Passages

by Olan Thorensen

  After the initial shock of hearing her husband describe the events in Landylbury, Maghen astounded Mark by immediately turning to sort through their possessions. He hadn’t fully appreciated until now the way she accepted in life what was and didn’t demand what she wanted.

  He had argued with himself and then discussed with her the option of him leaving alone. In no scenario was he convinced that she would be safer without him. If the Narthani found him gone, they might take his family as hostages, and the chances that they’d see one another again would become vanishingly small. If rumors were true, the Narthani might ship them to Narthon and a fate that could not be contemplated.

  Just as dangerous was the likelihood that once his name was known to the Narthani, the guilds would hear of his location. He had to assume they would send men to kill him. Then there was the phony murder and robbery he was supposedly charged with. There was no choice—he had to flee.

  “I said it before, but I’m so sorry, Maghen. Neither you nor Alys deserves to lose your home and the future we thought we had.”

  Her eyes were moist. “From what you described, Mark, it’s nothing you could have prevented. I, too, thought we were safe here from the guilds, but for whatever reason, the Narthani are after you, and we have to leave. And don’t say anything again about you going without us. You’re my husband, and we’re a family. Even if we don’t know whether we’ll be safe from the Narthani, our place is still together.”

  “Damnation, Mark. It’s not fair for any of us,” argued the ranch owner after Mark apprised him of the Narthani. “I’d hoped to convince you to become foreman and maybe come on as a partner with the ranch, instead of starting your own. Eventually, you could buy me out since none of our children want ranch life. Plus, we’ll all miss you and Maghen. But you’re right. If they want you that bad, for whatever reason, even if we drove them off now, they’d come back with more men or when we weren’t looking for them. We’re too remote and the local authority too weak to help us. It’ll gall me the rest of my life that I couldn’t stop all this from happening.”

  “I do have a favor to ask,” said Mark. “We’ll have to leave on horses to make good speed and so that we’ll have the option of riding where wagons can’t. I left my own wagon in Landylbury, and the horses I arrived with are done in. We’ll need six horses, two each to ride, carry what we’ll take with us, and as extras.”

  “Choose any you want. You know them all. It’s the least I can do. Be sure to also pick out a basic farrier kit: nails, shoes, hammer, file, chisel. It’s extra weight, but you won’t always be near a blacksmith. And don’t worry about us here. When those assholes get here and we tell them we don’t know where you went, there’ll be enough of us here to discourage them from doing anything. It’ll force them to go looking for your trail and give you time to lose them.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Mark said, “but my gut feeling is that they’ll be persistent. I don’t know how much the Narthani are paying, but it must be impressive. As for not telling anyone where we went, I’ll think of something for you to say. I don’t want them to assume you know where we are and that you aren’t cooperating.”

  They’d gotten four hours’ sleep, then loaded up the horses.

  It was only twelve hours after Mark had arrived home when the Kaldwel family said their last goodbyes to people at the ranch. Mark was flummoxed when Leesta Toodman and Tylmar both hugged him. He had expected Maghen’s leaving to be bitter, but more men and women than he expected seemed emotional at his leaving.

  “We’ll stop at Maghen’s family’s farm on the way,” Mark had told the ranch owner. “It’ll be a quick stop to see her family and let them know we’re leaving. Maghen will tell them why and that we can’t say if we’ll ever see them again. Then we’ll continue on to Nurburt and farther east. If the Narthani or their agents or whoever they are show up here, you can tell them the direction we’re headed. You don’t need to know more than that, but we’ll be watching to see if they follow us. If not, and if I’ve been an alarmist for no reason, then maybe we’ll come back here in a few sixdays or a month. Otherwise, we’ll try to disappear.”

  They rode away from the ranch, then reined in their horses at the top of a rise. Mark turned to look past his wife, riding with Alys, and four pack horses. The ranch and their cottage would likely vanish from their lives forever when they started down the opposite slope.

  Mark’s last goodbye before leaving the Toodman ranch took place at a nearby pasture. Secretariat trotted over when Mark whistled and hand-fed him several of the fig-like fruits.

  “Sorry, boy, but you can’t go on this trip. There will be ocean legs, and I doubt they have cabins for horses. Anyway, you might get seasick—I know I did my first time on a ship. You’ll be better off staying here.”

  Mark stroked the side of Seabiscuit’s head and fondled an ear. “Keeslyn and Tylmar will take good care of you. You won’t have to work or carry anyone again. You can live out your life safe and well-fed, not like some of the times you spent with me.”

  With a final pat, Mark turned and walked away, embarrassed that his eyes weren’t dry.

  Come on, man. It’s just a horse, he told himself. Yet he was leaving the last living link he had to his time in Tregallon and his drift south.

  Maghen waited on her horse, Alys sitting in front of her. “He’ll be fine, Mark.”

  “I know. It’s just that we’ve been through so much together. Let’s go.”

  He mounted, and they headed east. Mark never looked back, not wanting his last memory to be of Secretariat watching them leave forever.

  The stop at the Lorwell farm was far more wrenching for Maghen. The family’s surprise at seeing the unexpected guests turned to disbelief, then arguments about how the family members could provide protection. Their feelings morphed into anger and finally sorrow.

  Maghen’s brothers, Erlon and Fenon, declared the family would join Mark and fight off any pursuers.

  “I appreciate the offer,” said Mark. “But think about it. You both have families. Even if we won such a fight, there could be casualties in the family. Your children could be without a father. We could always lose, which would be worse. And even if we won, who’s to say the Narthani won’t send more? Maybe twice as many men. Maybe four times. We just don’t know exactly how badly they want me.”

  “I hate to admit it,” said Hurmon Lorwell, “but if what Mark says is accurate, I don’t see any other way out. I’ve heard a lot about the Narthani. Tura, you remember when my brother and his wife visited us last year.” Hurmon turned to Mark and Maghen. “He lives halfway to Brawsea and buys and drives livestock to market there, so he’s been to Brawsea every two or three years. He told me stories of how there’s more Narthani in that area the last few years and rumors of them having a level of influence with the royal court. I don’t know the details.

  “Anyway, the Narthani have a reputation of being ruthless and relentless. If they’re willing to pay as much for Mark as that man in Landylbury indicated, there’s no reason to think they’ll stop until they succeed. They are probably also able to spread around enough coin to make it unsafe for us to depend on local authorities.”

  Tura Lorwell quit listening and picked up Alys tightly enough to elicit protests from the child. “I’ll never see or hold you again, little angel! It breaks my heart!”

  She turned to her husband. “Hurmon, it’s terrible for Mark, but maybe it’s best if he goes on alone and leaves Maghen and Alys with us.”

  Mark shook his head, but Maghen answered. “We’re a family and we belong together, no matter what happens. And what if Alys and I stayed? Who’s to say the Narthani don’t also want me? Maybe they think that whatever reason they want Mark for also applies to me, either for information I have or to hold Alys and me as hostages to help capture Mark. No, there’s no choice. We go together.”

  Mark didn’t add that for him, another impetus was to get to Caedellium. He didn’t know what he would have done if
the Narthani were not after him. Considering the distance to the island, the life he thought he had, and for the sake of Maghen and Alys, his inertia to stay would have been formidable. A part of him, half-guiltily, was relieved not to have to make a wrenching decision.

  Another half hour of words and tears followed before Mark and family were once again on the road to Nurburt. Mark intended to leave numerous witnesses to his family’s passing through Nurburt and heading east toward the Madyrna border. Once clear of Nurburt, they would circle the town and stop in a place with a view of the road the pursuers would have to use to follow them. Then they’d wait. He held out a small hope that they would see no one, but if the two men from Landylbury and the ten others were on their trail, then the family would continue and push hard west, sticking to open country and bypassing the ranch twenty miles south. From that point, they would steer west toward to the sea, then north. They would look for passage to Novaryn, the smallest and most mercantile of the Drilmar dominions. If Mark hadn’t been worried the guilds would follow him there, he would have attempted to move to the Novaryn capitol, Baeraton. He didn’t have a specific plan once they were in Novaryn. He’d heard the language was different from Frangelese but similar enough to make oneself understood with effort.

  They needed to lose the men—whatever combination of Frangelese and Narthani they were. If they picked up his family’s trail, he’d first whittle them down with the doomsters. If that failed, and the numbers got low enough, he had other options. Maghen was a good shot, and with their collection of firearms, he would look for an ambush site to trap the remaining men as a last resort.

  As for what happened next, they might still be in danger if word had spread and agents of the Narthani waited for them elsewhere. They had all the coin they’d saved to buy land of their own and from the last five destrex hides. It was enough for food and lodging for many months, along with sea passages, as required. Wherever they went, they needed to keep moving to reach someplace safe before the coin ran out. Whatever happened and however long it took, he would protect his family and find a way, somehow, to get to Caedellium.

  CHAPTER 27

  STAND AND FIGHT

  They reached Nurburt at mid-afternoon and slowly made their way to the center of town, exchanging words with anyone they recognized. Mark wanted people to have a clear memory of their coming to Nurburt and then heading east. At the main square, they stopped to purchase food, even though they had been well supplied at the ranch.

  “All three Kaldwels and packed like you’re on a trip. What’s the occasion?” said a man selling dry sausage and meat in a small shop. Mark couldn’t remember his name.

  “Just visiting some relatives not far east of here, Umton,” said Maghen, who seemed to know everyone’s name. “We decided we wanted to bring along a little more food in case bad weather makes us hole up somewhere.”

  The shopkeeper skeptically eyed the amount they had picked out. “Well, you may have stocked up too much, but who am I to complain?”

  Two more shops and one temporary stall yielded a small whetstone for sharpening edges, a blanket, extra flints for starting fires, and more memories of customers buying items better suited for long trips than visits to nearby relatives.

  The sun was two fingers above the western horizon when they left Nurburt. Their exit was similar to their slow entrance, and they acknowledged anyone who was familiar or even seemed familiar. Two miles outside Nurburt, they turned south and moved into a trot for a half-mile into a flat area of meager vegetation with no ranches or farms. Then they turned west. Mark wanted to cover as much ground as possible. If he’d been alone, he would have continued into the dark, but he worried that Maghen wasn’t as good at riding horses. Both of them were also distracted by changing off carrying Alys. When even their light-adjusted eyes became unable to recognize what was directly in front of the horses, they stopped and dry-camped. They staked the horses and slept on the ground without a fire. The novelty of the day had energized Alys, but the cool night air encouraged her to snuggle between her parents. The three fell asleep within minutes.

  “Already?” groaned Maghen, when Mark shook her the next morning. The sun was still hours from its appearance.

  “We need to move quickly to get into position,” said Mark. “If we’re going to check whether anyone is following, we can’t afford to miss them heading to Nurburt.”

  “How long will we wait, and what if they don’t come?” asked Maghen. “Maybe they’ll give up when they realize we aren’t at the ranch. If they follow us to Nurburt, they might continue all the way to Madyrna.”

  “Even then, they might return to Nurburt and the ranch,” said Mark. “It depends how determined they are and how much the Narthani are offering for me. We’ve talked about this. No matter what happens, it’ll be months before we can consider returning to the ranch, and then only when there are signs they’ve given up and left southern Frangel.

  “If we see them heading to Nurburt, we’ll continue on west past the ranch. Then we’ll wait again to confirm whether they were fooled into thinking we’re headed east. If that happens, we still need to worry that they’ll eventually return to the ranch. We can hope that doesn’t happen and we might be able to return. But if they are still on our trail, no matter how they did it, then there’s a point of no return, and we’ll know for certain that we need to keep going.”

  Mark already had the horses saddled and packed. Maghen picked up the still drowsing child, and Mark helped them onto her horse, then he stowed the cloth they slept on. Two hours later, they reached a grove of trees on a short mesa overlooking the road to Nurburt. While Maghen set up camp and attended the horses, Mark went to the edge of the mesa and settled in with a view of the road. Maghen took his place when Mark needed to relieve himself or stretch his legs. At dark, he returned to find Maghen and Alys sitting at a fire hidden from the road. From now on, it would be concealed fires at night and none during the day when smoke could be seen.

  They ate a meal of sausage and bread. Alys ate the bread insides but not the hard crust. Maghen cut up tiny pieces of sausage Alys could mouth and swallow—reluctantly at first, but more easily as she found she could swallow the pieces.

  The next day passed slowly. Alys found running under the horses to be endless fun, though her mother kept a sharp eye in case any of the animals became annoyed or too rambunctious. Maghen prepared a hot meal as the sun set. She fought against hope that their flight would prove unnecessary. That forlorn hope vanished when she saw Mark’s face illuminated by the campfire as he returned from the observation position.

  “It’s them. They just passed, heading toward Nurburt. Twelve of them. They’re pushing their horses, so I think they want to reach Nurburt tonight. Even in the dark, there’s enough moonlight and the road is wide enough they should make it. But they can’t question people until sunrise about seeing us pass through.

  “I recognized the two men who attacked me in Landylbury. I assume it’s them because both have bandages, one on his nose and the other on an arm. I’m also sure the four beardless ones are Narthani. I’ve heard they think beards are a sign of barbarism. The other six men are probably other Frangelese hired to help capture me.”

  “Then it’s on to the next place you mentioned,” said Maghen. “There’s still hope they won’t figure out we’ve circled back.”

  “It’s possible,” said Mark, not believing it. But he saw no reason, yet, to dash her hopes of returning to the area where she’d lived her whole life.

  In the next two days, they used small roads twenty miles south that paralleled their route to Nurburt. Mark didn’t say anything when he knew they passed as close as they were going to get to Nurburt, Maghen’s family, and the Toodman ranch. Thirty miles later, they came upon a larger road heading west. Mark knew they were well ahead of the pursuers, so they didn’t push their horses too much, in case they needed an unexpected reserve of energy. By the time they reached the next observation point, Maghen had ridden a longe
r distance in less time than in her entire previous life. Saddle sores threatened, and Mark applied an ointment from Tura Lorwell, who had foreseen the problem. Under other circumstances, Maghen lying naked from the waist down and her legs spread would have elicited a different response from Mark, instead of sympathy and care in applying the ointment. And Maghen’s moans of pleasure merely expressed relief from the soothing ointment and Mark’s gentle hands.

  Alys was a different problem. Her interest in the novelty of travel had faded. She had been cranky all day, whining, asking for a stuffed animal left behind, and repeating, “Go home?”

  Other traffic on the road diminished the farther they got from Nurburt and the ranch. They acknowledged the few wagons and riders they passed with minimal interchanges. They followed a river valley and stopped where the river branched. The smaller fork came from the north and flowed over a quarter mile of a rock base with no obvious way to parallel the fork. On a previous visit to the area, a local hunter had showed Mark a single-horse track around the cascades to a parallel east/west valley. After taking the track, they camped on a ridge overlooking the main valley and the road heading west.

  “This is a good spot,” said Mark. “We’ll wait here. If they continue on, there’s nowhere to cross into this valley for another hundred miles. On the other hand, if they somehow suspect where we left the main road and come up by the cascades, I know another track where we can return to the main road. It’s narrower, and we’ll have to be careful, but they’d never find it. Either way, we’ll have big jump on them and a good chance of losing them.”

  The next day at first light, Mark sat in position to view the road. He expected that even if the Narthani realized the Kaldwels had doubled back from Nurburt and they picked up the family’s trail, it would be a day or two before they arrived.