On the eve of dawn, David found himself atop a horse, his hands restrained with a rope bounding him to a light armoured cavalryman.
General Adams handed a coin to another knight, the image of a curved tree as a sigil embedded on it. He then said him something in a minusculate voice which David couldn't hear.
The knight who accepted the coin nodded firmly and then tugged at the reins of his horse.
"Let's go!" He shouted as David suddenly jerked forward. Gripping on the horse tightly for balance, he saw that the horse he was sitting on had started trodding forward.
It wasn't just the horse he was on that was moving as another member of the cavalry lined his horse beside them. And behind the horseman, in a similar position as David, the nameless girl sat with a solemn expression.
'Guess she doesn't like her freedom taken away.' He thought internally, quite idiotically.
She reminded him of a cat he once had as his pet. It used to be a stray cat - energetic and mischievous. Every single day, David would sit by his window, watching as the cat jumped over fences and climbed his window sill. He would then feed it...and this continued.
After a while, he took the cat in, fearing for its safety. But then he noticed something strange over the course of the next few days - the cat, which used to be so full of energy, now sat at random spots inside his house, with a sadenned expression. Even every sound it produced was melodramatic in nature.
It took David some time to understand that the cat wanted its freedom back. It didn't like being caged, to have its wings clipped off and stored as if some prize.
There were few things he ever got attached to. For better or worse, the cat was one of them. Even though it hurt him, he let go of the cat.
And yet...every single night, it would still return back to him.
The sound of another horse approaching theirs roused him from his thoughts. Behind them, the knight who Adams had been talking with pulled up his horse.
"We need to deliver them to the caravan before going for our duty. General's orders." Neither of the two other horsemen spoke but in reply, they pulled the reins of their horses as they suddenly sped up.
David looked behind him one last time at the remaining members of his group. Bloodaxe and Draven sat hunched by a tree, surrounded by few pairs of soldiers. The others were busy in their own preparations.
'Where did the princess go?' He thought, puzzled by her absence. Soon, the camp behind him started becoming smaller and smaller to his eyes and after few more minutes, he lost sight of them.
Sighing, he looked forward. He wouldn't be lying if he said he was feeling a sense of trepidation. While he was with the group, atleast he had been in slight ease. Even while most of the group probably disliked him, atleast they wouldn't have harmed him. His destiny, in that sense, was a secured path.
But now...He would be walking an unknown path. He didn't know where he was heading to, didn't know what kind of people even waited for him, didn't know why was he even dragged in this mess, didn't know if he would even get out alive of this forest.
This forest...precisely speaking, a bordered part of it, had been his home in this world. He never had gone past the boundary controlled by the Hermanns, let alone the Windsor Kingdom.
And now he was about to enter foreign territory. Not even as a common person; but as a slave. Even if he was somehow admitted into the ranks of the Sihapis, that wouldn't change his status as a slave.
A Sihapi slave - could there even be a worse combo than that?
Suddenly he felt a tingling deja vü inside him - but not the pleasant one. It was around the time when he would be taking admission into his college and he had to change regions, not just his city. At that time, he had felt a sort of unspoken, unexpressed excitement. That was a pleasant feeling.
Even though, he was in a similar situation right now, he felt nervous. No excitement at all.
'Well that's history for you.'
The horses galloped over flatlands as they finally left the dense forest behind them. By now, the sun have risen up in the sky and the temperature mild enough to survive without any woollen clothes.
They rode on the clear path for nearly an hour before the first signs of human settlements and their citizens came into view, who were hovering on and about their own works.
However seeing three formidable knights pass by them, they bowed their heads as if showing reverence. Whether it was out of respect or fear was something David would find himself interested in.
But he wasn't exactly in the right mind to think about it in that moment. You see...cold winds have been blowing all throughout their journey and as it happens to be, he hadn't slept for the last fourty eight hours or so.
And right now, he was caught in an internal battle as he fought against the intense sleepiness. Every now and so, he would almost doze off thinking something along the lines of: 'Ahh, the winds are really calming...maybe I can close my eyes for just a minute...'
Only to suddenly wake himself up.
'Ugh, why now...and when shall they even take a break? They have been riding for around 6 to 7 hours now. Don't the horses get tired?'
Eventually...even after a long fight, he lost it as he suddenly struck the knight's back and...fell asleep.
"Oi, the savage has fallen asleep it seems." The knight at the back laughed loudly, trying to have his voice heard in the fast blowing winds around them.
"Bastard!" The knight on whom David fell asleep clicked his tongue in annoyance as he tried nudging him backwards, but to no avail.
The knight behind them said in a thoughtful manner, "Just let it be, we are close to our destination. No need to stop now and waste our time on him."
"I guess..." The other knight started as he softly added in a soft tone, "...just don't get cursed from these filths. I heard they worship a tree. Can you believe it?! Absolute heretics!"
The nameless girl who had been sitting with a blank face flinched at those words, at the way these three had so casually insulted her race.
She felt a flash of anger but taking a deep breath, she calmed herself down.
'Someday I strong and...a-and' Her thoughts suddenly collapsed into confusion as she realised she didn't have the correct word in her vocabulary to describe her feelings.
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A/N: When you know the author didn't have words to describe her feelings, but you just can't prove it :)