When they finally reached the top of the tower, Rhode was completely out of breath and her lungs hurt. As she straightened out, she took one look at the ground, far, far below her, and knew what was coming. The mercenary wrapped his bloodied arm around her again and leaped off the tower.

*

Rhode opened her eyes. She couldn’t see. She was surrounded by darkness and she couldn’t feel her body. It felt as if it had…melted.

“Where am I?” she tried to ask.

But no voice left her mouth. She tried to say something again, just testing this new, strange place. She seemed to have no voice, in addition to no body. While the experience was rather unnerving, it was also quite interesting. It felt a little like floating in water. With the difference that this ‘water’ was completely dark. It was neither cold, nor warm.  It was not wet either. It just ...was. For a brief, morbid, moment Rhode wondered if this was what drowning felt like. Was this how her father had felt in his last moments? No, that was not where she wanted her thoughts to go. She focused once again on the nothing.  For a moment she entertained the notion that this was just a dream. She quickly decided, however, that this option was opening a can of worms. There was no way, really, to distinguish waking reality from dream. So she decided to assume that she was awake.

Having ruled out being dead and asleep, Rhode decided that she must either be having an 'out-of-the-body' experience. Or she must still be in her physical form, but in some strange place. The fact that her mind still made reference to bodily reactions such as shuddering or opening of eyes, suggested that she still HAD a body. But this did not rule out the 'out-of-the-body' theory. Presumably only if the connection were completely severed, would the mind stop making such references. 

Her mind raced as she reflected on this new and unusual experience. Suddenly she noticed a very delicate glow just at the corner of her vision (so she still had vision - another argument that she was still embodied). The glow was in the shape of the letter PHI. She tried to focus her eyes on it, but it blurred, then faded completely, when she did. As soon as the PHI was gone, a new letter appeared. And then another one. More and more letters began appearing., always just at the margin of her vision. As soon as they appeared, they dissolved, so that she couldn't quite read them.  She was reminded of that moment in the citadel when she lost consciousness, earlier that day. Now however, everything was less chaotic. There was no spinning. No sense of movement at all. And, thankfully, it was not accompanied by pain, like last time.

New letters appeared. Some from a long-forgotten alphabet she did not recognize. Yet somehow she could tell that they were definitely letters. For a short while they glowed together. They now formed something like a chain. Then they disappeared. Rhode felt a delicate gust of wind brush her face. The feel of wind on her skin was the second sensory experience she had here. Wherever 'here' was.

 There, above her, glowed the letters again. Except now they seemed to form the shape of a feather. Rhode reached out to touch it. Her fingers only brushed it when she felt herself rise higher and higher in the blackness. The feather disappeared, but she was still rising higher and higher. Suddenly she felt a short stab of pain in her head and closed her eyes.

When she opened them, moments later, she saw she was standing on the ground, just outside of the city wall. Her legs felt a little shaky. Apart from that she felt absolutley normal. She looked around confused. There was the mercenary, standing just beside her. He was looking at her curiously.

“You feel alright?” he asked, his head cocked slightly to the side, staring at her in a rather piercing way.

“Yes,” she said, “what happened?”

“I…had to cushion our fall somehow. It’s difficult to explain what I did, and we are in a hurry, so I won't. Suffice to say that it’s hard to do it to someone else. Usually the person is in a state of mild pain and shock for some time after. But you seem to be ok. I’m glad.”

His voice was a little odd when he said all this. For her part, Rhode felt that his vague answer only made thing more confusing than they had been before she asked. What had the mercenary done when they fell? And what did he mean when he said it’s ‘difficult to do to someone else’? She furrowed her brows. She wanted an explanation. But she knew that when people didn’t want to explain things, they wouldn’t. She glanced at him again. He was looking at her with a curiosity equal to the one with which she was eyeing him. Then he shrugged his shoulders and walked over to the bag of books and threw it over one shoulder.

Rhode looked up at the wall. She had to crane her neck to see the top of the tower.

“We jumped from there?” she muttered with disbelief.

The mercenary glanced up.

“Yeah. C’mon, we need to hurry to make use of the time we gained.”

The mercenary brought a hand to his mouth and let out a loud whistle. Then he began walking. Rhode followed him, staring at his back. Only now did she find the time to take a closer look at him. He was one of the tallest people she had ever seen in her life. His hair was a sort of ashen, greyish-blond, and cut short, like a slave’s. Rhode knew that many westerners wore their hair short, but his was short even for a westerner. Only slaves and very poor commoners would wear hair like his. Or Latin priests. But this man, was certainly not a priest. The sleeves of his tunic and maille did not reach his elbows and she could clearly see that his forearms, and hands, were covered in scars, both large and small. On the inside of his left forearm was a large burn scar which looked particularly painful.

“What’s your name?” Rhode asked quietly.

“Chlodvig.”

She tried to repeat it. She noticed him smile slightly as she did.

“Strange name,” she muttered apologetically.

“Don’t know about strange, but definitely pretentious and puffed-up as hell!” he answered, slowing down so that she could catch up.

“How so?” she asked, glancing at his face.

“It’s….a…royal name. Where I come from. It means ‘renown in combat’…” the mercenary smiled bitterly, “you seriously have to have issues to name your kid that. If this isn’t a pretentious name, then I don’t know what is!”

Rhode pursed her lips. She knew that the polite thing to do would be to say it wasn’t that pretentious. But she agreed with him. It was. So instead she said:

“My name is also sort of pretentious.”

“Rhode?” he asked. Seeing the surprise on her face, he added, “that other woman, on the wall, she called you that. A number of times.”

“Oh.”

“So? Why is ‘Rhode’ pretentious?”

“Rhode was a nymph from the Pagan myths. Rhodes, the island where I come from, was named after her. I was born on the island. And my mother named me after the nymph. So...I’m named after a nymph whose name is the name of the island I was born on...pretentious AND circular!”

Chlodvig laughed, “I see what you mean. It’s a nice name though!”

At that moment loud barking coming from some way ahead caught his attention and he turned around. Three large dogs, followed by three horses, were galloping in their direction. The dogs were huge. One had yellowish fur and triangular pointed ears, like a wolf’s. The other had thick, white fur and the wise face of a shepherd dog. The third had a short, heavyset head and a slightly drooling mouth. This dog’s fur was short and glossy and glistened delicately in the moonlight.

The dogs surrounded the mercenary, wagging their tails and pressing their heads against his legs and into his hands. The horses stood a little way off, waiting. Two of the horses were saddled, and had their reins tied around their necks. The third, a pack horse, only had large saddlebags attached to its back. Chlodvig scratched the dogs’ heads, speaking affectionately in a language Rhode had never heard before. When the dogs’ greeting-ceremony was finally over, he nodded his head indicating the horses and asked:

“You ride?”

“No.” was the muttered reply. Rhode was looking at her feet intently now. Why did she always have to answer ‘no’ to any such questions? Sybil and Kale were both good riders. Rhode on the other hand, had always been too afraid of horses to even come near one. Let alone ride one. Her aunt once tried to get Rhode to learn to ride. But Rhode insisted that she did not like horses and was quite happy on her own two feet or carried in a litter. She remembered the disapproving look Sophia gave her then, and felt that her aunt had been right.

Chlodvig did not press the issue. Instead he clicked his tongue at the horses, who trotted up to him obediently. The greeting ceremony was not as affectionate as that of the dogs, but it too took a while. When it was over, Chlodvig attached the large bag of books onto the back of the pack horse.

“Alright then. This one will carry the books. And you ride with me.”

He swung himself onto the horse’s back, then bent down, picked Rhode up, and set her down lightly behind him. The leather saddle was soft and had no high back. There were also no stirrups. Rhode put her arms around the mercenary’s waist and wondered, not for the first time, what possessed her to embark on this madness. But of course, she knew the answer to this question as soon as she asked it: the books. 

____________________

Things:

PHI:  φ A letter in the Greek alphabet. In Philosophy often used to denote action.