Eleonora stumbled back several steps as the wooden handle on the side of the stall hit her hand, making the gold coins fly off her fingers and fall to the ground. She clutched her hand with her other one as the pain shot through her entire arm with the impact and moved further away, just in time to prevent her feet from falling prey to the booth that was toppled over.
The stall hit the ground with a thundering crash making the wooden splinters and shards of glass dart in every direction at a high speed. One nicked her brow; another pierced the back of her hand where a bruise from the earlier impact would soon start to show.
Her shock had barely started to give way to thought when one of the soldiers who had flipped over the stall grabbed her by her elbow and shoved her to the side.
'Clear the way!' the other one screamed on the top of his lungs. 'Clear the street!'
Without much thought or meaning, Eleonora looked around for Talia, and exhaled deeply when she saw her pressed with the crowd that had gathered around to watch the display. Her eyes looked dazed, there were finger marks on her arm implying she had been shoved as well, and the confusion on her face was something Eleonora could deeply relate to.
The second stall, right across from the first one, came tumbling down the next instant. The other two on the right of the first two stalls followed quickly after.
'Make way unless you want to lose your life!' announced a soldier. He was leading a group of men carrying huge logs of wood. A barrier was soon made over the wreckage where the four stalls had been set before — entirely ceasing any movement across the street.
Eleonora watched with mild empathy and incredible disbelief as the few people on the other side of the barrier were forcefully dragged by the soldiers and brutally thrown to the other side. Several protests rose — some from the men and women pushed around, others from the ones standing among the crowd. A few of them had drops of blood trickling down their faces and arms courtesy to the flying shards.
Watching them made Eleonora take notice of her own bleeding hand. She looked down on the small glittering piece of glass embedded in her skin and winced — less with pain and more with annoyance at the unreasonable injury. With expert hands she picked at the wound. The glass came off without much effort. Eleonora tore off a piece from the cloth wrapped around her remedy box and wrapped it around her hand. The bleeding wasn't much — barely a few drops — but she didn't want to risk an infection.
Talia, at last out of her daze, rushed to her side. 'Are you okay?'
'Not one bit,' Eleonora answered, biting the end of the cloth between her teeth to tighten the knot around her right hand. 'What in the Heavens is going on here?'
Talia watched the now empty street at the other side of the barrier and sighed. 'I had no idea the Duke would be here today.'
'The Duke?' asked Eleonora, wondering if she should offer aid to the bleeding people, but they had already started to scatter away despite the few protests demanding an explanation.
For Eleonora, it was odd. The casual manner in which they shrugged off the disrespect and walked away like nothing had just happened. The way the shop vendors that had been dragged away from their shops from the other side of the barrier stood there nonchalantly as if knowing and waiting for whatever-it-was-that-was-going-on to be over so they could go back to work again. The way the few men who had dared to scream their protests at the soldiers remained within the crowd, calling out from between the masses but not having the courage to show their faces.
'This happens every time Duke Winslow is in the capital,' sighed Talia.
'But why?'
'He's a bit messed up here,' she pointed at her head. 'Thinks everyone wants him dead so clears away the entire area wherever he decides to show up.'
'And no one says a thing?' Eleonora asked, looking over at the toppled down stall of herbs. Her heart pained at the sight of the ruined ingredients. The vendor lady was sobbing in a corner, clutching her bruised ankle. She knew the nobles were unreasonable and entitled folks, but ruining lives just to ease one person's baseless fears was stretching it beyond the limit.
'The King favours him. No one would dare defy him.'
'Forget what I said about wishing to live here,' murmured Eleonora. The Spirit Forest could be a wrecked haunted corner of the world, but at least it was not infested with half-headed nobles.
Talia caught her hand to stop her when Eleonora attempted to cross the street to go towards the vendor lady. 'Don't move. We are to stay still until he passes.'
Confused, Eleonora looked around. Certainly everyone had moved to either side of the street, their bodies almost pressing into the still standing booths. The few people that had been shouting complaints before had gone dead silent.
One of the soldier's thundering voices raised above the silence. 'Make way for the Duke!'
The sound of hooves on cobblestones filled the air the next moment. People squirmed further away as if the wide road would not be enough for the Duke's carriage to pass effortlessly. But then, she saw the open carriage appear to her left, felt the dust rise with the wind as the wheels rolled at a ridiculously high speed, and realised: the people weren't making way for the Duke, they were cowering away in fear of falling under the wheels instead.
The Duke's carriage disappeared just as quickly as it had appeared. Eleonora hadn't been keen on getting a look at the Duke — not wishing to put a face on the horrid image she had formed in her head of his before his arrival and ignoring him just as she is used to disregarding the people of her village, — but the bright sun reflected off his bald head had threatened to pierce her eyes even when she wasn't directly looking at him.
Eleonora rubbed her eyes and crossed to the other side of the street. The people standing around started to scatter away. The soldiers remained, standing at guard near the barrier. She could forget about going to meet her soldier now. He wouldn't have expected the Duke to show up either.
Alas, it was a futile attempt coming all the way to Ilyndor only to be shoved away like a ragdoll.
'Allow me,' Eleonora said to the vendor lady, crouching down to her eye level and pointing at her swollen blue ankle. 'I'll have to see if it's just the tendons or you have hurt a bone before giving you the potion.'
The lady moved her hands away from her feet to let Eleonora inspect it. She had her eyes pinned on her broken down booth — most likely her entire life saving down on the ground, crushed under the wheels of a noble's chariot. Eleonora doubted her bruised leg was much of her concern at the moment.
'It's just the muscle. It will heal in no time,' she told her anyway. Reaching inside her medicine box, Eleonora pulled out a small bottle of tincture.
The lead soldier's head snapped in her direction. 'None of that here,' he nodded at the little bottle in her hand. 'The fumes from those stuff sully everything else. Take the charity away from here.'
'You think she can walk?' the words were out of Eleonora's mouth before she could judge their impact. Talia, standing silently at the back, stiffened. The soldier must have caught Eleonora's brief glare directed at him before she looked away, because his voice rose the next instant, ordering one of his men to drag both of them away from their make-believe border.
She pressed her lips together in irritation as, out of the corner of her eyes, she saw the man walk towards them menacingly. It reminded her of those she had met back in the forest. Was every soldier in Valon so insufferable?
The vendor lady sat defeated, barely taking notice of anything around her. The incoming soldier reached to grab her first. Eleonora caught him by his wrist and, this time, glared overtly. 'I'll use a balm instead. It would not have the fumes.' She tried her best to keep the annoyance away from her voice, but if the growing anger on the soldier's face was any attestation, she was failing miserably.
Eleonora let go of his wrist before he could jerk her hand away. 'You must be new in Ilyndor, judging from your audacity. You don't talk back to men here. Especially not to the ones in power.'
Eleonora wondered if the man had ever had a proper conversation before to take her reasonable replies for retorts. She also wondered how long it would take him to unsheathe that sword of his if she actually started to talk back to him.
Not long, judging from past experiences.
Defeated, she put the bottle of tincture back in the box and put the vendor lady's arm around her shoulder in an attempt to help her stand up. The soldier moved forward — apparently impatient by the delay in movement as if he wasn't the one who had caused the injury. Eleonora parted her lips to tell him to retreat and halted when she saw the blond man coming towards them from the other side of the barrier.
'Stand back, John!' He ordered the soldier.
Each one of them took one look at the man and stepped away, standing at attention — with feet joined together and hands at their sides.
The blond man was quite apparently their superior, reckoning from the much more detailed armour, if not the authority with which he spoke to the other soldiers. As Eleonora helped the vendor lady to her feet, his eyes passed over the three women standing before him, as if assessing them, and at last halted on the green apothecary cloak, draped around Eleonora's shoulders.
'Are you Miss Eleonora? The apothecary?' he asked, his eyes narrowing as he said those words.
Eleonora nodded, puzzled and a bit worried. How did he know her name?
She mentally smacked herself for answering his question truthfully without knowing anything about him or his purpose.
'Please follow me,' he said. And when all Eleonora did was watch him with a face that effortlessly conveyed her distrust of him, he cleared his throat and introduced himself. 'I'm General Arthur Redmond of the Royal Army, Miss Eleonora. And I've been sent here to escort you to the Prince.'