The Hickory Staff

by Rob Scott

  Breathing the crisp morning deep into his lungs, Steven rose slowly, tested his leg and found it stronger. The querlis was working well; he was healing quickly now. He draped his blankets over the edge of the lean-to to dry and made his way, slowly and carefully, down to the river to watch Garec.

  For the next three days, the company made their way northwest alongside the river towards Falkan and Orindale. Steven, still unable to walk very far, reluctantly allowed Lahp to drag him in the pine gurney. Lahp seemed to mind far less than he did, and he didn’t appear to tire. Although nights were still cold, the days were bright with sunshine and warm enough for them to remove their cloaks and walk along in tunics and wool hose or leather breeches.

  Brynne walked with Sallax. The two spoke for avens about what was happening, where they were going and how they might successfully navigate their way to Welstar Palace without Gilmour. Brynne worked to keep her brother focused, emotionally and intellectually. Without her incessant reminders and redirections, his mind would wander, latching on to silly ideas or amusing memories, going off on a tangent or forgetting where they were and why they were heading for Malakasia. No one found his behaviour threatening, but they were all hoping he would make a quick recovery once they arrived in Orindale.

  Periodically Sallax would show some improvement: his speech slowed to a normal rate, his excitability waned and his eyes managed to focus on the people and places around him – but this never lasted long; Brynne was conscious that she needed to get him to a healer as soon as possible.

  On the morning of the third day they reached a cabin, set back in the trees from the south bank of the river. Garec guessed the cabin, a pretty basic structure, was used by trappers who worked the river and surrounding mountains for pelts. To them it represented sanctuary, a safe haven to rest, heal and plan.

  Inside, they found a cache of food stockpiled for winter: dried fruits, smoked meat, a stack of bottles of Falkan wine and even a block of Ronan cheese, all neatly stored in a dry closet near the fireplace. Garec assumed the trapper who owned the cabin must be nearby, because the cheese was not too mouldy and the wine had been bottled recently.

  Lahp helped Steven to a chair near a dusty table in the centre of the front room. A short hallway ran to bedrooms in the back. A neat stack of wood was arranged carefully beside the fireplace and as soon as he was certain Steven was comfortable, Lahp set about building a fire. Brynne looked haggard; she was worried for Sallax and anxious for news of Mark. To take her mind off things, she busied herself searching for candles, wiping the table and hanging their wet blankets and clothes to dry above the fireplace. Occasionally she looked over her shoulder at Sallax, who sat on the floor changing Steven’s dressing. Lahp’s supply of querlis was dwindling, but he indicated that he would find more of the miracle leaves in the valley.

  Steven assured him his leg was much better. ‘A few days by this fire and I’ll be ready for the four-hundred-metre hurdles,’ he said, using English where he could not find an appropriate Ronan translation. He was sad to see Sallax didn’t react: either he did not notice or, more likely, did not care to understand what was said.

  Garec emerged from the hallway drinking from a bottle of red wine. ‘There are two rooms in the back with thatch mattresses that don’t appear to have bugs or lice. Whoever sleeps back there ought to sleep on a blanket, though, just to be safe.’

  ‘I’m just glad not to have to sleep on the bare ground tonight,’ Steven said. ‘Someone else can have the rooms. I don’t mind.’

  Brynne came to kneel beside her brother. She took Steven’s lower leg in her hands and examined his wounds closely. ‘They look much better,’ she said, ‘but you’re still not cured. Take one of the beds. You need rest.’

  Garec grinned at them. ‘Fight all you like over the rooms. I’m sleeping out here, as close as I can get to the fire without burning, and then maybe just a little closer. I don’t think I remember what it’s like to be warm.’

  Brynne looked up from her work. ‘What if the trapper comes back?’

  ‘I checked outside and there aren’t any recent tracks. The cheese is still fairly fresh though, so he can’t be more than a few days away.’

  Steven chimed in, ‘Can we leave him money? Mark and I found some silver back in Estrad.’

  ‘Found?’ Garec took another swallow.

  ‘Okay, stole, but I’m happy to leave it here. This place may have saved our lives.’

  ‘Fine,’ Garec agreed. ‘We’ll pay handsomely for his hospitality.’ He passed the bottle to Steven, who took a long swallow and suddenly remembered how much he liked Falkan wine – in fact, any wine.

  ‘Garec, if we live through this, I want you to take me to a Falkan vineyard for a full Twinmoon. My treat.’ Again Steven used an English colloquialism.

  ‘Treat?’ Garec asked, trying the word out on his tongue.

  ‘I’ll pay.’

  ‘Ha,’ Sallax laughed, ‘if Steven is paying, count me in too. ’

  Brynne smiled as the friends engaged in friendly banter – the first time they’d felt secure enough for a long time. Her relief that Sallax would have a safe place to rest for a few days was mitigated only by her continued worry for Mark. Looking up at Steven, her smile faded.

  Steven squeezed her hand tightly and passed her the wine bottle. ‘Don’t worry,’ he whispered. ‘He’ll be along any time now, probably on skis, or with a posse of St Bernards in tow.’ Despite the levity in his voice, Brynne was not comforted.

  Later that day Steven dozed in a chair near the fireplace as the querlis worked its healing magic, dancing along the injured tissues and through his ever-strengthening bones. Garec had pulled a string of large trout from the river and they were all looking forward to a hot meal of fresh fish and dried fruit – they had found apricots, apples, tempine and pears, and an assortment of nuts and berries. Steven opened one eye long enough to pop a piece of dried apple into his mouth. Bliss!

  When he woke again, the sun was low in the western sky. Lahp was stoking the fire while Garec prepared the trout. Sallax stared out of the window, watching the sun sink behind the mountains. By the time Brynne announced dinner it was dark. The flames crackled cheerfully as they gathered around the table; Steven realised it felt like home, and these people were family. It would be so wrong of him to return safely to Colorado leaving them to suffer. He would encourage Mark to go home, but he would stay. They had rescued him, cared for him and treated him as one of their own. There were no excuses for him to flee, to find safety a universe away in the First National Bank of Idaho Springs. Mark would fight him on it, but he would stay and he would wield the hickory staff in their defence until this business was done.

  A short while later, Mark Jenkins knocked softly on the door.

  THE TRAPPER’S CABIN

  Santel Preskam cleared her throat, a raspy inhalation, and spat a mouthful of mucus into the underbrush. She stooped to make sure she was right; it was green. ‘Rutting demonshit,’ she cursed. She didn’t have time to be sick.

  ‘Rutting demonpiss river,’ she muttered, ‘if I wasn’t soaked to the bone every rutting day, I wouldn’t catch every rutting disease that floats by.’

  Two days. It would be two days before she could get back to the cabin, but once there she promised herself she would crawl into bed and remain under the covers until the Twinmoon. But for now she trudged back up the riverbank, two empty traps in tow and tossed them over her horse’s saddle. She had not pulled anything from that run all season; it was time to move the traps further upstream in hopes of snaring a beaver, a weksel, or perhaps a muskrat.

  She withdrew a plain green bottle from her saddlebag, pulled the cork and took a long draught of the dry Falkan wine – she might be an ill-educated trapper, but she did know her wines. Before moving south into the mountains, she’d worked in the scullery on a vineyard in the Central Falkan Plain. It was there she had vowed that even if she lived another two hundred Twinmoons, her life would be over too soon to ever dr
ink anything but good vintages. It cost her a great deal in pelts, but she justified the expense as a trade-off for all the clothing and accessories she would need if she lived in a city. ‘I need good wine more than I need clean clothes out here,’ Santel told her horse before enjoying another mouthful. ‘Could do with a decent crystal goblet though,’ she said with a croaky laugh.

  As the wine warmed her, she felt a little more confident she would make it back to the cabin despite the infection and fever. She stashed the bottle safely in her saddlebag and peered up through the woods.

  Something moved.

  Pulling a short forest bow from her shoulder, Santel nocked an arrow and stepped gingerly around her horse, hoping not to draw the attention of whatever it was that had passed between the trees up above. She squinted into the forest, then, seeing nothing, closed her eyes and listened. Nothing again. Exhaling in frustration, Santel whispered to her horse, ‘Whoring rutters! Now I’m seeing things.’

  She was about to replace the bow when she felt something cross the path behind her. ‘Lords and gods!’ she exclaimed, pulling the bowstring taut against her cheek.

  It moved again, this time to her right, and then again on the hill to her left. Santel held her breath. They were all around her. She was being hunted.

  Desperate for a clean shot, she tried shouting, ‘C’mon out here, let’s settle this like adults!’

  She detected movement again, behind the horse, and then on the hillside. Straining to catch a glimpse of whatever it was, Santel suddenly felt the hairs on the back of her neck rise.

  ‘Behind me!’ The words echoed in her mind, an instant too late. She felt that horrible, familiar sensation, the hollow certainty that had followed close on the heels of every careless, costly mistake she had ever made. She whirled about to face her attacker, screaming as she fired directly into its face. They were close about her now.

  As the sun glinted through the window, Mark woke and lifted his head from the pillow with a start. Where was he? Nervous insecurity gripped him and he searched the unfamiliar room for the opaque grey patch, until his anxiety relaxed its hold on his memory and the events of the past Twinmoon returned in a flood. The Blackstone Mountains, his brush with death, Gabriel O’Reilly, and finally, finding Steven: the scenes replayed themselves in his head.

  But here, safe, lying next to Brynne, it was easy to forget the hardships he and his friends had suffered. He was glad his memory, as if working independently, had softened the images for him this morning.

  Gently, so as not to wake her, Mark settled back down and contemplated Brynne’s sleeping form. She lay on her side, her back to him. The edge of her right shoulder and upper arm blocked the sun’s first rays; her flesh was rimmed with a brilliant gold border. Her beauty left him breathless.

  He reached out to pull her towards him; as she rolled over, the sunlight shone across her chest and stomach and momentarily blinded him. He ran his palm across the taut firmness of her abdomen, stroking her like a cat. Still asleep, she moved lazily under his hand; as he brushed away several adventuresome strands of hair that had journeyed boldly across her shoulders and now obscured her breasts she sighed softly and, eyes still closed, reached out for him. His arousal was almost instantaneous; as her gentle, clever fingers teased him harder than he had ever thought possible, he bent and kissed the indentation at the base of her neck, running his tongue across her soft skin.

  Brynne opened her eyes a slit and smiled up at him. ‘Waiting for permission?’ she whispered, tracing the hard curves of his buttocks. ‘It’s a little late for that, I think.’ She pulled him down and kissed him tenderly. Mark lost himself in her softness and moistness and an almost lazy coming together that exploded into hard, fast emotion that overwhelmed him.

  That same emotion had been almost as much a surprise as their passion the previous night. He blinked in an effort to adjust to the sudden brightness as the sun poured into the room. Brynne, smiling like a well-satisfied cat, rolled onto her stomach, pulled the wool blanket over them both and drifted back into slumber.

  Last night their passion had been unchecked, their embrace powerful, ardent, fierce in its urgency. Shrouded in darkness, skin on skin, legs lost among legs and fingers entwined as if they would never again be free, they had clung and clawed and come together, a tumultuous wellspring of feelings in the knowledge that they had nearly died among the Blackstone peaks, relief that they had found each other, and fear for the morning, when they would once again have to face the evil that was threatening both their worlds.

  Mark had not believed they would ever feel as much again as they had last night, but in the sunlit sensuality of morning, he found that he had underestimated both of them. Last night was not just frantic sex to forget the days and weeks of fear, or to celebrate their survival: it was far more than that.

  Now he smiled to himself, because he knew he was falling in love with this woman – had fallen, already. He smiled, because he had held her tightly, had made love with her furiously, here in this bed, had fallen asleep by her side and awakened to find her still there.

  Brynne’s reaction to Mark’s sudden appearance had been suitably dramatic: she had leaped up from the floor where she had been sharpening her hunting knife against a whetstone. She pushed the others aside and flew into his arms, alternatively crying against his neck and gazing deeply into his eyes, as if to ensure it really was him, and to ward against the possibility that he might vanish from the room and leave her alone again. In her enthusiasm, Brynne had forgotten to drop the knife; Mark had briefly worried that she might cut off one of his ears, or even accidentally stab him in the back. Now, watching her lush brown tresses fall across her cheek, Mark whispered, ‘That’s my girlfriend, my beautiful, sexy, knife-wielding revolutionary girlfriend.’

  He closed his eyes and revelled as long as he could in the moment before the reality of their predicament crept into bed with him. With Steven injured and Sallax in his peculiar state, how were they going to get the small company to Orindale?

  They had talked long into the night, discussing options. Mark agreed that Lahp’s plan to build a raft and float the rest of the way was the most viable suggestion so far. There was no way Steven could walk; he couldn’t yet manage more than a few paces at a time – and the rest of them were not much healthier. A few days’ rest here was what they needed first off. It would do them all good, and it would give him and Lahp a chance to construct a decent-sized raft.

  Thinking back on what he’d been though, Mark found himself remembering Idaho Springs. This morning he was especially missing the steaming-hot coffee served up by the Springs Café. Coffee. It was high time someone introduced the coffee bean to Eldarn.

  Moving softly, trying not to wake Brynne, he slid out of bed and padded over to the washbasin near the window. The clear river water was freezing; as he splashed his face he tried not to cry out. At least he was now fully awake.

  Mark hadn’t mentioned Gabriel O’Reilly’s warning last night, that one of them was a traitor. Sallax. It had to be, although it didn’t seem feasible. His condition had improved since Mark last saw him: Sallax was beginning to act more like the determined partisan he and Steven had first met back in Estrad. He once again spoke in confident tones, certain of their eventual victory over Prince Malagon. But there was undoubtedly something missing; he had changed – though Mark couldn’t pinpoint what had altered. When talking with the others, Sallax exhibited his old familiar strength, but when he sat by himself, his countenance changed. Mark noticed the difference as Sallax sat near the fire: his face was that of one who had lost hope.

  The wraith said he had temporarily weakened the Ronan’s convictions, but Mark didn’t know quite what the spirit meant. Now he cast about inside his mind for the banker’s ghost. Looking back at Brynne, lying naked beneath the blankets, he really hoped Gabriel was elsewhere this morning. After a moment’s concentration, he was convinced the spirit had not returned – Mark hadn’t felt him since the previous evening. Ju
st moments after entering the cabin, he felt the ghost break their connection, calling out in a hoarse whisper before disappearing, ‘I have failed.’

  Failed at what? Mark thought back, but Gabriel O’Reilly was already gone and his friends were pulling him into the welcome warmth. There was a lot of news to exchange, including Gilmour’s death. Mark could see Garec felt responsible; his eyes had filled with tears when he talked of organising Gilmour’s funeral pyre. Mark finally understood the smoke over the mountains.

  Now, watching the sun creep slowly across Brynne’s blanket-wrapped body, Mark pulled his filthy red sweater over his bare torso and felt it hang on him like a dead sail on a wooden spar. He had lost weight. They all had. Steven looked worst of all. They had talked about Steven’s battle with the grettan – there was something impossible. Although Mark was getting used to believing in a dozen impossible things before breakfast, this was a bit harder: how the hell could Steven have killed the beast after losing consciousness? Lahp insisted that he had not come upon the scene until after Steven had torn the grettan apart. A powerful force must have intervened on his friend’s behalf – maybe the curious wooden staff, working of its own volition to save his life? That possibility was unfathomable too. Mark laced up his boots and left the bedroom.

  Except for Lahp, who was already gone, no one else was awake. Mark poured a full skin of water into a cast-iron pot. If he couldn’t have a triple espresso, heavily sugared, he would drink an entire pot of Eldarni tecan by himself. Using some of the dry kindling near the fireplace he coaxed a small flame, added a log or two and began heating the water.