by Guy Antibes
In the morning they headed to their next destination, a city on the other side of the town that Tanner had visited the previous day. The coast had taken on a dreary look with a high fog making the sun a white dot in the middle of a field of light gray.
The un-walled town, Garran, had a wharf, but the boats were smaller, and they looked like fishing craft. Jack asked Ralinn about them, but she didn’t know, either. Tanner confirmed Jack’s guess. The town did have a market, filled with the smell of fish. They grabbed a few supplies and rode on without any problem.
Pestersee, borrowing the same city naming convention that Corand had, was almost two day’s travel on the other side of Garran. When they stopped to rest, Tanner pulled out his map.
“We will have to be careful here,” Tanner said pointing to an area noted with some bumps on the map indicating hills. “This is the closest the insurgents may be to us on our way to Pestersee.”
“I don’t see a problem,” Lark said with a confidence that Tanner lacked. “Between the five of us, we should be able to take care of scouts.”
“What if they aren’t scouts?” Tanner asked. “The rebels in this area are organized, so the men said in Garran.”
Lark pursed his lips. “No problem. We will just have to stay vigilant.”
“Vigilant, got that Helen and Jack?”
Jack did, but he wasn’t so sure about Helen. She moved closer to Lark than to Tanner, and to him, that meant she was closer to the wizard’s way of thinking. Jack knew all about vigilant. It was drilled into him in Dorkansee and Lajia.
Chapter Seven
~
A spur of hilly terrain snaked across Tesoria from the east to meet the ocean north of Pestersee. If they were in trouble from insurgents, it would happen through these hills, Jack thought.
Ralinn rode between Helen and Lark talking up front and Tanner and Jack in the back. Their goal was a tiny village with a good roadside inn, so the men in Garran said. Jack didn’t know if he could trust locals, but Lark didn’t know the area that well, and Jack didn’t want to spend another night camping in the open. Helen and Lark were very protective of Ralinn to the point it made their break uncomfortable. He and Tanner found a clear, flat spot ten paces from the others.
Jack had offered to start a little campfire, but Tanner had scolded him for thinking Tanner was incapable of such a thing, even though Jack hadn’t even considered his offer to be offensive.
Tanner’s foul mood continued to the point that Jack had to engage the man in conversation, which was a new development, since Tanner never lacked for a story or a comment on anything before.
“Vigilance,” Jack said to Tanner as they rode away.
His comment earned him a glare from the mercenary, but his expression softened. “Vigilance. Now that you mention it,” Tanner looked around the hills dotted with clusters of trees, “I see a forest up ahead. If you can bring up the rear by yourself, I will do a little scouting.”
“Why don’t you ask Helen?” Jack said. “She likes to scout.”
Tanner looked ahead. “I’ll do it today. Helen will get plenty of opportunity on this trip.” He kicked his horse in the ribs and moved out past the others on the road.
Jack watched him kick his horse into a gallop as he disappeared around a bend in the curvy road. Ralinn waited for Jack to catch up to her.
“Where did he go?” she asked.
“Scouting for rebels, scouting for bandits,” Jack said shrugging his shoulders. “Tanner was itching to do something. I could tell.”
Ralinn nodded. “Why didn’t you go with him?”
Jack couldn’t help but blush. “Everyone here is to protect me. I’m carrying the warded box to the grand wizard in Wilton. I shouldn’t go off.”
Ralinn shook her head, making her veil wave. “I forgot.” She paused. “I think we have all forgotten,” she said looking up ahead at her brother riding next to Helen. “I will remember. You can protect yourself, though, can’t you?”
“I’m not defenseless if that is what you mean. I’m not the world’s greatest swordsman, but I have a few wizardly tricks up my sleeve. Tanner and Helen are the experienced ones. Has Lark ever fought other wizards?”
Ralinn laughed. Jack could listen to that laugh forever. “Not really. He is probably better with a sword than you, but he doesn’t like wearing a weapon. I have the small sword that he bought for me, but it is more for show. However, I will admit to some training.”
“Why do you wear it, if it is just for show?”
Ralinn paused for a moment as if to collect herself. “I wouldn’t dare show it unless I was on the road. Ladies don’t do such things.”
“So what is Helen?”
Ralinn laughed. “She is not a lady, but she is very, very formidable.”
Jack disagreed. He thought Helen could be a lady if she chose, but he agreed on the formidable part.
“What is Raker Falls like?” Ralinn said.
Jack kept his mouth shut as he thought about his response. He didn’t want to come off as a complete bumpkin, but there was no escape from her question.
“It is a good-sized village at the end of a road that leads to nowhere else. It is big enough to justify an Alderachean temple with two and sometimes three priests. Raker Falls is an actual falls not far from the village that is on the Vellum River. Some folks use waterpower, so we have a flour mill and a lumber mill. My father, who is a furniture craftsman, uses the river to power some of his tools to shape wood. I learned to be a planer when I was ten years old. The other tool in big demand is the lathe that turns spindles.”
“Will you take over his business?”
Jack laughed. “Not hardly. I have a brother and a brother-in-law vying for that privilege. I was always meant to be a planer, since I am the youngest of them all. I don’t have to worry about that now that I have Fasher Tempest for my master.”
“And you are a wizard’s helper,” Ralinn said. “That counts for much.”
“Some day,” Jack said. “The hardest part about wizarding is patience.”
Ralinn turned to him. “But you learn so quickly!”
“Learn magic too quickly, and it might cost you. I knew a wizard that held an object of power and let it get the best of him. He lost his hand and soon after that his life. I saw it all.”
She put her hand to her mouth. “You hear stories…I have heard plenty, but you have seen it.”
“I have. The wizard was much older than I and should have known better, but using an object of power can be seductive.”
“Is it seductive for you?”
Jack had to think about that. “Using wizardry, in general, is that way, but an object of power takes the risk level way up. I was forced to use one once to get out of a jam, and I was very, very lucky.”
She laughed, but Jack could tell she was still a bit nervous about what he said. “You have experienced the high and the low, then.”
“I’m glad it wasn’t me who lost control,” Jack said.
Ralinn nodded and looked forward, not making another comment.
Suddenly, Tanner shot out of a copse growing out of a little valley to their left.
“To arms!” He said waving his sword. “I couldn’t shake them.” Tanner reached them and urged them to ride up the knob of a small hill. “Swords and wands out. There are eight or nine of them.”
Jack tried to remember all that Helen had taught him about fighting on horseback, but the group emerging from where Tanner had been erased any advice out of his mind. He did tie the veil to his face before he quickly strapped his cuirass on and jammed the helmet to his head.
The attackers stopped when they saw Tanner join the group. Jack held the sword and the wand in his hands, waiting to see what would happen.
Two of the band rode out from the others after they made a show of sheathing their weapons. Tanner and Lark rode in front of them.
“That is far enough,” Lark said, stopping the advance of the attackers.
Th
ey didn’t look like bandits to Jack. They wore uniforms, but they didn’t look new.
“What are you doing in Sparrow space?” one of the men said.
“When we set out two days ago, the road was uncontested all the way to Pestersee.”
“Well, it isn’t now. What do you intend to do about it?” the man said.
Tanner and Lark had a conversation and motioned Jack to join them.
“Do you have any wizards with you?” Lark said. “I’m a wizard, and this boy is a wizard. Do you want to risk burning alive? We have no reason to fight you. We’d just like to pass through on our way to Pestersee.”
“Then pay a tax,” the other person said.
“A tax?” Tanner asked. “That makes you brigands, not members of the Sparrows, doesn’t it?”
“That isn’t something you need to worry about.”
“If what you want are my possessions, it is,” Tanner said.
The pair rode back to their group. They broke out small shields and lined up, ten riders in a row.
“You could have counted better,” Jack said. “What do we do when they attack?”
“Take out the two men we talked to, first. If they are willing to thieve, they are willing to disturb Helen and Ralinn. I’m not worried about Helen, but…”
“Maybe we should give them some money,” Lark said.
“Even I know they will only want more,” Jack said. “We will stop them here. Is this the real Tesoria?”
Lark cleared his throat. “At present, too much of it is like this,” he admitted.
The brigands slowly rode forward. Jack remembered the uniforms of the two men, and once they crossed the road, they were in range of the wand. He brought it up and pointed it at the older of the two Sparrows and aimed toward the man’s face.
Jack squinted and said the trigger word. A bolt shot out of the wand and tagged the ear of the rider. The man immediately raised his hand, stopping the advance. He talked to two others, and they faced Jack’s group. Jack could see they were settling into their saddles. Jack’s warning only served to antagonize their enemy.
He had given them a chance, but the men began to charge. Jack shot his next bolt into the eye of the man he had tagged on the ear. He fell off his horse. Jack shot another bolt into the hand of his second in command. The sword flashed in the sun as it dropped to the ground.
“One last chance,” Lark yelled. He bathed the ground six feet in front of him with fire, which was stupid, thought Jack, because the drying summer grass burned uphill toward them. “Retreat!” the wizard said.
Tanner shook his head and headed toward his right with Ralinn following him. Lark and Helen went to the other side, while Jack, remembering his fire protection spell, filled himself with power and pointed his wand toward the flame (not that his wand would do anything, but he wanted it ready). He urged his horse onward. It balked, but Jack had it jump over the burnt grass. The flames were shunted aside. He faced three men. The other Sparrows had split to face the rest of his group.
Jack raised his wand and burned a hole in one of his opponent’s face. The man fell off his horse. The other two withdrew, but Jack hit another in the back. The man fell to join his companion. He looked right and then left to see that Tanner was having a harder time.
The fight was outside Jack’s normal range, but he grabbed hold of the handle of his knife and felt the extra power. He aimed his wand and cut another man down. Jack drew his sword and moved to harry Tanner’s second opponent. Tanner took care of the first and then wheeled, and when the last man looked back at Jack, Tanner ran him through. The three of them hurried to finish off the two men left harrying Lark and Helen, but the men galloped off to join their last mounted companion. Ralinn kept away from the action, and to Jack’s thinking, she didn’t get in the way of all the fighting.
The one man that remained alive sat with his hands up.
Helen dismounted and began to see to their enemy’s wound.
“We told you we didn’t want to fight you,” Lark said.
“No wizard should have that kind of range,” the man said, lying on his stomach as Helen cut his uniform shirt.
“You should have stopped when our man tapped your leader on the ear,” Tanner said. “We will leave you here with your companions. I’m sure the others will be back to fetch you.”
Jack and Lark dragged the bodies next to the injured man, and they left, hoping that their experience with the Sparrow insurgency was over. They drove their horses through the forest when too many men, who wore the same uniforms as the men they had fought a few hours earlier, surrounded them.
Jack followed Tanner’s lead of putting his hands on the front of his saddle, away from his weapons. Helen did the same. Ralinn moved her horse closer to her master on the south side of them. Any fool could see they were positioned to run if something went astray.
The eyes of the soldiers weren’t friendly, but they weren’t angry like Jack expected.
“Papers, please,” said an older man wearing decorations on his sleeve.
“Papers?” Tanner asked.
The man nodded. “Do I have to give you the request in writing?”
“No, sir,” Tanner said.
He quickly produced his papers. Jack’s and Helen’s were out before the man unfolded Tanner’s
Tanner turned around and looked at Lark and Ralinn, making a face that was easy to interpret: Get your papers out too.
“You are Jack Winder?” the officer asked Jack.
“I am. I live in Raker Falls. That’s in Corand. I serve a wizard, and he sent me on a mission to the Wizards Guild in Wilton. Everyone else is here to help me get there.”
“On a secret mission, eh? To help the king?”
“No, to deliver a message to the grand wizard. It is guild business. I don’t even think my master knows about the political situation in Tesoria.” Jack was going to make up some story about the Black Finger Society, but Tanner began to cough. He shut up before he got into trouble.
After looking at the rest of the papers, the officer let them go. They didn’t waste any time getting their horses going. Jack stopped to look back at the forest, once they had crossed a valley still in sight of the road, when riders joined the Sparrow troops and pointed at them.
“We beat the Sparrow’s messengers,” Jack said to Tanner, who was about to scold Jack for stopping.
Tanner gently slapped Jack on the side of the head. “If I hadn’t gotten you to shut up, they might have caught us on the spot. Let’s get going. If they choose to chase us, it might be a close thing.”
Jack nodded as he turned his horse. They rode for another half hour before they came across over one hundred troops in a different color uniform camped in a little valley, not in sight from the higher ground from where they came. They had to stop again.
“Papers,” an officer said.
They went through the same routine, but Jack had learned his lesson and only responded to questions from the officer.
“You had an encounter with the Sparrow faction?” the officer said once he had gone through their papers.
“We did,” Tanner said. “Two. First, we fought a squad of scouts and then we were stopped in the forest nearly in sight of the top of that ridge,” Tanner pointed back the way they had come.
“Did you kill any?” the officer said with half a smile.
“I don’t know. We ran as soon as given a chance. There were more than thirty men that stopped us to check our papers,” Tanner said. “I was told that the Sparrows hadn’t penetrated so far to the west.”
“Only temporarily. The border shifts daily. We are expecting a large force to drive them out of the forest.” The officer smiled. “It is permissible for me to tell you, since I’m sure our enemy is expecting us to counterattack at any time. You will be staying in Pestersee?”
“Just enough time to see what the latest boundary changes are,” Lark said.
The officer waved them on.
They didn’t wa
ste any time moving past the soldiers and weren’t stopped until they arrived at the gate to Pestersee. There was a squad of guards checking papers both in and out of the city. The line was long, and it took half an hour for them to show their papers yet again, before they gained entry into the city.
Chapter Eight
~
J ack couldn’t see much difference in size between Pestersee and Bartonsee. They rode past the center of the city. An Alderachean cathedral dominated the buildings lining the square.
“You worship Alderach like we do in Corand?” Jack asked.
“I don’t personally, but many people in Pestersee follow him,” Ralinn said.
“In Lajia, they worship a cloud goddess called Takia,” Jack said. He knew first hand that Takia had as least as much power as Alderach, who didn’t seem very engaged in worldly affairs, if as Aramore Gant claimed, the bovine god existed at all. He didn’t say that he possessed a cup that Takia herself had used when she manifested herself in Lajia.
He noticed a group of priests with horned caps walking down the steps of the cathedral. “Is Alderach worship the state religion of Tesoria?” Jack asked Ralinn.
She laughed. “Heavens, no! It is predominant in the north. Pestersee is the last bastion of Alderach in the west. The south and east mostly worship Eldora, the water goddess.”
“Is her aspect a fish?” Jack asked seriously, but it brought out a giggle.
“She is a beautiful woman, but she does have blue hair. I am almost embarrassed to go inside an Alderachean cathedral or a temple. The idea of a cow god is…” She put her hand to her mouth. “I’m sorry. You probably worship Alderach.”
“I do, but I have it on good authority that the real Alderach isn’t a cow.”
“And who might that authority be, a heretic?”
Jack smiled. “As a matter of fact, he was, but the man is no longer with us. He ranked high in Dorkansee, but his fall was devastating. He thought Takia, the cloud goddess, and Alderach once walked on the world. I can imagine Eldora doing much the same.”