Passages

by Olan Thorensen

  “Goddamn!” cursed Mark. “Is this guy some kind of circus performer besides being a Narthani asshole? He’s even still holding onto his musket.”

  Mark’s focus was shattered when rock fragments peppered his face, just missing his eyes.

  “What the fuck!” he shouted and ducked behind a boulder. He wiped his face. A small amount of blood came off on his hand, along with bits of rock.

  “There’s no way to make that shot with a musket!”

  It had to be the tracker. He had a rifle.

  Mark hurriedly reloaded both rifles. He no longer could assume he outranged the others, but whoever had the rifle had to reload.

  Movie scenes flashed through his mind. What did the hero do in this situation? Without exposing any part of himself, he laid a rifle on the rock he was using as a barrel rest. Then he put his slouch hat on the end of a ramrod and held it just above the barrel.

  Seconds later the hat was snatched away, followed by the sound of a long gun firing from below.

  Gotcha!

  Hoping the man had only one rifle, Mark jumped behind his rifle and searched for targets. The only clear one he could see was a man riding downhill. Evidently, he’d had enough evidence of Mark’s rifles and decided that discretion and getting his ass home were the best strategies.

  The man was at almost six hundred yards when Mark fired at him anyway—and missed.

  “Shit! I wasted the shot!”

  His eyes looked for a closer target while he traded rifles. A puff of smoke and a musket sound identified the location of another man about three hundred yards away and trying to crawl closer.

  “Must be a musket because nothing came close.”

  Part of the man was momentarily visible as he crept between rocks and humps in the slope, then disappeared. Mark sighted where he expected the man to reappear, ever mindful that the tracker was reloading.

  “Ten seconds, then duck.”

  At “thousand and six,” something of a different color appeared along the sight, and Mark fired.

  BOOM!

  Three things happened almost but not quite simultaneously: Mark ducked, a buzz zipped through the space Mark’s head had just occupied, and down the slope a man screamed.

  Mark peeked around the rock. The man crawling in the open was the one he’d fired at. Mark had hit the man, but he wasn’t dead. That left three men still engaged—the tracker, the last Narthani, and another one—presumably, a Frangelese.

  Mark reloaded.

  “Hey! You men below. I don’t want to kill any more of you, but I will if I have to. I swear I won’t fire again if you just leave and don’t follow me.”

  “Hello there, friend,” a voice called back. “That’s some rifle you have there. What in God’s name do you use such a cannon for?”

  “Hunting destrex.”

  “Damn! Really? If I’d known that, I wouldn’t have come along on this fiasco. Serves me right for being too greedy, but the Narthani offered me too much to turn down.”

  Another voice, angry, came from below.

  “Oh, that’s just our employers. Well, I guess employer, just one, since you shot the other three. Thanks for bypassing me and going for them first.”

  More shouting from the same angry man. Mark could only understand a few words, then realized it must be the last Narthani speaking Frangelese with a bad accent.

  “While I’d rather not shoot you,” Mark called down, “I’ll willingly shoot any Narthani.”

  More angry shouting.

  “How can we trust you not to shoot?” yelled the tracker.

  “You must have figured out I have two of the rifles. We’ll both fire our rifles. You’ll have time to get out of range. If you can’t get far enough away, you can take cover until I reload and fire again.”

  More angry shouting, followed by what sounded like a pistol shot.

  “Seems like a reasonable way out of this,” the tracker called out. “Our employer is no longer a factor. You and me have the only rifles. Tell me when you’re ready. You fire one of your rifles, I’ll fire mine, then you your other one. After your second shot, I’ll get my ass farther downhill and under cover before you reload, and we’ll repeat until I think we’re far enough away. I’ll have to help my cousin. He’ll live, but he’s going to wear a hell of a scar down his back the rest of his life. Your cannon missed by an inch taking out his whole backbone. We’ll also have to collect a couple of our horses, but they galloped back the way we came.”

  Mark looked down to the tree line. The sixth rider had fled downhill when Mark started shooting. He was visible well out of range and in possession of four horses.

  “I’m impressed your horses didn’t keep running.”

  “Oh, they’re well trained. One of the things our family is known for. Another is blood vendettas. You and I are both lucky our six took the wrong fork. All my family members are in this group, and you only wounded one of us.”

  I suppose that meant if I’d taken out the tracker first, the three relatives would have kept coming, thought Mark, even with all the Narthani dead. As good as his position was, Mark knew that dangerous and determined men could have eventually flanked his family’s location.

  It took half an hour for the three Frangelese to retreat in stages and rejoin the fourth. Then, mounted, the tracker raised a hand and waved, and they disappeared into the trees. Mark waved back, waited half an hour to be safe, then went to tell Maghen the results.

  “Are they really gone?” she asked, her face teetering between hope and fear.

  “I think so. I would assume they were to be partly or completely paid after they caught us. Not that I’m going to check, but I’ll bet the Narthani carried the payment. I never thought to check for coin on the first two we killed. The tracker and his relatives likely took all the coin from the four dead Narthani, so why risk keeping after us?”

  “But will there be more Narthani after us?”

  “It’s possible, but they would have to know where we are or are heading. That doesn’t seem likely, although we still need to keep moving and be careful when we get to ports. Those would be the only places where the Narthani or word of us might exist.”

  During the next two days, they crossed a series of ridgelines running north/south. Mark looked behind them at every ridge crest for any sign of followers. Nothing.

  Then they got to the top of another ridgeline, this one lower than the others. Before them was a plain stretching to the horizon.

  “Look, Mark. See the curve in the river?” Maghen pointed southwest. “That looks like smoke from different sources.”

  Mark found it. “Looks like seven or eight miles away. It may be my imagination, but I think I can make out structures. They’d have to be bigger than just farm or ranch homes for us to see them at this distance.”

  “A town,” said Maghen wistfully. “People with normal lives. No one chasing them. I know we can’t linger, but it’ll feel good to see other people.”

  “Those not chasing us,” groused Mark.

  Mark had missed the longing in her voice but regretted his words when her momentarily pleased expression faded.

  “We’ll stop for the night in a couple more days,” he said, hoping to give her something to look forward to, “if we can find an inn or a family I can pay to take us in. I want to put a little more distance behind us . . . just in case.” He didn’t need to elaborate.

  An hour later, they came upon a dirt road and the first farm. A man walking through a wheat field stopped to stare at them. Mark still carried one of the destrex rifles, and Maghen had a double-barreled shotgun slung on her back.

  “I think it may be the guns, Mark. Both the rifle and the shotgun are unusual.”

  Mark thought for a moment. “You’re right, but we’ll just let anyone who’s curious wonder about us. At least, until we’re closer to the sea.”

  They passed more farms, wheat fields, what looked to Mark like fields of plants similar to soybeans, a few small clusters of c
attle, and a village of perhaps a hundred inhabitants. They didn’t pause or engage the few villagers who stared at them as they passed.

  At mid-day, they came to the source of the smoke—a town Mark estimated had at least a thousand people. The small central plaza had a score of stalls, several of which sold combinations of fruits, vegetables, and dried meats. Maghen looked so longingly at the displays that he relented.

  It won’t hurt if we stay long enough for her to browse the stalls and shops lining the plaza, he thought.

  Two hours later they left the town, their stomachs full of fresh bread slathered in butter. Their food supply had been replenished with flour, dried fruits, sausage, small bags of various spices, several different fruits, and a roasted something the size and rough shape of a chicken. The latter had been offered for sale by a shopkeeper discerning they might be tempted to part with more coin than the cooked creature was likely worth. Mark also queried people for information on the distance to the sea.

  The only problem in their stop arose when Alys encountered other children and tried to explain with her limited vocabulary about bad men and guns firing.

  “Don’t mind her,” Mark told the older children. “She loves making up stories.” He scooped Alys up, and she waved goodbye at the other children, unaware of her father’s dismay or his urging them to discount her words.

  After they left the town, the road improved, and wagon and horse traffic increased daily. It took another sixday before Mark smelled what he’d been anticipating. They had just passed another village, one of a dozen since entering flat country. He reined in his horse, stood in the stirrups, and sniffed.

  “Do you smell that?”

  “Smell what?” asked Maghen as she shifted Alys’s position in front of her.

  “Close your eyes and take deep breaths.”

  “Here, you take Alys for a while. She’s about to fall asleep.”

  Maghen handed their daughter to him and did as he’d suggested. She closed her eyes and raised her head slightly, as if to taste the air.

  “Well, I smell something strange, but I don’t know what it is.”

  “Salt sea air. We must be close to the coast.”

  “The sea! Oh, Mark! I’ve never seen it. I can’t imagine what it’s like to see water going on forever.”

  The smell got stronger during the next two hours. They passed a one-horse cart that smelled of fish shortly before the road emerged from dense forest and curled around a hill. From there, they could see the ocean.

  “Oh, my. Oh, my,” said Maghen. “You described it, and I imagined it, but seeing is something else. And there’s a town and ships. Is it one of those we’ll take to Novaryn?”

  “That’s what I’ll find out. The town is named Munwurth, according to people we’ve talked to. They say it’s mainly here because of fishing, which sounds right because I don’t see any large vessels anchored offshore. They must be fishing boats. I’ll query whether one is willing to take us to Novaryn. I certainly hope so since the alternative is to go south around the Timbar Sea until we reach the Tekleum border. By my estimate, we’d have twelve hundred miles on horseback, instead of a six-hundred-mile sea voyage. We’d also be much farther south, where it’s much colder, and then would have to cross the Urstyl Mountains. I hear that’s not something to try if you don’t have to.”

  The road wound down to the shore a mile or so to Munwurth. The sun hung just above the western ocean horizon when the road began to parallel a beach and low surf. They crossed a wooden bridge with no rail over a small stream.

  “Let’s stop and camp for the night,” said Mark. “Any closer to Munwurth, and we might be on someone’s property. Maybe tomorrow night we can find an inn, but I want to wait until morning before entering the town.”

  “Maybe we can go ‘walking in the surf,’ as you’ve described.”

  Mark smiled. “I’m sure we can. Let’s go among the dunes and set up camp. We’ll have fresh water from the stream, and it looks like enough grass to keep the horses happy for the time being.”

  “What are dunes?”

  “Sand. Like you’ve seen along rivers and streams, although this may have a different feel. Here, there gets to be so much of it that it forms these mounds you see. They’re called dunes.”

  An hour later, Mark sat on a driftwood log and watched Maghen and Alys chase each other through ankle-deep incoming and outgoing waves. Squeals of delight from Alys and Maghen almost made him feel like crying. It reminded him too starkly of the contrast with what they had been through the last sixdays. He felt as if he’d failed them, no matter how often he tried to tell himself what had happened wasn’t his fault.

  He didn’t know how the Narthani and the guilds had connected, but it must have been their mutual interest once his name became known to both groups. Mark rued that he had gone back to using his real name, instead of keeping Kris Kolumbus. At least, he could have avoided guild involvement.

  Maghen waved at him to join in. He took off his boots, rolled up his pant legs, and for the next twenty minutes impersonated an ogre chasing two helpless damsels fleeing for their lives and honor. His growls and hand-shaped claws failed to suppress the giggles and laughs of his intended victims.

  Later, they dried off, changed into dry clothes, and sat near a driftwood fire. They ate cheese and fruit bought at the last village. They slept with the surf sounds and the night calls of birds that weren’t quite seagulls. When Mark woke up the next morning, he had a few moments of disorientation, as if he were back on Earth.

  “Papa, Papa, go play water?” brought him back to reality.

  He groaned. “Just a few more minutes of sleep, baby.”

  “No, Papa, now. Go play water.”

  “Maybe Mama will take you.”

  “Guess again, Papa! You go with her, and I’ll fix something to eat.”

  Mark thought about leaving Maghen and Alys to relax in the dune’s shelter, but he didn’t want to let them out of his sight. He didn’t expect trouble in the town, but he carried two pistols under his cloak. Maghen had a third. They left the long guns wrapped and out of sight.

  When they entered Munwurth, they went straight to the harbor.

  “I want to see if getting a boat across to Novaryn is possible. After that, we can make plans.”

  They wove their way through narrow streets, skirting the center of town. At the harbor, seven fishing boats lay moored at piers, with another dozen boats anchored nearby. They saw several of the moored boats unloading hauls of fish—at least, that’s what Mark thought to call creatures with larger scales than on Earth and in a kaleidoscope of colors.

  “Ugh!” said Maghen. “It doesn’t smell as good when you’re this close.”

  “Phewy, Papa,” added Alys. “Stinky. Somebody go potty.”

  “It’s the harbor,” said Mark. “They always smell worse. You’ll get used to it, but I need to find ships’ captains to talk with.”

  The first two captains he ran down dismissed the idea of sailing to Novaryn, and Mark never got to dickering on a price. The third captain was interested.

  “Why do you want to go to Novaryn from here?”

  “It’s personal family matters we need to settle with relatives.”

  “Relatives in Dawlber?” the captain asked.

  “Uh . . . Dawlber?”

  “That’s the closest Novaryn port. If you need to get to northern Novaryn, you’ll have to go by land after Dawlber. Cost you eight large golds to take you and your family to Dawlber.”

  “Eight—?” He did the calculation conversion. Ten thousand dollars! he thought in astonishment. Put it where the sun don’t shine!

  Mark struggled to speak calmly. “That seems excessive. I think something like two golds is reasonable.” He hoped they were bargaining.

  The captain snorted. “It’s eight. No one wants to cross the Timbar Sea from Munwurth to Dawlber with their family unless there’s something they’re running from. I might be the only captain willing to do i
t, so it’s eight.”

  Mark didn’t respond, just turned and walked away.

  “Don’t wait too long to come back. The price might go up, the more desperate I think you are.”

  Two more captains proved of no help. One flat refused, and the other asked too many questions and made Mark nervous. The last moored boat was evidently finished unloading because the crew was flushing debris off the deck using buckets of seawater. Mark caught the attention of the man doing most of the yelling and giving orders.

  “Dawlber? Why would you want to go there? Oh . . . never mind. Not my business. I’ve planned on fishing the waters closer to southern Novaryn than usual our next trip, so it won’t be much a diversion to go to Dawlber first. Cost you four large golds.”

  Mark sensed the captain might come down if they bargained, but he wasn’t in the mood.

  “All right,” said Mark. “Two golds when we leave the harbor and the other two when we arrive at Dawlber. When do we leave?”

  “Be three or four days. Crew needs some time at home or wherever they want. Plus, there’s a few repairs to do and resupply for the trip. Tell me now or tomorrow where you’re staying, and I’ll send word when we sail.”

  Mark’s step was more spritely than before when he returned to Maghen and Alys, waiting in sight on the dock.

  “We have a ship,” he announced. “Leaves in three or four days, so let’s find an inn.”

  They luxuriated the next few days: two hot meals a day, along with a hot bath and sleeping as long as any of them wanted. When awake and wanting to leave the inn, they walked the town and spent at least one hour-long session a day at the beach, so Alys could play.

  Mark also sold the horses, though they kept the saddles and other riding gear. They threw away any garments showing too much wear, bought new clothes, and boarded the ship with enough food for the trip.

  The first two days after they left Munwurth were grim. Maghen became seasick less than a mile from the harbor. On those days, she could only keep water down. Mark grew worried enough that he considered having the captain return to Munwurth. When he mentioned it to Maghen on the third morning, she demurred.