TRAVELLER (Book 1 in the Brass Pendant Trilogy)

by Amanda May Bell

  “So…..pick a winner,” he said, and I glanced at him again before I looked thoughtfully at the drivers below us. There was a middle aged man who fidgeted constantly and I watched him move his padded, leather helmet nervously from one hand to the other, and there was a young woman who was pacing around and around her craft. There were a couple of drivers who were running their hands over their chariots in such a way that it made me think they’d prefer to keep them in one piece if they could, and then, there was another man who looked like he was a fair bit younger than the others. He had dark hair and it was tightly braided in tiny braids. Each braid was finished with a white animal knuckle bone and I watched this man throw a rolled up flag to his friends who sat on a rooftop near the finish line. This driver looked more confident than the others and I watched him laugh as he held his hand up in a victory salute.

  I suspected it was going to mostly come down to luck, but I figured it probably wouldn’t hurt to have a wild and confident attitude in this kind of race, so I pointed to the chariot driven by the young man with the braids. His chariot had a burnt red circular symbol painted on the front of it.

  “Which one do you think will win?” I asked Morgan, and he pointed to the chariot driven by the middle aged man who was still nervously toying with his racing helmet. Morgan told me he recognised the man from the last time he was here, and he figured he might have the edge now in age and experience. This man’s chariot had a five pointed star marked in yellow earth coloured paint on the front of it.

  More people were joining us on the roof and the roof tops on the other side of the track were already overcrowded.

  “Stay here. I’ll put a wager on your chariot for you,” said Morgan, and he stood up. “And don’t talk to anyone while I’m gone; your accent is terrible,” he added, and he grinned as turned to walk back the way we’d come.

  “My accent is fine,” I called after him, and he turned around and pretended he couldn’t understand what I was saying before he jumped down onto the rock wall. It was only after he’d disappeared, that I wondered how it was that he had Nomadic Era coins with which to lay a wager…….

  Morgan was gone for a while, and I was starting to worry he’d miss the start of the race when he finally appeared on the roof. A few of the rowdy youths who’d been on the road had climbed up onto this rooftop while Morgan had been gone and they called out to the drivers who made final preparations to their craft. Morgan stepped around them and they watched him sit down beside me. I’d pulled the end of the cloth that covered my hair across my face as soon as they’d arrived. I didn’t want any trouble today and I wasn’t sure how the locals here would react if I had to throw five barely conscious, young men onto the race track just before the big race.

  Morgan sat down beside me and glanced at the youths. They were about the same age as we were but they sat down too and it looked like they were going to watch the race and leave us alone.

  “I have some water for you,” said Morgan. He took a small drinking skin from his jacket pocket and I took it from him gratefully because when you’d been sitting under the sun in the dry, desert air, water tasted extra sweet.

  “Thank you,” I said, as a roar from the crowd signalled the drivers were preparing to race. Someone gave each of the drivers a leg up into their chariots and we could only see their heads and shoulders now as they positioned their goggles and tied their padded leather helmets securely onto their heads. A hush came over the crowd as the track cleared and I could hear the light hum the chariots made as they hovered in mid-air.

  Somewhere, just behind us, a bell was struck and, as the hollow sound echoed around the track, a blast of hot air and dust hit us. As one, the five chariots tilted backwards for just a second before they all shot forward…..and the race began. The chariots disappeared from sight very quickly and the spectators were already eagerly watching for them to appear again as the whole crowd turned to look in the opposite direction.

  Morgan and I leant forward too and it wasn’t long before we heard a roar from the crowd. The noses of the speeding chariots appeared around the bend and a dust cloud followed behind them. They were almost in a straight line as they flew towards us but one of them lost some ground when it rolled to one side before righting itself.

  We shouted our encouragement as they passed us and a chariot painted with a black and white stripe was already edging its way to the front. There was quite a few laps to go though and, according to Morgan, anything could happen. The crowd shouted out the lap number around us.

  By the third lap, the striped chariot was clearly ahead and the others flew in a straight line directly behind it.

  By the tenth lap, the lead had changed and a chariot with a bright green cross on it was in front. The chariot Morgan had picked to win was falling behind and he wasn’t happy.

  “Oh, come on; my mother’s mother could fly that thing better than you,” he shouted, as the chariots flew past us. I laughed, and he told me I could probably fly the chariot better than his driver too….he wasn’t joking.

  On the fifteenth lap with only three laps to go, the striped chariot took the bend to our left poorly and his craft wobbled slightly before swaying sharply to one side. It crashed into the houses on the side of the track in spectacular fashion and it just missed taking the chariot marked with a red circle along with it. Morgan was right. The chariots broke apart on impact and pieces of shiny metal and strips of waxed covered canvas rolled and flew across the track, and up into the crowd around us. I ducked and covered my head, and I felt Morgan’s arm covering me too as pieces of metal spun through the air. There was a hush around us as the dust and pieces of flying debris settled and I raised my head to see the driver lying very still, face down on the dusty track. We stood up, along with the rest of the crowd, and there was a collective sigh of relief when the man moved. He rolled over carefully and got up awkwardly, but he rose to a triumphant roar from the watching crowd. He raised one arm with his fist closed and the crowd cheered even more loudly as he limped across the track. A door in the closest house was opened quickly to allow him to leave the track before the racers returned.

  The crowd shouted the lap number again and they raised their voices and their hands too as the chariots appeared once more around the bend. There were only two laps to go now and Morgan’s chariot had overtaken the others one by one. It was now in the lead, but the chariot I’d chosen was only just behind it. Morgan shouted at his driver and the crowd shouted around us, and we almost fell off the roof as we moved closer and closer to the race track. When the chariots appeared for the final time, it was the chariot with the burnt red circular symbol which passed me first and it passed the finish line first as well. My chariot had won, and I shouted and cheered as I raised my fist in a victory salute…..I definitely had race fever now too. Morgan cheered as well and he was just as pleased as I was that I’d won, because apparently, I’d won us a whole bag of silver coins.

  The winning chariot made a victory lap and a heavy, weighted cart on wheels was attached to the back of it so it could fly more slowly while the driver waved and the townsfolk cheered.

  When the driver and his chariot finally left the track, we climbed down off the roof and it was only then that we made our way back down the stone steps towards the stalls. The noise and excitement followed us though and I listened as the people around me discussed the drivers and their crafts, and the tactics they’d used in the race. While he went to claim my winnings, Morgan left me waiting in the shade beside a stall selling fried cheese on course bread. When he returned with a handful of silver coins tied up in a piece of cloth, we bought lunch from the stall vendor and sat above the crowd on a dry, sun baked wall to eat our food slowly.

  “This belongs to you. It was your chariot that won.”

  Morgan handed me the remainder of the silver coins and I examined one of them. They were unevenly shaped, silver discs and they were stamped with a simple, three pointed symbol that looked like it had been deliberately placed o
ff centre. I put the coins in my jacket pocket and we talked about the race too as we ate under the harsh glare of the desert sun.

  When we were done, we shared what was left of the water. I had no idea whose cart or stall Morgan had stolen it from, but it was clean and cool, and it quenched our thirst. We finished it as we wandered among the stalls slowly before making our way back towards our marker. We were so busy talking and laughing together we didn’t notice the youths who trailed along behind us, keeping us firmly within their sights.

  To Morgan’s disgust, I gave away most of my coins to the wide eyed children who pulled on my jacket as I walked by their parent’s stalls. As soon as their hands closed around a coin, the children would run from me as fast as they could in case I changed my mind. I smiled at them and handed out more of my coins.

  “Keep one for luck, at least,” said Morgan, when he couldn’t convince me to stop giving them away.

  “I’ve only got one left,” I said, and I grinned at the expression on his face. I kept the coin though, and I shook my head at the children again as we left the town and walked along the dusty road. The road wasn’t as busy as it had been before the race, but a steady stream of people left the township along with us and we all headed home into the early afternoon sun.

  It wasn’t until we left the road and began to climb that we noticed the five young men who left the road also and followed us up the terraced, rocky terrain. Morgan glanced behind him before he looked at me and frowned.

  “Keep climbing. We don’t want any trouble where we can be seen from the road,” he said quietly and I nodded and kept climbing quickly as the youths began to gain on us. When we reached a relatively flat area, well out of sight of the road, Morgan stopped, and we waited as the youths approached us with false expressions of friendliness. I looked around me carefully. The ground was reasonably flat in front of me but this ledge fell away sharply on my right to where the road curved around below us.

  The youths reached us and they stood in a group directly in front of us.

  “What business do you want with us?” Morgan demanded, and the young men glanced at each other and laughed a little.

  “We just want to trade stranger. It’s not uncommon in these parts,” one of the men said, and there was more smiling and more laughter.

  “We have nothing to trade. Take your business somewhere else,” said Morgan, and his voice held a warning which the youths found even more amusing. I could see these boys weren’t interested in going peacefully about their business today.

  “We propose a trade stranger. We take your girl and you…...take a beating,” said one boy, and he stepped towards me as he and his friends laughed again. The boy who’d spoken took hold of my arm roughly and he smirked at Morgan. I frowned and glanced down at the hand around my arm while I shook my head. Bullies were the same in every time segment of every era.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” warned Morgan quietly, but the youth just laughed. I glared at the boy.

  “I propose a new trade. How about, we give you this coin and you let us give you the beating instead,” I suggested, and it was Morgan who grinned now as I took my last silver coin out of my pocket and held it out towards the boy who held me by my arm.

  The boy took the coin from my hand but he wasn’t interested in keeping it. He threw my coin onto the dusty ground before he deliberately spat on the ground beside it.

  “No trade,” he said, before he laughed again. I frowned and looked down at my coin. I was glad he’d spat beside it and not on it. I was taking it home to remind me of this day.

  “I tried to warn you. You’re going to be sorry you did that too,” said Morgan, and he shook his head at the boy who was still laughing, as were his friends. I glanced at Morgan and he nodded and it only took me a few minutes to render the boy unconscious on the ground. The other four boys stopped laughing abruptly and they stared at their friend in surprise for a moment before they attacked us as a group.

  The youths were strong and healthy, but they couldn’t fight……not like Aldirites. To fight two of them at a time was an easy thing for both Morgan and I, and we were soon fighting only one of them each while two more boys lay semi-conscious and groaning on the dusty ground. We didn’t do them any permanent damage. We’d been taught since childhood to know exactly how much pressure to place on nerves and exactly how hard to hit an opponent. Questers weren’t Tournament Champions, so we were taught how to disable an opponent as well as how to kill them. It wasn’t considered good manners to kill locals unless it was absolutely necessary, especially when we were just passing through their time.

  I hit the boy in front of me and he staggered and drew in his breath as I backed him steadily towards the edge of the rocks. I kept my footing and hit the boy again and I was just about to land a blow that would tip him over the ledge when I heard Morgan’s voice from behind me.

  “Don’t throw him over there, Liv. He’ll land on the road and cause a scene,” called Morgan and when I glanced at him, Morgan held the last boy at arm’s length and he held him firmly around the throat. I changed my tactics, and my direction, so the boy in front of me was thrown onto the ground by my attack instead of down onto the road. He groaned and rolled over as he clutched his arms around his stomach. Not far from where I stood, Morgan hit the boy he held by the throat and I watched the boy fall backwards against a boulder before he slid very slowly towards the ground. Morgan hit him once more then, making sure there was no chance he’d get up again until we were well and truly gone from this place. I dusted myself off and, when I had to step over a couple of the unconscious youths to reach him, Morgan grinned. I shrugged and shook my head. Morgan dusted himself off too and he picked up my coin from the dusty ground.

  “Here; this is yours,” he said, and I smiled and thanked him as he took my hand in his and closed my fingers around the silver coin. Morgan smiled too and he looked into my eyes as he held my hand in his.

  “You don’t need this now,” he said suddenly, and he reached out and untied the cloth that had covered my hair. I didn’t move and he was standing very close to me. He let the cloth drop on the ground beside us and I looked into his eyes as he tucked a stray wisp of my hair behind my ear. “You’re beautiful,” he whispered in the old language, before he shook his head slightly and stepped quickly away from me. “Ah….I mean….your hair…..the colour…isn’t found among the locals here, so…..that’s why we had to cover it,” he said quickly, and he was the one who was flustered for a change, instead of me. I’d never seen him like this and I watched him as he hastily pulled his pendant from beneath his shirt and looked at the time on the outer dial. “We’d better go,” he said, and he still sounded flustered. He didn’t look at me at all as he began to climb up the rocks towards the marker again.

  I followed him more slowly and I put my coin safely back into my jacket pocket as I watched him thoughtfully and smiled to myself.

  When we reached our marker, we changed back into our school uniforms and when we had set our pendants to Pegasus +2013 rise 183º, the setting for the toy store marker, we tucked them away again beneath our clothes. Morgan no longer seemed flustered, but he didn’t look into my eyes again, and he didn’t hold my hand either as we travelled back to the twenty first century. We travelled through the pain and the darkness, and I completely forgot we were returning to an unguarded marker. I was too busy wondering if Morgan would ever want to hold my hand again……..

  When the darkness became colours and the pain faded slowly away, two small boys watched us appear beside the jigsaw puzzles. They stood beside their grandmother who was complaining under her breath about the air conditioning in the store. She was searching for her glasses in her hand bag as we appeared beside her and, as she didn’t look at us at all, she remained completely oblivious to our time travel entry.

  The two small boys, however, watched us with wide eyes as the air patterns slowed down and the temperature rose around us. One of the boys looked impressed by our s
udden appearance out of thin air, but the other one looked decidedly unimpressed and it was this boy who spoke to us as we walked innocently past him.

  “My dad can do that too,” he said to us smugly, and Morgan stopped and turned around.

  “Your father can’t do that,” he said to the boy scornfully. I frowned at Morgan. “Well, he can’t,” Morgan said innocently. I rolled my eyes.

  “Stop showing off,” I muttered, and Morgan grinned as we walked towards the checkouts at the front of the store.

  We timed our return perfectly to join the crowd of students who walked out of the school gate and we both noticed that the guards who followed us home were more vigilant than usual. They watched us very closely and stayed right on our tail, and they didn’t speak to each other or let their concentration lapse at all.

  “That school was so boring today,” said Morgan, and he spoke loudly enough for the guard right behind us to hear him.

  “Yes it was,” I agreed, as we tried not to laugh………

  Half a clock turn later, I ran down the stairs of my house to find Mirren waiting for me at the front door. I’d changed my clothes and washed my face, and I’d combed and braided my hair neatly before pinning it in a circle at the back of my head. I was particularly looking forward to my weapons class today.