by CC Hogan
Chapter 21 – River
Weasel was once again sitting backwards on his horse facing the wagon as they carefully picked their way down from the high moorlands of south-western Bekon. It had taken them two weeks to get across the vast Bekon Moors. Mab-Tok had guided them in short stages, and at last, they had come to the end of the moor and the end of Bekon. They had kept well off any route useful to a bandit and had seen very few people. Cresting another rise, Mistry pulled the horses to a stop, leant over and pulled on the brake. The ground was rough here and they were just ambling along carefully. Farthing had given up riding at this slow pace, tied his horse to the back of the wagon, and he and Pree were walking together a little way back talking quietly, which was now a daily ritual. Rusty had unlatched the backboard of the wagon and was sitting sideways chewing on a grass stalk with one leg hanging off the back swinging idly. It had become her favourite place to sit in the last couple of weeks. When Farthing and Pree caught up, she put her hand out to her brother, and he swung her up onto his shoulders and walked to the front of the wagon where she jumped off and up next to Mistry.
“Why are we stopping?” Weasel asked, looking up from the small map and the notes he had been updating from Mab-Tok’s bird’s-eye observations. Mistry stood up on the driving seat and pointed ahead of them.
“Downhill from here,” she called out. “Looks steep too. I will need one of you on the brake and someone else carrying the chocks, but I want to rest the horses first.”
Though they had only been travelling at walking pace, the horses had been hauling the wagon in and out of small potholes and ruts. Mistry had kept them weaving left and right to miss the worst of them, Farthing sometimes pulling at the lead horse’s halter to encourage it on. Farthing walked past Weasel and sat on one of the large boulders dotted across this end of the moor. Pree sat up next to him, wrapped her arms loosely around his neck, and leant on his shoulder. Over the last few days, the ground had become harder and sandier, the water-loving heathers and lichen replaced with thin grasses, sturdy, small shrubs and the occasional stunted tree. Bekon Moor dropped down steeply from this point and he was surprised how high they had climbed.
“Must be a thousand feet,” Mistry called out as she and Rusty unhitched the horses and gave them nosebags to munch on. “It’s like a plateau round here.”
Weasel jumped off his horse and plonked himself down on the other side of Farthing and passed him over the map.
“How is our water?” he asked.
“I tapped the barrels as we walked past,” Pree answered, sitting up. “About half full, I reckon.” Whatever high society airs and graces the girl may have had as the Prelates daughter, had been stripped away by their ordeal as slaves. Now she had relaxed into the style of Farthing and South Wead, and might almost have got away with being a Wealle native.
“The horses are going to need watering,” Weasel said. “We only passed a couple of brooks I think this morning.” He rubbed his eyes. The long journey was wearing them all down.
The barrels were a new addition as were a few extra boxes hung off the side of the wagon. After the incident with the highwaymen, they felt going across the Moors would be a safer route, but they would have less access to food and water. They had stopped at a village called Sone and the blacksmith had been able to give them a good sense of how long the journey would be and what they would need. He had supplied them with the two large barrels which he had attached to either side of the cart between the wheels. The extra storage boxes, fruit boxes with canvas lids, they had picked up in the general store, and these increased the amount of stock they could carry. Mistry had also asked the blacksmith to change all the shoes on the horses and replace some of the spares they had already used. One way or another, they were in good shape.
The man had been wary of Mab-Tok, which had surprised them, and it turned out that the people of central Bind had little to do with dragons, and most had never seen one. He had suggested that they might not want to blunder into any of the smaller communities with the dragons as it might not be tolerated. It was a short, unambiguous lesson on how the divisions between the intelligent species of Dirt had widened in the last couple of thousand years.
It was impossible to avoid contact with locals completely since they needed fresh food, and everyone except Farthing had grown sick of beans. Farthing had enjoyed his couple of excursions as they had given him a little break from the routine of the wagon journey. To visit a village without a list of probing questions, and just buy something ordinary from a general store, was a welcome note of normality. Mistry, Rusty and Lily wandered over and joined the others on the rock.
“Way over there to the right somewhere is Henderton, the old capital of Hendesse,” Weasel told them, checking his map. “The country stretches from about where we are all the way across to the Iron Mountains, where we need to go; you can just about see them on the horizon.”
“You have decided where we are heading now, then?” Rusty asked. From Hendesse they had a choice of places to aim for and Weasel had been trying to make up his mind which road to take for several days.
“Down onto the plain, then across to Henderton, is the plan. Then from there over to the mountains and the mines and across to Tool on the coast. According to a trader I met in the last village, they have cut a new pass across the mountains so they can get the iron ore down to the coast of Peys. That means it will be wagon friendly. After that, it is a fast run on the main trade route heading west to Tool, which is one of the biggest coastal towns, and probably our best bet to get passage to Taken.
“How long?” Mistry stretched and waved Farthing to his feet.
“Two weeks to the mountains? A few days up to Tool from there.”
“Have you been there then?” Farthing asked.
“Long time ago. I like Tool. Hendesse is less pleasant.”
“Why?”
“In recent years, they have become ore crazy. The ruling council here are obsessed with the iron mines, and don’t give a damn about the people. Some of it is very poor and rough.”
“Come on, Farthing,” said Mistry, trying to pull him away from the conversation.
“What are we doing?”
“I want to get the horses watered, but I don’t want to use up the barrels. Mab-Tok said there is a small river about a quarter of a league south. You and I can ride them over while the others get food sorted.”
“What about mine and Weasel’s horses?”
“We’ll take those too so you won’t have to batter your precious bum riding the draughts. I could do with a ride too.” He and Mistry had ridden the big animals out for watering frequently on the journey. Rusty and Mistry had already unharnessed the Bekons so Mistry grabbed the reins of the two lead beasts and jumped up onto Weasels horse. Farthing fetched his horse from the back of the wagon and grabbed the other two draughts, and then the two of them trotted off to find the stream with the big animals in tow.
There was no wind and apart from the odd insect and the sound of the horses’ hooves, it was a peaceful, warm day. Farthing stood up in his stirrups and stretched.
“The river’s up there,” he said, pointing out from his vantage point. “Looks shallow.”
“Oh, good, we can lead in the horses to cool their feet for a bit, then give them a run around,” Mistry said.
Farthing grinned. He loved watching the big horses frolic. They seemed to turn into foals and go completely silly, which looked daft with such a big animal, and it always cheered him up. It was a shallow, stony river about twenty feet across, running slow and clean. Farthing detached the reins from his two horses and gave them a smack of encouragement. They went chasing after the first two that Mistry had already released, playing some complicated, horse-only game of tag. They unsaddled the other two horses and sent them chasing after the draughts.
“They have made quite a team,” Farthing commented, sitting down by the small river
.
“We all have, one way or another,” the girl replied, sitting next to him. She played with a few pebbles around her feet. “How are you and Pree getting on?”
Farthing leant on his knees. “Fine, I suppose. She seems nice; not like I expected.”
“Oh, just fine then. That’s good.” Mistry smiled to herself. “She spends a lot of time with you.”
“She does? Yeah, I suppose so. She likes talking about stuff.”
“You both do, by the looks of it.”
Farthing nodded absently. One of the horses had just nipped another and was getting a right telling off. He grinned and pointed it out to Mistry.
“Look, sis. I think you are right, you know. That big mare is definitely the other one’s mother. They are always arguing.”
“You don’t see their personalities when they are hitched up, especially when they are blinkered,” Mistry told him. “Watching them like this is essential for getting the pairing right.”
“I noticed you always hitch them up exactly the same way.”
“They know their place and are used to it. That is why they have been so good on some of the rougher stretches. It’s been a hard journey for them, though. They have all lost a bit of weight I reckon. Not enough to worry about, but we need to watch them, especially across Hendesse; it looks barren from up here.”
Farthing slapped his own stomach. “They are not the only ones!”
“Yeah, I had noticed you had lost some of that puppy fat,” Mistry said with a wicked glint in her eyes.
“I have never had puppy fat!” Farthing sounded outraged. “And anyway, you shouldn’t have been looking.”
Mistry laughed and jumped up, whistling to the horses. “Oh, give over brother, you know you are just way too pretty.”
“Don’t you start; if Pree goes on about my sweet looks one more time, I am going to dunk her in the next stream we find.” He grabbed a passing, elusive horse by the halter and dragged it into the water like a spoilt child.
“Oh, you love it, Farthing, admit it! You like her.”
“Well, course I do. She is nice. I like everyone here.” He ran off to grab his own horse who was still into the idea of playing tag.
“Yes, Farthing dear,” Mistry said to herself. “But there is like and then there is like. And you really like her.” She screwed her face up and sighed. “Why couldn’t you have had a brother, dammit? Oi! Horse! Stop splashing the others!” She calmed the big beasts down, and let them drink and cool their legs.
“Pull it harder!”
“Got it!” Farthing pulled back on the long, wooden brake, checking the brake shoe wasn’t overheating.
“Weasel, if it gets much steeper, I am going to need help.” Mistry was trying to guide the draught horses around the big boulders on the steep slope. She pulled it all to a halt and shouted to Rusty and Pree to shove the big chocks in front of the wheels.” Mistry jumped down and walked to the front pair of horses. “Weasel, give me a hand with these.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Because these two are harnessed to a chain, they can’t help to slow the wagon down, so they are more in the way than anything else. If you follow the wagon with them, if I get into trouble, you can rope them to the back and pull.”
“Will that work?”
“Well, it’s a bit of a last resort, but I have seen my father do the same trick through the hills with a heavy load.”
The new arrangement worked a treat. With only two horses out front, the wagon was nimbler, and slowly, but safely, they managed to make their way down to the plain of Hendesse. Weasel brought the two lead horses back around to the front of the wagon and Mistry used some of their water to cool their tendons.
“Give them half an hour and they will appreciate a trot across the plain,” she said. “Where is the road?”
“Mab-Tok is looking for it, but we know it is that way somewhere.” Weasel pointed due north of their position. “Once on it, we can pick the pace up proper. I want to be in Henderton in the next few days if possible and restock before we head off to the mines.”
Farthing took a rag from one of their new side boxes, wetted it and cooled his own horse’s tendons then checked on Weasel’s mare. Lily jumped down from the back of the wagon looking annoyed, walked over to where Weasel was staring into the distance and jabbed him in the back.
“What? Ow! Lily! What was that for … Oh!” Suddenly he burst out laughing.
“What’s so funny?” Rusty was rolling back the canvas bonnet of the wagon by two bows to take advantage of the sun.
“I was trying to get hold of Lily to tell Mab-Tok something, but she hadn’t gone with him. I think I shouted a bit loud.”
“You can talk in my head, Eafa, but you don’t understand how you are doing it. You should learn.” She sounded irritated. The little wingless dragon closed her eyes. “He is coming back now.”
“You can talk to him?” Weasel asked in surprise. Aside from himself, the white and black dragons only seemed to be able to talk to each other, though Lily could also influence other species like horses and cows. That was not speaking, however.
“I cannot tell him, but I can hear where he is.” She nodded in satisfaction at her slightly strange explanation and climbed back into the wagon where she was sorting out her small supply of medications.
Since Pree’s recovery, there had been no major ailments among the friends other than the occasional dodgy stomach or headache. But there had been plenty of scratches and grazes, and Lily had taken on the role of nurse and healer more and more, allowing Mab-Tok to stick to his role of chief scout. The two dragons had grown noticeably closer over the weeks, to the general fascination of the non-dragons in the party. Draig Bach-Iachawr would do their bit to keep their kind from becoming extinct, but never paired and regarded romance as a mystery. Draig Wen were only known to associate with their own kind and the huge Draig Mynyth Dun. It should have been a clash of cultures, but for some reason neither of these two dragons were behaving to type, and it did seem to be working.
When Mab Tok landed he immediately confirmed the problem that Weasel had noticed on the map; a river.
“How big is it?” Weasel asked. He pointed to the map that just showed a very thin line with the lettering “R. Hend” on it.
“Big,” the dragon replied. “And in the wrong place. It is north of us not south as on your map. We are going to have to cross it. If I had been thinking, the clue was in the word.”
Weasel looked at the dragon, then at the map and then slapped himself in the head. “Stupid. The word Hend means river in ancient Adelan. The word Desser means plain. So Hendesse means River Plain. They are not going to name an entire country after the flood plain of a stream so of course the river is going to be big.”
“Shallow, however,” the Dragon added.
“How wide and how shallow, Mab-Tok?” Mistry asked.
“I was able to stand in the middle, so I doubt it is much deeper than the axels of the wagon, but it is very wide. It is going to be quite a crossing.” Everyone turned to Mistry.
“It is doable,” she shrugged. “But it won’t be easy. We haven’t crossed more than a little ford so far, so I don’t know how the horses will take to a big, noisy river. If they like it, then it will be easy. If not, I will be fighting them the whole way across.”
“Can we make it easier in any way?” Farthing asked her. So much of this journey was landing on this young girl’s shoulders, and since her teasing earlier, he was feeling guilty that he had been neglecting her.
“Not really, but once we are there, we might unhitch the horses and see if they want to play in the water. Maybe even ride them in a short way see how they like it. That might take a little the worry away. My old horses were dreadful at rivers. I soon worked out that it was the noise as much as anything. If this is slow running and not too noisy over rocks
, that will be easier.”
“It is not very fast running,” Mab-Tok said. “I think it is too wide for that, but it is stony. I don’t know how noisy it is by the banks, I didn’t think to check.”
“Well, we need to get there first,” Weasel said with a sigh. “If we can get the horses settled there overnight, we can try to cross in the morning. I don’t suppose there are any bridges?”
“Not that I saw,” Mab-Tok said. “If Henderton was on the river, then I would think there would be, but it is several leagues off.”
“If it is as shallow as you say, it wouldn’t be much use for navigation and so there is no benefit from building right next to it, especially if it floods, as the name implies.
The land of Hendesse on the south side of the river was not flat, but it was not exactly hilly either. It was a very gently rolling landscape of hard-packed, sandy-red dirt with mixed grasses and small, thorny gorse bushes. It was not as arid as it had looked from the top of the moor, but it was hardly good arable farmland either. To Mistry’s relief, the going was much smoother than she had predicted and she could relax. They soon picked up a rough trail that headed as straight as an arrow towards the river, passing by the occasional small, poor hamlet of flat-roofed, single-storey, whitewashed buildings. Crops were few and far between, but there were some groves of olive trees and the odd small herd of goats wandering free.
“No fences,” Mistry pointed out to Rusty, who was taking her turn driving and had the reins. With the canvas bonnet rolled half back, Pree was now standing on the bedding holding onto one of the bows and enjoying the gentle breeze from the high-legged trotting of the horses. Farthing suddenly shot off at a gallop to one side whooping, and then returned at high speed across the trail chasing a large hare. He pulled up grinning, and turned in to trot alongside the wagon.
“No chance, Farthing. Not a hope of catching that blighter!” Pree was grinning.
“Well, it looked like it needed the work out so I thought I would wake it up.” He held his hand out to Pree. “Want a ride?”
“You bet!” the girl said, and nimbly stepped off the wagon to sit behind Farthing on the big roan, cuddling into his back. Farthing kicked his mount into action and the horse galloped off; Pree screaming with joy. Rusty watched them go with a knowing look.
“I think we have lost control of that story completely, girl,” she said with a sigh. “Are you okay with it?”
“I am getting used to it,” Mistry said, and then laughed. “I am sixteen next week, you know. What are the boys like in Redust?”
“Not all like my brother, sadly,” said Rusty, who was only young herself. “But there are some interesting hunks around, especially down at the old harbour where we all go swimming. The trick is to sort out the posers from the good guys like that.” She pointed over to her brother who had slowed the horse to a walk, jumped off and was leading Pree through the trees. “Not that I get much chance, working on the island and everything.” She frowned. “I don’t do that any longer, of course.”
“But that is what makes your brother so damned gorgeous; he doesn’t know he is, or doesn’t care. I know it's what Pree sees in him. Have you noticed the way she looks at him?”
“What, you mean drooling?”
“Apart from that!” Mistry fidgeted in irritation. “I mean, she has all that man to look at and what does she do? She looks into his eyes and strokes his hair.”
“Which is why I know we have lost.”
“What is going to happen when we get back to your hometown?” Mistry took the reins and hooked them over the brake, then turned to sit cross-legged on the seat, looking at Rusty. The horses could find their own way for a bit.
“I don’t know. What I want is to go home, clear out my room so there is space for you, go down to the Hive, buy some cheese, bread and a beer, and then sit in our window and pretend none of this ever happened. But that’s a silly dream, isn’t it?”
“You think?”
“This is going to be about Pree now. She is going to want to deal with her father and that will turn Wead-Wodder upside down. I don’t know what that is going to mean for any of us, but if she wants to trigger a revolution, one has been dying to blow up in our town for years. Mistry, don’t get me wrong, I love my home and I love my friends, but Wead-Wodder is not a happy place, not like how you described Sarn-Tailin. Everyone knows it needs to change, but nobody has had the guts to try. Pree has talked a lot about her father while sitting back in the wagon, and they have never got on. She doesn’t like what the prelates stand for or their religion. I think she might use this as a way to change things, but it will be dangerous, probably impossible.”
“What about Farthing?” Mistry asked, looking worried. “I know those two look like they are going to be married by morning, but in the end, she’s the prelate’s daughter and he is just a cart pusher. We all are really; you, me and Johnson.”
“I can’t stop them now, Mistry. They are enjoying the moment so much.”
“Stop worrying about it, Miss Parrot, Miss Raven.” They hadn’t noticed Weasel riding up alongside. “We are still in Bind and then we have to go to Taken. After that? Well, whatever happens, neither you nor Precious can just head back to Wead. If Tekkinmod gets to his cousin first, none of us can go back unless we have some serious backup from others.”
“What sort of backup?” Rusty felt that it was all swimming away from her. There seemed to be something happening here that was beyond any of her knowledge of anything.
“Friends; some with teeth. I can’t tell you much because I am feeling my way here too. Several hundred years or more ago, there was a chance for Dirt, well, for The Prelates, to change, and for all kinds of maddening reasons, it didn’t happen. Instead, dragons, callistons and humans finished the stupid process that had been going on for generations, and that was turning their backs on each other. Prelate Oppression one, Freedom zero.”
“We don’t have that sort of system in Bind,” Mistry pointed out.
“Perhaps not. Instead, you have vast tracks of the continent either run by bandits or by local dictators, like this dry place or the bit of Wessen that Tekkinmod controls. What we dreamt about all those years ago was probably idealistic twaddle, but at least it was about the ordinary people and not the elite. One thing I do believe is that this situation is far more complicated than the rift between a Prelate and his daughter.”
“Where do you get that idea from?” Rusty said. “I spent weeks close to her, quite literally chained to each other, and I never got anything like that from her at all. Until we found out who had bought us, I don’t think it had even occurred to her that Prelate Hearting was behind this. You didn’t know either.”
“That is all perfectly true. My talent, if I have any at all, is learning bits and pieces at different times and then piecing them together to dig out the truth. And I have been doing a lot of piecing together in the last few weeks. I have yet to come up with a complete conclusion, and I don’t think I am going to get the last bit of this puzzle till we off this continent, but one thing I am sure of, what happens next is not going to include you being able to go back and just pick up where you left off.” He looked over to where Farthing and Pree had, somewhat suspiciously, vanished behind a tree. “And that young lady is going to need that big, strong young man more than anything she has ever needed in her life.”
“Why?” asked Mistry.
“Because he is ordinary. Now, get this wagon back up to speed, Miss Raven. I want to be at the river today if we can.” He turned his horse around and galloped off towards the trees, shouting for Farthing to, “put down that girl and go do some scouting.” A few minutes later he returned with Pree on his horse who was blushing right down to her toes. He dumped her on the Wagon and rode off to scout the other side of the trail.
“What?” Pree snapped when Mistry and Rusty turned to look at her.
“He is my brother, Pree,”
Rusty pointed out.
“Well, I didn’t think he needed any more sisters!” Pree said, smouldering. “And I can’t help it. And I need him too.” She sat down in a pile on the bedding. “And it has taken me ages to persuade him that being with me is not being disloyal to you two!” The two girls continued looking at her as she sat cross-legged, tying up her long red hair in annoyance. “What do you want me to say? I love him, alright?”
“We know,” her friends said in unison.
Farthing and Weasel dismounted in a small grove of twisted trees by the banks of the River Hend. They had ridden out separately for about a league either way from the trail till they hit water and then scouted towards each other to find somewhere that would be the easiest place to cross the river. This spot was the best candidate. Although the river was wide here, much of it was shallow and there were even pebble banks pushing above the surface at several points mid-stream; they would be able to cross in stages. Some of the channels were running faster than they had hoped, however.
“When they catch up, you will need to go play with the horses while Mistry and I find the best route across,” Weasel said. Farthing tied his horse loosely to a low branch, walked to the gentle shore of the river and stuck his hand in.
“Not cold!” he shouted back. “Do we really need to wait till tomorrow?”
“In a rush?” Weasel teased, walking over. “Looking for a nice warm bed?”
“Watch it, magician,” Farthing cut back. “One kiss is all it is at the moment.”
“Bloody good one, from what I saw.”
“Well, you shouldn’t have been looking.”
“Don’t you go speaking to Daddy Weasel like that, son,” Weasel teased again.
“Don’t even go there, Eafa!” But Farthing grinned in spite of himself and sat on the pebbles. “She is nice, though.”
“And a prelate’s daughter,” Weasel reminded him, sitting down.
“A prelate’s daughter in a lot of trouble, Weasel. She is going to need friends, and I think she is very short of them.”
“What makes you think that?”
“How many people went chasing after her?”
Weasel shrugged. It was a good point and one that had crossed his own mind several times in the last few weeks. “Do you think we would have been better off hiding over here somewhere? Sarn-Tailin, perhaps? Change of name, hair dye, that sort of thing?”
“More sensible, maybe,” Farthing replied. “But better? Or right? No. Not that.”
Weasel raised an eyebrow. The young man had been thinking far more with his head than he had suspected. “So, what is the plan?” Weasel asked.
“I thought that was your department?”
“Getting you back to Taken is, perhaps, but what about after that?”
“I don’t know. Look, my life and my sister’s life are not right. We are at about the lowest point in the heap that you could possibly be. There are thousands of us like that. But out of all of those people, I only know one that managed to push upwards, and he has still hit a ceiling.”
“Truk?”
“Yeah, Truk and a couple of his friends, probably. Most of the rest of the traders in Wead-Wodder are not even from the Prelates, let alone Redust. I didn’t think I would ever have the power or know the people to make change, though I know a lot of people who would love to. So I have been resigned to my lot, and live the best I can and try to protect my sister at all costs; which I failed to do, by the way.” Weasel decided not to comment. “And now, this descendant of some mad queen gets kidnapped and spends weeks with my sister hearing everything there is to know about my life. My life, Weasel, no one else’s. She knows about all the times my cart broke. She knows about when we ran out of money and I ended up sneaking veg and beans off a stall when no one was looking. She knows how angry I get when things go wrong, and that is regularly. She even knows how cold Rusty and I get in the wet season, and how we have been too frightened to tell Geezen and Barkles how hungry we are because we felt guilty about all the things they gave us when we felt we didn’t deserve it. She knows all of it. It is a complete slap in the face for her entire life and everything she and her family and all the other prelates have ever stood for.”
“What is she going to do then?” Weasel asked.
“What is she going to do? Well, that is simple, apparently. Today, she told me she is in love with me and owes me everything, and then asked me what I want to do. Me. Not her; me.”
Weasel lay back on the hard ground and put his arm over his eyes to shade them from the sun.
“It sounds like a revolution, Johnson.”
“I know what it sodding well is, Weasel. I just don’t know what to do about it!”
“As I told the girls back down the road, no one can do anything till we get off this continent and find our way to Taken.”
“And what then?”
“I don’t know, Farthing. But if you want change, you and your little princess can do nothing on your own. You are right, you will need friends and you need to be bloody sure that what you are fighting for is not worse than what you have already. Trust me, after a thousand years, I have seen a lot of that.”
“Where do we find these friends? Where do I start? And where does Pree start?”
“You start there.” Weasel pointed to the slowly approaching wagon which now had the bonnet removed completely, and had gained the company of a couple of small dragons. “Those are already your friends. Maybe it is time you two stopped ducking behind trees with secret kisses and conversations, and started including them.”
“And when they get hurt because they happen to know two stupid teenagers who want to change the world?” Farthing felt annoyed and out of his depth. Weasel sat up and looked at the boy-come-man.
“If you have already worked that out, then you are far farther down the road than you realise. I am not going to stop you and yes, people do get hurt. When it is people who love you, that is worse, but it is nowhere near as bad as if you did nothing and gave them no hope at all. Aneirin and I failed, in the long run. Apart from a few, most of the dragons have turned their backs on humans, and the callistons did centuries ago. That is the biggest cock up this world has seen in several millennia, to be honest. No one can say that Bren-Aneirin and I didn’t try; we spent six hundred years trying, and, in the end, I even fell out with Fren-Eirol. So, if you want change, people will get hurt. Just make sure they get hurt on their own terms and don’t stop them from also wanting what you want.”
“What about the dragons?”
“You two fight your fight and I will fight mine. I gave up when Aneirin died. That was my stupid mistake and is mine to rectify. Oddly, I have a feeling that the very person who won that particular showdown maybe the one person I can trust. But, as I said, that is my problem for the moment.” Weasel looked out across the river and to the road that would take them to the still distant town of Henderton. “First of all, we have to cross the river and get to Henderton, and you are not going to like it.”
“Why?”
“Because it is just like Wead, only nowhere near as nice.”
“Keep them moving, you idiot!”
“Oi,” Farthing shouted back to Mistry.
“Sorry, darling Johnson. Please will you keep the dear horses moving BEFORE I BLOODY WELL DROWN!”
There was no question who was in charge. The first half of the river had been shallow, slow and easy, and they had rested the horses on a bank midstream. The second half was deeper, faster and far more dangerous. The only way to cross was to keep going.
Mab-Tok was currently passed out on the far bank, having been laden up with most of their belongings to ferry them across in stages so they did not get wet or lost if all went wrong. Pree, Rusty and Lily had also been flown over which had just left the wagon. Weasel was on board with Mistry, and Farthing was on his horse up front with the draughts, keeping them moving. And the big Be
kon Browns were scared.
“Pull them right, I am getting stuck. Right!” Farthing turned his horse and pulled on the long line that he had attached to the lead draught mare, pulling her sharply to the right. The wide-eyed animal was in the deepest part of the channel and not happy about it.
“Come on your bloody animal! Come on!” Farthing pulled harder and the horse turned her head and followed him up the other side of the channel to shallower water, the other three scrambling along after. Mistry stood up as the water washed over the foot board and yelled encouragement to the horses in a somewhat colourful way. Weasel looked at her shocked.
“I am sixteen next week, magician, I am allowed to, Yeehaw!” The horses pulled the cart up and out of the water. “Drop the backboard; let the water out!” Weasel slid back down the cart and flipped the latch releasing the backboard of the wagon. The water rushed out nearly taking him with it.
“Next channel!” Farthing shouted. “Not as bad!” Mistry and Weasel had already scouted the route across, planting a couple of long sticks on the banks to mark the way. The first thing that morning, Farthing had tried the crossing for himself so he knew what was coming.
“Get the speed up!” the nearly sixteen-year-old shouted, and then cracked the reins down on the horses to speed them up, mouthing a “sorry” to them as she did so. Weasel, soaked through, struggled up behind her.
“What do I do?”
“Nothing, just hang on! Heeya, heeya, heeya!”
The horses forged forward, chasing the rump of Farthing’s mount. They plunged into the next channel, thankfully half the depth of the last. The far bank was now right in their view, and Farthing watched in amusement as the lead horse focused on the nice, dry, safe bank and just went for it.
“Whoa! Here they come!” he shouted as they headed straight for him.
“Bloody hell!” Mistry shouted. “Get out of the way!” Farthing pulled his reins around and pushed his horse on fast through the water as the big draughts dug deep and powered their way across the channel, up the other side, then raced across the last shallow and onto dry land. The lead horse scrambled to a halt, slipped on the stones, and sat on her rump, nearly pulling the others with her.
“Whoa! Whoa!” Mistry cried, jumping off the wagon and running to the front of the horses to stop them fighting and pulling. The big horses were panting and panicking, but they were stood still. “Whoa, girl, good girl.” Mistry calmed the lead horse, and Weasel dropped down from the cart and starting calming one of the others as Farthing did likewise, patting his own horse on the rump to send him off to his friend. Weasel looked over to the half-pint girl who was calming down the massive draught.
“To hell with me being the magician of the party, girl. You got some magic in you, I swear.”
“Just saying thanks, Weasel. Horses appreciate it the same as anyone else.”
“You want them unhitched?”
“Wait until they are settled down first or they may decide that the moors are a better bet than here and run off. Pree, Rusty! Get a couple of those apples over; only one each or we will have four big tummy aches.”
Eventually, with some nibbles and love the big horses calmed right down. Mistry and Farthing unhitched them, removed their harnesses, took them for a gentle walk around under some trees, and tethered them up on long lines so they could rest and roll in the dust. The girl then headed back to help with repacking the wagon.
“No way,” Pree said. “You have done enough. Go and sit down. Lily, go make her, will you?”
The small dragon trotted over, grabbed Mistry by the hand and pulled her off to the trees.
“Farthing has taught me to make tea,” the straight-talking dragon said. “I will make you tea.”
Lily quickly arranged a small circle of stones, stacked it with some fallen wood and bark shavings and went to get the tea things from the pile of stores. Mistry smiled at the little Draig Wen. It was so hard not to think of her as an eager young girl sometimes. Mistry pulled her tin from her pocket, took out her stone and struck a spark into the bark, blowing life into the fire. She had insisted that they all had these little tins containing something to make a spark and a little bit of dried moss to light in case nothing was available. No one should be without fire-making tools on a journey. The girl lay back, closed her eyes, and thought of her father, the man who had decided when she was just ten that she should know how to drive a team. He had never taught his sons, he didn’t think they were worth the effort, but he had spent months and years teaching her everything he knew.
“Thanks, daddy,” she said to the ghost in her memory.
The open gates of Henderton had not seen guards for a decade and as they walked the wagon up to the town walls there seemed to be few to care whether they came or went. The fifty-league journey down the main road that they had joined soon after crossing the River Hend, had been dry and dusty, and they had put up the bonnet of the wagon and shut the flaps at each end to keep the worst out. Mistry had tied her scarf around her face and pushed her hair up under her hat. The land north of the river and all the way up to Henderton was flat with a mix of thin, yellow grass and the odd shallow lake. There were few villages here and the land had an abandoned and neglected feel that made travelling, though easy, unpleasant. Mistry pulled her scarf down and guided the horses through the large open gates and into an empty, dusty plaza. Bringing the horses to a halt, she stood up on her seat as Farthing and Weasel walked up either side of the wagon.
“No welcoming committee?” Mistry asked no one in particular.
“This place looks dead!” Farthing looked around at the buildings the other side of the plaza. They were mostly windowless, single-storey buildings not so different from Thanks in Wead-Wodder, with similarly whitewashed walls and small lanes. However, there seemed to be no life here. Back in Wead, thin, birch and caten-nut trees grew between the buildings, and sometimes within the courtyards of the trader’s houses. And small rooms had often been built on the flat roofs of the richer homes, decorated with wooden carvings and the rich hanging cloths made by the sea dragons. There was none of that here, it was just plain, creamy-white, where it hadn’t already peeled off.
“Let’s find a livery and an Inn. This place has certainly gone downhill since I was last here,” Weasel said with a tired voice, and nudged his horse across the worn cobbles of the plaza and past an empty, broken fountain. The horse looked at it wistfully as she passed. “I could do with a drink too,” the magician said with feeling.
“How long since you’ve been here?” Farthing asked. He had slid off his large gelding and was walking. Pree dropped off the back of the cart and walked next to him. She had been locked away from the dust in the back of the cart for most of the day and was feeling claustrophobic.
“Four hundred years, give or take.”
“I can see that it would have changed one way or another in all that time,” Pree said. “What is it like to live as long as you have, Weasel?”
“I don’t know,” the wiry man replied with a shrug. “I haven’t lived shorter to be able to make a comparison, but I reckon it is not much different to living a hundred years, the memories are just woollier.” Nobody believed him, of course; his memories of hundreds of years before could be just as sharp as those of last week, and equally as selective. They passed into the warren that was the town proper and it soon became clear that most of these buildings were abandoned. Many of the doors had been removed, their wood no doubt reclaimed, and drifts of dust had built up against walls and sills, with only the odd track of a lizard to show anyone had been through here at all. Farthing’s initial comparison with Thanks was pretty much spot on, and Rusty joined him, looking through some of the openings into small quads that could have easily been something that Geezen and Truk would own.
“We could almost just dump ourselves in one of these as pay a livery,” Farthing commented.
“Bad idea,” We
asel told him. “Where you get empty buildings, you get crime and I would like to still have both the wagon and my life tomorrow morning, thank you.”
“Wead could become like this if it lost its trade,” Pree said. “If you think of the land immediately around behind the dust dumps and up the river, there isn’t much there to support the town if we didn’t have the traders. Not so many fish now and most of the goods down in The Hive, from what I saw when I sneaked out, were imported.”
“You sneaked out to The Hive?” Rusty asked.
“Too right. If I wanted to go have fun, the only place I was allowed to go was the Mace Market in North Wead, and that was boring. The Hive is way better, but I wasn’t actually allowed to go there. The ferrymen seem to be up for a bribe, though.”
“I’ve never been to Mace Market,” Rusty told her. “We only got to go across to North Wead if we were delivering something. That meant that neither of us ever went since we didn’t trade.”
Farthing agreed with his sister. The only time he had ever gone north was as a kid when he had sneaked onto one of the goods ferries for a dare. He had been quickly found and dumped on the south shore with the warning that North was not for his sort. To his surprise, that still stung a bit.
Pree slipped her hand into his and took Rusty’s arm. “The list of wrongs is getting longer the more I hear from you two, and that is despite neither of you being into grumbling much about anything.”
“You should try Farthing when you can’t magic people out of thin air for him,” Weasel said with feeling.
“Sorry, Eafa, was I being unfair that day?” Farthing asked sarcastically.
“No, you were no problem. Moppy hits harder than you do.”
“Who's Moppy?” Pree asked.
“His niece, apparently,” Farthing answered. “It is probably very complicated. Everything else about his family is.”
“Is she very old then?” Pree asked.
“No, our age. That is the complicated bit.”
“What is she like?”
“Nice. She works for Geezen and we kick around with her sometimes.”
“Vicious and uncompromising,” Weasel added without conviction, and then sighed in resignation. “Alright, she is nice, I admit it, and when I next see her, I should probably do as Geezen says and tell her.”
“Denial is one of our magician’s biggest failings, according to Fren-Eirol,” Mistry called out from the wagon.
“Oh, she told you that, did she?” Weasel said over his shoulder.
“Twenty or thirty times, yes. Why?” she asked sweetly.
“No reason. Oh good, a side road that appears to have some market noise coming down it. We can stop tearing me apart now.” Weasel turned left and Mistry eased the wagon around the tight corner.
From the side road, they joined another main route, and this one was a little busier with a few locals going about their business and ignoring theirs. The streets were just as dusty, and the general feel of the place was unloved. The walled town was built in a large square at the edge of the flats, and against the side of a barren, rocky hill. The principle structures were built up on the rocks overlooking the rest of the town. This was an ancient place that predated modern Hendesse by a couple of millennia. The architecture of the older buildings displayed the stark square lines of the more ancient peoples of Dirt, decorated with large, worn, swirling patterns within geometric shapes. Farthing pointed out the ruins of a large turret not far from them.
“That looks like it was built by the same people who built your castle,” he said to Pree.
She grinned. “Never really felt like mine and the insides were stripped out several centuries back by an earlier Prelate, but I see what you mean. Similar decorations on the wall.”
“Those were by some of the baddies,” Weasel told them.
“What baddies?” Pree asked.
“Going back a few thousand years, there were basically two large factions of humans. The Heinela had a monarchical society much wedded to feudalism. Great horse riders and banner wavers. The Haftens were very different. They ran their lands with small autocratic councils, membership of which was won by the sword. Despite vast amounts of spilt blood, they were great builders and you will find their buildings everywhere they managed to control, even as far as the north-west of the Prelates.”
“Ooh, he does history lessons as well,” remarked Mistry from the wagon. Farthing handed the reins of his horse to Rusty and jumped up onto the Wagon.
“Great big comfy bed for you tonight, sis. I have promised myself that,” he told Mistry. “We could not have got here without you.”
She leant on his shoulder. “When we get off this continent, I am going to sleep for a month. What is Taken like?”
“Well, there is the mountain and the strange place halfway up it where the dragons meet, and then there is the port, Taken Town. It is small but busy. The bit I like is in between where the few small villages are. And I mean small; just a handful of houses each. That is where we are going to stay, I hope. With the Jippersons.”
“Those two brothers that got you and Weasel into all this Mr this and Mr that stuff?”
“That’s them. They own this tiny inn and a forge just next to a stream with a little bridge over it; you would only just get this wagon across. The place is all green and small and stone walls and big green oak trees. Ha! I can picture the drunk Fren-Eirol lying under a tree with her tongue hanging out.”
“Eirol? You are joking!” Mistry hung her mouth open in amazement. Pree jumped up and sat the other side of Farthing. “Go away, Pree,” Mistry said pompously. “I am having some Farthing time.” Pree pouted and leapt back off.
“Rusty, I need a hug! My man has run off with a younger woman!”
“So, anyway, what’s the story with Eirol? Oh, hang on, tight turn. Weasel! Lead the big girl round will you?” Mistry shouted out. He waved his hand and led the lead horse around the tight turn, making it easier for the rest to follow. “I told you that short shaft on the wagon was worth it,” Mistry told Farthing. “So, Eirol?”
“Oh, right. Well, after I was stung by the Onga, she and Mab-Tok flew back to the Shallow Sea to pick up all our stuff because she had abandoned it to get me back.” He shook his head. “I still don’t get how she managed to fly me to Taken like she did. Anyway, on their way back, just as they landed, Fren-Eirol caught the end of her wing and tore the cartilage. Hurts like crazy, apparently. Well, Mab-Tok and Weasel pulled it back in and then the Elder Jipperson brings her out this bucket of rum…”
“Rum?”
“Oh, it’s a drink and you find it in ports everywhere. A bit like that dark whiskey up at the Abbey that Weasel and Eofin were gulping back.”
“Oh, that stuff. I tried it and it nearly took my hair off!”
“Well, Fren-Eirol drinks back the lot, grins once and passes out, sliding down the tree till her head slips backwards and her tongue fell out.” Farthing grinned widely. “One of a list of things I have that I probably should never talk to her about.”
“You finished with him yet?”
“Not yet, Pree,” Mistry shouted back, turned and gave Farthing a big wet kiss on the cheek.
“Okay, all yours!” she called out with a smirk. “You better get down to your lover-girl, brother, before she starts sulking.” Farthing chuckled.
“Livery ahead, Miss Raven!” Weasel shouted out. “Oh, goody, and it’s attached to an inn. Ah, very tight through the gate. Can you get the wagon in there, girl?”
“Just watch me, Mr Horseman!”