So they spend another night together wrapped up in a blanket on the ground. Everyone can see that the two of them are deeply in love and belong together.
The following morning, they get an early start. Before the sun has risen much above the horizon, they’re already a mile down the road. A little before noon they begin to enter rolling hills, which James can see stretches a long way ahead of them. The road continues to follow the river as it winds its way through the hills.
Ever since Jihara, the other traffic on the road has dropped off to almost nothing, only the occasional rider or caravan is encountered. At sunset when they set up camp, they find an area adjacent to the river where they can have ready access to water. James even wades out into the river and does his fisherman routine and bags several large reddish orange fish.
“Neat trick,” Roland says when James brings back his third fish.
“It comes in handy,” he replies.
Everyone enjoys the fish and after dinner, they take turns telling stories or singing songs. Most of them seem to be love songs or stories about those in love. Stig begins recalling his first amorous encounter but Cassie begins to blush a deep red, causing him to cut it short. Tinok gives him a stern look before someone else breaks in and begins another song, this one a fast paced silly song for Arkie.
“Better get to sleep,” James announces when the song is finally over. “I’d like to get an early start tomorrow.” Some grumble about having to turn in, but most take it in stride. The only ones who don’t seem to mind are Cassie and Tinok, who readily lay down together. Cassie lays her head on his chest and quickly falls asleep.
James looks over and sees Tinok’s head up and he’s looking around.
“What’s the matter?” James asks him.
He gestures to Cassie sleeping on his chest and then whispers, “I gotta go pee!”
James tries to hide his amusement but fails as he just shrugs his shoulders at Tinok’s predicament.
He starts to get up and Cassie wakes up. “I’ll be right back,” he assures her.
She lays her head down on the ground and says, “Hurry up.”
In no time at all, he’s back and she lays her head down on his chest again.
James lies down and continues to chuckle as he begins to fall asleep.
Ahhhh!
A cry in the night startles James awake just in time to see Qynn fall into the fire with an arrow piercing his chest. Without thought, he causes a great burst of light to explode over the camp and in that brief instance, sees a dozen or more attackers approaching from all directions.
Everyone comes awake when the light bursts overhead.
“We’re under attack!” he yells as he gets up, trying to find the bowman.
Everyone bursts into action, the girls hiding under a wagon while the guys all grab their weapons and move to engage the enemy. With light to see by, the surprise the attackers held in the dark is now gone. The pit fighters rush to engage the attackers, wreaking havoc with skills honed by years in the pits.
James locates two bowmen who each get an arrow off before James has a chance to take them out. An attacker is rushing him and is almost upon him when a knife flies out from the camp, imbedding itself through the man’s left eye. He turns and sees Shorty standing atop a wagon as he lets fly another knife at an approaching attacker.
Scar and Potbelly are standing back to back as they hold off three attackers while Jiron and Tinok are busy slicing and dicing ones of their own. He looks to see Stig engaged with a large attacker wielding a longsword. Stig deflects the thrust of the man’s sword with his shield and then follows through with his mace, pulping the man’s face. Seeing Scar and Potbelly engaged with three, he runs over to render aid.
Scar, with both swords weaving a pattern of death, takes out one of the ones pressing him and Potbelly. Turning to engage the other, he watches as a hole opens up in the man’s chest, blood and gore spraying out his back. He looks behind him and sees James there with another slug as he prepares to take out another attacker. Between Potbelly and himself, they quickly take out the last of the attackers near them before Stig has a chance to join them.
Scar quickly looks around for another to engage but all he sees are dead bandits lying everywhere. Shorty jumps off the wagon and races over to where Qynn is burning in the fire and pulls him out. The smell of burnt flesh and hair permeates the entire area.
“Tinok!” he hears Delia’s anguished cry. He looks over and sees her cradling Cassie’s head in her lap, blood from where an arrow sticks out of her stomach rapidly spreading across her dress.
“Cassie!” Tinok’s cry echoes across the battlefield as he races over to her.
He drops to his knees, tears falling from his eyes as he looks to Delia. She just shakes her head.
“Tinok,” Cassie says weakly when she sees him there.
“Yes, my dearest,” he says, trying to hold back the sobs.
“I can’t wait to be your wife,” she says, distantly.
“You will be soon,” he says as he takes her into his arms, brushing strands of her golden hair out of her face.
“Don’t leave me!” he cries as he starts to sob.
“Silly boy,” she says as she looks into his eyes. “I’ll never leave you. I love you.”
“I love you too,” he says to her. A tear falls from his face onto hers.
“Maybe tomorrow,” she says as her voice begins to grow faint, “we can dance again.” And then she smiles as he kisses her on the forehead. She closes her eyes as her body relaxes in death.
“Cassie!” Tinok cries as he gently shakes her as if she was just sleeping, “Oh my god, Cassie!” He then holds her tight to his chest as sobs rack his body. He just sits there holding her as he rocks back and forth.
His head snaps up as he looks to James with red, tear filled eyes, “You can save her, can’t you?”
Shaking his head as his own tears fall, he says sadly, “Some things I’m unable to do.”
“But…” and then he starts sobbing all over again.
Everyone leaves Tinok alone in his time of grief. Each in their own way cared for Cassie and her passing has touched each of them deeply. While Tinok mourns the loss of his beloved, the others go through the grisly process of removing the dead from the camp. James and Jiron go through all the dead bodies and collect what money they can.
“I think they were just bandits, out looking to rob us,” Jiron says.
“It looks that way,” agrees James. Then he gestures over to Tinok, “Think he’ll be okay?”
“I don’t know,” Jiron says, “he really cared for her.”
By this time, Yorn and the others have wrapped Qynn in a blanket. As they pick him up, he says to Jiron, “We’re going to go bury him out in the desert.”
Nodding, he replies, “Just a second and I’ll come with you.”
He was about to go over to Tinok when he all of a sudden stands up, holding Cassie in his arms. Without a word, he begins to carry her out to the desert. When he sees Jiron coming toward him, he just shakes his head and then is soon lost in the dark as he takes his beloved out into the desert to bury her.
“Alright,” he says to Yorn as he joins them, “let’s go.”
James watches as they carry Qynn out to be buried, taking a different direction than Tinok so as not to intrude upon him.
James and the rest remain in the camp and wait for the others to return. No one feels like talking, each is lost in their own reflections.
In a little bit, Jiron and the others return from burying Qynn. He looks around and asks, “Tinok hasn’t returned yet?”
“No,” Delia replies.
He turns and looks out toward where he disappeared into the night with Cassie, worried for his friend. An hour later, Tinok comes back to camp. Eyes red and swollen from crying, and covered in dirt from where he dug her grave, he looks a pitiful sight. The necklace he had recently given her hangs around his neck. His knives are caked with dirt, obviously
what he used to dig her grave. That above everything else gives Jiron cause to worry for his friend. Nothing has ever before meant more to him than his knives and for him to not have cleaned them cannot bode well.
He sits near the fire and stares vacantly into the flames. They try to engage him in conversation, telling him of their sorrow for his loss, but he doesn’t respond. Eventually he just goes over to his bedroll and falls asleep.
The others stay up for a little longer, discussing their worries for Tinok and the loss of their friends. But soon they all grow tired once again and one by one, drift off to sleep.
In the morning, Tinok is gone.
Chapter Seventeen
“What do you mean he’s gone?” Jiron exclaims after James gives him the news of Tinok’s disappearance.
“He’s gone,” James tells him again. “Sometime last night, he must’ve saddled a horse and taken off.”
“And no one heard him?” he asks, looking around at everyone.
They all shake their heads indicating they hadn’t.
“We must go after him!” he says.
“No, we shouldn’t,” Delia tells him. She grabs him by the arm and stares him straight in the eye as she continues. “With the wagons we will never be able to catch up with him. And if we abandon them, we lose the reason we’re in the Empire.”
He looks at her in anguish and she says softly, “Let him go, you have more immediate concerns.”
“Like what?” he cries.
Pointing to his sister she says, “Like her.”
Defeated, he nods his head acknowledging she’s right. “Let’s get the horses hitched up and get out of here,” he says miserably. He climbs to the top of one of the nearby hills and turns toward the desert, standing there as he looks out across the rolling, desolate hills. “Tinok!” he yells as his eyes scan the horizon. “Tinok!”
Nothing, dejected at the loss of his friend, he climbs back down and helps the others with getting the caravan ready for the road.
“He’ll be okay,” offers Yorn as he comes up behind him, laying a hand on his shoulder.
“Yeah,” adds Scar, “he’s a tough one, he is.”
He turns and looks into the faces of his friends and says, “Thanks.” Then he turns back and finishes saddling his horse.
It’s a somber group that heads down the road this morning. Each remembers the fallen in their own way.
“Remember when Qynn was going up against that sailor who thought he was hot stuff?” Potbelly suddenly says, breaking up the silence.
“Yeah,” Stig replies, chuckling, “the guy thought that Qynn was going to be easy pickings.” Laughing, he continues, “He sure made him respect the quarterstaff that day.”
“I remember,” adds Scar, nodding. Then breaking into a smile, he says, “Remember that tune he would always hum as he was whacking someone to its beat?”
Laughing, Potbelly exclaims, “And how he started doing that stupid dance, making the poor guy even more humiliated!”
Everyone from the pits starts laughing at that, James looks over and can see the beginnings of a grin appear on Jiron’s face.
After several more stories of Qynn’s antics in the pits, the mood is lifted somewhat. Apparently, he had been quite the clown at times.
A little past noon they leave the foothills and are once again in flat desert. The river curves to the south, as does the road and after another two hours they begin approaching another sizeable city. From a fellow traveler on the road they learn its name is Morac.
Even though it’s not getting dark yet, they decide to stop for the night here. Pulling to the northeast of town, they find a suitable spot for a camp and proceed to arrange the wagons and picket the horses for the night.
Delia says to James, “I’m going to take Scar and Potbelly with me to deliver a couple packages. Roland too.”
“Alright,” he says, “just be careful.”
“I will,” she assures him.
Once the others are aboard the wagon, she turns it and begins rolling on into town. In the course of her deliveries, she comes across a temple to Coryntia, The Hooded Lady. If you light a candle in one of her temples after a loved one’s passing, it’s said that she will help them to find their way to the afterlife and not be stranded or lost along the way.
She pulls up to it and tells them, “I’ll just be a moment.” Getting down from the wagon, she goes inside the temple and approaches a table with many candles. Sitting in the middle of the candles is a single silver bowl. Placing a coin into the bowl, she takes a candle and carries it over to where a statue of a veiled woman stands. A couple candles are already lit there at her feet and she lights hers from one of the ones already burning, before placing it alongside them. Kneeling down, she says a prayer for Cassie, that she will find her way.
After several moments, she gets up and turns as she walks back toward the exit. Once outside, she climbs back aboard the wagon and then continues on with her deliveries.
Jiron has been moping around the camp ever since Delia left, hurt that Tinok ran out on him. Tersa comes over to James and asks, “What should we do?”
“About what?”
“About Jiron,” she says as she gestures toward him. “I don’t like seeing him like this.”
“Not much we can do other than just be here for him,” he replies. “He’ll work it out on his own, all we can do is to simply allow him the time to do it.”
“I suppose,” she says, not entirely happy. “But I feel so helpless.”
“I know,” he assures her.
Yorn comes over and joins the conversation, “When the others return, we’re going to take him to get drunk.”
“Why?” she asks.
“To help him forget about things for awhile,” he replies. To James he asks, “You want to come?”
“No, I’m not into that sort of thing,” he tells him.
“Your loss,” he says as he wanders back to the others.
From the wagon where Ezra and Arkie are, they can hear poor little Arkie crying. “He misses her,” Tersa says. “She always played with him after we stopped.”
“We all do,” he admits, “she was special.”
A little while later, when Yorn sees Delia approaching, he grabs Jiron and the pit fighters all head into town. They pause momentarily at the wagon and soon Scar and Potbelly join the group as it continues on its way.
When Delia gets to the camp, she asks James, “Where are they going?”
“To get drunk,” he explains, “at least that’s what Yorn said.”
“Hope they don’t get into any trouble,” she states as she watches them go.
The first place they find is an old tavern with questionable clientele. Walking in, they see the mangiest group of derelicts this side of the gutter. “Perfect!” announces Scar as they sit at a large table off to one side.
A woman with a small beard and a patch over one eye comes up to them and says something that none can understand. Despite the language barrier, they finally make her understand that they want drinks. She brings them over several bottles of a foul smelling concoction that makes their eyes bug out and slightly burns as it goes down.
“Like mother’s milk,” Potbelly squeaks out after downing a large swallow.
“I hope they’re not trying to poison us,” Scar says as the liquid burns its way down to his stomach.
They sit there and drink for awhile, trading tales both true and improbable when a group of tough looking men walk into the tavern. They see them sitting at the table and walk over toward them. When they reach the table, one of them says something belligerently to them, which of course no one understands. Their failure to respond only makes him all the madder.
“What do you suppose is wrong?” Shorty asks.
A man sitting at a table next to theirs says, “You’re sitting at their table and they want you out.”
Jiron looks at the spokesman for the group and he says, “No, you find your own table. This one’s
ours.”
Even though he couldn’t understand the words, he understood the meaning behind them. The man suddenly reaches out and grabs Jiron by the shirt as he starts hauling him out of his chair.
Jiron stands up while at the same time swinging his fist with all his strength and connects with the man’s jaw, sending him stumbling backward several feet into his fellows.
Then pandemonium erupts as one of the man’s friends takes a swing at Jiron and both sides join the fray.
“For Tinok!” Scar yells as he trades blows with a large individual, finally sending him to the floor with two quick blows to the stomach and then one to the face, breaking his nose. Turning, he sees Shorty being tossed through the air where he hits the wall with a thud.
The other tavern’s patrons quickly make for the sides of the room or out the door to avoid becoming embroiled in the fighting. Some join in, those who always enjoy a good fight no matter the reason.
The fighting remains fairly even until the town watch shows up. When Potbelly sees them enter he yells, “The town watch!” They all turn to see a dozen uniformed men entering wielding clubs, which they use to start felling brawlers.
Trading a few more blows, they turn and race to the other side of the tavern where they dive through the windows or run out the door into a side alley, to avoid being taken in. A quick survey shows them all there and then they race down the alley.
“Man that was a good fight!” exclaims Yorn, wiping blood away from his nose.
“Just what I needed,” Jiron adds, smiling.
Stig says, “I think one of my teeth are loose,” as he wiggles one.
Walking down a little further, they find another tavern where they’re able to resume their drinking once more. An hour passes and they’re beginning to get fairly drunk, having a grand time. A girl comes over to them and asks, “So, are you boys new in town?”
“Yeah,” Stig replies as she makes herself comfortable on his lap, “just passing through.” He places his arms around her as she leans against his chest.
Fires of prophesy ms-2 Page 22