Pioneering on Jord

by Allan Joyal

  I nodded. “We have stories of bloody and vengeful gods. No one worships them now, or at least not really, but our history is full of cultures that practiced blood sacrifices.”

  “I was going to be one,” Cimbra said. “The priests were open about it. We serve one being that demands a virgin every five years. No one who has seen what he does to the sacrifice will talk about what this being does. If you ask them, they look away.”

  “Obviously the sacrifice was cancelled,” I said.

  “Another power struggle. Warriors who served a rival god captured the priests. They decided to sell me to the slavers. The slavers learned I was a virgin and were going to try to get extra money for me in Saraloncto, but when we were less than a day away from arriving at the city they stopped and set up an ambush,” Cimbra said.

  “And that ambush was when I rescued you,” I whispered feeling a bit of awe. “You have had a lot of close calls.”

  Cimbra nodded. “You rescued me and took me away from all of that. Someone finally told me that all I had to do was be myself. For a long time I didn’t even know what that was.”

  Before I could respond, Heather ran up. She grabbed me around the shoulders and buried her face into my shoulder. “You nearly died!” she wailed.

  “I didn’t. And I rescued Shaylin and Cimbra.”

  “At the risk of your life!” Heather snapped. “Ron, you are the driving force for all of us. If we lose you I’m not sure we could keep moving.”

  “There is plenty of material on the wagons. We could try to dig in right here. I don’t like that idea because it’s too hard to defend, and the animals would be tempted to wander, but it could be done,” I pointed out.

  Heather sighed. “I like the idea of the sheltered valley. If the animals have a safe area to roam we don’t have to spend all our time herding them like we do now. And we can try to set up some places to relax. I want to swim again, but not like you just did.”

  I smiled. “We’ll do that,” I said. I gently pushed Heather away and then took her right hand in my left. “Shall we walk back to camp?”

  We had taken only a couple of steps before Cimbra rushed forward and stood in front of us. She turned around and started to kneel in our path.

  “Cimbra,” I growled. “If you ask me any question while on your knees, I’ll make sure you don’t like my answer. You are free and can look me in the eyes.”

  The dark elf raised her head to look me in the eye. I was surprised to notice that she was as tall as me. Her eyes held a challenge as she looked at me. “You never answered the question I asked earlier,” she said.

  “What question?” Heather asked. “Ron, what did you do to Cimbra?”

  “He saved me,” Cimbra said as she turned to look at Heather. “First, when he rescued me from the slavers and today by jumping into the water. I would have died, but he saved me. I owe him everything.”

  I felt Heather freeze for a moment. Her hand crushed mine in its grip. “Everything?” she screeched. “Ron… I’ll have you know.”

  “He has done nothing!” Cimbra snapped. “You are his wife. Anyone in the group can see that he is devoted to your happiness. But who can I have? The others are nice, but only Krysbain and Jeff are not paired. Jeff is too damaged. I need someone who feels like a protector. Right now Krysbain only has eyes for Joelia. He was thinking about how she was a baron’s daughter.”

  “Is,” I corrected absently. “Even though we are far from her original home, Joelia is still her father’s daughter. We might not grant her any special privileges, but she should receive respect. After all, she did bring hairpins for all of the girls in the group. I’m guessing you already had yours.”

  “Hairpins?” Heather asked. “Why would anyone want one of those?”

  Cimbra reached behind her neck. When her hands returned she was holding a long needle about nine or ten inches long. Heather’s hand squeezed mine as she looked at it. “What is that?”

  “A hairpin,” I said. “And I’m wondering if that is the same one I saw earlier. I never saw you return it to your hair.”

  Cimbra appeared to wave her hands, and the pin disappeared. “Part of my original training was how to hide the pins. I have three in my hair. They were there when I was sold. The priests who took me after my family fell never looked for them, and the slavers only cared that I was virgin.”

  I sighed. “Cimbra, I…”

  Cimbra’s hands moved up to her neck. Before I could say more she had opened the robe she wore and pushed it off her shoulders. She let her hands fall to her side as the cloth slid to form a wet pile on the ground.

  My words got stuck in my throat as I gazed upon Cimbra’s unclothed body. Heather gasped as she looked as well.

  “My god,” Heather cursed. “Ron, she’s beautiful. I never thought that grey skin would look so…”

  “We can’t make a decision based on lust,” I growled. I was struggling not to take a step forward, as Cimbra put her right hand on her hip and turned to thrust it forward. The hike had kept everyone healthy, and in camp it was not uncommon to see someone in a state of undress, but Cimbra’s body was spectacular.

  “I think her breasts are smaller than mine,” Heather said absently. “But her waist looks tiny and her skin has no scars. How can that be?”

  “My people, no,” Cimbra began. “You are my people now. I have to stop talking about where I came from as my people. Anyways, they hate scars. Unless they are received in battle or bestowed by one of the spirits they serve, the citizens of that place despise those who are scarred. The school I went to was very careful to leave no marks on my body.”

  “And once you were sold to the slavers, they wanted you unmarked as that would mean more money,” I said.

  “And a quick death,” Cimbra said. “Even the slavers said that my flawless skin would anger many of the men frequenting the brothels they were going to try to sell me to. They expected that within a week I’d be beaten to death.”

  I sighed again. “Cimbra, I can’t…”

  Heather squeezed my hand. “Ron, what exactly is Cimbra offering?”

  “My body,” the dark elf replied. “He can have my body.”

  “Unacceptable,” I replied sharply. “I will not go along with that offer.”

  Heather squeezed my hand again. She turned her head and whispered into my ear. “Ron, she needs someone to care for her. Why not you?”

  I turned to look at Heather. Cimbra was standing stoically in front of us. “I won’t accept her just offering her body to me. You and I have true emotion holding us together. We have trust, respect, and most importantly love. If Cimbra can’t offer me that, I can’t give her true happiness.”

  Heather gasped. “Do you really feel that way about me?” she said in a shy little girl’s voice.

  “Everyone can tell he does,” Cimbra said. “Even me, and I still barely understand that love can exist. I grew up without love. That’s why I didn’t offer it. I’m not sure I can. I do trust Ron, and we all respect him.”

  “But that’s another problem,” I challenged. “How can I be with you? Heather is my wife and love.”

  Heather started laughing. “Oh, like powerful men haven’t had lovers before. Ron, if you argued that you own most of the goods the group has, no one would challenge it. You grabbed the pouch of coins when we found the first massacre site, and you’ve been involved in all the negotiations.”

  “I did it for the group, not for myself,” I replied. “And that doesn’t change the fact that I’m with you.”

  Heather grabbed my ear and pulled me so she could whisper in it. “I’m telling you I’m not against it. But how would it work? I’ve never…”

  Cimbra looked up. “I’ve never either. I knew that some women had… friendships that were intimate. There were two at the school I attended. But I never thought about it. I was being taught how to seduce a man so I could control him.”

  “Which isn’t exactly making me want to throw myself into your bed,”
I pointed out.

  Cimbra laughed. “I’d never use those on you. I’d feel like I was betraying you. You talk about trust and respect, and I want to give you that. Why is it so hard to understand?”

  “Because our culture spent generations pushing the idea that a good family is a married couple having children,” I muttered.

  Heather burst out laughing. “Ron, that is so right and yet wrong. I grew up in Iowa. My father was a bit of a local civic leader, and my mother got into putting together family histories for many of the families that had lived in the region for generations. It was surprising to find out that many families lived in homes with no bedrooms into the twentieth century. Many also showed that a sister or female cousin to the wife would move in. And if you check birth records, sometimes there would be siblings born less than eight months apart.”

  “That’s not possible,” I pointed out.

  “My mother figured that both women got pregnant, but at different times. The problem was that there was a stigma towards unmarried mothers, so they would simply have the wife claim all the children, even if she wasn’t the one who carried the child,” Heather said.

  “And you’d go along with this. I worry that you would sometimes feel you were being supplanted, and we wouldn’t be able to claim Cimbra’s daughter as yours,” I said.

  Heather looked at Cimbra. The dark elven woman was standing in front of us and trembling. Heather slowly nodded. “She really can’t end up with anyone else. Krysbain wouldn’t know how to be tender to her, and she can’t respect Jeff right now. We can make it work.”

  Cimbra gasped and then rushed forward with her arms spread wide. She gathered both Heather and me in a hug and buried her face in my left shoulder. “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you,” she stammered.

  “Let’s get back to camp,” I said after I kissed Cimbra’s cheek. “But Cimbra, you should dress first.”

  Cimbra reluctantly released us and walked back over to her robe. She bent down to pick it up drawing another gasp from Heather. My blond lover turned to whisper in my ear. “Admit it, you so want to take her to bed. She’s so beautiful.”

  “It only makes her the second most beautiful woman in our group,” I replied before kissing Heather firmly on the lips. My wife sputtered and gasped as I released the kiss. With a laugh I ran forward to grab CImbra’s hand and lead her back to the camp.

  I returned to the camp still a bit worried about the reactions of the others. Lydia helped defuse my worries when she rushed over upon our return to camp. Before Cimbra or I could say anything she enthusiastically hugged both of us and wished us happiness. She told Heather that only a brave and confident woman would be able to handle the situation, but that she was sure it would work out.

  The rest of the group showed the same sentiment. Jeff’s eyes flashed once with Jealousy, but he just shook his head and went back to chatting with Joelia.

  The children were even more enthusiastic about my return. Shaylin had been holding court near the wagons. When we arrived, the young lady was wrapped up in a bedroll and carefully slurping some still steaming soup. Her wave to me soon had the children charging towards me. They all clamored for my attention.

  I knelt down to look Haydee in the eyes and smiled. “Let me guess - you all want to learn to swim,” I said.

  There was a sea of bobbing heads in front of me. “Fine,” I promised. “The water here is too swift to allow lessons, but if we find a safe pond or pool, I’ll conduct some swimming lessons.”

  The rest of the evening was spent answering an unending stream of questions from the children. Many just wanted some attention from me, but I noticed that Thom and Corwar had some rather good questions about protecting the group. I ended up waving Al over at one point and asking him if he had looked at the weapons we had picked up in Saraloncto.

  My friend revealed that we had received a half dozen spear points, but that he was yet to find any wood staves that could be used as a shaft. Once we crossed the river, he was planning on continuing to look anytime we found groves of trees.

  Everyone was both looking forward to continuing travel the next day and scared by the near disaster that had occurred. The stress led to couples heading to their bedrolls early and for the children to pair up themselves. Everyone began to go to sleep even as the sun was just touching the horizon. Cimbra tried to pull away, but Heather held her as I got the bedroll set up. We put the dark elven woman between us and just cuddled her for the night as we drifted off to sleep.

  Chapter 23: The Not So Uninhabited Plains

  The next morning dawned with the sky clear and no wind. I called for Kariy to keep breakfast simple as we would want to get across the stream before a wind could pick up. The camp was packed almost immediately, and we were rolling for the ford.

  At the ford, Gerit and Amalya led the wagons across. Each wagon went alone, with four people working to make sure the horses and mules pulling it remained calm and kept moving. Amalya hitched up her skirts and slipped them under her belt in order to keep the fabric out of the water. It worked for her, but Mary and Aine just removed their skirts and placed them on one of the wagons. Krysbain gasped, and I caught Jeff staring at Mary while she walked away from him, but that was all.

  Getting the animals across was a bit more difficult. Though the animals were all large enough to easily keep their heads above the water, many clearly did not want to enter the water and would then rush to cross the stream. Hencktor ended up saving Piemal when one of our bulls tried to gore him as he led the animals into the water. Our old friend grabbed Piemal and pulled him out of the way just before the bull’s horns splashed against the water.

  Once we were all safely across and the ladies were again dressed, we struck out across the plains. The river appeared to be a divider between two different terrains. Before we crossed the river the plains were largely dry and flat with few tall hills or deep gullies and almost no trees. As we continued east we started seeing small groves of thirty or more trees and the landscape was now constantly moving up and down.

  Krysbain and Soldrin proved their worth over the next twenty days. They found fords across two more streams and even brought back game and wood for our camps. They commented that there were no signs that humans had ever lived on the plains.

  Some of the ladies were beginning to wonder the same thing when we came to a high plateau. Krysbain was waiting at the bottom and gazing up at the sheer cliff face.

  “Wow, and I thought Ayers Rock looked out of place when I visited,” Esme said as we gazed up.

  “Are those dwellings carved into the cliff?” Natalie asked as she pointed to a shadowy patch near the top of the cliff.

  “It’s been used before,” I said. “Hard to attack, and if you can store food and water, it’s a great way to stay safe. But I don’t see any movement or a way to get up there.”

  “What do we do?” Krysbain asked. “We checked to the south. There is a deep ravine. I don’t think we can cross it unless we find a bridge and that might not hold the carts.”

  I sighed. “We circle to the north then. The important part is to keep moving east. Hopefully we find that the ravine is confined to the south side of this place.”

  Krysbain nodded quietly. “I need a break from scouting. When, I found the ravine I just froze. All I could think was that we were in trouble.”

  “We seem to be far from any people,” I said. “You can stay with the group. Most of our traveling has just required that you find a ford occasionally, and if we run into another stream you can do that.”

  I started heading to the north of the rock. I could hear Amalya commanding the lead mules to resume moving. In the distance the shouts of the other drovers could be heard, and then the calls of our shepherds as everyone began following. I walked with Krysbain at the head of the caravan.

  We had only gone a few hundred feet when I noticed that there was a wide path with almost no plants. I jogged ahead of Krysbain, stopping at the edge of this path. I knelt down and brus
hed at the ground. There was a thin layer of soil and then I encountered stone. I brushed around the stone to find more. They were not even or level, but the pattern I could see looked man-made with straight edges joining the various stones.

  “A stone road?” Krysbain asked as he caught up to me.

  “And it runs east from here,” I said. “It might not last for long, and there always could be an ambush, but it looks like it might be easier to travel.”

  Krysbain nodded. “It’s one of the few ruins we’ve seen, but I’m amazed it’s not buried under dirt or torn up.”

  I pointed at the plateau. “That probably disrupts the wind enough to reduce the amount of dirt that has been blown onto the road. And if it’s well made, rain would wash off what dirt did accumulate.”

  I set foot on the road and waved my spear at the others. Heather was walking with Amalya and ran to join Krysbain and me. “What is it?” she asked. Before I could answer she looked at the path I was standing on. “How is this still here?”

  “Hopefully, it’s just well made and stood the test of time,” I said. “I thought we should take it east. It will make it easier on the animals.”

  “We should warn the others,” Heather said. “Can Soldrin run and make sure that Aine and Lydia are near their crossbows. We need them ready to fight if we do encounter an ambush.”

  I nodded. “Go with him. We’ll wait for Amalya to reach us and then get started.”

  Heather and Soldrin dashed off. Krysbain just shook his head. “I forgot he was standing right there,” he admitted. “So this was built by the empire?”

  “Or by some human survivors who eventually died out,” I said. “This is a huge land, and it’s possible some humans survived the destruction. But it is clear it hasn’t been used regularly.”

  Amalya caught up to us. She immediately led the cart onto the path and got the mule pointed to the east. “Oh, this will be nice,” she said. “Almost as nice as an evening in Gerit’s arms.”