B008P7JX7Q EBOK

by Ijaz, Usman

  Adrian nodded. They were two days away from Sune now, and yet the need to travel secretly still lay heavy upon them. He knew the importance of it, knew that they were being sought out, but still he wished they didn’t have to scurry away like rats. He looked around the bare, desolate room, which only held the two beds and a washbasin, and wished that he could be sitting back in his room at the Golden Lilly. Thoughts of his uncle’s inn made him wonder what everyone there must be doing. But that life had belonged to another boy. He suddenly felt as though he were the only one in the room, and all these thoughts and memories were of someone long gone.

  He stood feeling as though something inside of him was being torn apart, and waited for dusk to cover the world.

  2

  Connor couldn’t help but turn in his saddle and look back towards the town. Morning lit up the sky, and dew from the night sparkled on the grass to either side of the road. The horses’ hooves raised clouds of dust on the dirt road, which stretched before them like a snake, surrounded on both sides by flat fields. Others shared the road with them as well, farmers going to or coming from the town, and others who looked as though they spent much of their time traveling from one place to another. All the combined dust in the air made it hard to breathe. Connor coughed, then stopped abruptly. It hurt too much to cough; hell, it hurt too much to swallow his own spittle. He massaged at his throat through the coarse scarf looped around his neck. After a while the pain subsided, and he followed the horse before him, lost in thought.

  Leah led him away from the small town, her large bundle swinging from side to side where she had tied it behind her saddle. Connor stared at the bundle in silent absorption for a moment. Now that he knew what it contained, he could easily distinguish the shape of the harp. A female bard, he thought, I wonder what da would think of that. She played beautifully, he knew - it had been how she earned them their room. The innkeeper had seemed doubtful at her skill, but soon even he had had to admit grudgingly that she was better than most bards he’d heard.

  Leah turned in her saddle to look at him, and Connor found himself staring into dark eyes in a slender face. The breeze stirred her black, shorn hair around her face. She smiled at him in an encouraging manner.

  “Keep up, Connor.”

  Why does she help us? Connor wondered, but he nodded and spurred his horse on. The small pot tied to one side of his saddle banged with a dull, lonely clang, as did the pan on the other side. The pot and pan were two of the few items they had made certain they had before leaving the town. A town whose name Connor didn’t think he even knew. In his saddlebags were some of the other items they had bought - some hard-baked bread that looked as though it could last forever, a few small tin bowls, and two waterskins on top of the two Leah already had. Leah had paid for much of it.

  He watched Leah before him, turning in her saddle every once in a while to make sure he still followed, and realized that for the moment she was now tied to them. She had thrown her lot in with them, for good or ill. Connor thought of this, and reflected that it wasn’t too late for her to leave them, before she too ended up another death in their wake. As Michael had. We seem to have death waiting for us around every corner. The thought rose like a bubble. He didn’t like to think too much of Michael, despite the fact that the man had saved his life. Thinking of Michael was too sad, and it made him wish that things were simple, that the world wasn’t the harsh, convoluted warren that it was.

  Connor turned in his saddle once more and looked back the way they had come, but still there was no sign of Adrian or Alexis.

  They came to a bend in the road, at the edge of a thin copse of trees, and there they reined in their horses and waited.

  3

  Alexis handed eight gold sesterces over to the innkeeper in exchange for the reigns to a gray gelding that looked much past its prime. His pouch felt almost empty - the few remaining gold sesterces, a small number of silver marks, and a few silver pennies were all that he had left in there. And he had only held onto that much through convincing the innkeeper that the horse was not worth ten gold sesterces, much less eight. But prices truly had gone up, it seemed, and it seemed futile to spend the whole day arguing with the man. He watched as the innkeeper satisfied his curiosity of Grandal currency by biting the coins and then weighing them on a small scale. Alexis turned from the man and led the saddled horse to where Adrian waited. The saddle had been one thing the innkeeper had agreed to throw in with the horse. It was in suitable condition, if he forgave the torn patches of leather and the faded hue to it. All in all, it looked as well as the horse, which was to say it looked like it had seen better days.

  Alexis could think of a hundred other things to have spent the money on, but the truth was none of them were as important as getting a horse. With Michael’s black mare and Leah's spotted gelding, they had two. This would make three, and now when Leah left them they would still have two horses to carry them to Gale.

  Alexis studied Adrian in sidelong glances as he tied their saddle bags. The boy looked tired, a weariness that went bone deep. He stared at the opposing door, and his stare seemed to be a thousand miles away. He looked as though something essential had been drained out of him, but Alexis couldn’t deny that he didn’t feel the same. The events in Sune had shaped them all in some form. Nonetheless, he didn’t like seeing the boy in this state.

  “Would you mind getting the blanket rolls, Adrian?”

  Adrian looked from him to the blankets, wide eyes looking lost. He bent and picked up the rolled blankets and walked over to stand beside him. Alexis took the blanket rolls and tied them behind the saddle. He cinched the straps and made sure they wouldn’t come undone. When he looked up, he saw the innkeeper watching them. Alexis hoped the man believed the story of their old horse having died on the road. It would certainly explain the saddlebags they carried with them. He prayed the man wasn’t too curious about them.

  He led the horse out of the stables and Adrian followed at his side. They walked the horse out of town. Alexis noticed Adrian keeping his face down among the townsfolk, eyes hidden, and felt a profound pride and sadness for the boy. To have the knowledge that one wrong look could mean death for yourself and your friends seemed too heavy a burden for a child to carry. But then this whole mission seemed too much to demand from a mere child. Duty binds us tighter than any chain, he thought firmly. He must do what he must, and I must finish what I was given to.

  For all his desire to be on the road and leave the town behind, Alexis stopped at the road leading east. Adrian stopped and looked up at him. Alexis looked to the town behind them, to the road before them. He realized then that he didn’t want to travel down that road. Traveling down that road would mean carrying Connor and Leah with them into whatever other danger they walked into. Traveling down that road would make it easier for those who searched for them to mark them. His gaze shifted to Adrian, and he saw the same understanding in the boy’s silent face. For a few moments they only looked at one another. Alexis began to wonder if it wasn’t better to go back the way they had come and find another route to Gale.

  Adrian decided him.

  “It would take too long,” the boy said in a painful whisper.

  Alexis nodded, though the same thought had rung in his head several times. Yet he still couldn’t help but wish they could spare those two up ahead and travel a bit more covertly. His duty was to protect Adrian, and he truly had no desire to drag others into any danger that awaited them.

  Alexis shook his head slightly as he climbed into the saddle. He offered an arm to Adrian and pulled the boy up behind him. They were soon heading east along the road, and Adrian soon had his scarf raised around the lower half of his face from the dust in the air.

  They met Connor and Leah a few miles from the town, and there they all halted and conferred for a moment.

  “I think it’s best if we part ways here,” Alexis told Leah.

  The girl looked at him in disbelief, and then her brow furrowed in refusal
. “No.”

  Alexis looked at her in disbelief. “What do you mean ‘no’? I’m trying to help you get out of danger.”

  “Perhaps,” Leah said stiffly, “but it is my choice.”

  “I never said anything about a choice!” Alexis told her. “I’m thankful to you for the help you gave us, and if you want recompense then seek me out in Gale, but I can’t let you travel with us anymore. It jeopardizes both us and you!”

  Her face turned to stone at the mention of payment. “I do not need your money, Alexis. And I do not need your permission. I want to travel with you, and so I will.”

  Alexis looked at her as though she were daft. “Why?”

  Leah drew a deep breath. “Because you will need someone to tell your tale.”

  “Quit your idiocy!” Alexis hissed at her. “I should have known that was all you were after, a story to cement your post.”

  “I saved your life, or do you forget? It is a small thing to ask in return, to accompany you and witness your journey.”

  “What do you know of our journey?” Alexis asked bitterly.

  “I know that you are wanted for murder, and I know that Adrian is an Ascillian. It matters little where you are going, what I have seen so far tells me you will have quite the tale indeed.”

  “We don’t have a tale!” Alexis shouted at her. “We are trying to reach Gale alive, and our chances are far better without you to mark us!”

  Leah stared at him boldly for a long time. Then she turned and leapt back into her saddle, waiting. Alexis groaned aloud - the girl would simply not leave. He looked to the two boys, who had watched the whole argument with dazed eyes. “You two can ride together,” he told them wearily as he climbed back onto his own horse. “It will put less strain on the horse.”

  Once they were all mounted and waiting, Alexis took out the rolled parchment he had purchased in the town. The map detailed parts of the nearby country, and named the roads that spider webbed across the land. He’d bought it to erase the need to ask for directions and mark themselves in the minds of strangers. He stared at the map and the land that it labeled. He shook his head in wonderment. “This map has Asgar labeled. How old is it?”

  “Where?” Leah demanded as she rode over to see for herself. Without thinking Alexis moved the map from her view, then relented and let her see it.

  “We are still in Mareth,” she pointed out. “Yet this map shows that the city is not too far from us. It is clearly wrong. You should have let me chosen the map.”

  Alexis bit back his annoyance at her. Not everyone was schooled in history in a royal palace, he reminded himself. “Mareth consists of much that used to be Asgar, as do some of the other neighboring countries. After the Mad Emperor’s reign, Asgar was divided among many nobles and kings. It’s why you won’t even find the country labeled on any current maps.”

  Connor had moved his horse closer, as well. Adrian leaned forward from behind him and stared at the map, and when Alexis met his eyes he saw a fierce longing there.

  “Can we go there, Alexis?” the boy asked in a soft voice.

  “It’s out of our way,” Alexis told him.

  “Please. I want to see it.”

  Alexis hated the position Adrian had put him in, for he knew that if it were the home of his ancestors he too would wish to see it, but it would put them off their course. But then again, maybe it’s for the best. How much longer before we’re stopped on the road? Might it not be safer to go where no one expects us to? He met Adrian’s hopeful gaze, and nodded. The boy smiled wearily, one of the first Alexis had seen from him in quite some time.

  They started on the road once more, but when the land to the south-east began to resemble a sea frozen in motion, full of small rises and dips, they left the road and began to travel cross country.

  The quiet ride afforded Alexis the time to think. He kept a keen watch, and the rolled blankets tied behind him would allow him to reach the guns quickly enough. He led their small company across the undulating land. Landerly, he thought with a sorrow that wrenched his heart. Why did you do it? Why put us all through this? Had the sight of gray eyes been enough for the man to betray someone who had regarded him as an uncle? Was the world really that fickle? Alexis dreaded the answers to these questions. At least now you know for a certainty that Hamar and Owain are dead. He realized then how strong his desire had been to hear a different answer. That while all the time he’d been asking for news of Legionnaires, he had been secretly pleased that he had heard nothing affirmative. Now he knew for certain, and it only weighed more heavily on him. It should be one of them here in my place. But I ran ... and they died. It was the sound of those final gun shots he had heard as they were fleeing that came to his mind. We ran and left them to die. The bitter thought was wrong, he knew, but he couldn’t help but follow it and lose himself deeper in a hole of despair. They had all had a duty, Hamar and Owain had simply died to ensure that the remaining member of their team could carry it out, so why did he feel like a coward?

  He looked to the two boys riding to one side of him, and wondered if the death of three fine Legionnaires had been worth it. Quit your stupid thinking, boy! Owain’s irritated voice spoke up. You know that what happened happened to protect the boy, don't you dare go underestimating his value!

  Alexis looked away from the boys and looked ahead. A small thought, one which he dared not dwell on, flittered across his mind. He had better be worth it.

  Alexis emptied his mind and watched the rolling hills all around them, the same hills that slowed their progress. He judged they spent as much time climbing up as forward. Nonetheless, he was glad to be off the road. He hadn’t felt safe traveling so visibly, and there was no telling who the next stranger that passed them might be, or where the assassins might be looking for them. He wanted to hope the assassins were behind them, but with the trip through the woods, then the time spent on Captain Lavos’s ship, who knew how much land the assassins had crossed.

  They rode until the sun was sitting a little lower than its perch at noon. Alexis stopped them for a break and to rest the horses, as well. While they sat on the ground, nibbling on tough bread and washing it down with water from the skins, Leah brought out her harp and began to tune it.

  “Do you know Homer’s Folly?” Connor asked. He looked as though he had exerted great effort to simply speak those words.

  “Of course I do!” Leah exclaimed. “What true bard would not know that tune?”

  And she dove into it, fingers moving nimbly and hardly seeming to touch the chords. For a few moments they all sat and listened to the cheery tune carry across the hills on the breeze. Then she began to sing, and her voice, as gentle and joyful as the notes she plucked, seemed to give life to her words.

  There was more to the song, but Alexis stopped listening. It seemed that he couldn’t even find comfort in a song, if only because it reminded him of what he had lost. “We have to keep moving,” he broke into her song. God, why had any man decided to put such morose words to such a buoyant tune? Perhaps he knew how it would tug at lonesome hearts.

  They packed up and headed out once more. The land began to abate of hills soon and flatten out. Alexis led them, every so often conferring with the map to be certain they were on the right path. Behind him Leah talked with the boys.

  “Do you know what the story behind that song is?”

  Alexis could have told her, but he hoped if he simply ignored her, she would grow bored and leave them. He heard no replies from the boys.

  “It is about an old king of Arath-Dar and his queen. When she found out that he had been sleeping with another woman, she confronted him, only to have him tell her it was true. She plotted his demise from then on, attempting to make his life as miserable as she could. In the end, the gap between them became a wide chasm, and they could neither one of them do anything to repair it. They spent the rest of their lives living in the same palace, but in all the places that matter they were far apart. The once beautiful palace be
came a bitter and cold place. And it was in that manner that they died, in a palace where the chill could be felt even on a midsummer afternoon. Thus is the tale of King Homer and his Queen, Tilas.”

  She began to hum the song as they continued. It rode on Alexis’s nerves, but he wouldn’t turn around and let her become aware that she was affecting him in any manner. Perhaps she would go away soon. But at least she was good company for the boys. The sun was past its noonday peak when they came to a road. It was an old road and clearly had not been used in some time. It was wide and in a bad state, with ruts miring it in several areas. Alexis halted his horse on the edge of the road and drew out his map. The road wasn’t on there he realized, but then it hardly showed them where the ancient city was.

  "What's a road doing out here?" Leah asked.

  Alexis looked up and down the dirt highway. It continued on east, the general direction they had been going. "It may be leading to the city," he said after a while. "A road long unused by the looks of things."

  They rode onto the dirt highway, stirring ancient dust, and began to travel towards the general direction they had been going. They could soon see that the road angled south slightly, passing around hills and over the smaller ones.

  The day’s heat was quickly being replaced by the chill of the oncoming night. Alexis watched the sun sink behind the horizon, spreading a blood-red glow across the sky, and he wondered how much time this little venture was going to delay them. He was becoming certain that they would have to spend the night by the road. He had said yes to Adrian because it had seemed cruelly wrong to say no when looking at the naked desire on the boy’s face, especially considering the boy had asked for nothing when agreeing to come on this mission of his own will.

  Alexis stopped them before the sunlight left them completely. They made camp behind a hill, hoping to attain some protection from the wind. Alexis and Leah gathered kindling and a few dry branches of trees that had long ago fallen and lay dead. They made a fire, and spread their blankets around it. Alexis and the boys stayed close to one another, and Leah was forced to set her bed across from them on the other side of the fire. She didn’t seem to mind. Alexis handed the boys small squares of the tough flatbread and they shared a skin of water. Leah ate her own bread, and then brought out small round cakes that she shared with the boys. Alexis refused. They ate in silence.