Healers

by Laurence Dahners

  Having heard Eva and Daussie singing to the girls that afternoon, one of the musicians called out to them, asking whether they would sing. Although they often sang together in the kitchen and crooned little lullabies to their sick patients they had never sung before a group before. Nonetheless, they got up and joined the musicians. After a brief discussion it appeared that both they and the musicians knew an ancient song called Amazing Grace. The song seemed particularly appropriate after the recent events.

  Eva sang with the band, something Daussie had never done. Daussie harmonized with her mother and, to her ear, it sounded better than anything she and her mother had done before. It seemed like the crowd agreed because when the final notes trailed away, several moments of complete silence were followed by wildly enthusiastic applause.

  Later, Daussie found herself sitting between Tarc and Kazy as they listened to the music and watched some people dancing enthusiastically.

  Mr. Norton approached and sat on the other side of Tarc. “Young Hyllis,” he began, “I understand you were out there keeping an eye on the Yates’s farm last night?”

  “Yes sir,” Tarc said.

  “But you didn’t see whoever it was that attacked those bastards?”

  “Well,” Tarc said slowly, “it was really dark last night, you know?” Daussie admired the way her brother had given the impression of answering the question without actually doing so.

  “Yeah,” Norton said with a disappointed sigh, “and you wouldn’t have wanted to be too close to those sons-a-bitches anyway.” He chewed his lip for a moment, “I sure would like to know who did it though. I’d hire those guys as caravan guards in a heartbeat.”

  “The guards you’ve got are awfully good,” Tarc observed.

  “Yeah, they are, but wouldn’t you like to be protected by the kind of people who were able to quietly kill all those bastards in the dark?”

  Tarc shrugged and said in an oddly raspy voice, “I don’t know. The kind of people who could do that… they sound pretty scary themselves.”

  ***

  In the morning, the Hyllises rushed to serve breakfast to the caravan. Kazy pitched in with a will, making everything go better. Eva felt very impressed. The girl had only been involved in making one meal so far, and that one very different, yet she needed little direction. She sought out or found tasks she could do without prompting. Eva saw her flinch away from men couple of times, but Eva was watching for it. She didn’t think the men themselves or anyone else realized the girl had quailed. She hoped it meant the girl was recovering from her trauma and not that she was suppressing her emotions.

  As breakfast was winding down, Daum and Tarc started hitching their team and packing the wagon so that it would be ready to roll. They also saddled the Hyllises’ horses. Eva saw Tarc talk briefly to the girl guard, Lizeth.

  They almost had their wagon ready to roll when the caravan started to pull out. They threw a few things in at the last moment without taking care to properly pack them and managed to pull out with only a slight gap in front of them.

  Daum mounted one of their horses and rode over to speak to Norton for a moment. Norton didn’t look happy, but he did nod.

  Daum returned as Eva, Daussie, and Kazy led their team out onto the main road. “Kazy,” he said, “I’ve gotten permission for you, Tarc, and I to ride ahead and visit your family’s farm.”

  Eva looked around and saw Tarc carrying a shovel and mounted on their other horse. She looked back at Daum, “I don’t think Kazy’s going to feel comfortable riding behind you or Tarc.”

  Lizeth had just ridden up, “I didn’t think she’d be comfortable riding behind them either. She can mount up behind me.”

  Eva watched them ride away with some sense of trepidation. After the past few days, it felt frightening to have her family widely separated again. She took a deep breath and reminded herself the raiders weren’t just out of sight, they were dead.

  Over her shoulder she heard Arco’s voice, “Where are Daum and your son?”

  Eva looked up at the handsome, but unhappy looking guard captain. “They’re taking Kazy, the farm girl who’s joined us, to her farm to retrieve any possessions she can.”

  Arco frowned, “You guys picked up a stray farm girl?”

  Eva nodded, “Her entire family was killed by the raiders. Turns out she’s one of Daum’s cousins, though he didn’t know she lived around here.”

  Arco scowled as he looked out along the road the caravan was taking. “Dammit, I wanted Daum and his bow up on top of the guard wagon until we were absolutely sure none of the raiders were still around.”

  “Sorry,” Eva said, thinking Arco really didn’t have to worry, but remembering how she’d felt uneasy herself just a few minutes ago. “They wanted Kazy to have time to say goodbye.”

  As they approached the farmhouse, Tarc started to worry. It seemed unlikely that anyone had come to bury Kazy’s family and it had been quite a few days since they had been killed. What if their bodies are rotting? Or what if they’ve been chewed on by animals? Kazy shouldn’t see that should she? He nudged his horse over closer to Daum and expressed his concerns.

  Daum didn’t look happy, but he shrugged and said, “They say it’s better to see your loved ones after they die, even if they’re pretty messed up. It keeps you from constantly thinking you’re going to see them again.” He glanced down at the shovel Tarc balanced in front of him on the saddle. “That’s why I had you bring the shovel, so we could bury them and have a little ceremony.”

  “I thought it was because Kazy’s family had some money buried somewhere.”

  “That too,” Daum said, swinging down off his horse. “I think we should be the first ones in the door, don’t you?”

  Tarc wasn’t very happy about that either, but he reluctantly followed his father in the door of the little farmhouse. Fortunately the door had kept animals out, however the bodies were swollen and the odor was pretty bad even though the day was cool.

  Daum stared despondently at his cousin’s body. “Looks like we get to dig some graves.”

  They went back outside to tell Kazy. After some discussion, they decided to dig up the strongbox and the ground next to it to make the graves.

  They found a couple more shovels in the barn. Lizeth and the two men started digging graves while Kazy searched the barn and other outbuildings for valuables. It didn’t take very long to find the strongbox which proved to have quite a bit of money in it. However, despite desperately hurrying and Kazy taking a turn with a shovel too, they were only about halfway done digging the five graves when they saw the caravan going by on the main road.

  Finally, Tarc and Daum rolled each of the bodies in a blanket and carried them out to the graves while Lizeth tried to comfort Kazy. They filled in the graves and Daum said a few words. Kazy sang the mournful song she, Eva, and Daussie had sung the evening before.

  The strongbox would be clumsy on a horse so they emptied it into a couple of heavy bags as Kazy went through her home picking out a few mementos and items of value.

  Their hearts were heavy as they rode after the caravan.

  Chapter Two

  Tarc walked alongside the lead horse of their team, taking his turn. In the distance ahead and to the left, he saw a small plume of dust that looked like it would meet the road they were on. Turning he called back to his sister, “Daussie, find a guard and make sure they’ve seen that plume of dust up to the left.”

  Daussie lifted her eyes to see the plume herself, then turning, she untied their black horse, and leapt into the saddle. She trotted forward to talk to the guard leading the team pulling the guard’s wagon.

  Tarc snorted, the guard’s wagon was right in front of theirs and Daussie could easily have trotted up there on her own two feet. She loved having an excuse to ride one of the horses. On the other hand, he realized that if the guard sent her back to find Lieutenant Arco, it would be better if she were already mounted.

  Daussie wheeled her horse and trotted
back to the Hyllises’ wagon. She stopped beside Tarc and said, “This road merges with another one up there. The dust plume would be from someone traveling on that other road. He says we’re about to reach a river crossing. The town’s just on the other side.”

  Daussie dropped off the horse and turned to tie it to the wagon again while Tarc stretched his neck to look ahead. The town of Denton’s Crossing was their next stop. The caravan had been stopping for an hour or two at little villages along the way, but it was going to be nice to stop for a few days in a bigger town.

  When they rolled up over a little embankment and could see, Tarc found the actual river crossing setup fascinating. The crossing was attached to some of the ancients’ massive chunks of concrete. Henry Roper came up while Tarc was staring at it and said, “See those huge blocks of concrete?”

  Tarc nodded.

  “Believe it or not, those are only small pieces of what used to be an entire bridge over the river, all built out of concrete. It went from one side of the river to the other and those huge chunks you see are just the start and the end.”

  Tarc turned to look at Roper in amazement, “The ancients used concrete to go over a river?! How could they possibly hold up a bridge that was made out of something so heavy?!”

  Roper shook his head, “It’s amazing isn’t it? Those brown stains you see on the broken surface of the concrete? Those are from steel they buried inside the concrete!”

  Tarc’s eyebrows lifted as he tried to imagine construction on such a scale. And the use of so much iron! A pair of huge ropes were attached to the concrete pilings and stretched across the river. Some kind of platform floated in the river attached to the ropes. As Tarc watched he realized the platform was getting closer to his side of the river. Curiously he wondered how it was moving, he didn’t see anyone rowing, nor pulling on a rope to cause the big raft to come to their side. He considered asking Roper how the ferry moved, but didn’t want to seem ignorant.

  When it came the Hyllises’ turn to load their wagon, Tarc observed the entire process with fascination. A big wooden gangplank floated up and down with the river to allow people to get onto the floating platform whether the water was high or low. The ferry platform was big enough to hold an entire wagon and its team, with space left over for extra riders.

  Once they had loaded their wagon on board, several people who had arrived on the other road got on with them. The men driving the ferry started pushing some big levers on the down-stream side of the platform. It took significant effort to move the levers, but once they had been moved, the platform started moving across the river without any more effort! Tarc felt fascinated by the entire process and moved to the edge to try to see how the levers moved the ferry. It looked like they just shifted something underneath the platform, but he couldn’t see what it was, nor understand how it moved the ferry.

  Curious, Tarc looked around at the men who ran the platform, hoping to ask them how it worked. None of them looked inclined to talk to the passengers.

  Puzzling, Tarc realized he could use his ghost sense to tell what was going on. He just wasn’t used to thinking of his ghost during the day when he could see things with his eyes. Extending it outwards, Tarc first felt the warm planks of the platform. The underside was cooler and harder to detect, but he could still sense the large rudder like devices the levers moved. The levers had pushed the rudders over and they were deflecting the water. The force of the deflected water pushed the platform across the river!

  Tarc found the entire set up ingenious. Next he sent his ghost out to study the large rolling pulleys that guided the platform along the ropes on the far side.

  Tarc blinked. Within the field of his ghost a man had leaned up against the side of the Hyllises’ wagon! Tarc knew it wasn’t Daum, because he could see Daum standing at the front of the ferry with Kazy and Daussie. He turned his attention back to the man and realized the man had an arm slid behind him, underneath the canvas bonnet that covered the wagon! The guy was feeling around in there! Tarc started that way.

  Coming around the corner of the wagon, Tarc shouted, “Hey! What’re you doing?! Get your hand out of our wagon!”

  Pulling the hand back out from under the canvas, the large man turned narrowed eyes on Tarc and leaned away from the wagon. “I was just leaning up against the wagon. Is that a crime?”

  Hotly, Tarc said, “It is when you stick your arm in under the bonnet!”

  The man stepped towards Tarc who suddenly realized the guy was very large. He growled, “I said I was just leaning up against it!”

  Tarc stepped backwards, but realized the man was holding his hand out of sight. Probing with his ghost, Tarc could tell the big man had one of the Hyllises’ cooking knives in his fist. If he’d stolen something that wasn’t sharp, the man probably would have slipped it into his pocket by now. Tarc held out his hand and said, “Give me our knife!”

  The man’s eyebrows rose, probably finding it hard to believe Tarc knew what he had in his hand. He didn’t deny having the knife though; instead he lifted the knife and said, “This’s my knife!”

  Tarc gave him an incredulous look, “You just walk around carrying a kitchen knife in your hand?! You don’t even have a sheath for it!”

  The man glanced down at it, probably somewhat surprised to realize it was a kitchen knife, but then he looked back up at Tarc. “This ain’t no kitchen knife, it’s my work knife. And, yeah, I carry around a knife. Is that a crime?” He stepped closer.

  Warily, Tarc stepped back again. Not wanting to take his eyes off the man, he felt behind him with his ghost to make sure he wasn’t about to step off the platform. He kept his hand out, “You know that’s our knife. Give it to me and that’ll be all there is to this.”

  “I said it’s my knife!” the man growled, beginning to plod after Tarc, holding the knife in front of him threateningly.

  Tarc backed away, but realized he was about to run out of room. He glanced around. No one seemed to have noticed their little altercation. The river noise probably drowned out their argument. Tarc reached out to the man’s neck with his ghost, using his talent to push against the flow of blood in the carotid artery.

  The man shook his head; then stumbled. He went down on one knee, then put out a hand. The knife in question fell from nerveless fingers. Tarc stepped around him, picked up the knife and backed away as he let the pressure off.

  By the time the man sat back up and looked around in some confusion, Tarc had slipped the knife back under the bonnet. Warily glancing back, he headed up to the front of the platform to tell Daum what had just happened. He worried the big man would try to cause trouble, but the thief just sat where he’d fallen until the ferry docked at the other side of the river. Once docked, he got up and walked off the ferry before the Hyllises, but then sat to one side and glowered while they unloaded their wagon.

  With a sick feeling, Tarc worried the thief was the kind of man to hold a grudge.

  Sitting on a ledge of the big concrete piling, Bork Jonas scowled at the wagon unloading off the ferry. He didn’t understand what had happened back there.

  Bork made his living with petty theft and had done it successfully for years now. Stealing things off of counters in shops; breaking into shops or homes when the owners were away. He never stole things of high enough value to cause great excitement, just items which could be sold for enough to keep him going day to day. This wasn’t the first time he’d been caught in the act, but size and bluster had let him intimidate those who’d tried to stop him in the past.

  This pissant kid though, hadn’t backed off like others had. Bork had worried the kid would go crying to the ferrymen, but had counted on the ferrymen’s sullen disdain for their passengers to keep them from getting involved. Besides, there would be no way for the caravaners to prove the knife was theirs and not his.

  Few towns had any kind of policing and Bork moved from place to place. By the time a town that did have a police force started to recognize Bork might be a problem
, he had moved on to his next victims.

  He really hadn’t expected to have any serious trouble with the caravan kid. Now he wondered what had happened to him. At one moment he’d been threatening the kid; then he’d started feeling dizzy. A little like he’d been drunk, even though he hadn’t had anything to drink. Bork had staggered, then fallen. Never completely unconscious, he remembered with humiliation the kid taking the knife he’d dropped and moving off with it.

  Bork’s confusion and dizziness gradually wore back off, but left him unable to understand how the kid had beaten him. Was the kid some kind of witch?

  Finally, Bork got up and moved off into the town. That kid had better hope Bork didn’t run into him after dark. If he did, Bork would teach him not to mess with his betters.

  Tarc felt relieved to see the big thief had moved off before they finally got the wagon unloaded and their team of mules straightened out. They slowly pulled the wagon up the rise to the town of Denton’s Crossing, following the guard wagon to the market area. Tarc wondered whether this town would be big enough to have some baths. He’d been missing the hot soaks from their old tavern.

  The market area proved to be outside the walls of Denton’s crossing. They circled the wagons, but someone said that in the event of a major attack the town was supposed to allow them to drive their wagons inside the walls.

  Of course, they would be expected to help man the walls for mutual protection.

  Once they had set up their own little camp, the Hyllises began preparing dinner for the rest of the caravan. As the caravan had to cross the river one wagon at a time, it took the entire afternoon for the rest of the caravan to arrive. With hours to prepare the meal, Eva began simmering a huge pot of black beans spiced with some of the herbs she grew on top of their little trailer. She also roasted pork to put in the beans and serve on the side. Once that was underway, Tarc and Daum went over to the actual market where they set up the little stall where the Hyllises would sell moonshine, sweets, and healing.