The Caravan Road (30 page)

Graze sat quietly, not speaking to anyone as they resumed motion, and Alec worried about the man.  He’s suffered the twin shocks of losing his sister-in-law and his wife just a few days apart, and Alec hoped his spirit was strong enough to continue the trip.  Despite a gruff beginning, Alec sensed that Alfred was not an unpleasant person, just one that had spent his life being henpecked, perhaps doubly, into submission.

That day they made good progress.  With the horses available for riding and carrying extra weight, Alec let the bulk of the group travel at a faster speed than the wagon and the mules, relying on Andi and Jasel to provide protection, and Bauer and Hope to tell him of any trouble.  They were instructed to start setting camp after sunset, while Alec and Stacha, and the mules, remained with Mr. Graze and his steady-going, oxen-pulled wagon, who lagged behind the others.

“It seems risky to split the group,” Andi had protested.

“Don’t worry, I feel safe with my husband to protect me,” Stacha had spoken up brightly.

Alec saw the frown on Andi’s face.  He knew the Black Crag guard had never had a high level of tolerance for Stacha or Racha, but had kept her hostility checked following the loss of the twin sister; he decided to quickly cut off any confrontation.

“I think that since the one gang of bandits that is no longer here was so large, there was unlikely to be any other cutthroats within a few days ride,” he spoke, aware that others nearby were listening in.  “Those bandits were apparently a large group, and would have established absolute control over their portion of the highway; I’m sure they didn’t tolerate competitors, so the road should be clear of problems for a day or two.  I’m comfortable that we can split up as a way to pick up speed, especially while this nice weather holds.”

Andi quickly accepted his judgment, and the horse riders moved out at an increased pace.  The mules and the oxen-drawn wagon quickly fell behind and out of sight of the jaunty horse-riders, all of whom were pleased to feel the sun’s rays and even the bounce of the horses as they rode along, riding for the first time in the case of the Ridgeclimb travelers, and riding freely again in the case of Salem’s family.

Stacha
stayed with Alec, and the two of them led their placid mules alongside Alfred Graze; Alec walked while
Stacha
joined Alfred as he sat atop the front bench of the wagon.

“Gwen and I didn’t even experience winter for the first twenty years we were married,” Alfred said conversationally.  He glanced sideways and saw that they were both looking at him.  “We had a shop down in Cearche, a millener shop.  Gwen made the most fashionable hats in the whole city; all the ladies of the great men and the local nobility had to wear her hats at festival time – she was that good at it.  We even hired a pair of local girls to help with some of the stitching, while I ran the shop, and we kept those girls that busy.

“But then Gwen’s sister came to visit us.  Her husband had passed away up in Vincennes where they lived, and she had to handle the wrap-up of his trading business.  Times were pretty peaceful around the Empire back then, back towards the end of Empress Caitlen’s time on the throne, and we thought the idea of all the adventure, seeing new cities and meeting new people, traveling around on a boat or a wagon or what-not, it sounded so much better than sitting in that tidy little shop, gossiping with the same customers and neighbors every day.

“I wish we’d never left that shop, but it made Gwen happy to be with her sister and help her do her trading, and so long as she was happy, I was happy,” he concluded.

There was a long silent pause, interrupted only by the sound of hooves pacing along the surface of the road.  “What did they look like?”
Stacha
asked.

“Eh?” Alfred responded, caught off-guard.

“The hats – what did they look like?” she clarified, and Alec suspected that her question was evidence of genuine interest.

“Well, it depended on the season,” Alfred answered, and Alec listened with half an ear for the rest of the afternoon to the animated conversation the two had.

More than an hour past sunset the wagon and mules arrived at the campsite the horsemen had selected, their path lit by a ball of light Alec generated to ride in front of the oxen.

Jody was standing by the road, watching the ball in fascination as it glided slowly towards the campsite.  “The others say you can do all sort of magical things!” she spoke in a shrill, excited tone, caught up in the wonder of seeing the light, revealing the young girl aspect of her personality.

“You say you’ve never been to the Twenty Cities, but you’re practicing the tricks of the Old Ones from Yangchoo,” Zane accused him.

“I’ve never been to the Twenty Cities,” Alec agreed.  “And I’ve never heard of the Old Ones of Yangchoo.”

“You’re doing just exactly what they do,” Zane insisted loudly.  “They light up the whole city at night, the streets and the cafes and whatever else they want to.  The old ones have magic tricks they use to make the light bright.”

Alec split his ball of light into three smaller balls, and made the three circle around the camp lazily, one green, one yellow, and one white.  “I’d like to meet them some day.  Maybe after we’ve rescued Kriste we can all go visit Yangchoo and see if their lights are as good as mine.”

“Would you like some roast potato?” Salem asked, as Alec made one of his balls of light drop gently down to eye level in front of Jody, dimmed and shrunken, and seeming to dance on the open palm of the hand she held flat. 

“Yes, thank you,” Alec said with a smile, watching as Jody giggled at the dancing light

Salem brought him the potato, wrapped in a cloth to protect her hands from the heat of the warm vegetable.  She walked with a gingerly limp, and Alec realized she was saddle sore.

“I would have thought that you would be used to riding a horse,” he commented as he took the potato and tossed it from hand to hand, waiting for it to cool.

“We got a little playful today,” Salem answered, and seemed to blush faintly.  “I fell off my horse when I was racing Zane, and landed squarely on my back there.”

She watched apprehensively as Alec’s hand curled around and touched the small of her back, bringing them physically close together.  Salem’s eyes slide upward and studied Alec’s face apprehensively.

“You will not touch my mother so familiarly,” Zane stepped next to Alec.

Alec ignored him, and released a flow of Healing energy into the woman’s body, easing away the pain of the bruise, dispersing the blood that pooled in the injured spot, and mending the muscles that had suffered tears.  Satisfied after only a moment of healing that she would feel no pain, Alec withdrew his hand, and resumed tossing the potato back and forth as he stepped away from the woman.

There’s no place among the Twenty Cities that has anyone with a reputation for doing anything like that,” Salem said softly.  “Thank you for healing my pain.”

My pleasure to serve,” he replied, as Zane stood confused by the exchange. “Does anyone else need to have their saddlesoreness healed away?” Alec asked, and he walked away to sooth the others in the camp.

For the next two days the newly combined caravan group used the same method of travel, allowing the horse riders to sprint ahead and cover distance, then set up camp and prepare for the evening, while the mules and the wagon came plodding along at their gentle pace, and caught up in the evening.  After three days of such a routine Alec began to grow more cautious.  “Did you encounter many other gangs of bandits on your way coming east?” he asked Salem on the third evening after she had joined the caravan.

“We,” she waved her hand to indicate her family, “rode in the middle of the group.  From time to time we saw men approach the leaders of our group, and after some brief conversation, we went on without any ado.”

“Were any of those very close to the last time, the time you were attacked?” he asked, but Salem’s recollections were inexact, and she could give only a vague answer.  Thereafter the group traveled together as a single unit again.  Two days after that, Alec detected a man on a far off hill watching them as they crawled along the road at midmorning, and at noon he sensed a dozen men stationed at hidden locations on the mountainside above them,  as a single man stood in the middle of the road, openly waiting for them to approach.

Alec rode out alone to meet him.  “We are so glad to see travelers on the road,” the man said.  “How has your journey been?”

“It’s never easy to make the journey in the winter, but we’ve fared well,” Alec answered.  “You probably don’t see many caravans come through this time of year, do you?”

“No, it’s a rare thing,” the man agreed.  “You must have a very good reason to try to make the journey now.  Some goods of very high value that you are transporting, perhaps?”

“We’re carrying some goods, as a favor to some friends,” Alec agreed.  “But our real reason is that we’re following another group.  They took something we value, and we’re going to get it back.  Perhaps you dealt with them recently?” he asked.

The highwayman’s face twitched uncomfortably.  “There may have been a group, but I don’t recollect,” he said uneasily.

Alec’s sword was out of his scabbard and pointed at the man’s throat faster than his eyes could see.  “I suspect you do remember them,” Alec spoke softly.  “They wiped out most of the last gang east of here, and then we mopped up the rest; you’ve got no competition in that part of the mountains if you’d like to move into a nice new cave.

“The people we are pursuing are fighters, and we are too,” he bluffed.  “But we don’t want to shed blood needlessly,” he lazily pulled his sword away from the man’s pale face and shoved it back in his scabbard again, then pulled a bright red ruby, one of the smuggled stones that the brothers had hidden on the mules, out of his pocket and dropped it into the hand of the robber.

“So tell me now, truthfully, how many days are we behind the other group, and did they fight you? “ Alec asked.

“They wiped out half our men; we killed one of theirs, and that was just a lucky arrow shot,” the man said, his fist clenched tightly around the ruby.  “They came through about eight days ago.”

“Were they still on foot, or had they gained any horses from the last gang they beat?” Alec asked.

“Half were on foot, half were on horseback,” the man answered.  “Four and four.”

“Thank you.  You can call your men down off the hillside now if you want to, and we’ll pass through peacefully,” Alec ended the conversation, waved to his followers, and continued to head west.

Stacha
found her attention torn as they traveled.  She wanted to be with Alec, to practice her ability to speak with her mind only and to remind him that he was her husband.  But she also proved to be fascinated with Alfred’s stories of hats and fashions, asking questions constantly as she rode on the wagon bench with him.  “I didn’t realize how much I remembered,” he told Alec one evening. 
Stacha
questioned him about not just hats, but the fashions of the dresses and cloaks that went with them, and how they matched.  One morning Graze disappeared into the rear of the wagon for several minutes, an returned with a basket and cloth.  “Gwen never stopped loving sewing,” he said.

“Here’s her sewing kit and some of the material she was using right before she passed away,” he handed the bundle to
Stacha
.  “We’ll look at it as we ride this morning, and you can see what the different stitches did, how they looked.”

Alec was pleased to see
Stacha
’s attention subtly shift away from him.  But he was troubled when Hope gleefully relayed her conversation one afternoon with Andi.  The Black Crag guard had asked a great deal about Alec and expressed her determination to earn his attention.  Alec consequently tried to avoid Andi as much as possible.

During the following week, the caravan continued to enjoy better weather than Alec anticipated, and met only one other group of highwaymen, who Alec paid a token sapphire to.  Then, once he’d grown too comfortable, they were hit by another blizzard.  They saw it coming from the northern sky for half a day before it hit, and Alec attempted to use his Air energies to protect their group from the snow and wind, while keeping the road clear in front of them.  He succeeded in doing so for the rest of that day, but when they camped at night, the snow continued to fall, and large drifts built up around the campsite.  At last, when the cooking was done, Alec released his energies, and the brutal wind brought a sheet of snow into the campsite.

“Kane, you can take the first watch tonight,” he told Salem’s son.

“Me?  Really?  What do I do?” the boy asked, startled.

“You stay awake, you watch outside the campsite, you make sure nothing bad happens, and then you wake me up when my shift starts,” Alec said briefly.  He was convinced that no trouble was likely to fall on them under the conditions of the storm, making it the best time to start breaking the boy into the guard rotation.

“How will I know when my shift is over?” Kane asked, as his mother fidgeted about him.

“Watch the fire,” Alec answered.  “I would say watch the stars, but that doesn’t apply tonight,” he added with a thin smile.  “Watch a stick slowly burn, and estimate how long it takes, then stir the fire alive, and let another stick burn, and keep track of them.