Karavans

by Jennifer Roberson

  He saw faces he knew, and faces he didn’t, all startled by the abruptness of his entrance. Mikal was present, of course; but also Jorda, Bethid, and Ilona. Mikal had joined them at their table.

  Rhuan strode over to the table hosting those he called friends and knelt on one knee, speaking quietly but urgently. “I don’t have time for questions …go through the tents and tell everyone to leave. Now. They need to get as far from here as they can. Now.” He drew breath and continued. “It’s Alisanos …” He was conscious of the stunned and incredulous expressions, and how improbable his words sounded. “I don’t know exactly where it will appear again, but I’m sensing the settlement may be in danger. Jorda and Ilona, gather up your karavaners and send them east. Mikal and Bethid, you can sort out those of the settlement. Gather everyone and go east. I can’t tell you how I know, but trust me. Tell everyone to get out of here.”

  “But—the Hecari.” Mikal’s brows met as he frowned. “These folk have lost loved ones and shelter, all of their possessions—and now you expect them to leave everything else?”

  “I have no time,” Rhuan said bluntly. “Tell as many as you can. Go east. East.” He looked straight at Ilona. “Trust me.” He looked at Jorda. “Trust me.”

  They asked, of course. Humans always asked. All he could do, as he rose and strode swiftly out of the tent to his horse, was to hope Ilona and Jorda, who knew him best, would understand his urgency, his plea for trust, and act.

  He unlooped the reins from the tent rope and mounted. Part of him wanted to remain, to help with convincing the inhabitants to depart, but there was no time.

  Rhuan set the spotted horse upon the track leading away from the karavan, away from the tent settlement, and asked of it a gallop. The horse was more than willing to provide the gait; he wanted free of the unsettling questing as much as Rhuan did. He wanted away from Alisanos.

  Except that Rhuan now rode toward the deepwood, not away. Not to escape. Not to safety.

  To a family upon a road leading directly into danger.

  Chapter 43

  “HE CAN’T BE serious,” Mikal protested as the Shoia exited the tent. “Rhuan is known for his jests.”

  Ilona rose from her stool, scraping wooden legs across hard-packed earth. “He doesn’t jest about people’s lives. If he says there’s danger, there is.” She nodded in Jorda’s direction to include him in her reference. “We both know to trust Rhuan in something like this. There’s no time to waste.”

  Bethid rose, too, but her thin face was worried. “But Mikal has a point. I don’t think anyone will want to leave when they’ve lost so much already.”

  Ilona hung onto patience with supreme effort. “Will mothers risk their children? Will men risk their wives?” She drew in a steadying breath. “I dreamed this, Bethid. What’s coming. A killing wind, rain … everyone needs to go.”

  Jorda was standing as well. “I have a karavan to protect. I indeed trust Rhuan in this kind of warning, and I intend to tell my people so. And if Ilona has seen this in her dreams …” He rubbed at his scalp. “This settlement is yours, Mikal, if it can be said to belong to anyone; tell your people to go. Tell them to run.” He closed a hand on Ilona’s elbow and escorted her swiftly out of the big tent. “Now it’s time for you to run, ’Lona. Go east, he said.”

  She shook her head and gently disengaged her elbow. “I have a task as much as you do: I will urge the women to gather their children while you talk to the men. With both of us insisting they go—and I am a diviner, after all—they may heed the message better.” She was outpacing Jorda with her long-legged stride. The karavan-master was a large, bulky man and she could always outrun him. “Forgive me,” she said, then hiked up her skirts as she broke into a run toward the grove that was temporary housing for the karavan wagons.

  But even running, she was aware of a terrible fear chilling her bones. Go east, he had said; run. But how far, and for how long, had not been part of his warning. Too slow, she fretted as she ran toward the grove. Mother of Moons, let me be in time … O Mother, let them run far enough, let them run fast enough!

  In the midst of a bright, cloudless sky, lightning split the air.

  BY MID-AFTERNOON THEY found the turnoff and set the oxen upon it. Audrun and the children ventured out of the wagon and onto the track, which gradually transformed from an obvious roadway into overgrown, rock-strewn ruts nearly invisible to the eye. Davyn guided the oxen as carefully as he could, but the jarring of the wagon was constant. Wheels creaked a protest; floorboards loosened into chatters and squeaks. Audrun, walking next to the wagon, winced every time the wheels struck a particularly large rock. Davyn attempted to miss them, but oxen were not as responsive as horses or mules, and the overgrowth hid many of the rocks until it was too late to avoid them.

  The children walked immediately ahead of the wagon. Initially Audrun carried the long-handled spade in case any other strange creatures appeared, but it grew awkward after a while and she returned it to its loops on the side- board. Pots hanging from the floorboards clanked as the wagon rolled onward, and the bunghole in the big water barrel began to leak. Audrun did her best to tighten the spigot, but it simply worked its way loose within another revolution of the wheels. She tied a rag around the spigot in hopes of stemming the leak, but once the rag was soaked it began to drip. There was no help for it. They left a trail of splashes along the narrow ruts.

  Just as she gave up on the leak, the wagon lurched over a pile of rocks, then slammed down. Audrun heard an ominous creaking, the noisy clatter of pots crashing together, and then a popping crack. The left rear wheel canted at an odd angle for one haphazard revolution, and then the axle gave way, dropping the corner of the wagon to the ground even as she shouted to Davyn. The collapse was so abrupt that the lid to the water barrel came loose and a wave of water slopped over the edge, drenching the front of Audrun’s skirts. Stunned, all she could do was stand there in the middle of the track as water dripped from sodden fabric.

  “Gillan!” Davyn called. “Come unhitch the oxen. Ellica, watch the others.” He went to the rear of the wagon to inspect the damage. When he saw Audrun’s state he missed a step, then worked hard to contain a smile. “Are you drowned?”

  “Nearly!” She twisted wet skirts to force the worst of the water out.

  Davyn squatted to inspect the wheel. When he rose, his expression had become grim. “It’s split lengthwise.” He ran both hands through fair hair in a gesture of frustration. “Well, there’s no help for it. We’ll need to unload the heavy things, then prop up the wagon so I can mount a new axle.” Like all karavaners, they carried extra wheels and a spare axle lashed to the sideboards. But Davyn did not immediately return his attention to repairs. He rubbed his arms and frowned, glancing into the sky. “The light has changed. Do you see it? And all the hair on my skin is standing on end. I think we’ve got a storm on the way.”

  Even as he spoke, the ground beneath their feet shuddered.

  RHUAN, RIDING AT a gallop the third day out of the settlement, felt the tremors in the earth, felt the wind come up. It began as a breeze, moved into a series of flirtatious gusts, then settled in for an unceasing hard howling, the kind of wind that stripped tree limbs, knocked down and shredded tents, hurled birds to their deaths, drove humans to despair. He knew it as a killing wind, the kind that, unabated, did much more than cursory damage. It came from his left side, slamming his mount broadside with enough force that the horse stumbled and nearly went down. Rhuan yanked the horse’s head up, let him regain his balance, and went on once more at a gallop.

  His scalp prickled. The hair on his arms, though shielded by a long-sleeved tunic, stood up. A cold frisson ran down his spine, stronger now than when he had dug into the earth near the tent settlement. His body was answering the wind, responding to its song. There was power in that wind, a crackling, sizzling power that touched him, knew him, tempted him. Though squinted against the flying dust and debris, his eyes grew red as a membrane slid over them. The
world colored around him, the horizon bathed in a ruddy halo of fractured light.

  But Rhuan had no time for himself. A family he had sworn to protect was on the same road, accosted by the same terrible wind, but lacked any kind of power to withstand the storm. Rhuan was stubborn enough to put it out of his mind, to focus only on going forward, on reaching the wagon, on doing what was necessary to save the children and parents.

  The sky now took on a faint greenish light. Tree branches and debris spun through the air. Rhuan could feel the effort it took his horse to continue onward without faltering as the ground quivered beneath him; his gait was uneven, lacking the smooth consistency of motion that made him Rhuan’s favorite of all the karavan remuda. He leaned down and patted the spotted neck, promising the horse he would be rewarded in good time.

  Peering through flying dirt and debris, he came upon the family in the midst of disarray. The wagon canted in the unmistakable angle of a broken wheel or axle. Even in the screaming wind, the father and his eldest son labored to prop up the wagon so repairs could be made; the wife, head and face screened by a shawl, stood by. The eldest daughter and the two youngest children, wrapped in blankets, huddled on the other side of the wagon, using its bulk to shield them from the worst of the wind. Chests and heavier belongings had been set out upon the road to lighten the wagon, putting Rhuan in mind of a sad, untended burial ground.

  Until he reined his horse to an abrupt sliding stop next to the wagon, no one knew he was there. He saw surprise on the father’s face, and the flaring of profound relief in the mother’s eyes.

  Rhuan wasted no time. He pitched his voice to carry over the wailing of the wind. “You can’t remain here! You have to leave!” He gestured. “Give me the two youngest. Put the smallest girl here, in front of me, and the boy behind. The rest of you will have to run as best you can. As far and as fast as you can.”

  “Run?” the husband shouted, incredulous. “You want us to leave the wagon, the only shelter we have?”

  Beneath their feet, the ground shuddered. Grasslands undulated. The wife went to her knees even as her husband grabbed the wagon to steady himself. “This is only the beginning!” Rhuan shouted as his horse snorted and danced. “Put the youngest ones up on my horse. Now. Waste no time.” There was startlement and doubt in the father’s eyes, even as another tremor rattled pots and pans. “It’s Alisanos,” Rhuan explained in curt impatience. He smelled the unmistakable sharpness of lightning in the air. “I have land-sense. Do as I say. Or do you wish to be taken by the deepwood?”

  The wife, skirts flapping in the wind as she climbed to her feet, said something to her husband and then made her way to the other side of the wagon where her children waited. She lost her grip on her shawl, which was ripped out of her hands and carried away; now her hair was whipped free of its braid. Rhuan rode close, steadying the horse as best he could in the midst of the storm. He was unsurprised when the wagon’s battered oilcloth tore, then shredded. Within moments it was ripped from the curving ribs of the wagon, spun away through the air. The end of one flapping portion slapped his horse across the face.

  Cursing, Rhuan barely managed to remain in the saddle as the horse spooked in a scrambling, panicked retreat. He regained tenuous control and urged the horse beside the wagon once again, though it took effort to convince the horse to do so in the wake of torn oilcloth. “Give me the little girl!”

  By now the father and eldest son had joined the rest of the family. With the oilcloth gone from the wagon, there was less to shield them from the storm’s fury. “Do it!” the wife shouted. “Davyn, we must! The rest of us can manage, but Torvic and Megritte can’t!”

  Rhuan saw grim acquiescence in the father’s face. Then he scooped up the youngest girl and lifted her.

  She was frightened and crying, wanting nothing to do with Rhuan. He caught her around her slender, fragile rib cage and tucked her between himself and the pommel of the saddle, a shield against the wind. “Now the boy!” He reached down again as the boy was guided to him by the father. He closed his hand on the boy’s wrist and swung him up and back so that he landed on the horse’s rump. “Hold onto me! Don’t let go!” He bent over the girl in front of him so he could speak without shouting. “We’re going to gallop. This horse loves to gallop. And I’ll wrap one arm around you. Are you ready?” He heard no reply, but felt the rubbing of the girl’s head against his chest as if she nodded. “Good.”

  Crimson lightning streaked across the sky, leaving a too-brilliant white in its place. Thunder greater than anything heard before nearly deafened them. Leaves, debris, and tree limbs wheeled through the air. He blamed no one for their fear, for their hesitation.

  “The rest of you, run!” Rhuan told them, pointing. “That way, as hard and as fast as you can.” He saw fear in the eyes of the older children, but there was nothing he could do for anyone else. Even the two smallest would slow his horse. “Run.” He wrapped his left arm around the youngest girl. He turned his head so the boy behind him could hear. “Hold on. Grab my tunic and don’t let go.” Hands worked themselves into his tunic. “We’re going to race the wind,” Rhuan told his two human burdens. As red lighting split the air yet again, he looked down at the parents, at the older children. “Run. For your lives, run.” And with a final admonition to “hold on” to the girl in front of him and the boy behind, he urged his mount once again into a gallop.

  THE FEAR IN the faces of her two youngest as they were taken up onto the guide’s horse nearly broke Audrun’s heart. But she had no time to permit worry to govern every action; incredibly, the wind intensified. In the wake of deafening thunder she turned to Gillan and Ellica, urging them with shouts even though she knew they couldn’t hear her above the wind and in the aftermath of the thunder. She made sweeping motions with her arms, directing them to go after the guide. Gillan grabbed his sister’s hand and ran.

  Davyn moved close to Audrun as she attempted to control her hair so it wouldn’t blind her, gesturing for her to follow the oldest children. She knew he intended to gather needful things from the wagon. She shook her head, grabbed a handful of his tunic and yanked, trying to guide him toward the direction the guide had indicated.

  She saw refusal in his eyes. She didn’t blame him for it; all they had left in the world was in the wagon. “Davyn!” She nearly tore her throat with the force of her shout, but couldn’t hear herself in the wind. “Davyn, we all go!” She caught her breath, spitting out grit. “We can come back when the storm is over!”

  He hesitated a moment longer, then nodded resignation. Audrun grabbed up a handful of her skirts, let him take her hand in his, and ran after the children she could no longer see.

  Chapter 44

  ILONA WENT TO JANQERIL, the horse-master. She told him her idea for aiding the karavaners; at his nod of understanding, she hurried to the nearest wagon. The four women she recognized as something quite different from the farmstead wives; they were the Sisters of the Road.

  “Listen to me,” Ilona said. “There is no time—I must tell as many as possible. We are to go east. All of us. Immediately.”

  The women had laid and lighted a cookfire, and a tea kettle whistled. They wore clothing of a finer cut than the other women, and their tunic belts were of fine leather studded with silver. Four pairs of startled eyes fixed upon her. “Go east?” one of the Sisters repeated. “Why should we go east?”

  “Alisanos,” Ilona answered succinctly. “The karavan guide, Rhuan—the Shoia, with all the braids—has land-sense. He swears Alisanos is on the verge of moving, and that it’s coming this way. If we go east, we may escape it.” She raised a silencing hand as all four women began to speak at once. “Waste no time. Believe in me, as I believe in Rhuan. Take your horses, but leave the wagon; there is no time to hitch up.” She nodded at the two draft horses picketed near the wagon. “They are large enough to carry two each. Just mount and go. Now.”

  Ilona left them still asking questions and went on to the next wagon, repeating the
warning. She knew that somewhere in the grove Jorda was doing the same. But the wagons had been scattered any which way; in the wake of cancellation, drivers were no longer required to follow directions as to how they should arrange themselves.

  “If you lack for horses,” she told a family of five, “go to Janqeril, the horse-master. He will give you a mount. But hurry!”

  She heard the echo of Jorda’s voice in the grove, bellowing orders. Mount and ride east, mount and ride east. She said it. He said it. But the people were slow, too slow. Urgency filled Ilona’s chest near to bursting.

  Mount and ride east, she said over and over again. Go east, go east, go east.

  As she reached another wagon, a sudden rising wind hissed amid the trees. Ilona felt a prickling in her scalp. The palms of both hands began to itch.

  She was aware of eyes fixed upon her. Had she spoken? Had she told this family what she had told the others?

  “Go east,” she said. The wind keened through branches. “Waste no time!”

  Her palms now burned. Some unknown instinct told her to kneel, to spread her hands against the earth. She did so, and felt the thrumming power rising up through leaf mold and soil.

  Was this Rhuan’s land-sense? Or Alisanos awakening? Did Branca and Melior feel the same thing?