Arrows of Time - Kim Falconer [23]
A snapping twig cut short his thoughts. He didn’t move, didn’t shift his eyes, but heightened his awareness, stretching it out in all directions like an invisible web. He kept his hands resting together in his lap, his shoulders relaxed, eyes soft behind closed lids. Soon he could hear branches giving way to bipedal travellers, two of them by the sound of it. Their boots slogged through the mud, the low buzz of their voices mellifluous in his head. The language was unrecognisable. He guessed they were about a mile off and would take some time to arrive, if they were coming this way at all. Jarrod suspected they were.
He waited, unmoving, sinking deeper into meditation, letting the sounds and smells of his immediate environment fade away. When he opened his eyes, a man and a woman stood before him, fixing him with dark stares and drawn swords. He assessed them both and turned to the female. ‘Greetings,’ Jarrod said, his lips lifting into a smile. The tone of his voice was like sunshine.
‘Who are you and what are you doing here?’ the woman asked. Her sword remained directed at him, like an extension of her arm. The dull light that filtered through the clouds bounced off the edge of her blade and hit his eyes, making him squint. Clever.
The woman spoke with confidence and assertion. There was a sternness to her that suggested she would not hesitate to maim—or kill. Jarrod suspected she was not much older than Rosette, perhaps in her late twenties. Her body was wiry with long limbs, clad in leather pants and vest. Her hair was a short, spiky brown, her eyes green like Gaela’s North Sea—quite a contrast to the drab background of this world. She wore a black cloak flung back from her shoulders and clasped at the neck with a silver image of the moon. Her long fingers wrapped around the hilt of her sword like vines around a branch. What a focused soul, he thought. She’ll have to meet Rosette.
‘Answer me,’ the woman said. Her voice became more challenging as she raised her sword slightly, moving the refracted light back into his eyes. The hem of her sleeve fell back as her arm lifted, revealing the edges of a dark tattoo. It looked like the head of a serpent or a reptile, its mouth open, hissing.
Jarrod processed the words she spoke, considering her syntax and inflections, creating a new database for the language. It had vaguely familiar components. Ancient Babylonian Earth? He would have to research that. ‘I’m a traveller, waiting for my companion,’ he answered back in her own tongue. ‘Who are you?’
She lowered her sword enough to drop the glare from his eyes. ‘I am Selene, first marshal of the border scouts.’
Jarrod nodded his head, about to speak.
‘State your name and placement,’ the man cut in, holding the tip of his sword an arm’s length from Jarrod’s throat. He was taller than Selene—just—with a lithe, muscular build. His arms were bare from the shoulders down, and both were etched in tattoos of flames that licked up towards his face. His eyes were vivid blue, a colour beyond anything in this murky world. His sandy hair was cropped short except for a long thin braid that fell from the nape of his neck to his waist.
Drayco! Are you through the portal?
There was no reply.
‘Name and placement?’ the man repeated, stepping a fraction closer.
‘My name’s Jarrod Cossica. I’m not from around here, so the “placement” query is unanswerable.’ He watched as the two of them seemed to confer without sound or gesture, wondering if they were telepathic. He tuned in, but couldn’t hear their thoughts. Interesting…
‘Where are you from, Jarrod Cossica, and how did you learn our language if you are, as you say, “not from around here”?’ Selene asked, her voice more