“I have never wielded a sword until recently, but now I serve the people in a different way.” Mavra said. “I do not fight because I want to, that has never been the way of the Old Law, and will not be condoned. I fight to defend people like you, as does every person here. If you do not want to fight, there are a myriad of things that you can do to aid us, for we shall be bringing more people like you out of the bondage imposed by the mercenaries. There are countless villages across the grasslands, and they are all at risk. If the mercenary army can destroy every one, they will do so. We want to ensure that at least some can be saved, and have already seen to the survival of many. There are villages out there that are much more prepared than they would be, and a lot less innocent for it. Mark my words, they are more at risk now for they will appear as a threat to those that seek to destroy you all, but they are willing to take that risk to preserve their way of life. Would you join us and see that you have homes to go back to when this is all over? Or would you live your life out in hiding until one night, not too far from now, somebody puts a spear through your back and leaves you to drip dry.” Mavra paused to draw breath. “Mark my words, that will happen.”
The man looked a little more convinced, in fact his face paled as the scale of the potential horror washed over him. His wife looked up at Mavra. “What do they want?”
“They want several things at the end of the day.” It was Venla that spoke up before Mavra had a chance to answer. “They want you cowed and afraid, they want the pain of your deaths to last an eternity. They also want a former companion of ours, a girl not much older than Mavra here, who would do something about this.”
“Why don't you give the girl up?” The man was trembling as he said it.
“We would never do that,” Venla answered. “Give up one of our own? To that band of thugs? If we even knew where she was we would never do such a thing. Believe you me, if you thought that giving up one person would serve to end all of this you are sadly mistaken. This is not going to end. That is why we must all make a stand and make a stand now.”
Zya ducked back out of direct view. She could still see the crowd, but Mavra had them now and she saw her part ending.
“We have gone against our very tradition, the thing we hold dearest above all else, to make a stand.” Mavra said from above them. “Make a stand with us. Join us. The only way to go back to the way of life we so treasure is to do something so abjectly different that they will never see it coming. We have to rid ourselves of these mercenaries. We have to drive them out.”
The farmer that had raised his objections now looked a lot less sure of himself. “And can we? Can we make a difference?”
“Anybody can make a difference,” Mavra replied. “All you need is the fortitude to start something, the courage to take that first step, and the resilience to see it through. Trust me, you will need resilience, but you are witnessing the start of something phenomenal. You can go if you want, but we would much rather you aided us. For we know, I know, that it will make a difference both to us, and to all those people you will meet in the future that will thank you all for being there to stand up for their way of life.”
The farmer looked at his wife, and then down at his children. They were oblivious to the gravity of the situation, playing some obscure game with sticks and dirt. His wife remained mute, but the answer was clear in her eyes. The farmer wrestled with indecision for a moment, and then looked up at Mavra. “What can we do to help?” He said, and everybody cheered loudly in response.
* * *
Tired from the exertions of the previous day, Zya took the moments of peace when she could get them. At the moment, this involved snoozing by a warm fire in the middle of their forest encampment in the early morning. Mavra had convinced the farmers to stand with them, and they had celebrated the rescue in their own muted style. A good feed and a story from Gren was enough to make the people feel like a family. Even the tribesmen sat and listened with appreciation to the old cook, who told the story of the tribesmen that were chased and captured by the Witch finder outside the walls of Raessa. An ominous tale it was indeed, but it had a message of warning and of hope. Those that understood explained to the rest that they were the lucky ones, to have been picked from the viper's nest while the snake was not paying attention. Such a thing rarely happened, and so they all felt blessed. Zya felt little pride in having rescued them, but she was delighted to be back with her father, Ju and especially Lorn. So now she dozed, knowing that as soon as she opened her eyes, she would be asked a dozen questions, and talk of strategy, which she really did not understand. She wished it was all over, but Zya was inexperienced, not naïve. This had only just begun.
“Something to drink?”
Zya reluctantly opened her eyes. Venla stood nearby with a steaming mug. “Please, Venla.” Zya remembered to correct herself once again.
Venla smiled at the near-slip and sat down, producing two mugs. The tribesmen had been kind enough to build a small shelter for Zya out of respect for her tribal status, and now Venla nestled on the bracken next to her underneath fronds of the plant overhead.
Breathing in the aroma, Zya smelled the flavoursome but very bitter drink the tribe had brought with them. She took a quick sip, and the liquid warmed her as she swallowed. “Ahhh, you remembered,” she said in appreciation.
“Gren remembered the honey,” Venla supplied, unwilling to take the credit for anything that was not of her doing.
Zya leaned back into the shelter. Ahead of her, two of the children ran amongst the ferns and trees, squealing with delight as they swatted at the mist. “I bet they never knew why they were trapped in that village.”
“Probably not,” Venla replied as she took a sip of her own drink. She screwed up her face as she swallowed. “How can you drink that?”
“You get used to it, and the honey works wonders on the flavour.”
“Maybe I will try it.” Venla changed the subject. “You took a great risk coming into that camp, especially knowing who was there.”
“I had no say in the matter,” Zya replied. “I had answers to find, and the way I went about it was my only choice.”
“It is often good to act on instinct. A gut feeling or intuition can often be your unconscious mind's way of telling you something you wouldn't ordinarily think of, but at the same time something you have always known.”
“Perhaps,” Zya replied. “I would like to think that it is something that I can repeat. I feel that I am going to need that sort of strength in the future if I'm to become a fully-fledged seer, but know this. You have struck a blow with so many consequences. You are going to have to strike again while there is confusion.”
Venla looked confused. “You make it sound like we are the aggressors.”
“Are we not?”
“That was never my intention. We are trying to prevent an injustice here, not create one.”
“The boundary between the two is perilously close,” Zya observed as she watched tribesmen ghost in and out of the trees. “The act of rescue makes us all out to be doing the latter in the eyes of our enemy.
“But it exposed you all. Not that I am not grateful for you having done so, never think that of me Zya. The difference is that we were being held for a reason, and they are going to want to continue holding us for that same reason. It seems that the only reason they held onto us and treated us with the respect they did was because they were after you.”
This surprised Zya. “Did you not tell them of how we parted ways?”
Venla nodded. “I did, many times, but they refused to listen. The thing you have to understand with these people is that the best of them has a limited imagination. They stick to what they see and know. In our case, since they had captured somebody that had been close to you, they would keep pressuring us not because we would eventually tell them, but because we were the only link. The fact that we had not even seen you in moons never registered. The fact that they had held us for even longer, thus allowing you to m
ove even further away was at the best distant in their minds. Sense does not prevail amongst these people, and O'Bellah is the most pig-headed of the lot. He is nasty, a cruel being, and that gives him the power of command. It begs the question 'Why are you really here?' ”
“There were facts I needed to learn. That's why I was there. I now know the source of the evil, Venla. It all comes from Raessa.”
“The home of the Witch Finder.” Venla whispered. “Are you sure?”
It was at that point that Hawknest approached them. “You had better come and see this.” Nothing more the man said, but he turned and beckoned. Zya set her empty mug to one side and jumped up after the man. Venla followed as quickly as she could, but Zya outdistanced her with ease. As Zya approached, there were several of them kneeling around one of the shelters. Layric was there, her father, and Jaden, along with several of the tribe.
“It doesn't look like it was slept in for long.” Hawknest observed. “The bracken is not crushed, in fact it is still quite springy.”
“I would say this person waited until all had gone quiet and then left.” Concluded Layric, who then smiled upon seeing his wife once more. She smiled him a greeting, but remained quiet. This was not the time for banter. “Who was watching the forest during the night?”
“I was, and so was Scarlett,” Hawknest replied, “But I have not seen her since we took our posts last night…” Hawknest exuded a sense of urgency, uncommon for one of his tribe, and stood to look in the direction she had been guarding. “There is something amiss!” He pointed. “Footprints in the dirt, trailing off to the edge of the woods.” Without another word, he jumped up and walked off in the direction the tracks took him.
Cahal looked down rubbing his chin as he deciphered the marks. “He is good. Almost as good as the person who was here. Somebody intending to use stealth made those tracks. There are hardly any imprints in the ground where they have stepped. I would have missed them had they not been pointed out.”
Mavra smiled at this frank admission. “It's okay Cahal, we still love you.” She said.
“I was hired as a guard, not a tracker,” Cahal growled. “You are one fortunate girl to have found this lot. Speaking of that, should we not be following him?”
They looked up from the empty shelter and saw the briefest flash of Hawknest's red hair in the woods. Cahal led them, and they followed as quickly as they could. They caught up with the tribesman near the outer boundary of the trees. He knelt with his head down, studying something closely. They approached and he looked up. His face was wet with tears, and his teeth were gritted in anger. In front of him, covered mostly by bracken and grass, lay the still form of Scarlett Ashenfall, his partner. Cahal kneeled down on the other side of her, and touched her ice-cold skin, probing around for clues. He moved his hand around her head feeling around the awkward angles. “Broken,” he said without looking up. “Broken and then put back in place of all things.”
“To make it look as if she were just lying asleep,” Hawknest added, his voice full of grief. “She looks like an angel there, so peaceful, so very peaceful.” He touched her face, trailing the tips of his fingers, stained brown with soil across the smooth skin. He did not look up, transfixed by the sight of Scarlett in her death-state. “How could anybody do this?” He asked of them, and of the trees. He beseeched the very forest.
Zya moved away from the grisly sight, having seen enough death in the fight the other day. She beckoned Cahal over. “We will have to let Handel know of this if he does not already. He is going to have to deal with this, but hopefully he is a bit steadier than Hawknest. We also need to find out whom it was that escaped, and what they were doing in the camp in the first place. Ask the people we rescued if they remember anybody who are no longer with us, and ask the rest of the Caravan the same. There has to be somebody that remembers a face that is here no longer.”
Mavra broke the news to Handel herself, and instead of a similar reaction, he remained stone-faced, and it was only the look in his eyes that showed he was grieving. “Thank you for telling me of my sister, mistress. It means a lot that you sought me out so quickly. Has Hawknest been told?”
“He found her,” Mavra replied tearfully, “covered in bracken and ice-cold to the touch. It appears that whoever did this to her did it very early last night.”
Handel said nothing more, but instead went to his people, all of whom gathered around Hawknest to share in his grief. The travellers and the recent captives empathised, but could do nothing other than feel sorry for them. It was a private moment for a very private people. The tribe retreated to the very centre of the woodland, bearing the body of their fallen sister with them. It was at this point that Cahal returned, with the very farmer that had been speaking out against her. “This is Dag, a wheat farmer whom you might remember. He has some information that may help us.”
Mavra smiled a greeting, understanding that the farmer might be a bit hesitant after what he had said the night before. “Don't worry about it. You were right to harbour doubts, but I am glad that you stuck with us.”
“Don't get me wrong, Mistress, but I still have doubts,” Dag replied. “My wife and I just feel that our lot is better cast with you than on our own in a house that might get attacked.”
“That is good to know.” Mavra said. “How can you help us? Is there anything you can tell us of the person that did this?”
“Aye,” he replied, “there is. He was the one that said I would have a chance to speak up and let you all know how difficult things would get. He had been urging me all day during the ride. My wife had given up on me listening to her, as he continually had my ear.”
“Who was he?” Mavra asked, beckoning Venla and the others closer with her free hand.
“He was an old man, sort of bent, wearing a great brown cloak. He had little hair, and kept his hood up most of the time. He said his name was Patrick.”
“Oh Gods no.” It was Venla who had spoken out, and Gwyn and Jani were looking at the ground, muttering and shaking their heads.
“What is the problem?” Asked Cahal, unsure why the information that was so useful had this effect on them.
“When we had been captured at the farmstead, we were taken to a camp in the wilderness. What we have not told you was that when we escaped from that camp, during the ceremony where those aimless men gave themselves to that evil creature, we took with us those that were willing to go. One of them was an old man, stooped and hooded. He caused us no end of difficulties, and in the end he was the one directly responsible for us being recaptured. He was a lieutenant of O'Bellah himself, a man lovingly called Thrasher. He went by the name Patrick when he was with us. He sounds an awful lot like your Patrick.”
“And he was with us here, last night?”
Dag nodded. “My wife saw him snooping around the place after you finished speaking. He was acting awfully suspicious, always prodding and peeking into things. At one point I am sure that he tried to get into the wagon there, but something scared him off.”
“It makes sense that this was the same man.” Zya mused. “How come you didn't see him before, when you were trying to contact everybody the previous night?”
“Did you check every house as we asked you to?” Mavra asked Venla.
“All but one. There was one house on the end of a row that was deserted.”
Cahal swore, punching at the side of the wagon. “We got somebody from every one of those houses. It looks as though we have picked up this man with the rest of them, and we didn't know any different.”
“And now he has gone, killed one of the tribe and is probably taking our location straight back to O'Bellah,” Mavra continued. “So now the question that I put to you is do we stand and fight, or do we escape with our lives and live to fight another day? For surely they will come at us with whatever mercenaries they have now that they know of our location.”
“If I may make a suggestion, Mistress,” Said Dag, “My village is but ten leagues from here. It is
a sizeable community, and if there are any left alive there they will surely be willing to join and aid you.”
This brought murmurs of agreement from the rest of the travellers, and Mavra nodded. “Let us give the tribesmen time for whatever rite it is that they hold, and then we shall leave this place.” She looked up and around her at the woodland canopy. “So many homes, so little time.”
Cahal looked resigned as he said, “that is the way of war.”
It took but a day for the tribesmen to commit Scarlett to the earth with a series of simple ceremonies. Zya remained with her father during that time, somehow unable to press him about her mother in this circumstance. So it was the following day that they all packed up and moved out of their camp.
“Are we ready?” Mavra called back to the column. She received nods of approval and cheers from those that made up the 'band', for it was too large to call it a caravan. They moved out in the waning light of the afternoon, trusting to lengthening shadows to hide them from the eyes of any pursuers. Zya rode beside the wagon with her father. She was silent as she watched proceedings unfold She had never seen an army before, for an army was surely what they were becoming.
“It seems so very many people.” She said in a whisper as she looked around them.
“Numbers seem less when you are hidden by trees and bushes.” Observed Jaden, who was sticking very close to the main wagon, essentially the heart of the column. Cahal had gone ahead with some of the tribesmen who were acting as scouts. The rest of the tribe were busy erasing any clues as to which way they were headed.
That such a feat was even possible considering the number of them moving was astounding, and Mavra chanted a blessing to the Gods as she rode in front. Zya stood up in her stirrups. “How far to the villages?”
“Several leagues, lass.” Jaden replied without looking up at her. “We will not see any evidence of them for a good while yet. The villages on the plains are by nature guarded little settlements, not obvious to behold. We might not even see them as we pass should we not be looking in the right place.”
The Path of Dreams (The Tome of Law Book 2) Page 32