Exile's Return (2 page)

He flexed his fingers and rubbed his wrists as he slowly stood up. Forcing his breathing to a slow, deep rate, he crept around to the front of the tent. He peered around the edge of the tent and saw a single guard sitting with his back to the fire at the other end of the camp.

Kaspar’s mind raced. He knew one thing from years of experience: more harm came from indecision than from bad choices. He could attempt to silence the guard, thereby possibly gaining several hours on the pursuit that would certainly follow, or he could simply leave, and hope the guard didn’t come to check on him before dawn. But whichever choice he made, he had to act now!

Without conscious effort, he took a step in the guard’s direction. He trusted in his instincts: the risk was worth the potential reward. The guard hummed a simple tune, perhaps as a device to keep himself alert. Kaspar trod lightly on the balls of his feet and came up behind the man.

Some change in the light as Kaspar stepped between the guard and the camp fire, a slight sound, or just intuition, made the man turn. Kaspar lashed out as hard as he could and struck him behind the ear. The guard’s knees wobbled and his eyes lost focus and Kaspar struck him across the jaw. The man started to fall, and Kaspar caught him.

He knew his freedom was measured in seconds as he stripped the guard of his headcover, and sword. But the man had smaller feet than him and his boots were useless to Kaspar.

He cursed the soldier who had taken his boots on the night of his capture. He couldn’t attempt an escape barefoot. He lacked the calluses of those who traveled without boots and while he knew little of the terrain around him, what he had seen told him it was rocky and unforgiving. He remembered a small copse of trees on a distant hillside to the northeast, but doubted he could effectively hide there. What other cover might be nearby was unknown to him; he had had no time to study his surroundings between his arrival and the confrontation with his captors. His only escape option would be to find a pair of boots and put as much distance between himself and his captors before they awoke, climbing into the rocky ridge above them where the horses couldn’t follow.

He stood silently for a moment, then hurried quietly to the largest tent. Holding the sword at the ready, he gently moved aside the tent flap. Inside he could hear snoring. It sounded as if there were two sleepers, a man and a woman. In the gloom he could see little, so he waited and let his eyes adjust. After a moment he saw a third body near the left side of the tent, a child from the size of it.

Kaspar saw a pair of boots standing next to a small chest, where he imagined he’d find the chieftain’s personal treasure. Kaspar moved with the catlike stealth uncharacteristic of a man so large. He quietly picked up the boots and saw they were of a size he could wear, then moved back toward the tent flap. He paused. Conflicting urges tugged at him. He was almost certain to be overtaken and recaptured, perhaps killed this time, unless he could find an advantage. But what? While he pondered, valuable moments passed, time never to be regained that would count against him as he sought to distance himself from this place.

Indecision was not part of Kaspar’s nature. He glanced about in the gloom and saw the chieftain’s weapons where he would expect them, close at hand in case of trouble. He inched past the sleeping couple and took out the nomadic leader’s dagger. It was a long, broad-bladed thing designed with a single purpose, to gut a man at close quarters. There was nothing dainty about it, and it put Kaspar in mind of the daggers worn by the nomads of the Jal-Pur desert of Kesh. He wondered idly if these people were somehow related. The language of the Jal-Pur was unrelated to Keshian, but Quegan had been a dialect of Keshian, and these people’s language bore a faint resemblance.

Kaspar took the blade and crept closer to the tent flap. He peered in the gloom at the child. In the dim light he couldn’t see if it was a boy or girl, for the hair was shoulder length and the child’s face was turned away. With a quick, downward thrust, Kaspar drove the dagger through the floor cover into the earth below. The slight sound caused the child to stir, but not wake.

Kaspar left the tent. He glanced quickly around and saw what he needed, a filled waterskin. He then looked longingly at the line of horses, but ignored them. A mount would give him a better chance of survival, but trying to saddle one was likely to wake someone, and whatever chance his warning in the tent might earn him, stealing a horse from these people would certainly outweigh it.

Kaspar moved out of the village and toward the trees and the hills beyond. What he had seen before his capture indicated that it was rocky terrain and perhaps these horsemen might be disinclined to follow if the way was too harsh. Perhaps they had a rendezvous to make, or perhaps Kaspar’s message might give them pause.

For unless the chieftain was a fool he would understand what Kaspar had done. The dagger next to his child would say, “I could have killed you and your family while you slept, but I spared you. Now, leave me alone.”

At least that’s what Kaspar hoped the man would understand.

Dawn found Kaspar climbing over broken rocks, high into the hills. There was almost no cover above the small copse of trees he had seen the day before, and he struggled to find a place to hide.

He could still see the camp below, though by now it was a distant dotting of tents on the floor of the wide valley. From his vantage he could see that this valley was a choke point of a broad plain, flanked on his side by broken hills with a plateau opposite. On the other side of the valley, a vast mountain range rose in the distance. Snow-capped peaks suggested that these mountains would be difficult to cross. The military man in him admired the defensibility of the location, should someone choose to place a fortress where the nomad’s camp was. But scanning the horizon, he realized there was nothing to protect here.

The valley lacked apparent water. The trees he had passed through were a variety unknown to him. They were scrawny, had tough black bark, thorns, and obviously needed very little water to survive. Everywhere he looked he saw rocks and dust. The valley below and the cut through the rocks told him that once a river had flowed through here. Shifting land or a change in climate had caused it to dry up and now its only function was to mark a quick passage for horsemen between one place and another, both unknown to Kaspar.

Distant sounds informed him his escape had been discovered, and he returned his efforts to climbing, feeling lightheaded and slightly weak. He had not eaten for at least two days, depending how he calculated the time. He had been dragged before Talwin Hawkins and his allies in chains at night and transported here instantly at dawn. He must truly be on the other side of the world.

He needed rest and food. He had found some sort of dried meat and hard cracker in a pouch on the side of the waterskin, and planned on devouring these when time permitted, but for the moment he was content to put as much distance between himself and the nomads as possible.

He reached a ridge, on top of which a narrow path ran. He pulled himself up off the rocks and turned to look at the distant camp. Tents were being folded and the tiny dots he took to be men and horses appeared to be moving at a sedate pace. There was no sign of pursuit below him. Kaspar took a moment to catch his breath and regarded the path.

It was wider than a game trail. He knelt and examined it. Someone had taken the trouble to compact the earth beneath his feet. He followed it as it climbed, leading him away from the area above the camp, and soon he found a rock face on his right that showed marks made by tools. The sun was partially blocked by the rock face, so he sat and ate the cracker and some of the dried meat. He drank about a third of the water in the skin and rested.

He seemed to have escaped and it appeared that his message to the tribe’s chieftain had been understood. No riders fanned out in search, no trackers climbed the hills below him. He was free of pursuit.

The air was dry. He reckoned his orientation from the rising sun. The trail he was on had once been a military road, which appeared to have been abandoned for some reason or another. The surrounding countryside was harsh and ungenerous, so there seemed little reason to claim it. Perhaps it had once served as a highway for a nation no longer claiming this region.

He knew the heat of the day would be punishing, so he sought out shelter. None was evident. He decided to spend a while along this old military road, for if nothing else it offered him a vantage point. He allowed himself one long sip of water, then replaced the stopper in the waterskin. He had no idea how long it would be before he found another supply.

The snatches of conversation he had overheard the night before led him to believe water was a source of concern to his former captors. He assumed they would be heading for a new source, so he decided to walk the trail in parallel to their course.

A hour went by and he noticed that the distance between himself and his captors was growing. They walked their horses, but they were traversing flat terrain and he was picking his way along broken stones. The roadbed was flat for a dozen yards or more at a time, then would be interrupted by breaks, overturned stones and gaps due to slides in the hillside below. Once he had to climb down half a dozen yards in order to circumnavigate a collapsed section.

By midday he was exhausted. He removed his shirt and tied it around his head as a rudimentary covering. He didn’t know how he knew, but he vaguely remembered as a boy being told that the body could withstand sunburn as long as the head was shaded. He drank another swallow of water and then chewed the jerked meat. It was tough and with little fat, and very salty. He resisted the urge to drink more, determined to permit himself just one more mouthful when he had finished the food.

It took a while to chew the meat, but at last he finished and he took that one long drink. He sat regarding his surroundings.

Kaspar was a hunter. Perhaps not the hunter Talwin Hawkins had been, but he had enough wilderness lore to know he was in dire circumstances. Whatever rain visited this harsh countryside did so infrequently, for there were no signs of vegetation save the tough trees that scattered the landscape. The rocks he sat upon had no grass pushing its way up between cracks, and when he turned a stone over, there was no moss or lichen growing on the shaded side. This country was dry most of the time.

He let his eyes follow the ridge upon which he walked and he saw that it ran toward the south. To the east he saw nothing but broken plains, and to the west the arid valley. He decided he would take this trail for a while longer, and look for anything that would keep him alive. The nomads were heading south, and if he didn’t know anything else, he knew that eventually they would be heading for water. And to survive, he needed water.

For that was the task at hand: survival. Kaspar had many ambitions at the moment, to return to Opardum and reclaim the throne of Olasko, and to visit vengeance on his traitorous Captain Quentin Havrevulen and Talwin Hawkins, formerly of his household. As he walked, a thought arose. The two men weren’t actually traitors, he guessed, as he had condemned both to imprisonment on the isle known as the Fortress of Despair, but whatever the legal niceties were, he’d have them both dead.

He’d probably have to rally forces loyal to him and seize the citadel from them. Most likely Talwin had forced his sister Talia to marry him, to claim his throne, and Havrevulen was almost certainly in command of the army. But he’d find men who remembered who was the rightful ruler of Olasko, and he’d reward them handsomely once he was back in power.

His mind churned and he advanced plan after plan as he trod the roadway, but whatever plan presented itself he first had to overcome several significant obstacles, starting with the fact that he was on the wrong side of the world. That meant he would need a ship and crew, and that meant gold. And to get gold he would have to contrive of a way to earn it or take it. And that meant finding civilization, or what passed for it on this continent. And finding people meant he had to survive.

He glanced around as the sun reached its zenith, and decided that right now, survival looked improbable. Nothing stirred in any direction he looked, save a small cloud of dust marking the passage of the nomads who had captured him.

However, he considered, standing still only guaranteed his death, so he would keep moving as long as he had the strength.

He marched on.

Kaspar lay dying.

He knew his time was short as he sheltered under an overhang from the afternoon sun. He had been three days on the trail and his water had been used up at dawn. He was lightheaded and disoriented and had stumbled down the side of the ridge to a shaded area to wait out the heat.

He knew that if he didn’t find water by nightfall, he most likely would not awake tomorrow morning. His lips were cracked and his nose and cheeks peeled from sunburn. Lying on his back, he ignored the pain from his blistered shoulders as they rested against the rocks. He was too tired to allow the pain to bother him; besides, the pain let him know he still lived. He would wait until the sun was low in the west, then work his way down to the flat land below. The landscape was bleak and unforgiving: broken rocks and hardpan lay in every direction. He realized that the magician who had transported him here had given him little chance for survival; this was a desert by any measure, even if it lacked the flowing sands he associated with that name.

The few trees he had encountered were lifeless and dry, and even the underside of rocks were without a hint of moisture. One of his teachers had told him years ago that water could sometimes be found below the surface in the desert, but Kaspar was certain it wouldn’t be at this elevation. Whatever streams had graced this landscape ages before, any water was now long vanished; if any remained, it would be in those gullies that were his goal, down below the cracked surface toward which he staggered. For a brief moment he paused to catch his breath, which was now labored; no matter how deeply he inhaled, he couldn’t seem to get enough air. He knew it was another symptom of his plight.

Kaspar had never seen so bleak a place. The great sand ergs of the Jal-Pur of northern Kesh had seemed exotic, a place of shifting forms, a veritable sea of sand. He had been a boy with his father, and a lavish entourage of royal servants from the Imperial Keshian court at his beck and call, amid a mobile village of colorful tents and opulent pavilions. When his father hunted the legendary sand lizards of the Jal-Pur, servants were always nearby with refreshing drinks—water scented with herbs or fruit extracts, cleverly kept cool in boxes packed with snow from the mountains. Each night was a royal feast, with chilled ales and spiced wine.

Just thinking of those drinks caused Kaspar near-physical pain. He turned his fevered thoughts to his current surroundings.

Here there were colors, but nothing remotely attractive to the eye, just harsh ocher, dingy yellow, the red of rusted iron, and a tan muted with gray. Everything was covered by dust, and nowhere was there a hint of green or blue indicating water, though he had noticed a shimmer to the northwest, which might be a reflection of water on the hot air.

He had only hunted once in the hot lands of Kesh, but he remembered everything he had been told. The Keshians were descendants of the lion hunters who roamed the grasslands around the great lake called the Overn Deep, and their traditions had endured through the centuries. The old guide, Kulmaki, had counseled Kaspar, “Watch for birds at sundown, young lord, for they will fly to water.” For the last two days he had scanned the horizon in vain; but not a bird had he seen.

As he lay exhausted and dehydrated he lapsed in and out of consciousness, his mind alive with a mix of fever dreams, memories and illusions.

He recalled a day as a boy when his father had taken him hunting, the first time he had been permitted to accompany the men. It had been a boar hunt, and Kaspar had barely the strength to handle the heavy-tipped boar spear. He had ridden close to his father as he took the first two boars, but then he had faced his own, he had hesitated, and the pig had dodged the broad head of Kaspar’s weapon. He had glanced over and seen the disapproval in his father’s eyes, and he had charged after the boar into the underbrush, without heeding the warning of the Master of the Hunt.

Before the men could catch up, Kaspar’s horse had chased the boar into a thicket where it had turned at bay. Kaspar had done everything possible that was wrong, yet when his father and the others had arrived, he stood ignoring the gash in his leg, standing triumphant over the still-thrashing animal. The Master of the Hunt put the animal down with a quick arrow, and Kaspar’s father had hurried to bind his son’s leg.

The pride Kaspar had seen in his father’s eyes, despite the admonishing words about foolish acts, had branded the boy for life.
Never be afraid.
He knew that no matter what, any choice must be made fearlessly, or else all would be lost.

Kaspar remembered the day when the mantle of rulership had fallen on his shoulders, and he had stood mutely by, holding his baby sister’s hands while the priests applied torches to the funeral pyre. As smoke and ash rose to the heavens, the young Duke of Olasko again pledged to be fearless in all things, and to protect his people as if he was facing that boar.

Somewhere it had all gone sour. Seeking a proper place in the sun for Olasko had somehow turned into naked ambition, and Kaspar had decided that he needed to be King of Roldem. He was eighth in line for succession, so a few accidents and untimely deaths would be all he required in order to unite all the disparate nations of the east under Roldem’s banner.

As he lay there thinking this, Kaspar’s father appeared suddenly, and for a moment Kaspar wondered if he had died and his father had come to guide him to the Hall of Death, where Lims-Kragma would weigh the value of his life and select his place on the wheel for its next turning.

“Didn’t I tell you to be cautious?”

Kaspar tried to speak, but his voice was barely a croaking whisper. “What?”

“Of all the weaknesses that beset a man, vanity is the most deadly. For through vanity can a wise man turn to folly.”

Kaspar sat up and his father was gone.

In his fevered state, he had no idea what the vision of his father meant, though something told him it was important. He didn’t have time to ponder this. He knew he couldn’t wait until sundown, his life was now being counted out in minutes. He stumbled down the rocks to the flatlands, heat shimmer rising off the gray and ocher rocks, stumbling over the broken shards of stone once made smooth by ancient waters.

Water.

He was seeing things that weren’t real. He knew that his father was dead, yet now the spirit of the man seemed to be marching before him.

“You placed too much faith in those who told you what you wished was true, and ignored those who tried to tell you what was true.”

In his mind, Kaspar shouted, “But I was a force to be feared!” The words came out an inarticulate grunt.

“Fear is not the only tool of diplomacy and governance, my son. Loyalty is born from trust.”

“Trust!” shouted Kaspar, his voice a ragged gasp as the word seemed to scrape along the inside of a parchment-dry throat. “Trust no one!” He stopped, nearly falling over, as he pointed an accusing finger at his father. “You taught me that!”

“I was wrong,” said the apparition sadly and it vanished.

Kaspar looked around and saw he was heading in the general direction of where he had seen the reflected shimmer. He staggered along, lifting one foot and putting it down before the other. Slowly he halved the distance, then halved it again.

His mind continued to wander as he relived events from his childhood, then the downfall of his reign. A young woman whose name he could not recall appeared before him, walking slowly for a minute, then vanished. Who was she? Then he remembered. The daughter of a merchant, a girl he had found fair but whom his father had forbidden him to see. “You will wed for reasons of state,” he had been told. “Take her to your bed if you must, but leave aside foolish thoughts of love.”

The girl had wed someone else.

He wished he could remember her name.

He stumbled along, several times falling to his knees, only to rise once more on will alone. Minutes, hours, days passed, he had no way of knowing which. His mind was turning in on itself as he felt his life begin to wane.

He blinked, aware that the day was fading and he was now in a small gully, heading downward.

Then he heard it.

A bird call. Slightly more than the peep of a sparrow, but a bird call.

Kaspar forced himself out of his lethargy and blinked. He tried to clear his swimming vision, and then he heard the call again. Cocking his head, he listened, and then a third call came.

He staggered toward the sound, mindless of the treacherous footing. He fell, but caught himself on the walls of the deepening gully.

Tough grass appeared beneath his feet and his mind seized on this one fact: if there was grass, there must be water below. He looked around and could see no sign of it, but he could see a stand of trees ahead. He pushed himself forward until he had no strength left, and fell to his knees and then onto his face.

He lay panting, face down on the grass; and he could feel the moisture of the blades against his face. Weakly, he dug at the grass and his fingers clawed up the loose earth. Below it he felt dampness. With his last shred of will he pulled himself to his knees and drew his sword. The odd thought came to him that should his old swordmaster see him use a blade this way he would be up for a beating, but he ignored the whimsical thought and plunged the blade into the soil. He dug. He used the blade as a gardener would a spade and he dug.

He ripped and pulled with the last of his strength and forced a hole into the ground with near-hysterical purpose, tearing the dirt aside as rapidly as a badger digging a burrow. Then he smelled it. The damp smell was followed by a hint of gleaming moisture on the blade.

He plunged his hand into the hole and felt mud. He tossed aside the sword and dug with bare hands, and then plunged his fingers into water. It was muddy and tasted of clay, but he could lie on his stomach and pull up a meager handful at a time. He filled his cupped hand, raised it to parched lips and drank. At some point he rubbed some water on his neck and face, but over and over he raised his cupped hand to drink. He had no idea how many times he did this but eventually he collapsed, his head striking the ground as his eyes rolled up into his head and consciousness fled.

The bird scratched at the seeds, as if sensing danger nearby. Silently, Kaspar watched from on his stomach behind a depression a few feet away, masked by a line of thorny brush, as the bird—some sort of sage fowl he didn’t recognize—pecked at the seed, then picked it up in its beak and gobbled it down.

Kaspar had recovered from his ordeal enough to pull himself into the shade that morning, leaving it only to drink what he could dredge up from his impromptu well. The water came harder each time, and he knew this little reservoir would soon be exhausted. He had decided near mid-afternoon to venture deeper into the gully, to see where it led, and to find another place to dig for water.

Near sundown he had found the tree. He had no name for it, but it bore a tough-skinned fruit. He had cut several down and discovered that once the skin was cut with a blade, the meat was edible. It was also pulpy and tough, and the flavor was nothing to delight a hedonist, but he was desperate. He ate a few bites, despite being consumed by hunger, and waited.

It seemed they weren’t poisonous. He ate several before cramps gripped him. They might not be poisonous, but they were tough on the stomach. Or perhaps three days without food had caused his stomach to act more tenderly.

Kaspar had always possessed a healthy appetite and had never known hunger more pressing than skipping a midday meal because of a hunt or sailing off the coast. Others in his father’s household had complained bitterly when he pressed on, and he laughed silently to imagine how they would react in his current circumstances. The laugh died as he realized they would all likely be dead by now.

The bird came nearer.

Kaspar had placed seeds in a line leading to a snare he had fashioned from the materials at hand. Painfully he had woven tough fibers pulled from the bulb of a strange-looking cactus; it was a trick shown him by his Keshian guide. He had ripped off the end of the bud and yanked hard, producing a sharp tip attached to a long fiber. “Nature’s needle and thread,” the guide had said. He had struggled, but in the end he had produced a line twice the length of his arm. His hands and arms were covered in cuts and puncture wounds, testament to his determination to fashion a snare from the thorn-covered branches of the local plants.

It took every ounce of will for Kaspar to remain silent and motionless as the bird approached his snare. He had already started a small fire, which was now banked and waiting to be fanned back into flame, and his mouth positively watered in anticipation of roast fowl.

The bird ignored him as it worried at the seed, attempting to break though the tough outer husk and get to the softer inner kernel. As Kaspar watched the bird finished the tiny morsel and moved to the next seed. For an instant, Kaspar hesitated as a pang of doubt seized him. He felt an almost overwhelming fear that somehow the bird would escape and he would slowly starve to death in this isolated place.

Genuine doubt almost paralyzed him to the point of losing the bird. The fowl tossed the seed in the air and it landed just far enough from where Kaspar had placed his snare that he felt sure it would escape. However, when he yanked his line the trap fell exactly where he had judged it would land.

The bird fluttered and squawked as it tried to escape the thorny cage. Kaspar endured punctures from the iron-like points as he lifted the small cage to reach under and seize the bird.

He quickly wrung its neck and even before he had returned to the fire he was plucking its feathers. Using the tip of his sword to gut the bird proved a messy prospect. He wished now he had kept the dagger instead of using it to warn off the nomad chieftain.

Finally the bird was dressed and spitted and he was turning it over a fire. Kaspar could hardly contain himself waiting for the bird to cook. As the minutes dragged on, the cramps in his stomach were from anticipation more than anything else.