Passages

by Olan Thorensen

  THUND! went Maghen’s second shotgun, but Mark couldn’t check on his wife. The sixth man, having fired his musket, wheeled his horse and whipped it as he fled. Mark picked up the second rifle.

  When Mark took aim, the man had leaned forward and to the left, to present as small a target as possible. Mark lowered his aim to the top of the horse’s back and the bottom of the man’s butt in the saddle. Either hit would stop him.

  BOOM!

  The horse’s rear legs collapsed, and its body twisted right before rider and mount disappeared momentarily in a fountain of water.

  Mark grabbed both of the double-barreled pistols and spun to look for the first three men.

  THUND! roared Maghen’s last shotgun barrel.

  One horse was down, thrashing in the water, and the other two ran west, away from the firing. The first man lay face-down in the water. The second plowed through the water, trying to reach the other bank and trailing blood, one arm limp at his side. The teenage boy sat in two-foot-deep water, a gash on his forehead, and crying.

  Mark glanced at Maghen. “Are you all right?” he shouted.

  She nodded, then dropped the shotgun and leaned forward on the boulder to steady herself.

  “Pick up two pistols and watch out while I deal with them.”

  “Mark, I shot a horse.”

  “What?”

  “My first shot at the lead man. I missed him and hit the horse.”

  He stared, groping for how he was supposed to respond.

  “And I killed a man. The second one. He didn’t even know I was there, and I didn’t know his name or anything.”

  She stared blankly.

  “Maghen! Deal with it later! We have to finish them and move!”

  She stiffened and picked up two of the smaller pistols, then followed him. He slid down the bank and into the water, while holding his two pistols high.

  “Keep your pistols out of the water,” he called over his shoulder.

  Mark was closest to the boy, but he appeared unarmed and in shock. Mark bypassed him to catch up with the larger Frangelese man from Landylbury trying to scramble with one arm up a four-foot bank. The man could still be dangerous, so Mark shot the hand grasping a root in the bank. The man yelled and fell back into the water. Mark flipped him around and stuck a pistol under his nose.

  “WHY ARE THE NARTHANI AFTER ME!?” he demanded.

  The man spit at him.

  Mark used the pistol’s second barrel to shoot him in a knee. The man screamed and almost fainted as Mark shook him.

  “I’ve can keep shooting pieces of you away until you answer.”

  “I’m dead anyway, so why should I answer?”

  The man’s voice was chilling in its fatalism and conviction. It flashed on Mark that there was nothing he could do to the man in the time they had to make him talk. He put the expended pistol in his belt, pulled the second one, and shot the man in the forehead.

  Shit! he thought. I should have used my knife. There’s still two of them alive, and I’m down to one shot.

  Maghen read his mind and held out one of her pistols. “Here. Take mine. I’ll watch this live one while you check on the other.”

  Mark glanced at the youth sitting in the water. He didn’t look dangerous, but Mark hesitated to leave Maghen alone with him. He briefly considered just killing him now, but he’d have to use his knife, something that seemed too personal for a victim this young. Mark put off the decision.

  “Don’t get too close to him, and shoot if he tries anything. We need some answers, and I’ll question him when I return.”

  As he cautiously approached the sixth man and horse, a body floated past him. Downstream, two other bodies were already fifty yards or more away. All three headed in the direction the six men had come from and from where the other six would come when they eventually realized their quarry must have taken the other fork.

  Mark was ten yards from the horse and the man when he realized caution wasn’t needed. The man had gotten trapped under his horse and drowned. The man’s bandaged nose identified him as the leader in the Landylbury attack.

  However, the horse was still alive. Mark’s rifle ball had shattered its backbone, and a foreleg had broken when it collapsed. Its only movement was thrusting its nostrils from the water searching for air, only for the head to submerge again. The animal would die soon, but Mark couldn’t leave it. The man’s musket wasn’t in sight, and even if it had been, the powder was soaked.

  Mark glanced back at Maghen. She stood ten feet from the last living pursuer. The boy hadn’t moved. Mark recoiled at using his knife to put the horse out of its misery, so he held Maghen’s pistol behind an ear and fired. He didn’t fail to notice more regret at shooting the horse than killing the men. He sighed but didn’t dwell on the thought and turned back to Maghen.

  This time, he took a longer look at the boy. He was even younger than Mark had thought.

  “His name is Awton,” said Maghen. “He’s fourteen years old and only came because his father threatened to beat him if he didn’t. He says his father thought the hunt would help make a man of him.”

  Mark looked again at the boy.

  I’ll bet if he wasn’t sitting in water, we’d know he’s pissed himself, thought Mark.

  He knew what Maghen was thinking.

  He shook his head. “If we leave him, he may join the other six, and then we’ll have seven still after us.”

  “Please, ser, I just want to go home.”

  Maghen put a hand on Mark’s forearm. “The father was the last man, the one you just checked on. I think the boy may be glad he’s dead, and he just wants to go home to his mother.”

  Mark knew the smart thing to do was kill the boy . . . but he couldn’t. The adrenaline surge had drained away, and the carnage was already enough.

  He grabbed the boy’s closed jacket and jerked him upright. “Who are you people, and why are you chasing us?”

  “I only know what I overheard,” pleaded the youth. “The leaders are Narthani, and they hired my father and several other men in Landylbury to help find and capture you.”

  “What did you hear the Narthani say about why they want me?”

  “I didn’t hear anything about that, ser. I did hear the leader say he was glad you ran, so they didn’t have to fight any family and local people who would help defend you. He said they’d have had to send for more men if that had happened. I also heard them say to be sure at least either your wife or daughter stayed alive so they could use them to force you to cooperate.”

  Mark’s pulse pounded, but he somehow felt cold. The boy’s words confirmed that Mark’s decision to flee had been right and that the Narthani’s rumored ruthlessness was real.

  “How many Narthani are there? I counted four.”

  “Yes, ser. Four Narthani. The clean-shaven ones. Then there were seven of us hired to help and the man from a Brawsea guild.”

  “Guild? From Brawsea? How are the Narthani and a Brawsea guild connected?”

  “I don’t know, ser. The four Narthani and the guild man kept to themselves most of the time.”

  “Keep watching him,” said Mark to Maghen. He waded to where the last of the pursuers’ horses stood trembling.

  “Whoa, boy,” said Mark in English. “Everything’s okay now.” He kept talking quietly until he got close enough to grip the dangling reins and stroke the animal’s neck. “There, there. Let’s go meet your owner.”

  The horse docilely allowed itself to be led to Maghen and the boy. Mark also looked to see whether any pursuers’ muskets or pistols had survived the water. None had.

  “Get up,” ordered Mark, staying six feet away. Boy or not, he could be acting.

  “I don’t know if this was your horse, but it is now. Go home. If you want to live, stay away from the other six men. If they keep after us, we’ll kill them like we did these others. My advice is stay alert and try not to let them see you. Now go. I can still shoot you if you try anything.”


  The boy rose, trembling, his clothes soaked, and mounted the horse.

  “Thank you, ser. I’ll say a prayer of thanks for your mercy at every service I go to for the rest of my life.” The boy straightened in the saddle. “And she might not admit it, but I think Mother will say another prayer that Father didn’t come back.”

  “Well,” said Mark, as they watched the boy ride away, “at least something positive comes from this.”

  “Thank you, Mark, for not killing him.”

  “I hope I don’t regret it, but I just couldn’t. If he had been shooting at us, it would be different, but once the shooting ended, he wasn’t much more than a frightened child.”

  “Oh!” exclaimed Maghen. “Alys!” She plowed through the water, scrambled up the slope in the back, and raced away. When she reached the temporary camp, a blanket covering a lump lay where she had last seen her daughter.

  “Alys,” she called.

  A little hand snuck out, gripped a blanket edge, then pulled it until part of a small head and one eye peeked out. “Mama?”

  When Mark caught up, he was carrying most of their firearms, except for the two shotguns.

  “I’m going back for the shotguns and see whether there’s anything on the two dead horses we can use. You need to start reloading these firearms.”

  “Bad men, Papa?”

  “No, Alys. No bad men.” He patted her cheek. “Mama has to work, but we’ll be riding again soon.”

  Mark returned ten minutes later with a saddlebag stuffed with dried meat and hard bread.

  “It’s maybe four or five days’ worth. Nothing else worth taking. Their pack animal was too far downstream from where they came from for me to think about catching it. Let’s finish up and get moving. There’s enough light. I’d like to be out of this valley before dark. They’re not going to follow us at night. I want to find a place where they have to travel over open ground with no way to circle around us.”

  He stopped talking, but Maghen could sense there was something else.

  “And?” she asked.

  “You heard the boy. It’s not just the Narthani after us. The Brawsea guilds are somehow involved. I don’t know how, but it confirms we can’t go back, no matter what happens with the men following us. I’m sorry, Maghen.”

  A tear had run down her left cheek, even before she’d asked her single-word question. She had already known what he was going to say.

  CHAPTER 28

  KEEP MOVING

  They followed the stream another half-mile until the flanking land widened enough that they could leave the water. They continued riding on grass and through scattered groves of tall trees. An escarpment had formed the southern wall of the valley, sheer sides merging into rock and debris-covered lower slopes.

  Mark reined in. “There,” he said, pointing to a cleft, the only break they could see in the rock barrier. “Once we’re on top, they’ll be coming at us uphill, over open ground with no vegetation. And there aren’t that many rocks big enough for protection.”

  “Couldn’t we be trapped? We don’t know what’s on the other side.”

  “No, but it’s a necessary risk. Look. You can see a couple of peaks on the other side, but by the color it looks like they’re a good distance away. I doubt we’ll find a better spot. It also means we can rest ourselves and the horses. We’ll stay and wait for at least a couple of days. Maybe the last six men will quit after they find out what happened to the others.”

  They watered the horses and filled water bags from springs at the base of the escarpment. There was only half an hour of light left when they stopped fifty yards on the reverse slope at the top of the cleft. They camped within a cluster of boulders. Mark then returned to the tree line and brought back enough fallen tree limbs for Maghen to build a cooking fire, unseen from the valley below.

  Alys had clung to her mother ever since they’d left the ambush site. When Mark returned from gathering wood, he took Alys from her mother so Maghen could cook. Alys briefly protested, then put both arms around Mark’s neck and held on tight. He carried her in that position while he checked the horses. He laid out the single ground cover and blankets on which the three of them slept touching each night—Alys in the middle.

  As soon as they ate, Mark went to view their back trail. It was dark. The two moons of Anyar were in a dark phase and wouldn’t be visible for another three nights. They had also lucked out that the River of Stars, the Anyar version of the Milky Way, was out of season. With only starlight, Mark didn’t think riders would risk climbing the rock debris slope when they didn’t know what was in front of them.

  “Get some sleep,” Mark told Maghen, as he climbed under the blanket with them. “I’ll check every couple of hours, but I think we’re safe until dawn tomorrow.”

  He hoped he was right.

  Three times during the night, he rose to walk to the vantage point. There, he cupped his ears and strained his eyes for any sign of the other six men. Their encampment was shielded from the morning sun. At dawn, he let his wife and daughter sleep as long as they could. He walked over the ridge top and down to sit between two boulders. There, he watched the valley.

  A marmot-like animal chittered at him from thirty feet away. Mark had a moment to wonder whether it was an Anyar- or Earth-evolved creature. Small brown birds flew up and down the slope, doing what he didn’t know. A morning haze that hid the valley floor slowly dissipated under the sun’s rays. A whiff of wood smoke suggested Maghen was awake and cooking.

  The suggestion became reality when she appeared, holding something in the folds of a cloth. She knelt and uncovered four steaming biscuits.

  “Sorry, Mark. No honey. I’ve saved a little starter, but no more biscuits until we buy some flour at a town or village. No sign of anyone following us?”

  “No,” he said, breaking open a biscuit and letting the fresh aroma waft over his nose. “The view is beautiful from here. I just wish we could see it some other time and under other circumstances.”

  “I’ll get back to Alys before she decides to explore. Thanks for letting us both sleep. She seems more animated this morning. I was afraid after yesterday she’d be even more withdrawn than she’s been, but children are resilient.”

  She gave her husband a quick peck and left the three remaining biscuits.

  The marmot returned after having disappeared into a rock crevasse when Maghen approached. The chittering resumed. Mark broke off a piece of the harder bottom of a biscuit and tossed it at his companion. After first jumping back, the marmot approached the tidbit by fits and starts. After a few sniffs, it picked up the morsel with both front paws and sat on its haunches to munch. The chittering started again, this time from a closer perch.

  “That’s it, you little beggar. You can’t yell at me and then expect me to feed you.”

  His remonstration fell on two small deaf ears. Suddenly, the animal sat upright, looked downslope, and scurried away.

  Mark felt the hairs on his neck stand up. He looked down. A line of six horses had left the trees and meandered along the same route the Kaldwels had used. He cursed himself for paying attention to a dumb animal, instead of keeping a constant eye peeled for their pursuers. The six men were now only five or six hundred yards away. The tracker led the other five men by forty or fifty yards, alternately looking down at the ground and up the slope.

  “I hope you’re not suspicious,” said Mark in a mumble intended for the tracker. “I tried not to be TOO obvious leaving a trail even I could follow.”

  A flaw in Mark’s plan was if they somehow knew his intent and simply sat below and waited him and Maghen out. In two days, three at the most, a lack of water would make his family’s situation desperate.

  Staying out of the line of sight, Mark made his way back to their camp. “They’re here.”

  Maghen just nodded. She hadn’t dared to hope the men would abandon the chase.

  “Pack up. I’ll see if I can stop them from following or make them turn back. But if
they persist and are trying to work their way around us, we’ll ride hard down this side of the ridge. It should gain us a couple of hours because they won’t know we’ve left, and they should be cautious after seeing the range of the rifles.”

  He picked up both rifles and a cartridge bag and scrambled back to a firing position he’d picked out that morning.

  At four hundred yards, Mark sighted on the tracker, still leading the other five by about fifty yards. His first instinct was to first try for the man most likely to keep the others on the scent.

  But is that the best first choice? Mark pondered. It’s the Narthani who are driving this. Two of the four are already gone. If I can shoot the other two, why would the Frangelese keep coming?

  He moved the sights to the third man: clean shaven, as was the fourth man. He squinted. The tracker was wiry, maybe with graying hair. If Mark bypassed the tracker and went for the first Narthani, the tracker would be closer but still be out-ranged by the destrex rifles.

  He decided. The two Narthani first, then the tracker, if possible. The next decision was when to fire. On level ground, four hundred yards would be doable, but the downward trajectory of the minie ball added uncertainty. Then he realized he could hedge his chances. As the men wound their way up, men and horses passed in front of those behind. Mark sighted at the first Narthani and waited until he was nearly aligned with his fellow countryman. At three hundred yards they overlapped in his sights.

  BOOM!

  The second Narthani flew backward when the ball hit him high in the right side of his chest. It was as if the other riders exploded, whipping their horses and scattering in all directions. Mark kept his eyes on the first Narthani and ignored the others, as he laid down the first rifle and picked up the second.

  His next quarry was moving across the slope to the right, a moving target. Mark first sighted on the rider, but there was too much movement to keep his aim accurate, so he switched to the horses.

  BOOM!

  The horse collapsed, and the rider was thrown forward. Mark’s hope that the fall would kill or injure the last Narthani was dashed when the man went into a forward roll, rose to his feet, and ran for cover.