We eat from our packs along the way, sharing bread and cheese with jerky. Caedi tells us more about Yenna.

She’s a tall, half-orc ranger, trained in the wilds south of Truhaven. I wasn’t aware that Green did half-anythings and Caedi nods and explains that parents of different species are given an option for what they’d like their offspring to be. For example, if an elf mates with a human, mom and dad get to choose if the child will be elven or human or, if both parents choose differently, half of each. It’s a choice that most parents make beforehand, though sometimes, in the heat of things, those choices can change. Statistically, most of the time, the parents choose to go full-blooded rather than halfsies, though this isn’t out of concern for any stigma or fear of bigotry or anything. It’s that each species is a known quantity and those of mixed species are not. You know about how big your orc kid is going to get, for example, but with your half-orc it’s a crap shoot. They might get the height and the muscles but be as short and stocky as their dwarf daddy. A half-gnome might be able to see in the dark but be six feet tall.

Yenna, Caedi described, as having sea foam green colored skin, long black curly hair, a hawklike nose, and a taciturn disposition. She stood a little over seven feet tall, was heavily muscled, but had teeth more like her human mother. No tusks. Which worked because Yenna was omnivorous, unlike orcs which were strictly meat-eaters.

She worked in the forests around Truhaven City for five years before the old king died and the nation of Elmfast was broken up into the Four Kingdoms to be ruled by his sons. The transition from one country to four was relatively peaceful but Leland II had made no provision for his daughter, Hethian, who was staying in Truhaven at the time. Her brother, Elmund, worried that she would become a target and commissioned four carriages and an escort to take his sister away to safety. Yenna was chosen as part of the effort.

All four of the carriages came under attack and the princess and her decoys slain. Yenna was scouting the road behind when her group was attacked. She heard the sounds of fighting even as she reached the end of her patrol route. By the time she was able to help, she couldn’t do more than avenge the dead. This she did as best she could before being captured, beaten, assaulted, and left for dead.

I feel sick. I’m pretty sure I know what ‘assaulted’ means in this context. It’s only recently that the news on Earth will report a rape as a rape They used to prefer euphemisms like ‘assault’ or ‘attacked.’ I don’t see how downplaying it protects anybody. 

We’re all quiet for a long moment, then Caedi says, “Hypa found her soon after and brought her home where we tended her.”

“That’s awful,” says Wendy. “Did they ever find out who did it?”

“The kingdoms were in the process of reorganizing themselves,” says Caedi. “By the time the authorities decided whose jurisdiction it was to investigate, the trail was long cold. Most think it was one of the princes or even all of them, but no one knows for sure. None of the attackers wore uniforms and they took their dead with them.”

“Could it have been our bandits?” I ask.

Caedi shook her head. “No one knows. I’ve never head of any kobolds being involved though. Yenna said there was a variety of races involved. It could have been anybody.”

“Why did the king not do anything for Hethian?” I ask.

Caedi says, “Again, no one really knows. There are all kinds of rumors. She was promised in marriage to a faraway prince, or she disappointed her father with her choice of class, or she refused her own kingdom, or hundreds of other things. It’s all so sad. She was regarded as a great beauty with a towering intellect.”

“What class did she choose?” Wendy asks.

“Mage, I believe,” says Caedi.

The forest has grown denser and we are well off any track or trail. It’s a pleasant day with sunlight streaming down in rays through the canopy, illuminating the drifting pollen and occasional insect. A slight breeze rustles the leaves and I decide that Green is a fine name for a planet. I also remember I’m a forest gnome, so I might be a bit biologically biased.

Wendy holds up a hand and we all freeze.

She points to a branch laying on the ground. She looks at me.

I shrug. It’s a stick with one end sticking out between two uncomfortable-looking bushes.

She approaches it, and then reaches out a tentative hand to pull aside a bit of the bush to reveal bones tied so that they dangle loose within. I get it. If we jostle the stick, the bush will shake, causing the bones to rattle. It’s an alarm.

“What do we do?” whispers Caedi.

Wendy says, “I can see the tower.” She points off into the woods which just looks like woods to me. It’s trees and bushes and some flowers.

I shrug and shake my head.

“It’s there,” says Wendy. She considers the bush containing the bones. “I think we should just ring the doorbell. If we hide or something she might think we’re being hostile.” She looks up at Caedi, who nods.

I prop my spear against a tree a few feet away.

Caedi does the same with her quarterstaff.

Wendy rattles the bush.

The bones inside are louder than I expect. They’ve been hollowed and dried out. The clacking they make would be audible for quite a ways.

“Hello!” Wendy calls. She rattles the bush again.

Something thuds into the ground between my feet. It’s an arrow. I look up at Caedi.

Caedi frowns and says, “Yenna? It’s me. Caedi and two friends. We came to talk.”

An arrow slaps into the tree beside her face, quivering.

“Yenna, I—.”

Caedi is interrupted by an arrow splitting the one beside her face and she flinches away.

That scares me and pisses me off. “Yenna,” I say. “There are people attacking caravans on the road, slaughtering them. We lost a good friend this morning. You can help.”

There’s no reply and no more arrows.

Caedi bends a little toward Wendy. “Where is the tower?”

Wendy points and Caedi straightens, plucks up her staff, and heads over that way without any effort to make herself a difficult target.

I keep waiting for red arrowheads to start bursting through her back, but it doesn’t happen so Wendy and I follow. I leave my spear. Yenna knows Caedi, not me.

I can’t see the tower until we’re ten feet away from it. In my defense, it’s been deliberately concealed. Vines grow over the whole structure, which stretches at least a hundred feet on a small, thickly wooded rise, and leafy branches have been tucked in here and there to break up its outline. The stones are dark and covered with moss. It looks like someone tailored a ghillie suit for a turret which is exactly what it is. All that remains of the original fortification is the tower and scattered rubble. Here and there some of the stones show signs of charring, as if from an ancient fire. There’s a hole in the side large enough for a human to stride through, though it looks like the stone around it has been reinforced with muddy mortar and wooden supports. That’s the only outward sign I can see that there’s anybody living here.

From where we stand, no door is in evidence.

Caedi turns to look at Wendy who must see something the rest of us don’t because she points off to the right. Must be nice to have a five in perception.

We’re halfway around when Wendy clears her throat and approaches a part of the wall covered by a thorn bush. She studies it for a minute, then finds a good place to grab it and pulls. The whole thing comes away and I realize that the bush is a doorknob that’s grown into a heavy woven mat of twigs, grass, and sod.

Dirt and leaves cover most of the floor in the room beyond. An ancient lantern, hanging by the foot of a crumbling, winding stair, has been lit for us, which I take as an encouraging sign. Like most stairs in defensive structures, they curve up and around to the right, forcing an invader to fight with their left hands or be hampered by the wall.

There’s no one here, so up we go.

Caedi leads the way, her steel shod quarterstaff tapping each step before she trusts it with her weight. Wendy peers past her thighs on the lookout for traps. About halfway up, there’s the remnants of a floor, maybe a barracks, all fallen away now. There’s only scraps of moldering wood worked into the stone. Light shines through the hole in the tower’s side and from above, where a square of sunlight waits.

We smell her first, even before we reach the top of the tower, and it breaks my heart. It’s the odor of long neglect. Body odor steeped in vinegar, dirt, death, and excrement.

The roof was intended as a battle platform. The low surrounding wall is crenelated and punctured with murder holes, but now a quarter of the floor has fallen away. What’s left contains a campfire and a tent made of moss and weaved together tree branches and grass held up by a sturdy stick frame. Bundles of arrows are stacked in small piles all around, their barbed heads glittering, peeking out from under oilcloth.

A bucket slopping over with waste stands alone on the far side.

Yenna's large figure slumps by the wall, a bow across her thighs. She’s dressed in filthy, colorless rags. Thick, matted black hair with leaves and small twigs in it hides much of her upper body, which is corded with muscle and smudged with dirt. Large dark eyes peer out from under the tangle. They are without expression until they see Caedi and then they flicker and shine.

The healer doesn’t hesitate but drops to her knees and embraces the half-orc, pushing her cheek against the other woman’s, and squeezing hard. Caedi says, “It’s good to see you, Yenna.”

“It isn’t,” says Yenna in a resonant tenor.

“It is,” say Caedi. “Hypa and I would often worry about you.” She pulls away from Yenna to look at her. “You have not been taking care of yourself. You must weigh half of what you should.”

“I eat.”

“Yes,” says Caedi, who begins to examine her old patient, lifting one of Yenna’s arms, peering into her eyes, tilting her head this way and that. “Not malnourished, I think but under. You need a bath and look at this place.”

“I stink?”

“A bit,” says Caedi. “I’m sure it goes well with the mystique of the terrible and frightening ‘Yenna of the Tower’ but this won’t do. And you shot at me.”

"I missed."

"On purpose, I know, but still!" Caedi turns to me. “Mark, do we still have any provisions left?”

I haul out some bread and cheese and the rest of the jerky we brought from Fort Reach and hand them over.

Caedi takes them from me and puts them into Yenna’s hands. “Eat,” she says.

“I’m not hungry.”

“That’s because your stomach is the size of a walnut,” says Caedi. “You will eat or I will tell Hypa.”

It’s an empty threat but Yenna doesn’t know that. She tears off a chunk of the bread with her teeth and chews, mouth open and grunting.

Caedi sighs. “These are my friends Mark and Wendy. We’re all deputy sheriffs in Fort Reach now. I’m a journeyman healer. They are monks.”

Yenna looks at us and stuffs some jerky in her mouth.

“It’s nice to meet you, Yenna,” says Wendy. She sounds like she means it.

“Hello,” I say.

Yenna grunts.

Caedi is looking around, her hands on her ample hips. “This will not do,” she says. She’s looking at the bucket. “You know how to dig a latrine.” She pulls up the flap of the tent and recoils her eyes watering. “Okay, that’s it. When we get back, if we let you return…” she swirls her finger around in a circle over her head. “We’re fixing all this. You can’t live like this. Don’t you get sick?”

“No.”

“Well, you will. And who will take care of you when that happens?” says Caedi. “I’m hours away. I cannot leave you like this. I won’t. You’ll have to do better.”

The half-orc smiles. It lasts for a nanosecond but then it falters and breaks, disappears like it was never there. “It’s my home.”

Caedi stomps her foot. “It’s your prison, girl.”

“I’m older than you.”

“You should act like it then.”

Yenna stands. She towers over Caedi, head and shoulders. The former ranger's legs are wiry, pale green muscle without an ounce of fat on them, bare almost to the hip. She wears a thick black leather belt with two long blades curved like kukri knives tucked through. They look clean and sharp. Her bow, now that I look at it, is well-maintained. She's one that takes care of her tools. "Hypa told me you would come,” Yenna says in her deep voice.

“She did?” Caedi says, blinking in surprise. “When?”

“Years ago. Right before I left the temple hospital,” says Yenna. “She told me you would seek me out and that I should help you. She made me promise I would. She said that I would be ready. I don’t feel ready.”

I surprise myself by saying, “Nobody ever feels ready. They say they do, sure, but that’s hope. The only way to know is to test yourself.”

Yenna looks down at me. Way, way down. “You are very little,” she says. “But that is a nice spear.”

“Thanks,” I say.

Yenna looks at Wendy. “You are unarmed?”

Wendy shrugs. “I punch out horses.”

I nod. “It’s true. What? Three so far?”

Wendy giggles. “I wasn’t counting.”

Yenna nods. “I would like to see that,” she says. “Bandits? On the road?” She looks at Caedi.

The healer nods.

“Very well.” Yenna ducks into her tent and comes back out with two quivers packed with arrows and a brown leather satchel. “Let’s go.”

Caedi nods once and smiles. “Yes!” she says. “But the first puddle I see that I deem is big enough, I’m tossing you in to get you clean.”

Yenna nods.

“Oh, and I have a spare dress in my pack that’ll probably fit you.”

Yenna nods.