The journey along Proequa River was comfortable. The roads were well made and there were bridges to take her across the river’s smaller tributaries and ferries secured by cables for the larger ones. As an honoured guest of Proequa’s allies, she was invited to inspect new buildings (mostly replacing ones destroyed in the last war) and to attend banquets and public feasts. She accepted the public invitations, partly to substantiate her cover story and partly because, despite her wish to move along without delay, she needed this holiday physically and emotionally. However, she tactfully refused the private invitations she received from numerous men and a few women on the grounds that her official errand was urgent. Her refusals were mostly accepted in good spirit, although on several occasions she had to remove a lingering hand from her thigh.
Only once did she have to defend herself. It was a chance encounter on the road. A drunken traveller grabbed her. The man reminded her of the pirate called Pokk. However, since she had met Pokk, she had learnt a lot more about defending herself. She used a sharp jab of her knee to send this attacker crawling away. She thought the incident would not upset her, yet she felt strangely sick the next morning and for several mornings after that.
Blan finally left the river when she came to the last town before the mountains. As it was an important staging post, Proequa had a permanent agent there. He advised Blan on how to reach the nearest port on Polnet River and how to use the river ferry service to Quolow. The agent agreed to send her two horses back to Count Tor and to supply her with a pony for the journey ahead. He also recommended a reliable mountain guide.
“The guide will have spare horses, so you won’t need a second horse to get to the Polnet,” the agent advised. “Once you reach the river you will find it easier to get passage if you have just the one animal.”
“How much will the pony cost?” Blan asked. She had already spent more than expected. She would have to recalculate her budget.
“There is no charge. It comes from Quolow and was left here for me to return, so you will be doing me a favour.”
“And if I run into trouble and can’t get to Quolow?” Blan asked.
“Don’t worry about the pony, it would probably find its own way home. Worry about your own safety and keep away from the enemy.”
Blan welcomed the opportunity to be trudging in mountains again. She was sure that her clothes felt tighter than when she had started this journey. She feared that the cause of this was overindulgence at the feasts and banquets she had attended in recent days. She resolved to walk as much as possible with some of her supplies on her own back. With the lighter burden, she thought that the pony would be better rested and therefore in better condition to carry her in an emergency.
The mountain pass was broader and less difficult than the one into Austra County. It was well used and Blan passed several parties coming in the opposite direction, including a number of Proequan soldiers returning from the front. They had little recent news of the war, having been cut off from their allies somewhere east of Belspire several weeks earlier.
The countryside on the other side of the mountains was less densely populated than the rich lands around Proequa River. Farms were larger but less productive. Grain crops were more common than fruits and vegetables. However, there were markets in the larger villages along the way. The war had not yet disrupted trade this far south, so Blan found no difficulty getting the diet she preferred.
The guide agreed to take Blan as far as Polnet River; not his usual job but she offered him a handsome bonus. She could have found her way to the river without him, but there was no single road and she did not want to lose time taking wrong turns or having to find friendly locals for directions. That was what she told the guide and it was true. However, Blan also did not feel safe by herself in this strange land. At least when two people travelled together one could keep watch while the other slept.
After four days with the guide, Blan found herself looking down from a ridge of low hills across a broad river valley. She knew that the river she saw was the Polnet, not yet as mighty as it became many leagues downstream, yet broad and deep enough to float barges the size of ocean-going ships.
“If you don’t need me any more, I’ll start back,” the guide announced. He did not ride away because he had not yet been paid. There was little more he needed to say. The town, or rather collection of habitations, was a low density affair spread for miles along both sides of the river and never reaching more than a few hundred paces away from the river bank. There was a slight increase in density around a bridge which crossed the river directly ahead of where Blan stood. However, just downstream there was a long dock dominated by two large ferries and a large building. The building was topped by banners advertising Polnet Mountain Port.
“I guess that’s where I buy my ticket,” Blan suggested, pointing at the dock. The guide nodded. Blan continued, “Why is it called a Mountain Port? I can see distant mountains on both sides of the river but they are miles away.”
The guide seemed used to such questions. “The river’s source is in the fork where two mountain ranges meet and join the Arctequa Backbone. Behind us is the range we just crossed, the Upper Polnet Range. That divides Polnet River from the sources of Proequa River. In front of us, across the river, you’ll see the other range, the Great Polnet Range. To our right is where the two ranges meet and join the Arctequa Backbone, and where Polnet River rises. The ferries can go a little further upstream from here, but there are no more ports for them that way. They must load and unload there by lighter or pontoon. This is the nearest port to the mountains, hence its name. Conversely, there are no more bridges downstream from this town; the river is too wide.”
Blan thanked the guide, paid him and saw him off. There was now a clear road to the port, so she went straight away to buy passage downstream for herself and her pony.
It was more difficult than she had been led to expect. Shipping timetables were already disrupted by the war. Paying a premium helped smooth away many of the problems.
Blan continued downstream from port to port in reasonable comfort, the only snag being the slower-than-scheduled progress and the greater-than-expected delays between arrival and departure. Traffic was being increasingly disrupted by the war in the north and, reportedly, by enemy marauders. In the case of Blan’s barge, the delays were mostly caused by the greatly increased amount of unscheduled river traffic, mostly going upstream, which clogged the ports and sometimes even the navigable channels of the river.
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Blan noticed that many more people were travelling upstream than downstream. Most of those going upstream were using the roads on either side of the river. Many had carts, packed with possessions. Wealthier refugees had horses or bullocks to draw enclosed wagons while others pushed or pulled their carts themselves. Whole families seemed to be moving house. One notable exception was a rider on a great stallion leading an equally large but heavily laden pack horse. They were galloping along the road on the western side of the river in the same direction as the barge, yet faster. The rider was dressed in a uniform like a messenger with some livery that Blan could not make out at that distance. The pack horse was straddled by a sizeable wooden trunk on one side and a more irregular bag on the other.
“They are all fleeing the war,” said an old man standing near Blan as she watched the shore from the bulwark. “They can’t afford to take all that stuff on a barge. Anyway, I hear that barges are now being requisitioned by the Quolow Defence Legion on behalf of the Free Alliance. The last barge from Quolow arrived just as we were setting off. We’ll probably have to find alternative transport when we reach Hillside Inn where the Plupo joins this river. The skipper will want to turn around there. He won’t want his barge to be trapped in Quolow.”
“Do you think we will get a refund?” Blan asked. She had paid extra to make sure that both she and the pony would be comfortable all the way to Quolow. She had also subsidized the fare of a young family desperate to get to Quolow and
who found they did not have enough money for the whole fare. Blan would be hard-pressed to make her money stretch all the way to Port Fandabbin at the rate she had been spending it. By all accounts, transport costs along the rivers had quadrupled over the last two weeks because of the war. The money that Blan had expected to be ample no longer seemed enough.
“No such luck,” said the man. “After the last war the Guild of Barge Skippers introduced a new condition that there would be no refund if passage was curtailed because of a war or, indeed, for any one of many other excuses.”
“Are you going to Quolow?” Blan asked.
“Yes, I live there,” the man said. “And you?”
“I had hoped to reach it before going on. Is it safe from the enemy?”
“We held firm throughout the last war, although there was disease and starvation, and we might have fallen had the Dabbinans not come to our rescue in the nick of time. Of course, if the enemy gets its warships, the ones they call quimals, past Port Fandabbin and into the rivers to attack us from the lake, we will be finished.”
“I am Blansnette and I wish you and your city courage and success by the Great Plan,” Blan said, politely showing the palm of her hand to him in accordance with what she had learnt of the customs of Arctequa.
“Thank you. I am Questan and I wish you a safe journey,” the man replied as he too raised and opened the palm of his hand to her.
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Proequa Citadel – 2nd November
The librarian at Proequa citadel rarely had much company in the library. A few officials would come to ask for specific books or charts and would leave as soon as their enquiry had been resolved. There had been more activity recently as special councillors like Arnapa and Blancapaw came to research matters and, of course, Praalis had a stream of materials sent up to him all the time. He seemed to already know what the library held and would simply ask for the items he wanted.
The only person who always seemed to be in the library was little Memwin. She would somehow manage to get books down but she was not tall enough to replace most of them, so the librarian would ask his assistant to put them back in place.
The librarian smiled as he came across a stack of books on the floor. He thought that he had discovered Memwin’s methodology. She would get out a lot of thick tomes on esoteric subjects and use these to stand on in order to fetch the volumes of more interest to children like her. Here was an example.
The first book he picked up was a book about the flora and fauna of the lands around Polnet River, a book well suited to an intelligent child like Memwin.
The second book in the stack concerned poisonous mushrooms. That and another book concerning poisons used for medicinal purposes were obviously books that Memwin had pulled out to stand on so she could reach books of more interest to her.
Memwin was not in the library. She was apparently still convalescing from a strange illness. The assistant was busy with an errand, so the librarian replaced the books himself and went back to his office smiling and slowly shaking his head from side to side.
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Polnet River – 3rd November
Blan had been travelling on the river for eight days, a lot of it waiting at ports, and she had come a hundred and ten leagues downstream. Three weeks had passed since she waved goodbye to her friends at Proequa shipyards. Now she had come to the first major disruption to her plan.
The width of the river had never been less than five hundred paces and it often widened to a thousand paces or more, sometimes to more than a mile. The current was generally strong but not so strong as to prevent upstream voyages by barges and other vessels with sails. On downstream voyages sails were sometimes raised when the river broadened and the current slowed.
The barge now sped up as the river narrowed, yet the crew were raising the sails. Blan soon understood that this was not to further increase speed but to cope with the increased current from another river pouring in from starboard. She realised that she must have reached the confluence of the Polnet and the Plupo.
She found a more or less secluded corner of the barge and proceeded to activate Actio 28 and to update its map with her current location. She then requested that it update all the other Actios.
People were moving around, getting ready to disembark. Blan had no time to make any other communication, so she locked the Actio, a procedure which used to take her five minutes but now a few seconds.
This was where Questan had told her the barge would stop. She had hoped that he was wrong. However, the barge was not turning left to follow the Polnet; it was heading for a dock straight ahead on the north side of the confluence of the rivers.
Blan was disappointed. She had always needed to take care with money, so now it annoyed her that she would have to pay yet again for another form of transport to Quolow, still about forty-five leagues away by river.
A heavy thud told her that the barge had docked at a solid wooden jetty. That is when her mission became very dangerous indeed.
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Blan saw mountains far away in front of her. The peaks were about seven leagues to the north. They seemed to go on endlessly into the east but came to an end about ten leagues to the west. She knew that the Polnet flowed around the western end of this mountain range to Lake Quolow and so on to Quolow itself.
The mountains were nowhere near as high as those she had crossed in the south. These ones were a misty blue-grey colour and there was no sign of snow. She remembered that the map had shown the Arctequa Backbone branching out here into the North Plupo Range which ran westward for at least seventy or eighty leagues. She deduced that she was now near the western end of that range.
Nearer to hand the countryside near the river was fairly flat with low hills further away, except for one hill nearby. Tended green lawns bordered with planted palm trees stretched up from the dock to the hill. The five levels of a large hotel were built on and into the southern slope of the hill. On either side of the hotel, a number of much smaller buildings could be seen: warehouses and cottages. It was definitely some kind of local centre but it was spread out and did not have the compact appearance of a traditional town or village. The land beyond the settlement was open woodland and seemed to be used for grazing rather than any more intensive agriculture. The river itself was lined with coral trees.
Blan disembarked onto a broad wooden platform which seemed to serve as the main dock for river traffic, a parking area for wheeled carriages and a waiting area for passengers. It was very crowded and people sounded upset, disappointed and often fearful. Blan could hear languages and dialects she did not know. However, it was clear from the conversations of those who spoke in common maritime what the cause of consternation was: Quolow was under siege and all downstream river traffic had been halted.
“As I feared, we are both stranded,” Questan said. Having seen Blan in the crowd, he had come over to offer consolation.
“Can we not travel along the riverside to the lake?” Blan asked. “I would be happy to walk while you rest on my horse. When we come to the lake, we might find a small boat for you to cross to Quolow while I go on to Port Fandabbin.”
“That’s very kind of you to offer,” Questan thanked her, “but I have just heard that our enemies now control all the territory north of yonder mountains. They control both sides of the lake and a long way down Southport River. The Free Alliance forces have pulled back to make a stand where the Chay-Enn Mountains come very close to the river, thirty leagues west of where the Polnet joins the Southport. Much of the enemy army is moving into the area.”
This worried Blan very much. Her plan was to slip into Port Fandabbin before the enemy came so far as Southport River. The Actio had not indicated the presence of a Geode near Quolow.
“How long has the enemy been so far south, Questan?”
“There have been raiding parties for months, but this latest move has been very quick, just the last few days I should say.”
Blan then understood that the Geodes had
not been as quick to move as the army. Black Knight would not want to risk having any of them captured as in the last war, so he moved the army first. The naval blockade had forced the Dabbinans to withdraw their troops to protect their port. This had weakened landward resistance. Black Knight had taken advantage of this and pushed his armies forward as soon as he moved his navy into place. The Free Alliance had held steady for a while but eventually had to retreat rapidly to a new defensive position.
“What will you be doing, Questan?” Blan asked.
“I’ll stay here for a while and then make my way up the Plupo to stay with some relatives in the mountains. There are mountain valleys and ways up there that will take the enemy twenty years to find, even if he does win the war. You are welcome to come with me, Blansnette. This brutal war is not for you. You are not from these parts. You have no responsibility to participate. As for me, I did enough in the last war, and now I am too old.”
Blan was touched by the offer. A picture flashed into her mind of life in a cottage in the mountains, free of enemies, surrounded by spring flowers breaking through where the snow had melted and, most of all, Telko by her side, his purple eyes smiling at her.
She looked sadly at Questan and touched his shoulder in thanks.
“Well, if you must move on, I recommend that you stay here until you have a new plan,” Questan suggested. “It’s booked out with all these waiting passengers, but the manager is my cousin. I know he keeps a few rooms for emergencies. He will make sure you have a comfortable room and a place in the stables for your pony.”
Grand Vizier of Krar Page 19