“Now my two new paladins I may tell all that I know,” said Lauret gazing in admiration at the courage that the two halflings had just shown in undertaking the daunting task that had yet to be revealed to them. Indicating a point to the south, the knight-captain said, “This is what must be done.”
Chapter VI
A Friend In Need
“B ut mum, it ain’ fair!” cried Amyia indignantly, as her mother pulled her by the arm behind the caravan. “Conni and Kalen started it. I’s just walkin’ in the bushes beside ‘our path when they’s jumpt me! I’s told them before that when we’re not in town we mustn’t make war, but they’s don’t listen!”
Amyia rubbed her sores and bruises with her other hand as she was dragged along. Looking back over the caravan train and merchant carts, which stretched far behind her own caravan that was second from the lead, she searched among the dozens of horses, drivers, guards and tarpaulin covered wagons for any sign of her enemy. Two carts down she saw them! Their two pairs of beady eyes glowering at her from behind the front flap of their family’s home. Sitting on the buckboard of their vessel were their two parents who also shot scolding looks at Amyia.
“That’s no excuse for what you did Amyia! I’m almost ashamed to call you my daughter; you’re a lady, not some roughshod, wild urchin!” retorted Amyia’s mother admonishingly. She was a fearsome lady, tall and slender, and, except for that particular moment, quite beautiful as well Amyia thought – a thought which seemed to have been proven true, for all the whispers she had caught from the other men throughout her travels supported her notion. But behind the attractive smile lay a power as ruthless as a tyrant; as quick as she was to be kind, she was as quick to be merciless and punishing. It seemed to run in the family because Amyia’s aunt and older brother, who travelled in her caravan, for her father had died of the flu many years ago, were just as Amyia’s mother was – bull-headed, and held the philosophy that each sex had its place amongst the vocations of caravaneers; it was according to that belief each man and woman should conduct themselves. It was an antiquity which was common between caravaneers, for while serving as the life blood of many traders, and the mercantile development of the land, caravaneers still lived a nomadic life with a decorum far removed from any that had been adopted by the civilised population of the various countries they frequented.
“Well I’s don’t cares what you think mum! They’s got what they’s deserved – attackin’ me with stones ‘n sticks,” muttered Amyia adamantly. “If you’s ask me: they’s got less than what they’ve should’ve, I’s too gentle on them!”
Amyia had only turned twelve years old a few days prior. She had relished the party thrown for her two weeks ago, but despite the festivities arranged by her caravaneer family, she could never seem to do right in her own family’s eyes. She was always too boisterous, too impish, too mischievous, too un-lady-like for them. But their considerations were of little consequence to Amyia, she had a will of her own; she did not care if her family found her ways distasteful to their own; Amyia loved who she was and nothing in the world would or could ever change that. However, at that particular moment, she looked absolutely out of place with the erstwhile resolution, dejectedly being hauled along by her overpowering mother.
With many eyes upon them, Amyia considered her current look; it was significantly different to that when she, too frequently she thought, was forced to bathe. Her usual long, flowing, and neatly combed, hazel hair was tousled, matted and lumped together with dirt and mud and grime. The splendour of her deep and dark viridian eyes, a near replica of her mother’s, were lost as gashes and blood wept around them. Despite her lithe and nimble body, the very feature that had enabled her to drub Conni and Kalen utterly, she appeared then as a floundering elephant, much to the amusement of several teamsters along the caravan line - with the exception of her two victim’s parents naturally; they still cast menacing looks at her. Amyia sniffed loudly with her delicately upturned nose, in order to siphon back the mucous that had begun to dribble from the purity of her anger, an anger which was yet to start ebbing. While gazing backwards, her tongue shot out between her rose-coloured lips, taunting the four pairs of eyes cursing her from two carts away.
“Too gentle? Too gentle! If I hadn’t of found you lot, you would have damn near taken their heads off with that stick,” snapped Amyia’s mother as they approached the rear hatch of the slow moving, laden caravan.
Amyia murmured harshly. “They’s got whats was comin’ to them; I’d thrash ‘em again if I had too. Attackin’ me all alone like that; was just not fair; they’s broke the war code.”
“Do you hear yourself Amyia? War? You’re a girl not a barbarian. Now start behaving like a lady or I’ll ban you from leaving our caravan for a week!”
“So I’s should be like you then?” said Amyia coolly.
“Yes,” said her mother with an inkling of pride.
“So I’s should go ‘rounds to all ‘em men and tease ‘em? And make ‘em talk like them waterfolk after you go?” cried Amyia hotly, knowing full well that she was nipping at her mother’s vulnerabilities and exploiting her role as one of the caravaneer’s cooks.
“You little harridan! If I wasn’t your mother, I’d give you a sound wallop!” she yelled. Amyia was beginning to regret her slur towards her mother. Her entire arm was yanked and she was thrust upwards, as if she were a sack of unfulled wool, and was slung into the back of the caravan, through the open, wooden door. Amyia’s skirt caught on one of the jutting hinges and tore.
“Now look! You just- Never mind! Take off your clothes and wash all of that dirt and blood away. Then you think about your deeds, ‘cause you won’t see light again today!” commanded her mother, slamming the door, leaving Amyia alone in their dwelling section of the caravan. Diffused light trickled through the beige coloured, tarpaulin roof, casting a soft, defining light around the wooden interior of the room.
The abode of the caravan was basic, functional but displayed the attentiveness and careful craftsmanship that was treasured amongst caravaneer appreciation. Two pairs of bunk beds were fixed to the one side of the wagon, attached to the struts which supported the roof and the floor beneath it. Adjacent the beds, almost as if it were an extension of the wooden caravan itself, was a large armoire, intricately and precisely decorated and bevelled with flowers, vines and oak trees. A reflecting glass, kept as clean as crystal by Amyia’s mother, and a glazed earthenware basin were set into an ornate wooden stand. Candle holders dangled from the arches overhead; they were wax covered and filled with tapers indicated that they saw use every night. The entire room was no larger than the span of the beds, and just behind the bunks was a solid, wooden partition separating the sleeping area from the goods stores.
Amyia reluctantly pulled off her dirty, torn clothes and threw them into a corner on the dark, mahogany floor. The caravan’s wheel must have caught a large stone in the road for the entire room suddenly jostled about her. She stumbled around for a moment; in a heartbeat she regained her balance with practised ease from years of wagon legs and her inherent dexterity. Sadly, it did not occur before she stubbed her toe on one of the bed posts. The young girl cried out in frustration as she plonked herself on a dark green carpet that was spread out in the narrow space between the beds and the washbasin; Amyia cradled her big toe. A few tears trickled down her face, but they were not because of her throbbing foot; that merely served as tinder for a deeper melancholy.
She loved her family, as most children are wont to do, but it was not a love of fulfilment or joy or even binding; it was a love that merely came from being with someone for the entirety of life; from nothing but familial isolation sprouted love.
Her younger childhood was not an unhappy one. She had had every whim catered for and was loved and cared for greatly by all the caravaneers as well as her own family. It was when she grew a mind of her own that the world altered drastically. Amyia loved to participate in activities considered rather unconventional for a
young girl; she would often plead, beg and bribe the older caravaneer men, when they stopped along their travels, to take her hunting and fishing and even asked them to show her how to tend horses and show her carpentry and how to repair the wagons. More than that, she revelled in playing with the boys of other caravaneer families rather than the dreary girls who were indoctrinated into the arts of sewing, stitching, cooking and every other manner of chore that Amyia found appalling to her senses. The wars she fought with the boys, only when in town for a few days, were exhilarating to her. She would dash between buildings with a few of her other allies in tow, lying in wait until another group would grow tired of their own trap and come searching for them. Leaping from low roofs and haystacks and barrels and building trap doors, she would brutally plough into her enemies and bash and wallop them into submission, until they cried out in pleading capitulation. And despite the bruises and welts and wounds and cuts she received while playing war, she could not think of a greater enjoyment in the world. Her mother, aunt and brother, however, did not seem to appreciate her diversions, even though many of the other caravaneers had changed their values with the times; Amyia’s lot was to be deeply entrenched with family rooted in tradition; a tradition of the caravaneers that disallowed girls from foul play. It was a great source of heartache for Amyia that her family disapproved of all she held dear. Often, in the heat of the summer nights, she would lie awake on her bunk when the tarpaulin was pulled back and gaze at the stars wondering whether her life would be different, or if she would have been more accepted and loved for who she was, if her father had still been alive. She knew it absurd and she could not quite describe it, but when everything in the night air was silent and she stared at the celestial pins above her, life seemed perfect - perfect and safe for those few moments.
From the older men in her extended caravaneer family, she was told of her great and powerful father with such verve and reverence that she always sat enraptured when they spoke, oblivious to anything else in the world. She learnt how handsome and courageous he was, and that in his youth, all by himself, he held off an entire army of goblins from attacking the wagons! Stories of how kind and caring he was also found their way to her ears: she heard of his great exploits of how he had travailed and surmounted an entire mountain, in one night, to reach the climes where rare herbs were fabled to be found, in order to cure a sickly caravaneer and stem her death before the morn came. She had her favourite story though; it was a tale that began in a port city, which one exactly seemed to remain hazy to all tellers, although Amyia did not care; he was swimming in the ocean and came across a mermaid who was being chased by foul mermen; he dispatched them with ease and saved the damsel! As a reward the mermaid cast a spell on him and the entire legacy of his family, and even all those he would fall in love with, that their eyes would change to the most brilliant and stunning green; it was to display to the world his great and gallant deeds, so that they might never be forgotten. Amyia knew that many of the tales were exaggerated and only circumspectly untrue, as most stories are, but nevertheless, she wallowed euphorically in them and took such comfort in their repeated telling that it created the illusion that she had known her father her entire life.
Amyia wiped the tears from her eyes, an action only serving to mix and spread the blood and dirt around her face even more. She stood up; her toe still painfully pulsing. Submerging her entire head in the basin of water Amyia rubbed, pulled and squeezed all the grime she could from her hair and face for as long as she could hold her breath. Using a wash towel she cleaned the rest of her body, from head to toe. After a few minutes, all the water in the basin had turned a sickly oxblood hue.
Reasonably clean, Amyia reached into the sink and felt around for the bung inside; pulling it, the water gushed down its newly fashioned escape route, through a metal pipe, to the trade road below. From the adjacent armoire she retrieved a cotton drying-towel her mother had fashioned; the last vestiges of dirt and water were wiped away. Her moist hair flitted around her face in dainty spirals, framing her youthful, and when clean, elegant face. Pulling on an indigo slip and darker drawers, she climbed into her upper bunk and lay on the top covers. She reached under her goose pillow and pulled from beneath it a well-used book: it had a strong leather binding with a gilt title running down its spine: Tales of the fey, the majestic and the unbelievable. Out of everything Amyia owned, the mythological book, given to her by a kindly loranic publisher when they had once traded goods in the Kyn-Lor province, was her most precious asset. Every day she would sit with it and engross herself with the all too familiar stories. Tales of how Tabben, blessed by a two inch fairy, grew wings from his arms to fly up into the heavens themselves and ravaged the land at the behest of the fairies and their gift; or how a lone dwarf mined an entire mountain away, gaining great wealth, but in the flat land he had created there was greed and desire from farmers and soon his wealth counted for little as the farmers bashed him upon his crown. Amyia knew each and every tale intimately; she relished each one time and time again, fuelling her imagination, her will, and above all, her indomitable personality.
Flipping through the dirt stained pages she stopped at one of her favourite fables: Merian, the dagger wielding baker’s daughter. Amyia propped the pillow behind her head and began to read, admiring the majestic illustrations. Still, the earlier fight with Conni and Kalen, combined with the gentle rocking movement of the caravan, quickly robbed her already fatigued mind and limbs of consciousness; she fell asleep with the book on her breast.
A knock pounded on the back of the caravan; a deep voice rang out: “Amyia, dinner is nigh on ready!”
Before her eyes had stirred, Amyia could feel that the caravan had come to a half. Barely awake, she faintly recalled the words spoken moments before. Hazily, Amyia sat up and pushed her nearly dry hair from her eyes and rubbed them vigorously.
The rapping at the rear entryway repeated, this time more sonorously: “Amyia!”
“I’s comin’!” cried Amyia, her voice was hard although still filled with sleep. “You don’ have to breaks the wagon!”
“Better I break the wagon than you fall any deeper into mum’s pot of anger!”
Amyia threw her feet over the side of the bunk. “I’s be there now. ‘N tell her I’s comin’.” Her brother’s footsteps indicated he was moving away from the caravan. Jumping off the bed she thought she had better thank her brother later for waking her in time for supper; not only did it save her the wrath of her punctuality precise mother, but also her ravenous stomach; there was a voracious grumbling within. Without dallying, and remaining in her night attire, she pulled on her two cowhide slippers, a task that was far from simplistic, for night had fallen and the inside of the caravan was in a complete gloom. After bumping into two pieces of furniture and knocking something off a table, she opened the rear hatch and hopped out into the night air; there would be time to regret the demise of the object later when consequence found its remains.
The lambent glow from the great fire, and the carmine hue from Asthen, flickered brightly off the well-polished wagons, drays, caravans and carts – one of the defining traits of a caravaneer was their impeccable and meticulous care they took in maintaining their vessels of hearth and trade. Amyia swiftly sauntered past them, glancing to the stars every now and then and smiling to herself as she did so; she headed to the community fire where most of the guards and all of the teamsters, drivers and caravaneer’s were gathered and where, more importantly thought Amyia, the cooks were tantalisingly weaving their art!
The merchant train had stopped for the night on a section of road where, but a short distance from the verge, lush and abundant vegetation grew; it was a verdure that the many horses of the caravaneers were exceedingly happy to avail themselves of, along with their half dozen caretakers and shepherds who sat nearby and sipped at their goulash. First low shrubs and bushes enhanced the narrow greensward that, perhaps reluctantly, gave way to thicker and loftier trees and woods several steps beyond.
The caravaneer pioneers must have been unable to find a suitable glad or dell, for they would have always scouted ahead first for a more spacious spot off the road instead of halting upon it. As a consequence, the fire had been set adjacent the core of the trains, on the road itself - most unfortunate should any night time travellers be wending their way. Around fifty caravaneers were gathered at the fire; small stools had been brought out, and long, little benches circled the fire. All the various families were talking, gossiping, boasting and spinning the usual loquacious yarns they would most nights. The younger children worked furiously, ferrying plates and bowls of food from the women cooks pouring over their cauldrons, kettles and spits, to the rest of the community hungry for their repast.
“Good eve to you, Amyia,” said a man walking away from the group, heading off into the eaves to relieve himself.
“Good eve, Mr Willom,” replied Amyia with a perfunctory bow of her head.
By the hour Amyia had arrived, the gathering had been on for a while she assumed; clues to support this theory were presented by talk that was loud and overly verbose, along with two empty ale casks that had already been put to one side. Squeezing through the mass of standing people, and adroitly skipping, hopping and bumping over the sitting ones, Amyia preserved to press on through the crowd to get to her supper! As she drew near the eye of the tumultuous crowd, her attention was caught by two faces, just off to her left, that were throwing proverbial daggers with their eyes. Turning to face them, Amyia espied Conni and Kalen looking at her steadfastly. Amyia narrowed her eyes and returned their gaze with the most vindictive opprobrium she could muster; with the firelight reflecting in her own eyes, she appeared to her two foes as if she were possessed by a dark, devilish spirit. Conni and Kalen immediately slunk behind their parents, much to the satisfaction of their tormentor.
The Good Goblin Page 12
