From her position she had a fairly good view of the village blacksmith shop, and she could even see the feet of Mr. Mendez and his assistants. None of the adults had seen her enter through the shop proper and sneak under the water trough, and now she could watch them going about their business with near impunity. They were very busy these last few days, and though Marina couldn’t be sure she had some vague impression of hearing that something important was happening soon.
Looking past the bustling feet of Mr. Mendez and the three men who helped him with his work, Marina kept searching for any sign of her brother. Today it was Ciro’s turn to seek and the other children’s turn to hide. In the past, Marina had never been particularly good at playing hide and seek. She had been patient enough, but never very adept at finding appropriate hiding spots or being very quiet. Yet now, with Pavlina’s instruction, Marina had become one of the best hiders in the village.
Watching carefully for her brother, Marina noted with idle curiosity the bustle of many adults. It seemed to her that there were more adults than the village normally contained, and she had been wondering for several days what might be going on. The most likely explanation was that monsters were going to attack the village soon. It wasn’t an uncommon occurrence; it had happened four times in her life already. Sometimes gnolls attacked looking for food or other things, or maybe a pack of gremlins would be found in the village. Once, the great dragon in the forest outside the village had threatened to attack…for some reason, Marina couldn’t remember.
Without warning (since Marina hadn’t been paying attention), the water trough above her suddenly let out a piercing hiss that sounded exactly like a dragon scream to the startled little girl’s mind. Marina screamed in shock, which startled each of the men in the smithy shop, and everything just escalated from there. Two of the workers dropped the weapons they had been working on, only startling Marina more, and she flew out from under the water trough only to run into the legs of Mr. Mendez. It was only the elderly man’s decades of experience with metalwork that prevented anyone being hurt by the red hot metal he held in his hand.
“What are you doing in here, girl?” Mr. Mendez exclaimed in surprise and anger once things had calmed down a few moments later. Marina looked up at him wide-eyed, at a loss for words. Mr. Mendez shook his head and handed the metal he had been working on to one of his workers, then reached down to pull Marina to a standing position. He was not rough, but neither was he particularly pleased. “I swear by Temult I should deal with you here and now. You’re lucky I don’t have the time.”
With that, he shoved Marina out of the smithy shop and glared at her uncompromisingly. Clearly she was not welcome there, and Marina believed the smithy in his threat to punish her, so she took the unexpected good fortune to make her escape right then and there. Whipping quickly between the bustling adults, she made her way away from the smithy shop and to the village square. It took a few moments for her to calm back down, but by the time she reached the assembly area she was herself again.
The open area near the village’s outer wall, just near the small marketplace, was much busier than usual today. Marina wandered through the crowd curiously, more interested now in finding out what was going on than in finding another hiding place. Most interestingly was the fact that there were some people in the crowd that she did not recognize. In a village this size, everyone could recognize everyone, and so encountering people that were unfamiliar was both exciting and frightening to the young girl. Something important was happening.
Most of the unfamiliar people seemed to be wearing armor of some type, and this began to worry her considerably. In all the previous times when there was trouble for the village, no strange people had been present. The mere inclusion of people from outside the village during a dangerous time was something to be concerned about. Marina began to look for someone she could ask; someone who could tell her exactly what was going on.
She wondered if she should go find Pavlina or Esteban. Did they know what was happening? Most likely, yes, Marina decided. They were both privy to the happenings inside the keep, having frequent meetings with Baron Soto. Having decided that her two teachers would know what was happening, the decision to go find one of them was rather a moot point. Marina began to hurry through the crowd now, making her way back in the direction of the keep.
The going was not terribly difficult for her, given her small size, and she slipped quickly between the adults almost without notice. She did not put much effort into using Pavlina’s teachings right now, she merely used her smaller size to her advantage and found openings in the crowd that an adult could not have used. Within moments she was hurrying almost at a run through the crowd, her excitement and nervousness growing with each step she took and every armored stranger she saw.
In her excitement, paying little attention now to the people she passed, Marina didn’t see the heavily armored stranger step in front of her until it was too late. The stranger also didn’t see Marina, facing the other direction, and so the hard thud as Marina’s face met the solid plate armoring the stranger’s back was inevitable. She didn’t hit too hard, but the impact was surprising enough that she ended up sitting down quite suddenly, and the stranger’s conversation with another person was interrupted.
The armored woman turned around, and Marina knew instantly that she was looking at a paladin. She had never seen one before, but everyone heard stories of the Gods’ enforcers. In these lands, the paladins of the goddess Kelana kept divine law and protected Her loyal subjects. The woman’s finely crafted plate armor, the heraldry she wore bearing Kelana’s symbol of five crossed weapons, and more importantly the holy symbol itself hanging from the woman’s neck all gave proud claim to her station. She wore a large, clearly magical sword on her back, and carried a plate helmet under her right arm.
Seeing that it was a young girl who had run into her, the woman’s stern and surprised expression softened. She reached down a hand, gloved in protective cloth, to help Marina up from the ground.
“Forgive me little one, I must have stepped in your way,” she said kindly. Her accent indicated she was from a different region, but her expression was gentle and, most importantly, the paladins of Kelana were known as kind protectors of the people. Marina smiled and accepted the hand to help her stand.
“I’m sorry I ran into you,” she said, still rubbing her sore nose. “I was in a hurry.”
“Just be careful in such a crowd,” the woman admonished gently, and then turned back to her conversation.
Marina gave a quick curtsy, at least as best as she knew how, then quickly moved off through the crowd. Had she known that she would see that paladin again in the future, and just how those interactions were destined to go, she definitely would not have curtsied.
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