Chapter 283

'You never know what to expect tomorrow.' Neia thought as her wings carried her far out of sight of the other royals. 'Suddenly I'm glad of my aversion to dresses. A royal upskirt would have been a little undignified even for me.' She chuckled and relaxed her body, allowing her wings to do the work with the wind.

The world opened up far beneath her, going from oh so small, to ever so endless, and even mighty monarchs became motes of dust caught in the sun. 'What would it look like to see it from the vantage of the stars? Would the whole world be just like them?' She wondered and put the city farther and farther at her back.

'What a useless thought.' Neia said to herself and focused on the matter at hand. In her brief association with the Golden Queen Renner, Neia came to some very definitive conclusions. 'That one is dangerous, maybe not for war, but she's smarter than she lets on, and she's already shown she's plenty smart. If she really did work out a time for Queen Draudillon to arrive with us all, I have to believe she'd get it right.'

The more Neia thought about it, the more it concerned her in an abstract sort of way, her eyes narrowed and her tail lashed behind her in the chill winds of the sky. 'If she were just behind schedule I should have seen something by now…'

But there was nothing, not on the Kingdom of Carne side of the border at least. The Long River was the de facto border between Kingdoms, and when Neia saw the blue approaching, she began to rethink herself. 'A monarch crossing into a border nation uninvited is exceptionally bad manners, and the Theocracy is already on bad terms with Demalbion. Of course… there's a human monarch on the line… Do I cross the river? No demihuman that I know of has ever crossed into Theocracy territory without a war beginning…'

The river was growing larger and larger before her eyes, the shining white of the reflected sun giving way to its natural blue.

'Do I go over… screw it, yes. I do. Whatever happened, they might be in trouble, and I can just offer an apology if I get caught, they'd have to be damn fools to object to someone going out to help their neighboring head of state.' Neia reasoned, and batted her wings ever harder, propelling her faster and faster until she shot across the riverbanks to the other side and into the land of the Slane Theocracy.

Chills ran down her spine of the sort she hadn't felt since the day Remedios Custodio thrust the first sword into her guts. The icy feel of looking at someone who hated her to the very depths of her being. The memory of that tearing feeling of her flesh opening up, like torn burlap as the blade entered her belly and came out her back, and then the next, and the next in violation of the traditional form of execution. 'Walk off that if you can.' The whispered words she heard even over her own screams, the noise of her parent's cries as they struggled to rescue her, and the feel of a dragon's maw closing around her and being carried away, limp and nearly dead.

'May that bitch be suffering still.' Neia cursed, now, just as then, she felt that hate come down on her as if the land and sky below and above hated her presence.

The chill didn't vanish, but Neia had become accustomed to it and tried to think instead of what she knew of the area from what Renner and Calca had said. 'Ikari is to the west, that's probably that dot over there…' far ahead, she saw the ground become golden, 'Wheat fields, the Latifundias of the Theocracy.'

Neia tried to think like a monarch, 'What would a Queen do… she's not like me, she was born on the throne… so… shit.' Neia rubbed her forehead and scratched the horns, 'If I ever have an heir I'm going to have to make sure they're raised with the children of the other monarchs because… god dammit, what do I know about that?!' She cursed her lack of experience and switched tack when she couldn't come up with anything.

'Suppose she was a soldier… actually maybe that's better, she'd have an escort, and want to make it on time, so… going to Ikari wouldn't happen, she's not taking a tour of the Theocracy or even of Carne, she's on her way to Arwintar with a time to meet up with the others. Especially the one who lent her the soldiers she needs, that isn't the time for a power play… so a more direct route…' Neia considered and tilted so that she was soaring southeast, following smaller roads that offered a more direct route.

It took considerable effort, the sun's steady passing went on and on as Neia followed a persistent flight pattern, weaving back and forth in search of some island of evidence in the sea of green grass below.

It was a wheel that first caught Neia's attention. It lay on a small hill, onto its side, she began to circle the area, on the other side of the hill, a broken wagon lay toppled on its side, the source of the lone wheel. Beside the carriage lay a corpse, as Neia came closer, it was obviously human. She landed, several crows were pecking at the body, his eyes were gone, that was obvious, he lay on his back three arrow heads pierced through his chest, and broken arrow shafts lay scattered beside his corpse. He wore servant's clothing, or what was left of it. White and black, and was, or had been, very young when he died.

Neia crouched down, waving her hand and scattering the crows that had been enjoying the meal his body offered them. They didn't go far, they hopped around in the grass just out of reach, their beaks open and the caws that came at her sounded almost rude.

As if they were saying, 'You're interrupting our dinner!'

Neia ignored their 'rudeness', and touched her finger to the arrowheads. 'Almost like the arrows of the dark elves to the east of me but… not quite.' She thought. All three shots were lethal and all passed through the back and between the ribs to emerge out the other side, 'Spectacular aim.' The Frost Queen praised the skill of his killers, and then she walked back along the path, though she could have flown, it felt 'right' to follow the track as she had in her scouting days.

Her feet bent the grass as she followed the way the wagon had come, until she went around another low rise after a dip in the ground and found the point of origin.

The fire was long gone, but a lot was burned, wagons lay toppled over, a carriage of obviously royal make was hacked to pieces, the tent poles still stood in places, while the surviving fabric clearly survived only because the blood that stained it impeded any of the flames from spreading.

What had been pools of blood were gone, in its place was only damp earth and red stained grass. Birds of various types were obscuring the dead, and there were multitudes of those. The cawing became worse and the stench of death thick in the air, Neia's tail danced behind her, it was a familiar scent, almost comfortingly so despite the pity she felt for the unfortunates.

'Now I know why they were late…' Neia thought as she knelt by the body of a guard. An arrow pierced his throat. The arrowhead was taken, only the shaft remained.

She began to search in earnest. 'The Queen? Is she dead?' The carriage was burned, and not far away… Neia paced over to a larger cluster of crows and found a slew of toppled over corpses. "Execution." Neia mumbled, her soldiers, and the humans, had both killed others this way. Dead on their knees, the humans were toppled forward.

"The tents were up, so they were still encamped… so… where are the rest of them?" Neia asked herself out loud, as she went from point to point and corpse to corpse, finding only one woman among them, and that one had a broken shaft in her throat, with no evidence an arrowhead had been on the end of it. 'The Queen's party should have had a large number of female servants… surely they didn't abandon her? Oh… right…' Neia felt faintly green despite her hardy constitution.

"There's only one reason why bandits would do that… and it's probably why this one killed herself. I wonder if they know they took the Queen of the Draconic Kingdom?" Neia shook her head, answering her own question.

It wasn't until she found the corpse of an elf that things grew complicated. The eyes were gone, just as all the rest, he was a towering, hulking figure. His body was torn open in places by the birds, and flies were buzzing about his face and other open wounds, maggots already crawling about, but in spite of that, the cause of death was clear. He had a broken spear sticking out of his gut, an arrow lodged in his eye, his hand was cleanly severed and at least three sword wounds pierced his side, several other human bodies lay around him, all in full armor and with their heads smashed or limbs severed. 'He must have been a terrific warrior once…' Neia inclined her head with respect for the dead, and then with grim purpose, she drew a dagger from her belt and severed the dead elf's ear from his body. She then cut a strip of cloth from the tabard a guard once wore, making sure to get part of the insignia of the Draconic Kingdom, and after wrapping the ear up in the cloth she launched herself skyward again.

'They will not be pleased to hear this… I daresay even the Theocracy won't be happy to learn it.' Neia thought, and then set out for the capital of the Kingdom of Carne again as fast as she could fly.