The Lord of the Plains

by Sarah Chapman

Chapter 5

  Riley shifted nervously in front of the fire. Aerlid, tired, looked up at her questioningly.

  ‘I don’t like it here.’ she announced.

  Aerlid paused. Neither did he. ‘The children have been nicer since you saved one of them?’

  She nodded. ‘I think…but…’ she glanced down. They had been nicer. They’d been positively pleasant. ‘I don’t like it here.’ She didn’t trust that niceness. She didn’t know what to think of it, how long would it last? Was it truly meant or was it just another game? She didn’t understand how things worked here… she had made no friends and didn’t think she ever would make friends with these people.

  Aerlid nodded. ‘I think we should leave.’

  Her face brightened instantly. Aerlid felt a pang of sadness at that. She’d smiled so rarely since they’d arrived, she did not feel safe here. When she smiled her whole face was transformed, as with most people. It was a bright, pleasing sight to behold.

  ‘They ate the deer…’ she said uncertainly, looking at him.

  ‘They did…’ he sighed, ‘some believe that eating the flesh of…those things… will strengthen you. And for some it does… but not for people such as these.’

  ‘For us?’

  ‘No.’ he said sharply, and instantly relaxed as Riley looked relieved.

  ‘Can we leave soon?’

  ‘Tomorrow.’ he promised.

  The next morning Aerlid informed Olef that they would be leaving. He received a grunted acknowledgement in response.

  After, they packed up their small supplies and buried what had been their fire pit.

  As they stood ready to leave the children and adults gathered in the village. Aerlid raised a hand in farewell, as did Riley. They did not bear ill will towards these people, but they weren’t comfortable or happy here. The solemn group responded in kind.

  They headed towards the forest. Riley turned and asked Aerlid, ‘are you supposed to say something?’

  Surprised and pleased she had asked he replied, ‘farewell is good I believe.’

  Riley turned back to the crowd and waved again. This time she cried out, ‘farewell!!’

  A few smiles broke out on the faces of the children and adults. Then Aerlid and Riley turned their backs and disappeared into the forest.

  They travelled through the forest for many weeks and Riley was happy. She was practically skipping along, when she wasn’t climbing of course. And she never seemed to tire. They stopped before it got dark so he might teach her more of fighting, with and without a sword. While they travelled her lessons on the world continued. It was a relief to Aerlid to see that she had not been too damaged by her experience in the gemeng village. It was also a relief to release himself. He was no longer pale and small. Every night he sang to his heart’s content.

  It was on one of these pleasant days of travelling that Riley made her announcement. ‘I’m going to fight with two weapons.’

  Aerlid’s step slowed at that and then he sped up again. ‘Two weapons?’ he asked cautiously.

  ‘Yes. I need to get a sword smaller than this.’

  ‘You can make a dagger from stone, if you want one you may make it yourself.’

  Surprised, she said, ‘no, our weapons aren’t made from stone!’

  ‘The hunting spears are.’ he frowned at her.

  ‘I don’t want a hunting knife. I want a dagger that is a weapon like your sword and mine.’ She said, quite shocked that he didn’t understand this.

  He looked at her in surprise, ‘what are you going to do with it?’

  ‘Fight with it.’

  Aerlid opened his mouth to say something and then closed it. Where did she think these swords came from? Where did she think he was going to get a dagger made from the same material, further, where had she gotten this idea?! He’d certainly never mentioned sword and dagger- or even sword and shield fighting styles to her- mainly because he wasn’t familiar with them!

  ‘The sword you have now is little more than a dagger. Perhaps when you’re older.’

  ‘When I’m as tall as you?’

  ‘I doubt you’ll get as tall as me.’

  Riley looked at him askance. ‘Of course I will.’

  ‘And how do you know that?’ he asked desperately.

  ‘Because I get bigger all the time and you stay the same.’

  Aerlid was silent for some time before saying, ‘you are going to stop growing, you know.’

  Riley, quite stunned by this revelation, said ‘no I won’t!’

  ‘You will. Once you reach a certain age children stop growing.’

  Riley was so shocked that the conversation about swords and daggers ended right there.

  After about three weeks of travelling Aerlid began to detect the scent of the ocean in the air above the smells of the forest. He began angling towards it. It had been a long time since he had seen the ocean and it would be a nice change. Not long after, they reached the coast, the forest never far away.

  Riley was excited to see something new, but Aerlid kept her on the side of him furthest from the ocean. It was a beautiful thing, and he remembered happier times when he had swam in it freely, but now he could not be sure of its safety.

  The beach was not like the beaches he had once swum from. The rough scrub and hardy grasses stopped at a brown sheet of rock. Pits and cracks ran through the sheet, and closer to the shore parts of it became more pebbly while in others it retained its structure.

  With the ocean calm, as it was now, the rocks did not seem particularly dangerous, they did not look jagged from this angle. Once strong waves came up, jagged or not, the rocks would be very dangerous. But that was not why Aerlid kept Riley away from the beach.

  ‘Are we going somewhere?’ Riley asked, as they walked along the edge of the grass that marked the beginning of the rocks.

  The wind played with her hair and the sun beat down from the cloudless sky, warming them pleasantly.

  ‘We are.’

  Riley didn’t reply for a moment.

  The lapping of the waves was peaceful.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘A human city.’

  Riley gave him a sidelong look.

  ‘It will be different to the village.’

  ‘Will they step on my fingers?’

  ‘Maybe, though not in the way the gemengs did.’

  ‘Hmm…will they like me?’

  ‘That depends on how nice you are.’

  ‘I was nice to the two legs.’ She said after a moment, her gaze focused ahead. She was swinging her legs in a totally inefficient manner again. That meant she was happy, despite her solemn tone.

  ‘Ay, but they aren’t like the gemengs. You shouldn’t call them two legs.’

  Riley didn’t bother arguing with that.

  ‘No snarling either.’

  She didn’t respond. She had mostly grown out of that habit anyway.

  That night Aerlid was concerned about the safety of camping near the beach. Something could crawl out of the ocean and attack them, at least in the forest he was familiar with the dangers. He could always stay up all night watching, but that hardly seemed practical when the forest was so close.

  Riley didn’t mind, so they returned to the forest to prepare dinner and camp.

  After dinner was finished and packed away Aerlid sat and relaxed. He let himself forget about the mundane concerns of life and became silent within. The night opened up with a clarity that always astonished him. The breeze against his cheek, the grass beneath him, the sounds of animals, the sounds of Riley. When he was ready he opened his eyes and looked to the moon.

  And he sang.

  He sang in words Riley could not decipher, though she grasped the edges of their meaning. They were words and sounds she struggled to copy. But she knew the tune. And Riley hummed along with him.

  The next day they walked along the beach again. Summer would soon be ending, today though was a lovely day like yesterday. The days were usuall
y lovely in this part of the world.

  The travelling was easy and pleasant.

  Sometime after lunch Riley spotted a large bird flying over the ocean. She watched it for a few moments, noting that it did not skim the surface of the ocean and maintained a large distance from it at all times. Then suddenly it darted down and shot back up into the sky, a fish caught in its beak.

  ‘Dangerous..’ Aerlid murmured. He could practically feel the relief of the bird as its flapping ceased its frantic nature once it was far from the ocean again.

  Later they saw another bird, being as careful as the first one. Riley watched it again for a few moments before her attention turned away.

  They walked on.

  Suddenly a splash and a roar came. Riley turned, startled. She was just in time to see a long glinting blue pillar, standing a good three meters from the ocean. She could discern no marks on the scaly pillar to tell her anything about this creature. No eyes, mouth, no holes or appendages. The bird was gone. Then the creature slowly crashed back into the water. The water swirled and churned in its passing. Only after a couple of minutes did it calm down.

  Aerlid stopped and stared. ‘A mixed? No…’ he said, his eyes on the water. ‘Yes, it is. How did that happen?’

  Riley looked up at him and took his hand. She was shook up. Aerlid turned away from the water. He glanced down, noticing what she had done and smiled. ‘It’s alright. Come, let’s keep going.’

  They did not go back into the forest, but they did move further away from the beach.

  They left the beach as the coast began to curve northwards and headed further inland, back to the forest.

  Riley did not complain. The ocean was new and exciting, yet scary too. How was she to fight things in the ocean? She could not swim. If they crawled up on land perhaps it would be more even, but the ocean creatures were too alien for her, she feared them.

  The days gradually shortened and soon it would begin to grow colder, though it was still weeks before they would have to think of changing their clothes.

  There was a purpose to Aerlid’s travel that had not been there since he’d decided they should enter the gemeng village. He was going somewhere now.

  One day they came to the edge of a cliff. Perched upon the lip of the cliff was an ancient wall of stone, barely higher than Riley. The years had worn the stone down, until its original function could not be discerned. Riley glanced once at the grass underfoot and caught a glimpse of the same rock that made up the wall. They had come across these remnants of an ancient time several times during their travels, but they held little interest to Riley and she paid no further attention to the wall. Aerlid said they were very, very old, and at her obvious disinterest revealed no more.

  Aerlid though favoured the wall with a long look, ‘this must have been the palace…’ he murmured.

  Riley did not respond, and instead looked out over the cliff in amazement. It was not forest that greeted her but a vast plain of grass. In the distance the jagged shapes of mountains were just visible, though she did not look at those. She peered over the edge of the cliff. The plains were like an ocean of grass, so they were at once alien and familiar.

  Riley spared a glance for Aerlid and grinned at him.

  He smiled and sat down on the cliff edge next to her. It was a long drop to the ground below, not that this bothered either of them. ‘Those are the Plains.’ Aerlid spoke. Riley settled down to listen, her eyes wide with interest, moving between him and the Plains.

  ‘The strongest gemengs in the world are said to live here. I don’t know if that’s true, nonetheless they are the strongest gemengs in this part of the world. There are many groups or tribes,’ he continued, ‘these gemengs aren’t like the ones you met. Even the weakest would be stronger than all the people in that village combined. No, they are all warriors here, and they are constantly at war with each other. Though…’ he cast a critical gaze over the view below, the wind playing with his hair. ‘It seems they have more control these days, or perhaps there just aren’t any fire masters among them. There was a time when these Plains were often in flames. Fires would rage across from here to there.’ and he pointed at the mountains, a blue haze in the distance. ‘Many would die, and afterwards the land would be nothing but charred black ruin. It always recovered quickly though. Fire is naturally common in this type of land anyway, just not so… uncontrolled.’

  He stopped for a moment, enjoying the peace.

  ‘We won’t be going there.’ he said after a while. ‘It’s too dangerous.’

  Riley shot him a frown and then reconsidered, remembering the fearsome ocean creatures.

  He smiled, knowing what she was thinking. ‘Maybe once you get a bit taller.’

  They stayed there for a while, Aerlid instructing her in an easy and relaxed manner on the different gemengs he knew of. He’d stop sometimes for great lengths of time; there was no hurry in this instruction. Further, this was one of the few things-fighting- that he knew interested his charge…though interested might be a weak term… either way, she listened attentively and absorbed it after hearing it only once. She also had a disconcerting habit for one so young of coming to her own conclusions about things he had never even spoken of- extrapolating from the lessons. Her decision that she would wield two weapons was only one example.

  He told her how to recognize the different types of gemengs, where they would most likely be found, how they tended to fight, their strengths and weaknesses, and if he knew anything about how they lived he told her that too.

  After a few hours they moved away from the cliff. Aerlid did not wish to draw the attention of the Plains people, though he had wanted to show this to Riley. He took her through the forest, the course of travel chosen so that they would remain a safe distance from the Plains.

  The lessons continued.

  It was getting colder. Cold enough that Riley had started giving him baleful scowls for bringing her to this part of the world. Cold enough that it was time to get something warmer to wear.

  ‘Riley,’ he called. She was running ahead of him and doubling back whenever she got too far ahead. The thin material of her clothes did little to keep her warm, though running made up for it, and she could run all day.

  She trotted back to him, her brows slanted darkly over her eyes.

  ‘We need some coats. You are to make them.’

  She turned without a word and started trotting off the way she’d come.

  ‘Off you go!’ He said cheerfully, and gave her a gentle boot in the rump.

  She started and turned over her shoulder, giving him an injured expression. Still, she ran off quickly and silently.

  He did not expect to see her for some hours and continued walking. He knew it would get colder here, but how cold, he wondered? Would the leaves fall and the snows come? Would it get windy and rainy? It hardly mattered however. He had taken her to colder climes before. She hadn’t liked it, though she still needed to know how to survive in unpleasant conditions as well as in the pleasant sunny weather of the forest they frequented most often.

  Around midday Aerlid found Riley. She had made a camp and was busy preparing the carcass of a dear. When she noticed him she gave him a cross look, but he could tell she wasn’t really unhappy. She was working with stone tools. A small smile tugged at his lips. She wouldn’t use her sword for cutting up animals, it would never be used for something so mundane. She’d make herself another set of tools before she did that.

  The deer was too much for them to eat by themselves. As Riley skinned it Aerlid began preparing the meat and drying it so that they wouldn’t have to waste it. Aerlid had taught her to take only what she needed and to use all she took.

  Riley used the bones to make a needle. It took a few tries to get it right. She used the sinews to make thread. Then with her recently made knives, needles and thread, Riley set about fashioning cloaks for them. They’d had some once before, but they’d been lost in a freezing mountain stream some time ago, and th
ey’d had no need for a new set since.

  Riley didn’t finish that day. They stayed at that campsite a few days. By then Riley had made a lovely warm cloak for Aerlid.

  He asked her what she was going to wear.

  ‘It’ll take ages to eat this meat.’ She said. ‘I’ll make one later.’

  ‘Perhaps we’ll find someone in need of food.’

  Riley shrugged in uninterested response.