by Allan Joyal
Relway made his way to the door. His daughter stood staring at Heather for a few moments before taking off after him. They left the room and Al stepped in, glancing over at Heather before joining Steve, Henck, and me in the one corner.
"What now?" he asked.
"First, what was the weather like out there?" I asked.
Al frowned. "The wind was picking back up, and the sky is growing dark again. The last storm must have ended during the night, and we are at the end of the break."
"We stay here then. Hopefully the food Werlyn promised will arrive," I said.
My words were followed by a booming knock on the door. The two ladies screamed and huddled in the fur cloaks they were wearing. Lydia and Victoria moved quickly to block their view as I walked over to the door and pulled it open.
The misshapen face of one of the messenger's was on the other side of the door. The creature said nothing as it walked into the room. As it had on its previous visits, it ignored our presence as it approached the counter area and lifted a bag from its shoulder.
The creature piled a dozen new bundles on the counter. Then it turned to me and crooked one of its clawed fingers. I approached it slowly as the creature held some additional bundles in its arms.
The being just looked at me until I held my arms out. The bundles were dropped onto my forearms, and then the creature turned and stalked out of the room. I was surprised by how soft the bundles were and turned my head to look more closely at them.
The top bundle proved to be two dozen short sticks, each about six inches long. The end of the branches was broken into a number of fibers. I held up the bundle and Kariy smiled. "Good we can clean our teeth now," she said.
I said nothing, but held out the bundle for Hencktor, who accepted it and then started distributing the sticks to everyone. The rest of the items in my arms proved to be eight thick furs. They had been rolled up. When I unrolled one, it proved to be bigger than a man. Hencktor smiled when he saw them. "Those will be great," he said. "They are thick coats, and it looks like the tanner knew what he was doing. It might take some work, but we can definitely make warm outfits from this."
"You can," Jennifer said. "I don't know how to."
I nodded again. "However, I think the first thing we need to do is calm down our new friends. And then find out how they arrived here so quickly. Other than William, I didn't know of anyone who reached the plains before we did, and we barely arrived here before the snow flew."
"They staggered in during the second storm," Lydia pointed out. "It's not like they got here before us."
"Perhaps they should tell the tale," Heather said. "It might help them start to recover. I know the one woman is Sharice, but we don't have a name of the other."
Chapter 6: The Tale of Madness
"Aine," the black haired girl said. "My name is Aine. But how can I believe that when the only thing I recognize is a blue bikini on a blond woman I've never met before?"
The girl had a strong Irish accent and slumped down as she clung to Heather. I handed out a fur to Natalie and another to Lisa and then found a warm spot on a bedroll. I sat down and looked over at Esme. "How are they?" I asked.
Esme frowned. "Lots of bruises. Someone beat these girls, Ron. Aine is going to have some permanent scars on her face. They are just skin and bones too. We need to allow them to rest and eat."
"Frostbite?" Steve asked. "After all, they just walked through driving snow for days."
Esme's frown deepened. "No, but they were very lucky to avoid it. I can say that the fur cloaks they have are quite warm as are the leggings they are wearing. They still are very lucky to be alive. And I don't think they would have survived another week unless they stopped to rest and eat. They are starving."
"Something scared them," I said. "That much is clear. Aine, Sharice, do you want to tell us what happened? We can't make it go away, but perhaps talking about it might allow you to fight the nightmares."
Sharice snorted, but Aine relaxed enough to release Heather and sit up. Heather then carefully pushed Sharice away. "Sorry," Heather said. "I need to get dressed; it's too cold to be wearing this."
Sharice shook her head, but did not grab at Heather. The blond stood up and walked back into the room she had used to change. Sharice watched her go and then slumped to the floor while Aine turned to look directly at me.
"I guess you all know about how we arrived," she began. "I was on the lift that had been in Liverpool. My father had won some money betting on the horses and was taking the family on a vacation to celebrate his good fortune. It was a cheap vacation, but my mother had heard tales of the place from her grandmother, and it was a long standing dream of hers to visit."
"My family was up in their room. It was our last day, and we were packing up to leave. I had gone down to the lobby to drop off our keys and was returning to their room when the lift when crazy," Aine said.
The dark haired woman sobbed. Jennifer moved near her and put her arms around the young woman, patting her on the back.
Sharice sat back up. "I wasn't doing anything so exciting," she spat. "I had missed the previous elevator because one of the lawyers decided that it was the right time to tell me about the lunch date he had arranged for me. I wanted no part of that, but I had to talk to him or lose my job. The next thing I know, we're in some field and Kevin Varley is being torn apart."
"He was the man who refused to come out of the elevator?" I asked.
Sharice nodded. "When we all started to exit, he insisted that the problem had been caused by building maintenance. He pulled out his cell phone and tried to call them."
Aine was shaking her head. "I just remember that strange winged creature flying overhead. Then the one guy … Roy. He started shouting about leaving the clearing and that anyone who traveled with him would be protected. I walked over by him, thinking that someone had a plan."
"He did," Sharice spat, "but it wasn't the one we thought. Everything was fine at first. We left the clearing heading towards where that winged thing took off from. We walked for about an hour, and then Leroy said he saw a path."
"Was it a path?" I asked.
"I have no idea," Sharice said. "It wasn't paved. I'm from New York City. Give me a sidewalk, and I can follow it, but we were wandering through trees and around thickets."
"It might have been a path," Aine said. "It wasn't very wide, but we could walk in pairs." The Irish girl had turned shy. She had raised the hood of her cloak and was sitting with her arms around her knees.
"Who cares," Sharice said. "All I knew is that we were walking through some impossible fucking forest. At least I had comfortable shoes on. Several of the men in the group were wearing those long swimming trunks and some beach sandals. God did they complain about how their ankles hurt."
"We remember that," Lydia said. "We had the same problem. It was worse for Lisa and me because we started out in heels."
Sharice scowled. "We didn't have that problem. There were eight women. All of us had sensible walking shoes on. But that isn't the issue. I guess we should have noticed when Roy started organizing some of the men with him."
Aine shivered. "When we stopped for a break, they had all gathered up large branches. They clubbed Trish when she complained about the pace we were setting. After that, Roy made it clear that the women belonged to the men."
Sharice grunted. "We were like the party favors at some gang initiation. After that announcement, we all had a guy walking next to us. It was like they were afraid we'd run away."
"But you did run away," Al pointed out.
"Not then," Sharice said. "We stayed with the group. It was when we found that battlefield that things changed."
"We know that Roy's group had been there," Lydia said. "We ran into him a couple days later, and they had items they had taken from the battlefield."
Heather walked back into the room. She was wearing a blouse and her long skirt. She stopped at the packs long enough to put something into them, and then she conti
nued over to sit by me. She kissed my cheek as she sat down. "You saved us from something like that," she whispered. "I love you."
I smiled and nodded. Aine still had her head down, and Sharice appeared to have missed the exchange as she continued. "Yes, the battlefield. Roy had us strip every body on that battlefield. He wanted us to take anything we could use. It made some sense, but … ."
"It wasn't right what they did," Aine muttered. "They were cutting the men in order to force them to release items clutched in dead hands."
Sharice snorted. "Roy and a couple of his friends were the first to grab weapons. Mostly long knives, but Roy did find a sword on the guy pinned under the horse. He used that to take over the group completely. Once he had that, we were no longer a democracy. I saw him start to push Tammy around, and I grabbed a small bag of coins from the pile we were making. No one noticed because the men were already forcing the women to strip naked."
Al glared at me. "We could have done something!"
"What?" Esme asked. "It sounds like they had already found more weapons than we had, and they also had more people. Ron and Steve would have been overwhelmed."
"We had a crossbow!" Al screamed.
"One that took a lot of time to load," I reminded him. "I'm cringing myself at hearing this. All we would have done was died after maybe killing one or two of them. Remember last night."
Natalie and Esme started to giggle. Natalie had convinced her love to assist her in taking on Al in a two on one knife fight. The difficulty of taking on two opponents, even when one was a comically inept as Esme was proving to be, resulted in Al being killed twelve times before he figured out that he had to make Esme and Natalie work against each other. He glared at them and then shrugged.
"Fuck! You're right; we couldn't have stopped it. It just feels wrong. And now I feel worse that we didn't rescue the others when we saw them," Al said.
Aine looked up at that. "You saw them?"
"Two days later," I said quietly. "We were staying in a village we stumbled on. Roy's group showed up in the morning. During the meeting, he had the women lined up against a wall in the inn we had stayed in. They looked … ."
I shrugged, unable to find the right words. Aine just nodded sadly. "I understand. We saw it that night. Once Roy had the sword, he dominated everyone. I was stripped of my clothing and then forced to lie there while any of the men got to do whatever he wanted. They went after the others as well, forcing all of us. I lasted long past the time darkness had fallen…" Aine's voice trailed away and her head dropped.
Sharice shook for a moment. "The faggots actually got tired and fell asleep. The last bastard to do me had wanted me to ride him, so I was on top of him when I noticed he had drifted off. I realized then that my choices were to escape or be subject to daily rapes once the sun rose. I checked the other girls, but most were trapped under one of the men. Only Aine was able to get up and help me find our clothing. We picked up what we could and then snuck off down the road."
Aine nodded. "And before you ask, we did look for the weapons, but Roy was a light sleeper and was keeping the sword under his body. We might have tried to knife him, but the knives were hidden by the men. We decided to run."
"Wise," I said. "So what happened after that?"
Sharice glared at me. "You might not remember that night, but it was dark. Aine and I didn't even talk for the first half of the night. We had dressed in the darkness and then crept out. Aine led at first; following a path we could barely see in the dim moonlight. I had my hand on her shoulder and kept as close as I dared."
Aine smiled pensively. "We did have some food. One of the bodies I helped strip had a number of pouches hanging from his belt. I had checked them and found that they contained cheese and dried meat. Back on Earth I was a strict vegetarian, but here I felt any food was better than none."
Sharice snorted. "I knew nothing of that at the time. I just wanted to get as far away from the rapists as I could. We traveled through most of the night before we were too exhausted to continue. By then I was in the lead. We found a small tree that had some cleared area under its branches. We curled up in each other's arms and slept for maybe two hours. When the rising sun warmed us up, we jumped up and continued down the road."
Aine nodded. "We were sure that Roy would be following us and we had no idea how close we might be. We divided the contents of one of the pouches I had grabbed and then took off down the road. With the sun out we were jogging down the road."
"We passed a village very early that morning. I didn't see anyone looking around, and didn't worry about it," Sharice said. "After what Roy had done, we wanted to avoid all men. The path turned and started heading down the mountain. It left us a bit vulnerable to be following the road, but at least it gave us a path to follow."
"We would have helped you," Hencktor said quietly.
"What?" Sharice asked.
"The villagers you ignored," Hencktor. "We would have helped you. The men would have leered at you, but the villagers would have helped."
"How would you know?" Sharice asked.
"Because he's from that village," Lydia said. "As is Kariy, the young woman cooking our dinner. We stayed in the village the night after you ran past it."
Aine shook her head. "We could not have stopped. Not then. Roy had seemed trustworthy when he organized everyone and convinced us to leave with him. Then he turned on us once we were away from the clearing. I feel sorry for the women we left behind trapped with him."
Sharice nodded in agreement. "He was smooth, I'll give him that. Well, we were almost running down the mountain. All that mattered was getting as far away from Roy as we could. The path curved some, and twice we found ourselves in canyons following a stream down the mountain. The stream was nice because we had nothing to carry water in. We drank when we got thirsty and continued our run until we came to a crossroads. By then the sun was touching the horizon. Next to the crossroads was an inviting little field. We spent the night huddled under a bush at the side of the meadow."
Hencktor groaned. "Those meadows are enchanted. No one would have attacked you. You should have stayed in the meadow."
"Really?" Sharice asked. "And how was I supposed to know that? We had arrived two days before with no warning. Anyways, we woke up the next morning hungry and still confused."
"By that time, I think we both knew that this was not just a nightmare," Aine said. "There was going to be no sudden awakening where we discovered it was all just a dream. We decided it was best to stay together, even though by then we only had one pouch of food left. Sharice took one of the coins from the pouch she had claimed. It was further proof we were in a new world. The coin was silver, and heavily tarnished, but we could see the face on the front was one we'd never seen before, and the writing was in a language we didn't recognize. She flipped the coin for what direction we should go."
Sharice smiled for the first time. "Like that dumb country song, only we just said we'd take the left fork if the coin came up heads. It was tails."
"The opposite direction we took," Steve observed. "And a full day and a half before we arrived there. At that time, we were confronting Roy in the inn back in Tralvein."
"We were scared," Aine said. "Running seemed the best thing to do. At least until that afternoon when we ran into Fadul. I think running into him saved our sanity."
Sharice snorted. "You weren't the one he wanted to fuck every night. But he did help us realize what had happened. The man was traveling the road. He was carrying a huge bundle of furs and had more in a cart he was pulling. We helped pull the cart, and he told us about Jord. We learned a lot, and he offered us furs to help keep us warm. He warned us that winter would be brutal."
Aine nodded. "He also listened to our story. I think when we took off our blouses and let him see our bras, he finally believed us. He explained that the only people powerful enough to pull a human to Jord from someplace else would be the wizards in the academy. Unfortunately, he could not take us there."
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"Refused to," Sharice said with a snort. "The man feared others more than we did. In some ways he was pathetic. However, he did tell us where the academy was and suggested that we try to catch a boat going upriver when we reached the town he was heading for. He even agreed to bargain for our passage as long as I could pay."
Aine blushed. "I think he was hoping we'd have to offer sex to help pay for the trip. Sharice's pouch of coin saved us from that embarrassment, but we did agree to help row for extra food."
"I don't know what we expected, but this boat was long and narrow. It had ten oars on each side. The captain even paid a man to beat on a drum to help set the rhythm of the rowing. It was exhausting work, but we outran people walking along the road that ran along the river. We stopped at two cities, exchanging some passengers and cargo each time," Sharice said.
"When we arrived at the last city on the route, the captain offered to take us as concubines if we wanted to stay with him. He warned us that many men would not accept free women. We refused. At the time, we both still hoped to arrive here before the snow flew. We had been warned that we had less than ten days, but the distance didn't look too long on the map Fadul had shown us," Aine said.
Sharice nodded. "The captain did sell us some food and traveling gear. It wasn't the best, but I think he lost money on the sale. We struck out across the plain. We had been told that we might run into some hedges, but it would be safer than the roads. I guess there were armies traveling the roads."
"There is a short period after the harvest when the armies often go to war," I said. "At least that's what we were told, and we encountered two battles while getting here."
Aine shivered. "How did you escape?"
"The first time, we saw the battle in time to get off the road," Lydia said. "We would have been completely safe except that one of our members decided to try to talk to the soldiers. They killed her."
Sharice and Aine both gasped. Jennifer went over to comfort them. "Sorry," she said quietly. "We didn't mean to upset you."