The Caravan Road (23 page)

What is happening
? He paused his conversation
with Andi
and addressed the question to Hope.

I think you need to ask them
, she said enigmatically.

With a sigh, Alec left Andi and trudged over to the dim area where the girls were busily spreading their blankets.  “Why did you move my bedding over here?” he asked.

“We are married to you now, so we will need to sleep with you,” one girl said.

“No!  That’s not right,” Alec said hastily.

“The other girl doesn’t se
em to mind losing you to us.  I
f you only want to sleep with one of us at a time we can take turns,” the other girl said.

“The merchants bought us to be w
ives for them.  You killed them –
you get all their belongings, including us,” the first girl said.  “If you don’t take us, we’ll have no one to care for us; that
’s the
rule of our land.”

Alec rocked back as he considered the logic they used.  “What are your names?” he asked, stalling for time to figure out how to address his predicament.

“I’m Stacha, and this is Racha,” the second girl answered.

Alec looked up and down the line of mules, making sure that all the animals were secured.  “Everything looks all set back here; did you settle all the animals in place?” he asked.

“We did,” Racha affirmed.

“Then if everything is secure, let’s go sleep up front with everyone else tonight – just sleep,” he affirmed, “and we can talk tomorrow about our situation.”

“If that is your command, that’s what we’ll do,” one of them said, and the three of them walked forward with their bundles of covers.

“It’s not a command, just a suggestion,” Alec muttered to himself.

As they all placed their blankets near everyone else by the campfire, Alec saw Hope whispering to Marva
.  You know what they think, don’t you?
he asked Hope.

Yes, oh luckiest of men!
the girl laughingly replied, the humor in her thoughts evident.  She said one thing more to Marva and they both laughed, as Andi walked up to them.  There was more whispering, and then Andi looked closely at Alec and the widows, a worried look on her face.

The next morning, after breakfast, the group broke camp, and Alec asked Stacha and Racha to walk along with him at the front of the traveling expedition.  The blizzard had ceased during the night, and the morning was bright and beautiful, though frigidly cold.  Alec used his Air powers to blow the snow and the drifts out of their path as they journeyed towards Ridgeclimb.  They had two long days of travel ahead of them Alec estimated, but without a blizzard and without the poisonous merchants, the journey seemed likely to be smooth the rest of the way.

Alec had a proposal to make to the girls, one that he hoped would address the question of what the next step would be once they reached the clinic and settled in.

“Now that Amos and Aethos are gone, the mules and all the goods they carry belong to you,” Alec began.

“No, they belong to you, just as we do,” Stacha answered.  Stacha, he believed, was the one whose face and figure were slightly fuller, with cheeks that were not so lean as Racha’s.

“What city do you come from?” Alec asked, deciding to take a different approach.

“Valeriane,” Racha answered.

“Before that, when you lived in the Twenty Cities, which one was your home?”

“We lived in Stanfell,” Racha answered.

“Would you like to go back to Stanfell, to return to your family there?” Alec questioned.

“If that’s where you want to take us, we will go there with you.   Have you ever been there before?” Racha questioned.

“Have you seen the Great Tower?  It’s the tallest building in Stanfell, maybe in the whole Twenty Cities,” Stacha chimed in.

“We never saw anything as tall in Valeriane,” Racha agreed.

“Would your family be happy to see you return to live there?” Alec asked.

“Momma would be happy, and proud, if we came back with such a handsome husband,” Racha answered, as Stacha nodded her head in agreement.

“What if I didn’t come back with you to the Twenty Cities, to Stanfell?” Alec asked, the name of the unknown city falling awkwardly from his lips.

“We would bring shame on our family if we were rejected and sent back.  We’re no longer virgins you know, so we can’t be sold again,” Stacha answered matter-of-factly.

“Okay, we’ll talk about this further once we get to Ridgeclimb,” Alec decided to drop the topic for the time being.

“Leave his lordship along now.  He needs his time to plan our journey,” Andi abruptly inserted herself into the conversation, shooing the girls away from Alec, after having listened to Stacha’s comments.

“What gives you all your powers?” Andi asked after lunch, as they continued climbing towards a pass at a high elevation, the highest altitude they would reach before Ridgeclimb.

“I was born in a land where some people are gifted with ingenaire abilities,” Alec answered,  “And then, over the years, I discovered how to acquire more special skills,” he said, thinking of the amulet that allowed him to physically enter the energy realm.  “So I gained some extra abilities that seemed valuable over the years.”

“How many years?” Andi asked.  “I have a bet w
ith Marva about how old you are.
”

Alec grinned.  “I am around five hundred years old, but some of that doesn’t count, so I’ve probably lived more than three hundred years, and only a little over a hundred in this land.  You pick whichever one helps you win the bet.”

Andi’s face was blank.

“So who wins the bet?” Alec asked.

“I don’t think either of us do,” Andi mumbled.

They traveled on that day until shortly after nightfall, then rose early the next day and started again.  The mules were much more cooperative for Alec than they had ever been for Amos or his brother, and the journey was a smooth one.

As darkness fell on the final day of their trip, Alec felt sure that they only had a few miles left to reach Ridgeclimb.  “We’ll keep on going,” he walked back along the line, informing each of his fellow travelers on the grueling journey.  “We’ll have a comfortable place to lay our heads tonight,” he promised them.

Three hours later Alec’s Light illumination faintly shone on the distant structure, leaving Alec puzzled over why no windows were lit.  He jogged ahead of the caravan to look closer and prepare the return, only to stop in sudden fear.  “Hold back!  Don’t come any closer!” he shouted behind him.

Bauer, Hope, tell Andi and Marva to draw weapons
, he sent an additional message
.  The clinic has been attacked
.

Chapter 12
– Assault at Ridgeclimb

Although tired from the long day’s journey, Alec engaged his Warriors powers along with his Light and Spiritual powers, then sent a small, bright ball of light floating along the front of Ridgeclimb’s structure, exami
ning the building from his position
many yards away.  The shutters over the windows had been pried away, and broken glass littered the ground in front of the windows.  The gate to the courtyard lay on the ground, and a sooty shadow surrounded one forlorn window upstairs.

Alec allowed the ball of light to move about the building, giving him time to try to absorb the shock of what he saw.  His Spiritual powers sensed the presence of several people huddled together far inside the building, fearful people, presumably the survivors of whatever disaster had befallen his home.  No other presence came within his senses.

“Hello Ridgeclimb,” he shouted loudly.  “It’s me, Alec, returned from the east.”

He split his ball of light into two parts, leaving one hanging outside the building where his traveling group could see it, while the other ball of light preceded him into the clinic.

Whatever attack had taken place, it had been some time ago; the floors inside had been swept, and an effort to superficially clean the bloody smears on the wall had taken place.

“Hello, it’s me, Alec.  I’m back,” he shouted as he cautiously walked down the chilly hallway.  He descended down a short flight of stairs, and stopped in front of a closed door.

“It’s me, Alec.  I’m coming in.  Don’t do anything,” he cautioned as he pushed the door open, and let his ball of light float into the room as he stood in the doorway, senses alert.

Inside he saw a dozen people huddled together behind a flimsy barricade of furniture.

“What is that light?”

“It is Alec!”

“Be careful, it may be a trick.”

No, that’s Alec.  He’s back at last!”

“Thank the spirits!”

What’s that light?”

People started to emerge from behind the furniture, and Alec recognized a pair of his assistants.  Half the people stayed stationary behind the table as the others came out, and Alec realized they were injured.

“Is there any danger at the moment?  How long ago was the attack?” Alec asked as he pressed forward to see the injured.

“Two weeks ago, Lord Alec,” a healer in training, Mirren, answered.

Hope, Bauer, bring everyone forward.  There’s no attack now
, he sent the message to the travelers.

“Can someone get a fire started to warm things up?” he asked.

He knelt by the injured people.  “Give me a couple of minutes to care for these people,” he asked, gesturing vaguely to clear the room, then dropped his Warrior powers and called on his Healer powers, using a thin thread of power as he tried to maintain his Light and Spiritual energies as well.

The wounds were severe.  If these people had survived two weeks in such conditions with wounds of such severity, they had suffered a great deal of pain.  “I’m going to put out my light,” he warned people both verbally and mentally, then withdrew his use of the other energies so that he could focus solely on his Healing powers, and began to treat the patients in the room, going from one to the other until all were recovered.

“Are there any other injured who need to be treated?” Alec asked.

“Out in the stable we have some people,” another of the assistant healers, Michar, told him.

Alec returned to his Light powers, filling the room with light as he stood to a chorus of thanks.  “I’ll go to the stables to treat those people.  I’ve returned with other travelers; they’ll be here in a minute, he announced.  “Mirren, come with me and tell me what has happened.  Start lighting lanterns and candles to brighten this place up,” he told the others in the room.

“What have you become, master?” Mirren asked him as soon as they were in the hallway.

“I am the same as I’ve always been.  I’ve just never needed to do so much here before,” he told the round-faced girl with the black hair.  He said no more as his mind continued to circle in shock.

“Who did this?  Why?” Alec asked several steps later.

“There were a dozen men and women who came one evening, shortly before sunset.  They were looking for Kriste, who was at the clinic that afternoon, and they just slaughtered us to get her.  They fought like no one I’ve ever seen before!  They broke in and we couldn’t even see their weapons, they fought so fast.  Our people tried to protect Kriste, but we didn’t stand a chance,” Mirren told her tale.  “Then they took her and were on their way just after sunset.”

Alec was shocked by the tale of Ajacii launching such an attack to take a random girl hostage.  He couldn’t fathom why they would come all the way to Ridgeclimb for Kriste.  It had to be the Ajacii; no one else could have fought into and through the clinic building so quickly.  He thought he had a good understanding with the warrior people of the village, a relationship that allowed him to understand them, and he could not understand what would prompt such unnecessary violence.

“They took Kriste, and no one else?” he asked.

“Just her.  Once they had her they took a pair of horses from our stables, threw her up on one horse, and put a pack of stolen supplies on the other, and then they just started on the road, headed west.  We found Kriste’s brother, Jasel, down on their farm, badly injured, and carried him back up here.  You just healed him,” the girl told Alec.

He had been so upset by what he had found that Alec hadn’t even realized who he had healed, he realized.  He tried to put together the random thoughts that were shooting through his mind as they reached the stables, and Mirren led him to the stalls where injured people laid.  Andi was leading the mules into the stables as well, he realized.

“Marva, come join me,” he ordered, and the Black Crag guard came trotting over quickly, her sword still drawn.

“You can put the blade away,” he told her as he knelt by the first person he began to heal.

“Mirren, you say the attackers fought like nothing you ever saw before, and then they went west?  West, you’re sure?” he asked, suddenly realizing the inconsistency of Ajacii coming from the east, and then going on to the west.