saddle bag where someone had placed it for her to find, but she did not appear to have brought her longbow along with her, nor her set of razor-sharp throwing daggers. That was so unlike her. She never left home without those. She did not even take a riding cloak, which all seemed to suggest she had not intended to venture very far from home when she'd originally set out. Either that or she had needed to leave in a great hurry. Crazy thoughts ran through her mind as she imagined all sorts of scenarios; perhaps Kline was right about events being altogether a little peculiar.

With her sabre in hand, Kalena decided to make a quick, but silent recce around the camp to get a lie of the land. Part of her exotic assassin's training had involved tracking lions through dry leaves in order to learn the art of moving swiftly and undetectedly over terrain, a forest floor in particular. Slinking through the trees and foliage, she paused behind the bole of a thick dark-barked pine for cover when she saw the eerie faery lights. They looked like pint-sized lanterns floating above the undergrowth, but she knew in reality each of the gleaming forms was that of a tiny woman-or at least a magical being that resembled a woman.

The wretched little creatures were known to play pranks and tricks on hapless human travellers. She usually was equipped with weapons designed to kill them, but was sorely under-armed at the moment, and so slowly and quietly she withdrew back to the road toward the far wagon where Kline suggested she place herself. Upon coming within sight of it she spotted the tall captain standing there, looking around edgily.

With a mischievous smirk, Kalena dashed catlike over to the wagon. She silently crept up on top of it, draping herself across the wine kegs in a casual, almost alluring pose, feigning nonchalance. The fairies were not the only ones who could be impish; she too could be as much a prankster.

“Miss Kalena?” Kline half whispered in the darkness.

“Yes, Captain?” she answered brightly from a few feet away, to startle him.