“Oh Eshezy!” Jeraldanine whispered intensely. “It’s not just you that’s in danger; they will punish us, too.” She pulled up the roughly-fashioned skirt she wore and showed the back of her left leg. There, near the top of the thigh, was a huge bruise, going yellow – which Eshezy knew, somehow, meant that it had been inflicted many days earlier – and a still-red-outlined scab within it. “They hit us with the flat of their swords, but sometimes we still get cut.”
Eshezy reached out and ran a finger along the barely-healed wound. She leaned closer, and saw that there were other red lines, radiating down the back of the child’s leg. This is infected! And there’s no more well water here… that’s one reason not to stay to face the soldiers! “What did they do this to you for?”
“One of them dropped his loaf, just after he took it from my tray. He said I dropped it, so Carranavak said he should hit me.”
Eshezy wondered about what she would have to do with ‘the Governor’, assuming he recovered. I suppose being shot with an arrow might be good punishment for his cruelty – though it seems this must have been only a small part of his ‘gifts’ to these lost souls! Looking around, she saw the townspeople eating their bread with eagerness, though to her, the lack of any meat to go with it made it seem insufficient. Soon she had finished her loaf. It didn’t seem as good as the one Gefforen brought me! All the other loaves were consumed, too, and the group hesitantly started to stand, as though they felt compelled to return to their work but still wanted to see if the powerful Eshezy was going to communicate with them again.
“I know you are scared.” Eshezy supressed the shiver she felt, as the knowledge of the path she should take flowed into her, giving her courage to speak with total conviction. “I will give you two choices.”
Jeraldanine stopped her twisting attempts to see the strange lines running down the back of her left thigh and onto the top part of her calf. She looked at Eshezy with an intensity that scared her potential liberator. “What do you mean… ‘Choice’?”
“I will explain.” Eshezy lowered her voice to say this, then continued, louder than before, so all could hear: “You can do one thing or you can do the other. The first option is to stay here and tell the soldiers, when they return, that you had nothing to do with my actions. Perhaps they will not punish you then.” Eshezy could see that no one, not Shenanik, Basrillene, Gefforen, or Jeraldanine, not the reluctant rescuer of soldiers whose name she still did not know, or any of the other young guys that had pulled the cart, believed that this outcome could possibly occur as she suggested. “The second option is to come away with me and I will try to protect you. I have a special place, over the river and through the grass – we’d get there in about half the time between meals. Gefforen has seen it.”
Gefforen nodded, so that all the townspeople would see her confirmation, then leaned close to Eshezy and whispered in her ear: “There are hundreds here. Your place will not fit all these people!”
“Still, I can protect them there!” Eshezy spoke with a quiet intensity, though she herself had no idea how it could be done. “Do you believe that I can?”
“I … choose to go with her!” Gefforen turned to face her fellow-Neechaallites, her face almost glowing as she spoke, no trace of her trademark-scared-scream in her tone. “She is Eshezy!”
Basrillene knelt before her, then leaned back and spoke loudly: “I will go too!”
“I will come too.” The young lad with the penchant for revenge spoke up.
Eshezy looked at him, studying his hard face, his scrawny strength, and seeing the independent streak, long-suppressed, flaming up rapidly. “Good! And what is your name?”
“I am Larkandert.” He glanced over at the two bodies in the cart. “What about these two? If we leave them here and they recover; there will be more soldiers to face. Let’s kill them now!” He walked over towards the cart, stooping to pick up an apple-sized rock as he quickly scanned the ground for a suitable weapon.
“Larkandert!” Eshezy spoke with her ‘voice of authority’, a tone she knew he would respond to, and indeed, he halted, turning back to face her. “We will take the cart with us and the men on it!” This was said to all around. “Those who choose to come with us – go and collect everything that you can carry. Let’s not leave any food for the soldiers. And I will come back later and find a way to get the miners freed, too.”
Once this was said, the townspeople immediately started to move: some returned to the shacks that were their homes, others to the longer, larger buildings at the far end of the town. Those whose names she knew also hurried off to make their preparations. Eshezy watched as another cart appeared, already laden with sacks, and the inhabitants started to gather around her, their belongings hanging in makeshift containers of rough cloth and leather from each shoulder. She was amazed at the quantity that they could carry and the speed with which their preparations were completed. It was soon apparent that everyone was coming. No one wants to face those soldiers!
Basrillene, on his return, organised some of the stronger young men to push and pull the carts and stepped up to help them.
Eshezy got up and headed for the river. Rauffaely remained on her shoulder and the youngest and smallest of the townspeople, including Gefforen and Jeraldanine, seemed to instinctively crowd around her, feeling safer, just by virtue of their proximity to the one who had given them the first real choices they had ever perceived since their creation, mysterious appearance, or arrival, in Terraless.
The cart wheels bounced and slipped over the rounded rocks under the water of the river and many of the littler ones stopped at the bank, clearly worried that crossing would be hazardous due to their reduced stature. Gefforen stepped ahead, holding a small bundle of well-wrapped treasures over her head to keep it dry. She staggered a few times under the load, but, once safely on the far bank, turned and smiled at the others in encouragement. Soon all were safely over and Eshezy led the way into the tall grasses, following the path she had ventured along just a few hours earlier.
Rauffaely jumped down and ran off into the greener growth along the riverbank. Eshezy turned to watch him go. Whatever you are doing, my furry friend, I trust you will find me once you are finished!
Some considerable length of time later, when they were about half way along the path, Eshezy stopped and turned to see the progress behind her. Literally hundreds were following, the column of refugees stretching back as far as she could see, five to ten persons wide. I’m like the pie… piper? Again, a memory, clearly from a time earlier than her inexplicable arrival in her Fortress, played tantalisingly in the shallows of her subconscious, almost surfacing to be fully recognised. And what will I do with all these people? Even if I pack each room like… sardines! … The recollection burst forth, and she gasped in surprise, then broke into a big grin, as the trivial nature of this bauble – like Rauffaely jumping down onto Basrillene’s back – immediately put the triumph into perspective.
And then, some twenty yards back along the trail, Eshezy saw Jeraldanine keel over, hitting the dirt uncovered by the progress of many dozens of earlier footfalls. The smile left Eshezy’s face and she ran back, crouching next to the young girl and gently turning her over onto her back. A hasty check – the motion was small, but rapid – showed that Jeraldanine’s chest was rising and falling, so she was still breathing, but the eye she observed was glassy, when an eyelid was gently raised.
The sound of the cart wheels breaking through the harder crust of the soil slowed. A pair of sandal-shod feet stopped next to the unconscious child.
Eshezy looked up. It was Larkandert.
“We could put her in the cart with the soldiers. She’s so small, she won’t make it any harder to push.”
Eshezy nodded gratefully and watched as the tough youngster picked up the far smaller child and put her carefully across the rear end of the space, beyond the rough-cut hair of the still-silent pair. She smiled as Larkandert took a small bag of flour and put it under the back of Jera
ldanine’s head to cushion it. “Thank you!”
The grin that lit his face seemed to transform the hardness there, at least for a moment.
The townspeople had moved on ahead, and Eshezy urged the cart team to resume their pushing and pulling. Again, she was impressed by the strength of these labour-toughened youths. The wheels turned, the cart rolled onwards, and the endless sea of tall grasses continued to make any vision of progress quite impossible. She looked back, along the track they had made and saw it was now more than ten yards wide in places. No hiding that! Those soldiers will soon be here and I must find a way to handle them… hopefully without having to kill them! She resumed her forward progress, wondering what she had committed herself to.
She noticed that another short person – perhaps her age, perhaps slightly older – just five feet tall at most, was keeping pace beside her. Eshezy thought about asking her name, but the dust raised by many tramping feet had dried her throat and she decided some well water would be needed first. That well is such a gift! She wondered at the extraordinary combination of events that had occurred to her since she had awoken in the bed in the strangely familiar but different house she now thought of as her personal Fortress. How can it be that I know there’s more, but…
“How much further is it?” The short young woman spoke, and her words made Eshezy rethink her previous estimation, deciding that perhaps she was still a youth, as the plaintive phrase echoed with another shade of familiarity in her mind.
“Not much at all, I–” Eshezy was interrupted by a commotion in the crowd that had walked ahead. She ran through the now stationary travellers and looked in wonder beyond the well that now was before her. The ‘forward guard’ had trampled down the long grass and stopped at the waist-high grasses close to the intended destination.
However, her Fortress had changed.
Well, of course! That would be a great idea! …wish I had thought of it! She looked in wonder at the transformed building – no longer just a block-like home with fortress-like characteristics – such as a hugely thick front door and similarly solid but much smaller back door, and very small ground floor windows, like portholes, complete with bars – it now had expanded somehow and was more like a fortified ancestral home, with two wings stretching far out from the bit she knew, almost encircling the tired travellers.
Eshezy stepped beyond the well and up to the shorter grass. She turned to the left and then the right, observing the grand lengths of walls made of interlocked blocks of stone, peppered with little round windows on the lower floor and generously provided with larger, square windows above. Each wing was a full fifty-five yards long!
“Eshezy! I think you are wonderful!” Gefforen knelt before her, but looked up with her face glowing – and eyes that Eshezy now observed were the deepest blue.
I must try not to look as amazed as I feel! “Didn’t I tell you this was the right place to come to?”
“Oh yes! Now I like choosing!” Gefforen broke into a big grin.
I think I do, too! “Now. The first thing to do, is to get the rope.” Eshezy pushed her own wonder aside with an effort and looked around for the cart containing her biggest worry – the unconscious Jeraldanine. A quick check of the motionless child showed that the infection in her leg seemed to be expanding rapidly – the reddened area around the scab was a deeper red, almost purple, and the streaks had spread to cover much of the lower part of her leg, too.
“She looks very bad, Eshezy.” Larkandert was staying close to the cart and his previously hard face still seemed softened with his new-found concern for the girl.
“I’ll be back in a moment and everyone can have some of the wonderful well water. But first, I’ll be giving some to Jeraldanine.” She looked down the well as she walked to the small back door, confirming that the bucket was somehow back inside, on the water far below, and trying to act nonchalant as the spectacular sprawling size of her ‘renovated’ home filled her peripheral vision on both sides. The three bolts slid back as she gestured with one hand; she removed the quiver from her shoulder, placed the bow against the wall, and ducked and rolled inside. Looking left and right as she walked across the large, high-ceilinged room towards the as-yet unopened front door, Eshezy saw that two huge archways now opened up from this previously simple, though large room. These must lead into those new wings. I’ll have to do a new tour! But first, the rope.
She walked back to the kitchen area, picked up the rope from where she had carefully looped and placed it and returned to the small back door. In a moment, she had rolled out, but this time she did not bolt the door behind her. “My new friends, I will quench your thirst!”
The gathered townspeople made a space for her to walk through and the end of the rope dropped into the gloom as soon as she had crossed the thirty-seven-pace space to it. Basrillene leaned over the side, surprised that Eshezy did not do likewise, and his mouth fell open as he thought he saw the rope loop itself around the handle of the bucket floating far below. This proved to be true, as Eshezy started to reel the long rope in, and the bucket came up with it.
As the bucket caught on the underside of the brickwork around the rim, Basrillene gathered his wits and reached down to grab hold of the handle and ease the bucket’s progress to the top.
“I need a piece of cloth, and a bowl, or cup or jug or something!” Eshezy spoke to no one in particular as she looked back to the cart, but Gefforen ran over with a carved wooden bowl just as Larkandert waved a cloth from his position beside the makeshift ambulance. Eshezy dipped the bowl into the bucket and walked away from the well. “Basrillene, share out the water and get some more when you need to.”
The young man grabbed the edge of the bucket and, looking startled at the thought of being allowed to ‘work the well’, gestured for the thirsty crowd to line up.
Eshezy had progressed to the cart by this point and, taking the cloth, she poured a little of the water onto it and then laid it across the scab. It still looked fairly dry, so she poured on a few more drops and then a few more until the cloth looked soaked. Then she raised the unconscious child’s head and called to Gefforen. “Take the bowl, while I ease open her mouth.”
Gefforen did as directed and waited until the moment was right to pour in a little of the water that she had seen work so well on the two soldiers’ wounds. Jeraldanine coughed and choked as the water filled her mouth, but Eshezy waited until the coughs subsided and told Gefforen to do it again. This time the child swallowed reflexively.
“I’ll see how that works.” Eshezy looked up towards her newly expanded home and back to the young girl’s face.
“I’ll stay with her.” Larkandert seemed to perceive how much Eshezy wanted to get back to the massive building in front of them.
“Thanks.” Eshezy’s look spoke more eloquently than her single, simple word, just how grateful she was. “Come on, Gefforen.”
Gefforen looked startled at this unexpected summons, but followed on the heels of her new heroine, dropping to her knees to enter the building she had so timidly and tentatively approached, only the previous day. Inside, she stood up and stared at the interior in wonder. “It’s so beautiful, Eshezy! How did you do it?”
I have no idea. “It would be too difficult to explain without a lot of time, and right now, we need to figure out where to put everyone, so…”
“I’ll help you to do that!” Gefforen knew a lot about organising, having done that with bread production and grain gathering for all the time that she could recall.
“Let’s look around a bit.” Eshezy ventured.
The two of them crossed the large room, with Gefforen, temporarily distracted, staring at the huge fireplace located to her right as they moved across to the ‘front’ of the ‘house’.
Eshezy stepped into the space near the bottom of the stairs and turned, rather arbitrarily, to the right. A dozen steps took her to the newly created archway – though it looked like it was part of the original construction – and another six took he
r through and revealed the next archway, also on the right. Here she stood and looked down, seeing the impressive length of this new corridor, with a seemingly endless row of doors to rooms on the right and windows to the left – except that, about ten windows or three rooms down, there was another archway on the left!
Gefforen scampered down the hall and looked left. “Eshezy, it’s another corridor!”
Eshezy stepped up to the nearest ‘porthole’ and peered out through the solid, slightly distorting glass. Sure enough, the view to the right was of yet another wing, about the same length as the first! This is crazy! She stepped into the room behind her ‘viewpoint’ and found that it was filled with shelves, loaded with large glass bottles, filled with… What is that stuff? She picked up one bottle and held it up towards the light coming from the window. Green filtered through the liquid inside, showing shadowy round objects within. I don’t have time to check out every room… and there’s another floor above, too!
“Eshezy?” Gefforen’s voice came drifting into the room, much diminished by the distance it had travelled. “There’s a funny little door here, and some steps behind it, except they twist…”
Returning to the corridor, Eshezy stepped down to the junction, then stopped, looking down the impressive length. “Where are you?”
“Not that way!”
Eshezy heard the youngster’s voice coming from her right and turned back to the first corridor in time to see the mousy blonde head popping in and out, seemingly from the wall, about three rooms down.
“Sorry!” The excited youth was ‘floating’ on the wave of new experiences and could barely hold still.
Eshezy hurried to join her and found that the door was comparatively small, akin to the back door of the Fortress, at least it was of a similar reduced width, though, unlike that unusual exit, it was still tall enough to facilitate entering without bending or ducking. Inside, carved stone steps led to the left and then curved up to the right, and she knew, somehow, that this was a defensive strategy, though the full meaning did not unfold immediately. “Let’s check out the view from upstairs.”
Terraless Page 5
