Chapter 417

When it was time to go to Wheaton, Vargas found the elves to be hardier than he expected, stories of the elves collapsing after only the lightest beatings were often told as 'proof' that they were a weak race meant only to serve their betters. But after inexperienced riders fell off their mounts, they simply got back up again and started riding, even when a wrist or arm was broken, they made no complaint.

Aola seemed to have picked up on his dismay, 'She has an uncanny knack for that.' He thought when he heard her horse approaching from behind.

"Does something trouble you, Vargas?" She asked with that same little smile on her face, it was almost cocky, like she knew things he didn't, which thus far proved to be the case nearly every time she wore that expression.

"Your people are not especially good with horses, but they are… hardier than I expected." He remarked.

"Most of us have little chance to ride these beasts." She gently patted the neck of the horse she rode, "But we're quick learners, all of us, so they will pick up on it. As for being hardy… remember what I told you before?"

"Yes." He answered.

"It's the same thing all over again, but instead of laziness, it's about our pain tolerance. If humans think that beating us too hard will kill us, they will protect their investment and do us less harm… generally speaking. So we pretend it hurts more than it does." She answered and looked over her shoulder at his 'accompaniment'. "We are not pretending with you, because you are our savior. You saved us, freed us, it's been a long time since a human cared enough to actually do something to help us in any way at all that mattered. So we won't hide anything from you, our Liberator."

Vargas felt the faintest twinge of guilt then, looking into her wide eyes and trusting expression. "I told you, I'm not as good as you think. But…" He looked at the way she handled her horse, she didn't strike him as a master of it, but she gripped the flanks well with her thighs, her posture was good, she held the reins the right way and she kept the right distance between her mount and his, "Where did you learn to ride?"

She looked off toward the vast open ground ahead of them, it was just the dirt road with its white stone markers beneath a vast blue sky above, with the wind blowing just right, it could be said to be nearly perfect, her hair caught by the wind, it lightly danced up and down behind her, and for a brief time he took her silence to be a refusal to answer.

Then she said to him, "Do you really believe that I would find you loathsome, if I knew who you really were instead of being who I believe you are?"

She hadn't forgotten that she didn't really know that much, but even so, the more she studied him, the less vile it seemed he might be.

"Whatever you think, it's probably much worse." Vargas replied to her, "I am one of the faithful, my scripture is named after the very word for 'Atrocity' we specialize in countering your people's method of fighting. You don't know me, you don't know anything about me. If you did, you would turn that horse around and ride away, not stopping till you reach King Mare's domain."

She exhaled a long, slow breath. "If I tried to run… what would you do? Recapture me? Throw a collar back on my neck again…?"

"I gave my word. However it was understood, my word is my word. If you go, you go and I do nothing." Vargas's voice was icy with certitude, and he did not have to wait long for her retort.

"Then you're not as bad as you think. However… Vargas, I want to know how bad you really think I'd find you to be. So I want to ask you for something."

"What?" He frowned a little, but held his tone otherwise neutral.

"The others will stay outside the city, with your contingent of soldiers. But when you go into the academy where Breakers are trained, I want to go with you. I want to see who you really are, and nothing will tell me more what kind of a man you are, than that. If I am wrong, I am wrong. But I have been around too many humans, I am not wrong often." Aola said and looked up at him with bated breath.

It was a trivial request, "Fine. But what does that have to do with my first question? And what if you're right?"

"If I'm right, then I will show you the truth of how I learned to ride a horse., and I hope then that your sleepy eyes will finally be fully opened, awake to the world you truly live in, and not the one you think you do. It's not me, that's wrong about you, Vargas. It's you that's wrong about everything else." Aola reached out across the distance and grabbed his wrist. "When you do, and don't tell me you won't, you will, I know it, I will not be far away. I will save you. I swear it on my life."

Vargas smacked his lips together and looked at her slender, pale hand, she wasn't trembling then, whatever drove her to speak so strangely, it wasn't fear or loathing, and it didn't feel like she was lying. But even so, it was an absurdly emotional thing to say.

"Don't protest, Vargas. You haven't seen, so you won't believe, you grew up a peasant, you lived far away from the lives we lived so everything is like a dot on the horizon. That won't last. That won't last and then we'll both see what you really are when there's no lying anymore." He didn't need to tell her to go back with the others, she wheeled her horse around with the skill of someone who had done it many times, and left him to his own thoughts which mostly consisted of variations on the words…

'How absurd.'