"Jenniline, is this really right? You're on a god walk - you're not out here to pick up stray animals. You're already stretching the boundaries of a god walk by bringing us as an escort; bringing this," the man gestured contemptuously at Grange, "completely erases your credibility."
"Look at him,” the girl replied forcefully as Grange passively rose to his feet. “Look at that arsenal,” her hand demonstrably swept past the knife, the sword, and the bolos that adorned his belt. “And look at these,” her fingers poked at the numerous slashes and stab holes that were scattered across his cloak, some stained dark with blood.
“You’re a fighter, aren’t you?” she said to Grange.
“If you say so, my lady. I don’t remember,” Grange answered wearily.
“I say so,” she answered firmly.
“The god says that the winter war is coming,” Jenniline said. She looked at the man who had questioned Grange’s worth. “We shall neither leave him behind to be overwhelmed alone, nor pass up the chance to bring him home to help us fight the battle at home, Burr,” she said decisively.
“As your ladyship wishes,” the other companion put an end to the conversation.
“What shall we do now?” the man asked. “You said our goal was to reach the Yellow Spring. Did you know he’d be here? What’s next?”
”We’ll stay here tonight,” the woman answered. Grange looked up, and saw that streamers of pink were crossing the sky, heralding the arrival of sunset.
“Then we’ll head back to Southgar tomorrow. I think my god walk is complete,” she told the others. “Set up camp. You,” she motioned to Grange as she unslung the pack from her back, “Grange, come walk with me.”
She removed her heavy coat after her pack was off, revealing a slender, boyish frame, then she turned and walked away from the banks of the yellow spring.
Grange looked at her receding back, then looked at the three men around him.
“You heard her ladyship; go on and talk to her. Don’t do anything stupid,” Trensen said.
“Leave your weapons here,” Burr added quickly.
Grange looked at him, their eyes challenging one another, as a spark of personality kindled in Grange. “I’d not harm a woman,” he said, as he pulled his weapons free and dropped them on the ground.
“You’re a fool then,” Trensen said. “Because they’ll hurt you every chance they get,” he grinned to show the humor in his words. “That one especially,” he added.
Grange grimly returned the smile, then walked after the woman, catching her as she turned around behind a scrubby patch of bushes.
“Who are you?” she asked bluntly.
“I told you, my lady,” Grange answered, surprised by the pointless question.
Jenniline reached over and grabbed his arm, then yanked his sleeve up; he grimaced in pain from the wound in his shoulder. They both stared down at the line of puckered, red scars – five spots that drew a line along his flesh.
“The god told me he was sending me out on a god walk in order to find the hero to save our land from the demons that are coming,” she said in a low voice. Her words set off alarms in Grange’s foggy mind, the word demon sounding ominous and painful.
“The night before I departed, a goddess spoke to me, and told me to take warriors with me, and to go to Yellow Springs to look for arm scars to mark the great hero,” she continued.
“I expected that I was going to come here, and receive scars on my arms somehow,” she said as she released Grange’s arm. “I thought that I was going to be the hero,” she added in a flat voice.
He stared at the marks, aware of some significance to them, some great role they had played in his life. Frustration welled up as he failed to find any answer, any connection, any glimmer of understanding of what had implanted the marks on his arm. He pulled his sleeve back down into place.
“I can’t tell you anything. I don’t know what they are. I doubt that I’m a great hero though,” he said. “Check your own arms.”
“Believe me, I have no scars,” she said. “It’s you; it has to be you,” her shoulders slumped in defeat.
“I wanted to be the hero so badly! I wanted to stand out finally; I wanted to be someone, to be noticed,” she exhaled loudly.
Grange stared at her. She was striking to look at. Not classically beautiful, not breathtaking, but attractive and memorable. She had a headful of thick, nearly white hair, piled in a bun at the back of her skull. Her nose was slightly upturned, her mouth was small, and her eyes were as blue as the sky.
“A girl like you will always be noticed,” he blurted out the words.
She looked at him for a moment, then looked away. “To boys like you, sure,” she listlessly agreed. “My father will never care though. He just wants to secure his dynasty. Now, he’ll just marry me off to some noble family he needs to support him.”
“Who is your father?” Grange asked in confusion.
The girl looked at him haughtily, and straightened her shoulders. “You’ll find out soon enough. Now, not another word of this, not to me, and not to anyone else either, is that understood?” she demanded.
“And you’ll come with us, back to Southgar, starting tomorrow,” she added before he could answer. “Understood?” she demanded again. “We’ll figure out the rest when your brain isn’t so addled. The god will reveal all.”
Grange considered rejecting the plan for just a fraction of a second, put off by her imperious manner. But he saw no other option than to go with her, he decided. She and her companions offered what was probably his only realistic chance to stay alive and leave the tiny oasis.
“Understood,” he agreed.
She turned her body sideways and brushed past him to return to the others, while he stood in place, head hung, wondering what his future held. It had to hold more than his past, he decided, for he had none that he could remember, no more than the past hour, though his scars and aches and torn clothes told an unhappy tale about that past.
After a minute of reflection, he turned and trod back to the small campsite, where the girl was speaking earnestly to her companions, talking in the language that he didn’t understand.
“We’re ready to go back home starting first thing tomorrow,” she said as Grange edged towards the outside of their circle. “Do you have any supplies?” she asked Grange.
He knelt by his pack and looked inside. There were some articles of clothing, a slender wand of wood, and a wooden flute, but nothing else. He looked up at her and shook his head negatively.
“The rest of us will have to share our supplies with him,” she directed the others.
“But it’s over ten days march,” Burr protested.
“We’ll make the food last; we’ll do it in eight,” Jenniline said sharply. She looked around at the others, daring them to challenge her, and all fell silent, averting their eyes.
“I’ll give him part of my dinner rations for tonight,” she set the tone. “But I won’t have to serve guard duty in return,” she smiled in an effort to soften her stand.
“I’ll take the first shift,” Burr promptly said.
“I’ll take third shift,” Trensen jumped into the topic.
“I’ll take middle,” the third guard glumly accepted his lot. “Unless the orphan wants it,” he looked hopefully at Grange.
“I am an orphan,” Grange said. The word sounded right, and his assertion clicked as a true statement.
The others looked at him for a moment, then started digging in their packs, seeking their rations. Jenniline handed over a handful of nuts and dried fruit to Grange.
“Don’t eat it too quickly. That’s all you get tonight,” she warned him.
They settled into rest then. There was no campfire – the shortage of firewood saw to that. So they went to individual spots and spread their bed rolls. Grange picked a spot a little apart from the others, but still close to the water, hoping to feel as much of the thermal output of the warm water as possible, and slowly fell as
leep, wondering about all that had happened and all that he had learned, and especially about what he had forgotten, and when the memories would return, if ever.
He had seemingly no more than fallen asleep than someone’s toe was nudging his shoulder.
“Time to get up and pack. We’re leaving before dawn to make this eight-day journey you’ve stirred up,” one of the men’s voices said hoarsely.
And they were on their way out within twenty minutes. Grange was shocked by the frozen chill they experienced once they climbed over the banks of the small thermal valley and left the warm yellow spring waters behind. The ambient air outside was infinitely colder, and Grange bundled his clothing and belongings around him, knowing that he must have done the same in earlier days, whenever he had travelled to the yellow spring oasis of warmth in the first place, but finding his clothing to be inadequate protection nonetheless.
The small band of travelers kept to a challenging pace at first, but as Grange began to fall behind from the stress of his unhealed injuries, the others, especially Jenniline, began to chaff at the delays.
“We need to get back,” she snapped frequently, as she strode back from the front of the group to where Grange was trailing in the back. “Hasten your pace.”
Grange silently accepted the urges, and tried to go faster, despite the aches he felt in his various injuries. The other men stoically pushed forward, and they covered ground at a determined pace.
“We’re making good progress,” Trensen said during their stop at the fifth sunset away from Yellow Spring. Grange could detect no difference in the landscape from anything they had passed or seen anywhere along the hurried journey – there were low bushes, grasses and mosses and lichens. There were low hills, frozen puddles and streams, and numerous rocks protruding from the ground. And there was the sun that traveled overhead from east to west, dodging frequent clouds. But there were no landmarks.
He stood, breathing heavily, hands on hips, and observed a small, dark creature flit from the shadow of one bush to another, circling around the small human encampment. The creature was larger than a typical rodent, with longer forelegs than a rat or mouse, and a face that was vaguely human, Grange thought, though the details were hard to observe, for the creature moved quickly, and seemed insubstantial in some inexplicable way.
“What kinds of rats live out here?” he asked idly, curious about the animal. It stopped at the sound of his voice, then it disappeared into the bushy foliage.
“There are a couple of kinds of mice, the scrambler and the hopper,” Burr answered. “But no rats.”
“I just saw something in the bushes, about this big,” Grange replied, holding his hands several inches apart.
Burr and Trensen looked at one another. “There’s nothing that big out here,” Trensen answered.
Grange started to protest, then stopped when he saw the expressions on the faces of the others. He shrugged, knowing that he had seen what he’d seen and they wouldn’t believe him; he dropped his pack to the ground, then he walked apart from the others, around a rise and out of sight to relieve himself. A minute later he heard an unidentifiable shout from one of the men, and then the unmistakable clang of swords clashing.
Astonished by the sounds, he pulled his own sword free and started to run back to the camp.
Seconds later there was a scream, and as he came into sight of the camp, where a battle had erupted among his companions, illuminated by the bright light of a full moon overhead.
“What are you doing?” he shouted in astonishment. Jenniline and Trensen stood back to back, as Burr and the other guard attacked them from either side. The sight of the battle was disconcerting, but worst of all was the fact that atop the shoulders of the two attackers there were clusters of the small, filmy rodents Grange had seen minutes earlier, seeming to urge the battle on.
“Grange!” Trensen shouted. He turned to look at the new arrival, and in his moment of distraction Burr was able to stab deeply into the man’s stomach, causing him to double over and fall to the ground.
“Stop!” Grange shouted. He rushed forward, and as he did a new pair of the dark rodents leapt up at his face from bushes along his path. He swept his sword through the air before him and struck them, making each explode in a bright flash that startled him and everyone else in the battle scene.
“So you and your weapon are still lethal, despite your condition?” Burr said in an ominous voice that sounded nothing at all like his usual tone. He kicked his leg out and tripped Jenniline’s feet from her unprotected back side, then both of the attackers turned and rushed towards Grange.
They commenced to attack, separating to find their own angles of opportunity, crashing through bushes to find the best locations, as Grange spun and retreated and tried to grasp the inconceivable fact of the internecine fight that had erupted. The two men were battling ferociously, and Grange had to swing his sword with ceaseless effort to protect himself.
He felt something on his back, and momentarily swept his sword over his head and across his shoulders, causing more explosions that startled the other combatants for a moment, giving Grange the chance to strike quickly at the man on his left, stabbing him in the chest. The man fell, and the creatures upon him leapt at Grange in a suicidal wave that crossed the small gulf of air between them.
Grange stabbed one, missed two others, and then fell to his knees as a result of Burr successfully landing a slice on his thigh; Grange dropped in pain, and fell beneath the flight path of the incoming creatures. He slapped his free hand on the injury, then swept his sword across the ground, where the creatures that had missed landing on him were trying to sneak upon him again.
He awkwardly spun on the tundra and deflected another attack from Burr, then he rose back to his feet and commenced to spar with the man.
There was a sound off to the side, and they both turned to see Jenniline back on her feet, her arm swinging forward as she threw a knife at Burr.
The man rasped a curse at her, just before the blade landed in his chest. Grange stabbed his sword at the things that were jumping from Burr’s shoulders, causing more flashes, but then one flew at him, emerging straight out of the center of Burr’s forehead as the man collapsed.
The demon landed on Grange’s chest.
“You’ll fall to us soon, doomed one,” it said, its beady eyes glowing green.
Grange stabbed it with his sword as well, and fell backwards from the impact of the bright flash on his chest.
He landed on his back and lay there in pain and confusion, stunned for a handful of seconds until Jenniline’s face appeared above him. She spoke excitedly to him in her own musical language at first, then stopped.
“Are you okay?” she asked in his language.
He nodded wordlessly, and she disappeared. He propped himself up and saw that she was tending to Trensen, who had received the dreadful wound during the battle.
Grange painfully rose and examined Burr. The man was dead, and the other guard was dead as well. There were no other obvious demons in sight as Grange gingerly stepped over to join Jenniline, who was cooing soothing words to her guard as she bent low over him. She looked up when Grange arrived, and he saw that there were tears in her eyes. She shook her head silently.
Grange looked down at Trensen. His eyes were open.
“Grange,” he whispered, and Grange bent down.
“Protect the princess. Take her back to the palace and the temple. She was my responsibility, and now I place her in your hands,” the man grunted in pain as he passed his duty on. “She is your charge now, do you understand?”
Grange’s eyes stared back directly. “I will do it, or I’ll die trying,” he pledged.
“Don’t die – succeed. I’ll handle the dying part,” Trensen gave a partial smile, then closed his eyes and passed.
Grange raised his eyes and looked at Jenniline. Her eyes were closed and her head bowed. He saw her lips moving quietly, and heard snatches of a whispered prayer. When she was fini
shed she raised her head and looked at him.
“Are you in any shape to travel?” she asked. She reached over and touched the bloody slice along the front of his leg.
“I can travel; I don’t have a choice, do I?” he asked.
“We have an option. There’s another thermal spring not far from here. We can be there in a few hours, and use it to recuperate. Can you go that far?” she asked, and he nodded, hoping that he could.
“Good. First, we’ll need to build a cairn over Trensen,” she said. “Let’s gather stones.”
Grange hesitated, then decided to speak his mind. “We should cover the others as well,” he told her.
She looked at him in astonishment. “Let their bones feed the scavengers,” she said.
“It wasn’t their fault,” Grange replied. She started to protest, but he held his hand up. “They weren’t in control of themselves. Did you see those shadowy things that were in them – the ones that exploded? I think they controlled the men. I saw one come through Burr’s head.”
“I didn’t see anything, but I saw the flashes of light, and I know Burr and Anthel were good men. They’d never been disloyal before. They weren’t supporters of the old regime,” she acknowledged.
“We should cover them all,” Grange reiterated.
“So be it,” Jenniline agreed.
They spent several hours bringing together enough stones to protect all three bodies, as Grange continued to be hobbled by old and new wounds. They finally finished, then combined the remaining supplies from all the packs and collected all the water bottles, then set out, moving south instead of northeast.
They made slow progress, but finally reached the pocket in the side of a shallow valley, where a boiling hot spring created a tiny oasis, and they both collapsed in relief on the south slope of the warm spot, just minutes before the sun rose to start a new day.
Grange continues his unpredictable journey towards a fate he doesn’t understand in the next book in the Southern Continent series, The Greater Challenge Beyond. Read the following except for a peek at his future:
Perilous Travels (The Southern Continent Series Book 2) Page 29