17 Out of the Mountains with a Little Girl (2/2)

She quite enjoyed this feeling, and yet was a bit dissatisfied with the fact that it was Ning Que who caused such emotions. Feeling somewhat embarrassed, she intentionally adjusted her tone to somewhat cold and insensitive.

”During the assassination earlier on, it seemed you that were trying to save me?”

Lee Yu thought to herself, ”Anyway, that was not me in the carriage at the time, your intention to save the princess was no grander than your ambition to win honor for yourself.”

”I knew you were the real princess since you were in City of Wei.”

Ning Que explained to her in earnest, ”As the maidservant was the real princess, so the one in the carriage should be someone else. This little act may be helpful when luring the enemy, but only a shoddy trick to the one who is observant.”

Frowning, Lee Yu didn't ask him how he could recognize her real identity. She slowly formed a good impression of him after the battle mostly because of the sense of security he gave her.

She suddenly asked coldly, ”You said you learned your killing skills in the military, but till now you're only fifteen or so. You were no more than a kid when you were enlisted. How come the military would enlist you?”

Planning to make up something to fool her, Ning Que thought,”You married off to the far-away grassland at sixteen, why couldn't I be enlisted at that age?” At that time Sangsang quietly walked over and sat beside him.

Watching Sangsang sitting beside him and the dancing fire nearby her, Ning Que suddenly softened and said, ”You must already know that I met Sangsang on the road. We were very little then, and were somehow lost in Min Mountain. We met an old hunter as we were almost dying of thirst.”

He raised his head, saw the princess' profile, and continued, ”The old hunter was not a sage or master. He saved us, but this proved nothing. Anyway, he taught me how to hunt. Later, he died. I and Sangsang, we lived off what I hunted in the mountain.”

Though a very simple and short account about his childhood, vivid pictures flashed before the princess' eyes. A ten-year-old boy carried a five-year-old girl on his back, searching in a mountain full of beasts and perils. He carried a small boxwood bow and the girl had a barrel of arrows.

They might get nothing for days, or might be chased by a leopard and fall off of hills. They might get excited just about a dead rabbit, or might watch the lights from a small village for a time from a distance, and then silently walk away.

Now Lee Yu reckoned that Ning Que seemed not to be as awful as he was before, and asked, ”Living in the mountains is quite dangerous, why didn't you just go to the local council? The allowances for orphans in our country are generous and fair.”

Ning Que lowered his head, picked up a charred piece of wood and said in a soft tone, ”It's easier to live in a place with fewer people.”

Such a simple reason, but yet it revealed the kinds of hardship they had met. Lee Yu stared at the two with no words, asking suddenly, ”How, how did the old hunter die?”

Ning Que lifted his head, and answered peacefully, ”I killed him, with a knife.”

As for why he did so, he didn't say further, and would not explain it to this princess, who would never understand how base and dark life was for people like them, and probably never to anyone. He caressed Sangsang's little head gently, holding her in his arms closely.

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