This time, Chanyeol was wakened not by a voice, or by a touch, but by movement. He became aware first of a rocking motion, then slowly of the pain, his body bloodied and battered. But he was laid out on something softer than a bed of rocks and covered in a thick blanket, warm and dry.

Warm and dry and .

Chanyeol sat bolt upright and instantly regretted it. “Ow,” he snarled, clutching at his pounding head with his aching hand. It wasn’t until after he’d done so that he realized his hands were bandaged.

“Hey,” he heard, “he’s awake!”

The rocking motion came to a halt, and as Chanyeol’s eyes adjusted, he realized why - he was in a cart, a covered wagon, the driver of which had just brought whatever was pulling it to a stop. Looking around, Chanyeol noted that the inside of the cart was garishly dressed in reds and oranges and purples, crates and packs lashed to the frame with rough-made rope to keep them from shifting during travel. The blanket over him was equally rough-made and equally garish, chevrons and stripes dyed in sky blue and russet in the thick wool. After nearly a week of nothing but nature and - by his best estimation - two days of near-complete darkness, the colors and patterns almost physically hurt to look at.

The back canvas wall of the wagon pulled open, letting in some angled sunlight - dawn or dusk, Chanyeol couldn’t tell - and a man climbed in, lithe and dark and dressed as obnoxiously as his cart. Chanyeol’s immediate instinct was to scramble away, to find something to defend himself with, but his body protested motion of any description and the man didn’t seem to be threatening, really. (Outside of his apparent predilection for eye-searing color combinations, that was.)

“Whoa,” the man said, holding out both hands, palms forward, in defensive placation. “I’m not here to hurt you, friend. You’re safe.” He had an accent, soft-edged and unfamiliar.

“Where am I?” Chanyeol croaked, and then grimaced at the gravelly quality of his voice. “Who are you?”

“My name is Jongin, and you’re in the middle of absolute nowhere,” the man told him, rather too cheerfully. “We found you on a riverbank when we stopped to water the horses. You looked like you’d been through hell.”

Not at all an incorrect assumption. “My clothes?” Chanyeol asked.

“We tossed ‘em,” Jongin told him, climbing more fully into the cart and offering Chanyeol a waterskin. Chanyeol took it and gulped from it gratefully. “Your armor was okay but your clothes were soaked and just about as destroyed as your skin. And you were turning blue from the cold, so we figured we needed to get you out of them. What the heck even happened to you?”

“It’s a long story,” Chanyeol mumbled, wiping off his mouth with his forearm. “Do you have clothes I can borrow?”

Jongin opened a nearby chest and dug through it, pulling out some things and tossing them Chanyeol’s way. The shirt was much cheaper-made than Chanyeol was used to, while simultaneously being flouncier and showier than he preferred, deep teal blue with bright yellow ruffles and a neckline that plunged more than halfway down his torso. Thankfully, the trousers were plain black canvas, a little too short but otherwise they fit well. He laced up the fly as Jongin tied open the back wall of the cart, letting in the fading light.

“Let’s just make camp here,” Jongin called, and Chanyeol craned his head to see who he was talking to. There was movement outside the canvas, at least two bodies, but Chanyeol couldn’t make out features.

Jongin held out his hand. “What’s your name, friend?” he asked.

Chanyeol blinked at him. “...Chanyeol,” he said finally, and took Jongin’s hand gingerly with his own, heavily bandaged one. Jongin helped him to roll up to his knees and get out of the back of the wagon. His bare feet hit cool, dewy grass, and Chanyeol looked around.

They were at the side of a road, with no civilization visible in any direction. The sun was already almost disappeared behind the massive range of mountains which loomed up on the western horizon; from that Chanyeol deduced that they had been travelling north, perpendicular to the direction he’d intended to go.

“How far have we come since you picked me up?” Chanyeol asked. It came out a little bit sharp, a little bit anxious.

“It’s been half a day,” Jongin said, pulling a spade from a crate behind Chanyeol’s shoulder and jumping down to the ground. “Why? You got somewhere to be?”

Chanyeol sighed. “Maybe,” he said, staring at the mountains. They were a lot wider than he’d expected - how was he ever going to find his destiny?

“Well, you’re in no shape to travel alone,” Jongin said decisively. “We’re headed for a town; you’re welcome to stay with us until we reach it. Should be about one more day’s ride.” He flashed Chanyeol a grin that burned white against his tanned skin. “We seem to be collecting strays these days, anyway.”

“I heard that,” an unfamiliar voice said. Chanyeol leaned around the side of the wagon - ow ow ow, good heavens his back was a mess - and looked for the source. He found it in a tall and extraordinarily thin young blond man, coming around the back of the wagon with a bundle of firewood in his hands, dressed similarly to how Chanyeol now was (except in an unfortunate shade of pink) and looking exceedingly unimpressed with everything around him.

Jongin’s grinned widened. “Chanyeol, this is Sehun. We picked him up about a week ago.”

Sehun glared. “You make me sound like a sack of potatoes.”

“It’s not an un-apt comparison.”

“I hate you.”

Jongin blew him an obnoxious kiss and started digging a fire pit. Sehun rolled his eyes in Chanyeol’s general direction, making a smile tug at the corners of Chanyeol’s lips.

“Ah, Sleeping Handsome awakens,” a third new voice said, this one sharp-toned but with the same odd accent that Jongin had.

“His name is Chanyeol,” Jongin said as the newest man came around the back, a sweaty, muddy saddle hefted up onto his shoulder. He was smaller than Jongin, and paler, with catlike features, and his clothes were the loudest yet, layers of colors and patterns and heavy, tacky golden jewelry. “Chanyeol, that’s Jongdae, my unfortunate partner-in-crime.”

Jongdae somehow managed an elaborate bow over one leg while holding a saddle nearly half as big as he was. “Charmed, sir,” he said with a wink. “Welcome to our little caravan. I hope you can cook because Jongin is terrible.”

“As if you’re better.”

“I’ve seen you burn water, boy. You have a rare talent.”

“If you two don’t shut up, I’m stealing the new guy and both your horses and taking off,” Sehun threatened. Jongin and Jongdae flipped him an array of rude gestures in quick succession and Chanyeol had to cover his mouth to keep from laughing.

“Um,” he offered, “I can cook game?” He’d never had reason to learn the more delicate craft of kitchen cooking, but campfire cooking he could do.

“Excellent!” Jongdae enthused. “Sehun, go hunt us some game.” He hefted the saddle into the back of the wagon, then hauled himself up after it, digging in the crates for a tack brush and saddle soap.

Chanyeol ended up helping Jongin with the fire while Sehun hunted and Jongdae took care of the tack. He moved very slowly, his entire body one pulsing mass of pain, but the more he moved the more the stiffness wore through and the less pained he felt. His hands were cut up, but they seemed to be smaller cuts that would heal quickly. Other than the bite wound on his thigh from that eel, the rest was just nasty scrapes and bruises on his arms and legs. His borrowed chainmail had thankfully protected his back, shoulders and chest from being battered by the rocks; he was just sore from exertion and being knocked around by the current.

Jongin and Jongdae pelted him with questions, which he answered as truthfully as he dared - he was on a Quest, he wasn’t certain where he was going, but he knew he needed to go west. He left out his parentage, and also the more unbelievable elements of his journey so far; but he did, hesitantly, talk about his vision, about the images of a dragon and the glimpses of the woman he believed was waiting for him.

“You should talk to Sehun,” Jongin said as he began chopping up vegetables, perched on a felled log with a cutting board balanced on his knees. “He’s on a Quest himself.”

Chanyeol blinked, and opened his mouth to ask what kind of Quest, but at that moment Sehun himself returned with a young doe slung over his broad shoulders, and Chanyeol’s throat suddenly felt dry. The doe was smaller, and antlerless, but still, the image of Lu Han in that doe’s place hit him hard.

He closed his eyes. Humans had been hunting deer for eons. It was fine. It was normal. And Lu Han was so deep in a forest filled with hostile creatures that he might never encounter a human hunter in his life, anyway.

The image of Lu being suddenly felled by an arrow in the middle of a conversation with Minseok flashed through his mind, but he pushed it away. These men had rescued him, and he’d volunteered to cook for them, and in any case, he hadn’t had a substantial meal in a week.

“You okay?” Sehun’s flat voice asked lowly, and Chanyeol opened his eyes to see him standing over him with the deer still in hand.

“Yeah,” Chanyeol assured him, though his stomach was rolling. “I’m fine.” He looked over his shoulder at Jongdae. “Got a knife?”

Jongdae reached into still another crate. “We kept yours,” he said, passing it to Chanyeol.

Preparing a whole deer was something he hadn’t done since he was a teenager, but the palace huntsman had drilled the process into his head, citing that no man should be forced to rely on someone else to prepare his meals, prince or no. So Chanyeol said a silent and heartfelt apology to Lu Han and Minseok and this poor young doe herself, and started to skin the carcass.

Between the simple vegetables and a few jars of herbs that Jongdae had lying around, Chanyeol managed to produce a fairly reasonable meal. And despite his guilt, the meat tasted like heaven to his half-starved system. For the first time since he’d set out, Chanyeol felt full.

Over dinner, Jongin goaded Sehun into talking about his own Quest, likely for Chanyeol’s benefit. Sehun, as it turned out, had a friend, a very close childhood friend who had a few years before been sent away to live with his uncle. Sehun had received a letter two weeks previous that told of the horrors inflicted by the friend’s new guardian - who, as it turned out, was an evil sorcerer - and begged Sehun to come rescue him.

“Tao’s never been a fighter,” Sehun said softly, staring into the fire where the remains of dinner was still hanging on Chanyeol’s rough-made roasting spit. “He’s strong, he’s fast, and he’s absolute crap at defending himself. He gets startled by songbirds. His favorite pastime is knitting. I couldn’t leave him.”

Chanyeol felt a surge of simultaneous camaraderie and jealousy with the younger man. Jongin was right - Sehun got it. Sehun understood what it was to fight your way through hell and high water for the sake of someone else. But at the same time, Sehun actually knew who his person was. Knew where they were, how bad the situation was for them, how he would be received when he came to the rescue. Knew what he was up against.

Chanyeol didn’t know any of those things. All he had was a vision and a gut feeling.



+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++



The four dubiously-dressed travelers set out at dawn. Fed and rested and in somewhat less pain, Chanyeol was in good spirits, and his conversation with Jongin was easy and casual, riding on the driver’s bench of the cart as they drove behind Jongdae and Sehun on the horses.

“What are you planning to do once we get to town?” Jongin asked, after they’d been on the road for half an hour or so.

“I’m not sure, to be honest,” Chanyeol said. “I’m alright as long as I don’t move too quickly, but it’ll be a few days at least before I’m feeling up to travelling on my own, let alone facing a dragon. And I suppose I’ll need to find someone to direct me, too. Those mountains look awfully expansive; I’d imagine even a huge mythical monster could find plenty of places to hide.”

Jongin gave him a considering look out of the corner of his eye. “You don’t have any money, do you?” he asked shrewdly. “You weren’t carrying a purse or anything when we found you.”

Chanyeol wondered briefly if they’d frisked him. “No, all my money was lost with the rest of my supplies in the forest,” he realized. Until this point, he hadn’t had reason to think about it, and growing up a prince he was used to taking money for granted. “I suppose I’ll need to find a way to get some if I want to eat in that village, huh?”

“Or have a roof over your head, yeah,” Jongin said. “Well, you can always join our act for a while.”

His eyebrows raising without his input, Chanyeol asked, “Your act?”

“Well. Yes.” Jongin blinked at him. “What, you don’t think we dress like this because we like it, do you? Well, alright, Jongdae does, but his taste is atrocious.” Jongin made a grand gesture at the garishly colored wagon. “We’re travelling performers. People will pay all kinds of money if you interrupt their boredom.”

Oh. Chanyeol had never really had occasion to see travelling performers before, at least not outside of the renowned ones who were invited to perform at the palace. “What...what would I need to do?” he asked cautiously.

Jongin looked surprised he was actually considering it. “That depends on what you can do, I guess,” he said. “I dance, Jongdae sings, we both bang clumsily on drums. People throw money at us, sometimes literally.” He nodded at the tall figure ranging ahead, bow out in his hand. “Sehun is pretty terrible at singing but he picks up choreography quick, so for the past few days he’s been out there dancing with me. We’ve got this sort of night-and-day theme going on. People are eating it up.” He adjusted the reins in his hand. “So? What can you do?”

An excellent question. “I can...sing? Sort of?” In truth, he’d been trained in the basics of a number of arts, but he was wary of mentioning that, for fear his obvious education would give away his high-standing background. Jongin - and the other two - treated him like they would any other man, and Chanyeol found it refreshing. “I can probably bang a drum at least as clumsily as you. And. Um.” Oh, what the heck. “I do know a couple of sword dances. I trained with the military for a little while.”

Jongin’s eyebrows disappeared into his dark hair. “That would be something,” Jongin said. “That’s a rare skill in these parts. I’ll be asking you to demonstrate when we break next. In the meantime, sing me a song.”

Chanyeol blinked, and harumphed to clear his throat, and took a drink from his waterskin. “Right now?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Jongin challenged. “Sing for me.”

So Chanyeol did, softly. The only song that came to mind was the old folk song his nanny had sang for him as a child, the same one he’d sung to himself while making camp that first night. It wasn’t the same without some kind of accompaniment, so he tapped out a simple beat on the bench of the wagon and his own thighs.

He went through the first verse with his eyes on the backs of the horses in front of him, not looking up until his voice trailed off. Jongin was watching him and grinning from ear to ear.

“Oh yeah,” he said, wrapping an arm companionably around Chanyeol’s shoulders, “you’ll do just fine.”



+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++



Once Jongin explained the situation to Jongdae and Sehun, their day was as much rehearsing as it was travelling. By the time they reached the town, a little village that housed maybe a fourth as many people as Chanyeol’s home palace alone, they’d fit Chanyeol into their show in as many places as they could manage. Jongdae went in first to speak to the innkeeper, and he’d come back out at a jog and disappeared into the back of the wagon with a hiss of we’re on in half an hour. The next half an hour was a flurry of preparation, and then they filed into the little in and took up a cleared area that served as a stage in front of what seemed to be half the town.

With fingerless leather gloves pulled over his bandaged hands, his ragged hair brushed out and tied back, and his collar pulled open as far as it could go, Chanyeol took a hand drum and kept the beat. Jongin had told him that any amount of showing off or flirting with the audience that he could do would directly translate into a bigger take for the night, but Chanyeol wasn’t really certain how to flirt with an audience, so he just sort of smiled widely when someone caught his eye and hoped it came off rakishly handsome and not manic.

Not that anyone was looking at him, anyway. The first number was focused on Jongin, because apparently he garnered the most attention, and Chanyeol could see why. Dressed in layers and layers of brightly colored silks that somehow managed to hide exactly none of his sleek, dark body, with tinkling brass bells ringing his wrists, ankles, and hips, every single thing about him was carefully calculated to be attention-catching. His movements were graceful and strong, punctuated with stomping and clapping and carefully timed jingling of bells, making music as much as the drums Chanyeol and Sehun were playing.

Then Jongdae started to sing, his clear, powerful voice ringing off the beams of the little inn. Chanyeol was glad he’d heard him practicing on the road, or he might have completely forgotten to keep his beat. It was a simple performance, but a captivating one, and judging by the catcalls and hollering it was well received.

The next song was a little faster, a little darker, and both Jongdae’s voice and Jongin’s body oozed as they performed. This went on for a handful more numbers, with Jongdae occasionally addressing the audience and making them laugh in between, and then it was Chanyeol’s turn. He handed his drum to Jongdae, picked up his sword, and rolled out his shoulders as he took his place in the center of the makeshift stage.

Military sword dancing was created originally as an exercise in strength, coordination, and concentration; it had developed into a slightly showier art form over time as trained officers used it to impress royalty and entice new recruits. Chanyeol had always been good at it, his long arms giving him an advantage of space. Jongdae set a steady beat, and Chanyeol began to spin his blade, just on the one side of his body at first, but soon crossing over, overhead, switching hands, spinning in place and tossing the sword in the air.

He was a little out of practice, but his muscles remembered what his mind did not, and the routines flowed out of him easily. Only once did his bandaged hands cause the sword to slip, but he caught it and did what he could to make the mistake look intentional. Signalling (as agreed) with a double stamp of his right foot that he was ready to end, he launched into the flashiest sequence he knew as Jongdae’s beat sped. The sequence ended with him dropping the sword, catching it across the instep of his boot and tossing it back up. He caught the sword and dropped into a flourished bow, and the audience erupted into cheering.

“Brilliant,” Jongin whispered as they traded places, squeezing his arm in excitement. “Now we bring it home.” Chanyeol took the drum from Sehun as he stood as well, and Jongdae picked up an oddly-shaped string instrument that Chanyeol had never seen before.

He’d been taught the beat for this one, which was a simple pattern of four bars repeated over and over, so and Jongdae’s signal he began to play. Four bars in, Jongdae added both voice and strings, and Jongin began to move.

The song was one Chanyeol had not heard, something about the sun and the moon, and Jongin and Sehun were playing the parts, Jongin in red and orange, his darker skin set off by gold jewelry, and Sehun in blue and grey and white, with strands of bells to match Jongin’s, but in silver. They moved well together, and though it was clear that Jongin was the professional, Sehun kept up.

Though he wanted to drop his drum - and his jaw - and just watch, Chanyeol managed to keep his four-bar pattern going, and when the two young men were finished, applause erupted and Jongin and Sehun moved through the crowd with baskets, accepting donations. (They also accepted some inappropriate touching, which made Chanyeol frown, but both men shrugged it off with easy laughter and smiles, and Jongdae wasn’t saying anything so Chanyeol let it go.)

As planned, Jongdae announced him as the encore - because, as he’d said earlier, if you collect both before the encore and after, sometimes people donate twice - and as the crowd quieted, Chanyeol took the stage, cleared his throat, and started to sing.

He’d performed sword dancing in front of a crowd before, but never sang for one, and standing still and staring at the audience quickly became too much for his nerves. He closed his eyes and pretended he was home, singing to himself in the gardens at night.

Except that behind his eyelids he saw those eyes again, that beautiful smile, and something new, the brush of black hair against a rosy cheek, and suddenly he was singing to her. And he’d heard the song so many times, all his life, but he’d never actually listened to the lyrics, never realized before how they reflected what was in his heart.

It was over before he realized it. The applause was deafening, and he opened his eyes only to realize there were tears in them. Tears for his homeland which he’d left, and also for his future, which was unknown.

Chanyeol received congratulations from patrons and fellow performers alike and got a basket shoved in his hands, Jongin grabbing him by the wrist to go make the rounds one more time. He went in a daze, his mind still half back in his vision, still trying to piece together a whole face from the glimpses he’d seen so far.

He was yanked rather rudely back to reality when a woman swiftly d at his exposed chest, and barely had time to react to that before he felt a different hand cupping his . Jongin’s grip on his wrist kept him from whirling around and demanding to know who was manhandling him, but the younger man seemed to have noticed his sudden discomfort and ushered him back to the stage. The four of them bowed one last time, then Jongdae sent Sehun and Chanyeol back to the cart while he and Jongin stayed to chat up patrons.

The moment the caravan’s canvas flap was closed, Sehun yanked off the jewelry, the baby-blue silk shirt. Chanyeol followed his example, sick to death of the yellow ruffles. “You did really well,” Sehun told him. “That looked like a good take.” He gave Chanyeol a shrewd look. “You know, you told us you trained with the army, not that you were an officer,” he said, “but that swordwork was much too advanced for the rank-and-file. And yet, you don’t move or act like a soldier.” His eyes narrowed. “You’re a nobleman, aren’t you?”

Chanyeol flushed. “Don’t say anything,” he pleaded. “I don’t want to make things strange between them and me.”

Sehun made a buttoning motion over his lips. “I only noticed because I’m from the East, like you,” he assured Chanyeol. “Jongin and Jongdae, they’re from the South, I’m sure they’d never make the connection.” He dug through one of the crates near the back of the caravan and pulled out a plain, deep blue shirt, no ruffles besides a little bit of a flounce at the cuffs. “So. How noble are we talking?” he asked, tossing the shirt Chanyeol’s direction. Chanyeol pulled it on gratefully - those butter-yellow ruffles were really getting to him.

“Uh.” Chanyeol gave Sehun a careful look. “Pretty noble, actually.”

“You’re not royalty, are you?” Sehun asked, half in jest. Chanyeol reddened and Sehun’s jaw dropped. “Oh hellfire. No wonder you’re keeping it under wraps.”

“Please don’t -” Chanyeol stopped, not really sure what he was asking. Don’t treat me differently.

“Nah,” Sehun said. “Never held much stock in bloodlines anyway. It’s about what a man does, not who his parents are.” He yanked on another shirt himself, dark grey and even plainer than Chanyeol’s. “I’m close now,” he said softly, looking down. “The sorcerer's tower is less than a day’s ride from here. Jongin and Jongdae are staying for another night, but I’m leaving in the morning.”

Oh.

“Are you scared?” Chanyeol asked curiously. Sehun looked up at him with a little smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes.

“Yeah,” he admitted. “I’m kind of scared. But I’m gonna do it. Tao needs me.”

On a sudden whim, Chanyeol asked, “Do you need help?” Sehun blinked at him, and Chanyeol clarified, “Someone to watch your back, I mean. You are going up against an evil sorcerer.”

The smile this time was more genuine. “I appreciate the offer,” Sehun said, “but I can’t wait, and you’re in no shape to be travelling like that, or fighting either. You concentrate on getting better so you can go rescue your fair maiden. I’ve got this. With luck I can get Tao out without ever running into his evil uncle.”

Chanyeol opened his mouth to protest, but at that moment Jongin and Jongdae came back, to give them their shares of the money earned and to usher them into the inn for dinner.









In case you’re curious, Chanyeol’s sword dancing looks a little bit like this, and the song he’s singing sounds kind of like this.

If you haven’t read the totally adorable Hogwarts!AU Chansoo that jumpthisship wrote for me, you really should! (The community is members-only but trust me, it’s worth joining.)

And if you left me a message on tumblr it would seriously make my day!