The Sea of Grass

by Gilbert M. Stack

  He lifted the hand and the sound stopped.

  What was going on inside of him?

  Rising he asked to be shown the place where they’d lost the first of Evorik’s men. It was one hundred yards to the west of the caravan and he could still make out the ripples in the salt where a horseman had once ridden. “How big is the sinkhole?” he asked.

  “We don’t know,” Evorik admitted. “How do you test such a thing? But I lost my other man on the other side of the wagons. It’s bad.” After a moment he added, “Hate to lose the animal too. That was a mighty fine horse he was riding.”

  Marcus wasn’t certain how to respond to that, so he didn’t. “Someone bring a rope so if I put a foot wrong I don’t end up like these two poor Gota.”

  When the rope had been brought, Marcus tied a bowline around his waist. Then he set about trying to figure out how Mataskah had been able to tell the surface of the sinkhole from the rest of the terrain. He tried to keep a few feet back from the camouflaged hole, but within ten steps realized just how impossible that was going to be. Without warning, the ground cracked beneath him and he sank over his head into the salt as if it were quicksand.

  The rope went tight beneath his armpits and just as his body prepared to scream in horror he was breaking back across the surface and being dragged back to solid ground. He lay there panting on his back, trying to push back the horror of drowning in salt. His eyes burned because he hadn’t closed them quickly enough and his skin felt parched and—wait a minute. His skin wasn’t prickling as he had become used too.

  He sat up and rubbed at his flesh, knocking a thick layer of clinging salt off of him. Why wasn’t it prick—

  “Tribune?”

  “Give me a moment, Severus.”

  As Marcus cleaned his flesh the sensation slowly returned. But that didn’t make any sense, did it? The salt had intensified the feeling. His body should be on fire with the pain of a million needles poking deep inside him, yet the sinkhole didn’t feel that way at all.

  He rubbed his fingers on his chest to make certain they were clean and touched a part of the earth that was not covered in spillage from the sinkhole. The tingling sensation returned with a vengeance, as did the buzzing sound. So why wasn’t the salt of the sinkhole making his flesh react this way?

  He checked that the rope was still around his waist. “Keep a firm grip on this, all right?”

  Then he got to his hands and knees and slowly retraced his path to the edge of the sinkhole. He didn’t need to see the ripples from his near disaster. He could have found it with his eyes closed because not only did the prickling sensation ease as he approached it, but the buzzing sound began to diminish a good foot and a half before that.

  He got to his feet, crouching, and shuffled forward along the edge of the sinkhole, successfully finding the contours of the deadly trap. It was hard going. He couldn’t walk straight, but he was able to figure out the line between safety and disaster…

  Could he lead a caravan this way?

  “What are you seeing, Tribune?” Evorik asked him. “I can tell no difference between the trap and the safe ground.”

  “I’m not sure I can put it into words,” Marcus said.

  He straightened up, his back cracking with relief as he stopped crouching over. Straining mightily he could still hear ever so faintly the buzzing sound. Stepping back away from the sinkhole it became ever so slightly louder. Moving forward, he discovered that at the very edge of disaster it disappeared.

  “This is going to be an awful lot of work,” Marcus told them, “but if there’s a path through this, I think I can find it. What we’re going to have to do is keep me secured with a rope like this in case I mess up and fall into another of these sinks. Then we’re going to have to mobilize the legionnaires to mark the trail as I uncover it so that none of our wagons fall in. And we’re going to have to accept the fact that we might move a couple of miles in one direction and have to turn around and retrace our steps. The only question I have is do we want to continue trying to go north, or do we want to try and make our way back to Fort Segundus.”

  “North,” Evorik answered without hesitation. “There is no safety in returning. That bastard scout obviously lied to us. We can only expect to find more savages waiting if we try to go south.”

  “Besides, we really might be within half a day of the northern edge of the pan,” Severus noted. “We need to get out of this place before nightfall. I agree, going south is not an option unless you can’t find a path to the north.”

  “I don’t understand how you’re finding the sinkholes at all,” Evorik added. “We only woke you because as the leader of the legionnaires your men insisted that you assist me in deciding what to do. I didn’t think you would have such a hopeful solution.”

  “Hope is good, but let’s not get over confident,” Marcus said. “We’ve got a long way to go and no idea how truly bad it’s going to get.”

  ****

  It went from bad to worse before dawn began to light the horizon. Marcus found the edges of the western sinkhole, but fell in twice more in the process. It seemed that any time he tried to push the pace he missed the telltale signs that told him where the border with danger lay. In two hours time, he discovered an extremely narrow path that appeared to lie between the two sinkholes and was ready to start exploring how far it went. Over the protests of Lord Evorik, he recommended that the caravan not start moving at dawn, but give him a chance to explore the extent of the lane of safety ahead of them.

  It was a good thing he did.

  Half a mile upward, the lane disappeared and he and the legionnaires helping him had to walk back and start all over again. By then the caravan was awake and the merchants frightened and angry.

  Marcus let Severus and Evorik handle them—far from a diplomatic solution but the weight of all of these lives was firmly on his shoulder and he had no energy for their nonsense. He backtracked the caravan for a mile and a half before he found a direction that gave him more hope. He sent two of the men back to get the merchants moving and began charting a course northwest around the sinkholes and hopefully toward salvation.

  The weather was damnably hot and he—like the rest of them—was drinking too much water. Why hadn’t he poured out all of the wine and filled those amphorae from the spring at Fort Segundus? It would have been easy to do. Why hadn’t he seen it was necessary? And why was he wasting his time now on these recriminations when he needed to focus on finding a path to safety?

  By noon he had led the caravan two miles to the northwest and was as exhausted as he ever remembered feeling. Calidus kept food in his belly and insisted he take short breaks to recover his strength, but with the heat of the day upon them there was no recovering to be had. The strong sun, combined with the salty air, sacked the energy from his bones with the moisture from his lips and skin.

  He pressed on.

  By mid-afternoon they had moved only one more mile and he was fast losing any hope of getting them out of here. He’d had to backtrack again, losing precious progress and was now passing the narrowest of bridges of good solid land. Matsahkah didn’t have to be waiting with more savages. He had to figure that none of them could emerge from the pan without him.

  Even more disturbing then the heat and the parched air was the way in which Marcus’ whole body came to yearn for that strange buzzing song. The sound that had disturbed him so much the night before had become their lifeline and he snatched at any scrap of the strange music. The sinkholes were an abomination of silence by comparison as if something far beneath him had sucked all the music—all the strange prickly sensation—out of the salt above it leaving only dead hollow crystal grains to trouble the surface.

  His legs were ready to give out again within an hour of sunset and he called a halt, finally forced to accept his limits. “We’ll take a brief break, say two hours. Let everyone eat something and rest. Then when the moon’s up, we’ll start forward again. We’re pretty much out of water so we’ll
push on through the night and try and get out of this ghastly place.”

  The merchants were too exhausted and too frightened to argue with him, which really was a bad sign. For his part, Marcus crawled under his wagon and lost consciousness moments after his head touched the ground—lulled instantly to sleep by the strangely beautiful music within the salt.

  ****

  This time it was Calidus who woke him. “Tribune, the moon is up.”

  He woke more quickly than he had that morning. After a drink of water and a bite of food, he met with his legionnaires again and resumed picking out their path from amid the many dangers of the salt pan. The brief rest had not exactly revitalized him, but it had helped, and as the night deepened and the heat fell, Marcus began to gain more confidence. They encountered fewer sinkholes and the horses, strengthened by the cooler temperatures, found the stamina to increase the pace behind him. After midnight they encountered no additional sinkholes at all and an hour before dawn Marcus stepped off the salt and back onto the Sea of Grass.

  Day Twelve

  Beautiful and Awe Inspiring

  “We’re still nearly out of water,” Calidus noted.

  The whole caravan had rested until noon with many merchants foolishly drinking the last of their reserves as if they believed escaping the salt pan resolved all of their problems.

  “Lord Evorik,” Marcus addressed the Gota, “we’re getting closer to your territory. I don’t know this terrain at all. Can you find us water?”

  “Fort Quartus is probably the nearest source,” Evorik told him. “You see that jagged peak there?” He pointed at a noteworthy crag rising above the hills to the north. “My home in Topacio is about ten miles north of the Tooth, as we call it. The city is five miles further north from there. Two good days journey south of that—three or four at the pace of these wagons—is your Fort Quartus. Say sixty miles short of those hills and I make that to be only thirty or forty miles from where we are now. We’re well west of it. If we had more water, I would suggest we head straight for the Tooth and forget this last fort, but we can’t do that. It’s going to be too hard to get there without losing people as it is.”

  Marcus nodded. “We really should drop more cargo, but I doubt that the merchants will agree this close to their destination. “So let’s gather them up together and tell them what we aim to do.”

  ****

  The members of the caravan might be exhausted and dirty after their crossing of the salt pan, but they were in no way cowed by their grueling experience. Quite the opposite, they gave off an aura of invincibility and the sort of confidence that said: You’ve given us your worst and we’re still fighting. Marcus’ green legionnaires acted the same. None of them were happy with what they’d just endured but surviving it had pulled them together and toughened them much in the way that battle hardened veterans. They’d learned a lot about themselves and their commander in the past days and they were not going to be beaten by another forty measly miles.

  “So that’s where we stand,” Marcus summed up. “Lord Evorik estimates it is at most another forty miles to Fort Quartus and fresh water. I laid in a few more amphorae than most of you did so we have enough to give the horses a small drink and wet our own mouths, but there is no denying that it’s going to be a hard journey.”

  “If we travel again through the night as we did to escape the salt,” Señor Adán suggested, “we can avoid the parching heat of the day and be close to our destination by sunrise.”

  “Lord Evorik?” Marcus turned to the Gota. “You and your men will be scouting the trail. What do you think?”

  “Damn fine idea!” Evorik agreed offering a rare complement to the Gente merchant. “Let’s be blunt. Staying still means death to us now. So let’s push as long and hard as we can so we can reach Fort Quartus.”

  In a rare moment of total unanimity, the meeting broke up and the men went to prepare their wagons. Legionnaires brought the last of Marcus’ water around to help revitalize the strength of the horses. Marcus looked at the remaining wine in his wagon and whimsically noted that if it came to dying of thirst they could do it drunk and happy.

  Then they hit the trail and started pounding out the grueling miles. The salt pan had left all of them burnt out and exhausted, but there was something uplifting about having the feel of grass beneath their feet again. Like the rest of the caravan, Marcus couldn’t help feeling that they had just about won.

  ****

  Marcus noticed with satisfaction a team of legionnaires quickly and efficiently repairing a broken wagon wheel. They barely needed to be told to go to the merchant’s aid, waiting only for Green Vigil Phanes to reluctantly agree that it was needed before springing into action. They’d come a long way from that first time he had mobilized them to help Señor Alberto and his wife.

  From his observation as well, the water supply, while desperate, was not totally used up. He’d carefully marked the wagons that appeared to have husbanded at least a slight reserve against the needs of the entire caravan. He’d learned from Calidus that he had a slight reserve as well which he had reluctantly decided to mix with wine at a ratio of five parts water to one part wine, just to stretch it out a little farther. Starting with his legionnaires, he’d give that out to anyone who was primarily walking. It would only be a mouthful apiece but that was a hell of a lot better than nothing. If only they weren’t traveling so slowly. He didn’t know what they were going to do if they walked all night and still hadn’t found Fort Quartus. Eventually horses and men were going to start to drop as he had done in the salt pan and that was the beginning of the end for all of them.

  ****

  Calidus poured the last cup of extremely thin wine from the amphorae and handed it to Marcus. “And your drink, Tribune.”

  Marcus accepted the cup. All of his legionnaires and a handful of the merchants had all had a single cup of the water/wine mixture and now he suspected the caravan truly had used up all its reserves. They’d break out the wine if they needed to, but Marcus knew that that was a genuine signal that the end was upon them. While the wine would wet the mouth and bring some small comfort, it didn’t truly help a man who was dying of thirst. He didn’t understand why this was the case, but legion lore insisted it was true.

  He put the cup to his lips and then thought of the young mother, Carmelita, trying to feed her baby with no water in her. “Thank you, Calidus, I think I’ll savor the drink while I make my inspection of the wagons.”

  Calidus’ frown told Marcus he wasn’t fooled, but like a good adjutant, he accepted his superior’s decisions even when he disagreed with them.

  The sun was setting and deep shadows were stretching across the plain behind the wagons. Soon the heat would start to lift and the horses and men would gain a little second wind to help them in this final push toward salvation. He hoped it would be enough. It had to be enough. They had to reach Fort Quartus both to save themselves and to warn them of what had happened at Segundus.

  Ahead of him, Alberto and Carmelita’s wagon loomed into view. If he was being honest with himself, Marcus would have to admit that he was quite taken with the young señora. There was much to respect in the courage of the young woman, accompanying her husband into foreign lands to help him save her father’s fortunes, and then attacking this difficult ride north in her extremely pregnant condition without a single complaint that he had yet heard. Everyone in the caravan liked the woman and he hoped that others had done as he was doing and put a little aside to help her and the new child.

  As he reached the wagon, he saw Alberto checking the harness on his team of horses and Carmelita, already in her seat at the front of the wagon, holding little Gaspar Marcus Lope in her arms. “Hello,” he greeted them.

  Despite their obvious exhaustion, both husband and wife managed smiles for him.

  “It is good to see you, Tribune,” Alberto told him. “As you can see, we are ready for our final push. A few more miles and all will be well again.”

  �
��Absolutely right,” Marcus told him. “Evorik tells me it’s just a few more hours. In fact, he’s a little surprised we can’t already see the fort. Come dawn we should be within a mile or two of fresh water.”

  He held out the cup. “But in the meantime, Señora Carmelita, please accept the last cup of the legion water reserve for you and your son with our complements. It has been very slightly mixed with wine to stretch the water supply.”

  “Oh, Tribune Marcus,” Carmelita protested. “I could not possibly accept. You and your legionnaires are walking while all I have to do is—”

  “Feed my namesake,” Marcus reminded her. “Please, it is not much, but we all want you to have it.” He turned to Alberto for support. “Wouldn’t you agree, Señor?”

  “I absolutely do, Tribune,” Alberto swore. “And what is more, you and your men have once more earned my eternal gratitude. To think of my Carmelita while all are in such distress.”

  Reluctantly Carmelita took the cup and drank the very weak wine. When she had finished she handed the cup back and forced a smile onto her face. “Thank you, Tribune, for Gaspar and me both.”

  Marcus just hoped it would be enough.

  ****

  By midnight the temperature was much cooler, and the walking had become only difficult. The moon continued to give enough illumination to keep them moving forward although the amount of the horizon they could clearly see was much reduced. Evorik and his men mostly walked their horses, preserving the great beasts’ strength as much as they could. Everyone was tired, everyone was grumpy, and the feeling of invincibility that had invigorated them when they escaped the salt pan was long gone. Life had become a drudgery of step after step after step and the hope represented by Fort Quartus seemed a very long way off.