The Long Journey Home (Across The Lake Book 2)

by Doug Kelly

  Larn became enraged. He regretted not having his axe. If he had it, he would have immediately swung at Aton. Larn yelled, “Nomads!” because nomads had captured his daughters and other girls from the village when the hated pirates of the roadways had attacked during the battle of the burning wall. Larn’s daughter had told him of the nomads selling her and the other captured girls into slavery after their abductors had killed her mother, and with bound wrists, had transported them in a wagon far away from home. It was the same wagon that Aton, Hauk, and the hill people had recently used to hitch their horses. Therefore, it was easy to understand that when she had yelled that about Aton, all of the villagers had thought he was associated with the man that had bought the children from the nomads, because there were no doubts that the nomads had taken the girls and sold them to a slave trader. Once more, Aton extended his hand to try to give the clan leader the gift of gold, Larn slapped it out of his hand, told him that it was the vile symbol of a nomad chief, and accused him of being a nomad spy. The two groups of men squared off, weapons ready. Tarply’s armed men outnumbered Aton’s group, but his men were prepared to fight. Hauk had already unsheathed his sword, not even flinching once at the odds. Eighteen spears surrounded Aton, to protect the leader of their federation of tribes. It appeared that a battle would immediately ensue.

  It was absolutely true that the nomads had sold the girls to a traveling merchant, but that merchant was the man that Aton had killed to set the girls free. Because of Aton, they had safely returned home. This was their home, and Sevi was one of the young girls that Aton had set free when he killed their tormentor on the road back to Acadia.

  Sevi jumped between her father and Aton, and yelled, “Stop!” Larn was shocked at his daughter. She was usually so withdrawn and shy, especially since her return from the terrifying ordeal. She pointed at Aton again, and desperately yelled, “He was the man that gave us the wagon and a silver coin! He saved us!” She tried to make it perfectly clear that Aton had killed the slave trader and had freed her and the other captured girls. The horse-drawn wagon that Aton had given them had provided the young girls transportation for the long trek home, and the large silver coin had bought them food.

  Aton was as shocked as Larn. He had not recognized Sevi, because all the girls that he had helped save had their hair tightly braided, and the slave trader had smeared their innocent faces with makeup, disguising them. They appeared different now, like normal children. Then Aton recognized the wagon that he had used to hitch his horse, and now he understood why he had thought it appeared familiar to him. It was the slave trader’s cart that he had ridden in and had given to Sevi on his way back to Acadia. Sevi, her sisters, and the other captured girls from the village had been in it. Aton had saved Larn’s daughters. The instant Larn realized this, he raised both hands and bellowed, “Stop!” as loud as he could. His people put down their weapons. Cooler heads prevailed.

  Aton was irritated that he had not anticipated the potential problem of riding on hill ponies adorned with horse blankets, and using saddles from a clan enemy; he would understandably appear as a nomad.

  Larn, seemingly in a daze, began to walk slowly toward his daughters’ savior. While the clan leader approached him, Aton tried to explain belatedly that they had killed many nomads in battle to get these horses, saddles, reins, and horse blankets. Struggling with his accent, Tig explained that Aton and Hauk had just recently been living with the hill people. On their arrival to the tribe’s village, their clothes were tattered and filthy, so the tribe clothed their guests with customary attire made at Greenhill.

  Larn’s anger turned to profound gratitude. He had only cried two times in his life. The first was when he realized that the nomads had killed his wife, when his daughters had gone missing during the battle of the burning wall. The second was when his daughters had arrived safely back home, because of a brave stranger who had given them a wagon for transportation and money to buy food. That very hero was standing in front of him now. As Sevi’s father got closer, Aton could see a storm brewing in Larn’s eyes. Tears were welling in them. The proud and brave man, the clan leader, was desperately fighting them back. When he tenderly clasped Aton’s hand, the levee broke and a flood of tears poured down his sunburned cheeks. Today was the third time in his life that he had cried, and he did it in front of everyone. The crowd also shed a few tears, reminded of the joy of reunion in gaining back their captured children. Like the calm after a storm, when the breakers change into gentle waves receding from a sandy beach, the armed villagers retreated to their homes or returned to the task of repairing the village’s wooden barricade.

  Tig and others from his tribe took their steeds to the village stables, leaving Aton and Hauk’s horses with them. Hauk would have it no other way considering that their treasure was in the saddlebags on their two horses. Hauk stayed by his friend’s side, wanting to hear the impending conversation between Aton and Larn.

  Larn’s tender clasp transformed into a firm grip as he happily shook Aton’s hand. “Please stay. Stay as long as you like. My village welcomes all of you.”

  “Others are following us. People from the Greenhill tribe will be arriving soon.”

  “They are welcome.” His tears of joy had evaporated. He was grinning, and profound happiness was seething through his pores. He had finally met the man who had saved his children. Larn would do anything in his power to accommodate Aton and his friends, without question. He already had a fondness for the hill tribes, so their company would be easy to accommodate, too.

  “I can pay.” Aton picked up the gold broach from the ground, and he blew the dust off it. He offered it to Larn again.

  Larn held up his hand in a halting gesture and shook his head. “I’m eternally in debt to you. I cannot accept.”

  “I can see that your village has fallen on hard times,” replied Aton, referring to the burned section of the stockade, but he had no idea of the town’s debt and the trouble with inter-clan trading caused by the nomads. “We would like to stay for a while and don’t want to be a burden to your village. Please take it.” Aton pressed it into his new friend’s hand. “Put it into your treasury. We’ll pay for everything we need.” Aton also had no idea that the treasury was empty.

  Larn did not want to offend his guest by rejecting the gift, but because it was a symbol of nomad strength and power, it felt disgusting against his skin, so the repulsion Aton felt in their clasped hands was obvious. Larn could not hide that. The nomads had murdered Larn’s wife and abducted his children, so it was understandable. Aton could feel the reluctance in Larn’s grip and see the horrid expression on his face.

  “Melt it if you like,” said Aton. “Put it into a crucible and forge a gold coin that’s a symbol of the strength of your community.”

  The thought of destroying a nomad symbol to create a golden coin in his village’s honor was very appealing to Larn. He felt the hatred for the broach melt, as if it were already in a forge heated with the warmth of his new friend’s hand.

  Aton felt Larn’s resistance capitulate, and he pressed the precious metal more firmly into the clan leader’s palm. As he did, Aton turned his hand so the silver ring, decorated with Olar Regalyon’s crest, was prominently visible.

  Larn’s eyes exploded wide again, and he jerked Aton’s hand close to his face. He stared at the ring, almost as if he were staring through it, as if it were a portal to the underworld, through which demons could escape. “What is this?” Larn recognized the ring, or actually, the ring’s insignia. The silver ring was less a piece of jewelry than it was a sign indicating the status and official position of the owner with the warlord, Olar Regalyon.

  “It’s from a dead nomad,” Aton replied. “They attacked the Greenhill tribe.”

  “And I cut it from his finger,” Hauk interjected.

  “Good. Good for you.” Larn nodded with an expression of approval. “This ring is from a privileged clansman, not a nomad. Are you sure he was from a nomad tribe?”


  “I’m sure,” replied Hauk. “One of our horses used to be his, too.”

  “I don’t care about the horses. This ring has the crest of a nearby warlord inscribed on it, so they must be attacking close to a warlord’s estate. They’re getting bold. This has been a bad year for us.” Larn pointed at the gap in the burned wall. “They did that earlier this year, but I haven’t seen them lately.”

  “Can you tell me anything about the warlord, Olar Regalyon?” asked Aton.

  “If you’re from Acadia, how would you know of Olar, or that his domain is near Tarply? And what is your business with Tarply? Acadia is on the other side of the lake. That’s so far away for men on horseback.”

  “I’m from Acadia, but I’ll never return,” Hauk interrupted.

  Aton did not answer the questions. He was close to home, too close to feel comfortable talking about the false accusations brought against him by Lanzo Brill’s murderous act.

  Larn did not care if Aton answered. If Aton had done something offensive to the warlord, then maybe he was a wanted man, or maybe he had a bounty on his head. It mattered little to him. That was fine with Larn, because he had no sense of loyalty to Olar.

  “Desperate men do desperate things,” said Larn. “I won’t question your past. You can stay here for as long as you want.” First, he looked at Hauk’s wrists, concluding that he was a runaway slave, and then he looked into Aton’s eyes and concluded that he was also a man on the run, but not a slave, because Aton had spoken like a very educated person. For just a moment, Larn wondered if Aton could have been someone with privilege in the warlord’s ranks. Maybe he was someone who had treasonous aspirations, who had fled Olar’s domain after someone loyal to the warlord had discovered the potential usurper. To Larn, it did not matter, because they were with the village of Tarply now, and they could begin new lives. Aton had done him a great favor, and for that, he felt as though he owed Aton his life. He touched Aton and Hauk on the shoulders and asked, “Will you stay?”

  Aton and Hauk silently nodded and smiled. They accepted the invitation.

  “Good! Welcome to Tarply. We have much to discuss. Please, follow me.”

  Larn went to Aton and Hauk’s horses, and he took the reins. For the town’s two new citizens, he intended to lead the horses to the stables, but Hauk quickly grabbed for the reins, because he did not feel comfortable losing sight of their saddlebag’s contents. Hauk lied and told the clan leader that the horses were temperamental with strangers. Larn thought nothing of it and released the leather straps. Hauk guided the horses forward, and the travois sled bumped along the ruts in the ground as they went through Tarply’s open main gate.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The walls of Tarply were twice the height of a man and built with logs that the town’s carpenters had hacked with skillful swings of their broadaxes, fashioning each one so that it had a sharp tip. The pointed ends gave the vertical logs an ominous appearance when securely placed side by side, like a formation of armed soldiers standing at attention, waiting for battle. Wooden scaffolding lined the interior of the village’s barricade. Wrapped tightly around the intersecting joints of these elevated platforms, sturdy rope bound the scaffolding’s framework together. From the top level of this network of walkways, archers could take aim at their enemies, or during times that were more peaceful, the guards could view the adjacent lands with their watchful eyes as they marched back and forth along the elevated planks, surveying for any approaching dangers.

  A large metal warning bell was at the center of town. Foundry workers had cast the metal bell from scavenged steel that they had heated in a massive crucible, which transformed its contents into molten metal, glowing as bright yellow as the noon sun. After they had cast and polished the warning bell, they suspended it from a tripod of stout logs, and then they coated the metal with a thin layer beeswax to help prevent the bell from rusting. Each guard had a ceramic whistle hung from a leather lanyard around his neck. If any sentinel were to blow his whistle, another guard would run to the center of town, strike the warning bell, and keep hitting it until he was sure that his alarm had stirred the entire village.

  The citizens of Tarply had founded their village beside a stream. As its population increased, the town had grown along the length of the water, expanding in the direction of its flow. The village was long and narrow, and its main street ran through the center of town, the entire length of Tarply, from the front gates to the hot, smoky foundry at the opposite end. The main road through town was wide enough for a wagon with a long team of horses to easily turn around and go back in the opposite direction. Smaller side streets ran perpendicular to the main thoroughfare at regular intervals. Businesses populated the main road, and private residences speckled the side streets. Although some citizens were farmers and others had herds of cattle or goats, the residents were mostly merchants. This was entirely evident to Aton and Hauk as they went down the village’s main road. They saw blacksmith shops, textile shops, cobblers, a tavern, an inn, a glasswork shop that sold crystal made from melted beach sand, a moneychanger, a bakery, and many other proprietorships that had been conceived with an entrepreneurial spirit, which was a ubiquitous trait with the town’s population.

  In the recent past, Tarply would have been bustling with commerce, but because of the recent trouble with the nomads attacking merchants along the local trade routes and their raiding of clan villages, it was much quieter now. Business had slowed considerably. Today, just as it had been for several months, not much smoke was rising from the blacksmiths’ forges. Usually, the sound of hammering metal would be constant, but not today, or for longer than the shop owners cared to recall. Now, there were just the sounds of some intermittent tapping, which was the noise of some light horseshoe repair emitting from around the blacksmiths’ furnaces, an irregular tempo of metal hitting metal.

  Despite the general slowdown in business, some women in the town’s textile industry were still weaving fabric, producing bolts of woven cloth. Others made felt, as if it were business as usual. As long as they had plenty of raw materials in their inventory, they stayed busy at their looms. Although they had no one to purchase their wares due to the people’s fear of raiding nomads attacking travelers on the roads, they still had piles of cotton and wool that they could weave into bolts of fabric, and with their inventory of wool, they had created an abundant quantity of felt, too. As Aton and Hauk walked by the textile shops, they could hear the rhythmic clacking from the looms as the weavers launched their shuttles back and forth across taut beds of parallel threads. It sounded like the ticking of an optimistic clock casting away the endless seconds of misery.

  The recent attacks by the nomads, who were the despised pirates of the trading routes, worried many of the villagers because when the nomads had previously raided around their territory, these gangs of road bandits were not usually large or organized, but this year was the worst for Tarply. Several months ago, a large and organized horde of nomads had attacked the town and had burned a large section of its protective barrier before they had captured and left with a dozen of the town’s children, but the nomads had not returned since that battle. After the nomads had burned a section of the barrier wall, there was not even a trace of them near Tarply. Although no one had recently seen any of the road pirates, tensions were still high.

  The villagers had no idea that the tribe of nomads that had participated in the last raid of their town had also attacked the people of Greenhill. Under Aton’s leadership, the people of Greenhill had repulsed the nomad’s attack. Shortly after he had influenced the hill tribes to unite, the news of a federation of hill people had spread quickly among the nomads. Understanding the great threat that would come with the united tribes, the nomads had decided to migrate to the east and raid those trade routes and villages, instead. Any bands of nomads that remained near the vicinity of Tarply were small and unorganized. They were mostly petty criminals. The actual threat to Tarply from nomads had dissipated, but the town’
s citizens, as well as most of the region’s clans, had not comprehended that yet.

  Tarply had more merchants than farmers, because of the success of its nonagricultural industries, so they had to import food; therefore, what the few farmers and ranchers had produced was not sufficient to feed everyone in their town, which was sadly truer now more than ever. The merchants had always sold or traded their goods for most of their food, but with many of the local roads empty, business was sparse to say the least, and Tarply’s fall harvest would not be enough for all of the villagers again. This lull in economic activity had brought with it a severe depression in commerce, the likes of which the town had never before experienced. Because of the problems on the roads, the town had trouble processing its main raw material: metal. To acquire the much-needed fuel for their blacksmiths’ forges, they had enticed the coal traders to continue shipments in spite of the danger from attacking nomads, but that had come at a high price. Tarply’s other merchants had needed raw materials, too, and they all had gone into debt with their suppliers so they could continue producing their goods, all the while hoping that inter-clan travel would increase and normal trading would resume, but the nomad raiding had been relentless along the trade routes. Local merchants had remained unable to travel. No one had come to Tarply to purchase their wares, and their inventories of finished goods increased, and so did their debts to the few brave suppliers who had brought them raw materials. The town’s merchants were running out of credit. To alleviate this lack of funds for the village, Larn had taken the drastic measure of seeking a loan from the nearest warlord, Olar Regalyon. He had actually only received a letter of credit, because Olar was having money problems, too, so the best Olar could offer was his reputation as a man of wealth and power, which was faltering. Tarply was now deeply in debt to Olar Regalyon. The warlord would expect repayment, and his tax collector, Trahan Brill, would be happy to use any means necessary to drain all of the town’s assets to do so.