A Voyager Without Magic

by Guy Antibes

  Sam walked back into Banna’s room and found a handkerchief in her purse that he stuffed in his pocket. He strapped on his sword and wand, made sure he had a golden tip secure in his waistband, and grabbed his notebook. He found Ilsur talking to three stableboys, the same age as Sam.

  “They wrapped Miss Plunk in one of their pollen robes and rode to the east, into the heart of nomad territory.”

  “How many nomads?” Sam asked.

  “Eight to ten. It was dark when they rushed through the stableyard. The nomads didn’t keep their mounts here but at hitching posts around the corner.”

  Sam grabbed a lantern and ran around to the hitching posts. It looked like the nomads had arrived together, since there was a large gap between the horses. He looked down at the ground with his spectacles on and with them off. Since it was dark, the light hampered his search, but he wanted to see if he could see any more colored pollen.

  Towards the far side, Sam spotted a little pile of the same kind of stuff. Half of it was ground into the dirt by a horse’s hoof print. It was as if Banna had a fistful of pollen and let it drift into a pile at her feet. He picked a few strands up, but it crinkled and faded into nothingness at his touch. Sam didn’t have any tweezers, so Ilsur would have to keep the samples.

  He noticed a few unique hoof prints. One horse had a cracked shoe, another horse had thrown one of its shoes, and yet another had one end of the shoe missing. From Sam’s standpoint, they could track the horses, but he had an even better way of finding Banna. Emmy stood, panting, watching Sam investigate.

  Commander Ilsur caught up to Sam. “What did you find?

  Sam ripped a page from his notebook. “I’d like you to pick up some pollen that Banna Plunk left. This is like the lump that I found in her room when she was captured, and here is some more. I can’t touch it, or the pollen is ruined. If you would put it in here for reference.”

  “This is even harder to see than the pollen upstairs,” Ilsur said.

  He offered the sample to Sam, but Sam had to reject it. “I am pollen adverse. If I put it in my pocket…”

  Ilsur nodded. “It is hard to get used to a person who can’t touch pollen,” he grinned, “but I’ll do my best. There are horses in the stable, and my men have stripped the kitchen of provisions.”

  At this time of night, the trail the nomads left was easy to follow. When dawn broke, and Sam didn’t need a lantern, he stopped the pursuit.

  “Time to check the prints, and time to put Emmy to work,” Sam said dismounting. Emmy nuzzled him as Sam examined the hoof prints ahead. He checked to make sure all three hoof prints were still in the group. He pulled Banna’s handkerchief out of his bag and put it to Emmy’s nose. “Find Banna,” Sam said in Vaarekian.

  Emmy sniffed around the road and took off toward the southeast. Sam hurried to re-mount as they had to push their horses to catch up with the dog. On they rode until Emmy stopped at a junction. Two dirt tracks shot off on either side. Emmy sniffed for a bit. Sam dismounted and tried to read the tracks going forward and to either side. The nomads split into two groups. One headed along their current trajectory, and another group turned left.

  He went down on his hands and knees and identified the three horses. Two were with the group that went straight, and the horse with the shoeless hoof had taken the track. Sam was about to suggest they split when he spotted another tuft of multi-colored pollen stuck in a small bush.

  “This way,” Sam said. He looked up at the mounted Commander Ilsur. “Could you let Emmy sniff this sample? I don’t know if dogs can detect pollen, but let us give it a try.”

  The commander let Emmy smell the sample. Sam pulled out Banna’s handkerchief and gave her another whiff of that. Emmy, now fortified with more scent took off down the track. Sam scrambled to his mount, and off they went.

  Commander Ilsur called a halt half-an-hour later. “Our horses need to rest, and we need to eat,” he said as he gathered his men around and pulled out a map. “There is a spring not far from here.”

  “If we need to stop, then the nomads do, too,” Sam said. “I can proceed with Emmy and see if they are up ahead while you walk your horses.”

  Sam took off at a run with Emmy slightly ahead of him. Small hills and gullies marked the landscape, making Sam think he had a chance to sneak up on anyone at the spring. Sam spotted the tops of a copse of trees not far ahead. That could be the stopping place.

  “Off the road, Emmy,” Sam said, motioning Emmy when she turned her head at his instruction. She didn’t bark as she usually did and followed him. “They might be looking for us to charge them,” he said, but then he smiled. Emmy responded especially well to Vaarekian commands, but she probably had no clue what Sam had said.

  A whiff of smoke tickled Sam’s nostrils. He was tempted to turn around and warn Commander Ilsur, but he decided to inch ahead and see how the nomads had treated Banna. She might not even be alive.

  He stopped at the top of one of the small hills. It had a view directly into a clearing, bordering on an explosion of lush foliage. The spring had been located, along with the nomads. At first glance, Sam couldn’t spot Banna, but then he saw a lump of brown on the dirt. He removed his spectacles and could see Banna beneath. Her eyes were open. She appeared alive, at least.

  He counted three nomads, but there were five horses tied up, and he had counted that many mounts in the group that had split off. That meant two were sentries, and just as he thought that, one of them appeared in the clearing, making excited noises. Even if Sam could hear clearly, he still wouldn’t have been able to understand them, as they chattered in Wollian or a language that sounded similar.

  The nomads gathered weapons and left a single person behind to guard their prisoner. They left their horses, but Sam was concerned about the bows and arrows the nomads took with them.

  Sam considered cutting them off but decided he would attempt to take Banna, since the nomads were outnumbered seven to four. He ran just below the low ridgeline for a hundred paces and then used the copse as cover between the nomad and him.

  He slid through the trees. Emmy’s dark gray coat made it hard for him to pick her out just a few paces to his side. He stood for a moment at the edge of the copse and looked at the back of Banna’s captor.

  He took a step closer, and Emmy followed him, looking at him with inquisitive eyes. Sam had no idea how to coordinate his attack with Emmy, but he outnumbered the nomad by a wide margin with Emmy at his side.

  He had reached midway across the clearing towards Banna, when the nomad turned around. The person yelled at Sam and pulled out a sword.

  Sam did the same. His blade flashed blue in the sunlight. The nomad stopped cold and backed up and began to run away, but that only put Emmy into action. She made a few liquid strides and caught up to the nomad, biting into the thick pollen-made robe, pulling the nomad to the ground.

  The nomad screamed like a woman, so that was why she hadn’t accompanied the others. Sam ran up and tossed her sword away, as Emmy stood over the woman, growling.

  His next thought was for Banna. He grabbed his wand and screwed on the gold tip and got to work on the thick felt-like blanket binding Banna far more securely than any rope. The material melted like a hot knife through butter as Sam ran it along the edge of the material, revealing a hard pollen shell beneath.

  He removed the nomad material from Banna’s face and saw that either Banna or the nomads had built a cocoon of pollen armor.

  “It is me,” Sam said.

  “Then get the armor off. There are a lot of things I can do, but I can’t work pollen trussed up like this, especially with the pollen shell I made to protect me.”

  Sam smiled at her temper. She didn’t seem to be in any kind of shock. Removing her armor took a bit longer since it was denser. Finally, he succeeded. Banna had Sam help her stand up.

  “Can you bind the female nomad?” Sam asked.

  “Gladly.” She spun a hood of pollen over the woman’s head and put pollen hand
cuffs on her hands and manacles on her feet, and then looked at the horses. “I’ll do more than that.” She hobbled to the mounts and did something to them while Sam still watched over the guard.

  “Let’s find a place to watch,” Banna said with half a smile. She looked back at Sam. “Why did you come to save me? After all I have done, I would have expected you to just let the nomads take me. You could have even negotiated with Addia Darter for a portion of my gold.”

  Sam noticed the smile was off her face. The woman was serious.

  “I didn’t do it for the same reason I could have had you arrested in Carolank, but didn’t. We have a truce. You have things yet to teach me, and I would never consider taking the gold, under any circumstances,” Sam said. “We are allies until we reach Tolloy. Anyway, Commander Ilsur depends on us working together to solve the mystery of the missing weapons.”

  Banna stared hard at Sam. “You are either the best person in the world or the most naïve.”

  “Actually, I’m not the best person in the world, but I will gladly accept the title of naïve, since I have done and will do lots of naïve things in times to come.” He looked over the camp. “We need to find some cover.”

  Sam had been very uncomfortable during that conversation and hoped he wouldn’t have to repeat it during the voyage. He really didn’t know why he had immediately worked to save her, but Sam didn’t question his motives. He knew his first instincts were the right ones in the current situation.

  They retreated to the brow of the hill that Sam had used as an observation post before. They had just settled down when three of the four nomads ran into the clearing. They carried the woman to the horses and laid her on a saddle and mounted, leaving their supplies in the camp.

  Commander Ilsur rode into the clearing.

  A loud bang was followed by more noises, making Banna laugh.

  “Time to see what happened to our friends,” Banna said, as she confidently strode down the hill into camp.

  The constables headed into the copse, while Sam ran towards the sounds.

  Nomads littered the trail. Banna’s guard was thrown on top of a bush. All of them groaned in pain. The horses had just stopped a hundred paces or more up the road.

  “What happened?” Commander Ilsur said as Sam arrived.

  “They left Banna with a female guard. Emmy and I took care of her. She’s the one covering the bush. The others left to set an ambush.”

  “Two constables are injured back on the road. Arrows.” Ilsur shook his head.

  “We ran down one of the nomads and took care of him. It looks like Banna got her revenge.”

  Sam looked at the moaning erstwhile captors.

  “Take them to Rakwall. Their companions will pick them up and take them away,” Ilsur told his men in Toraltian.

  “Won’t they get prosecuted?” Sam asked.

  “That isn’t how things work in Wollia. Since Miss Plunk wasn’t killed, it is counted as a faction issue. We keep track of such things in our country. The nomads will accompany us to our destination.”

  “But what of the other nomads? Won’t they try to retrieve their friends?”

  Ilsur shook his head. “Not now. If they did, the soldiers in Rakwall would go to the nearest nomad village and lay waste to it. No one wants that,” he shrugged, “but it happens.”

  To confirm what the commander had just said, Sam observed the constables tending to the nomads’ wounds.

  “What about the injured constables and the dead nomad?” Sam asked.

  “Part of the game, young man.”

  Sam didn’t especially want to play this game. “Could they have killed Banna?”

  Commander Ilsur nodded. “With impunity, since she is a foreigner.”

  “But you said—”

  “In Port Hassin, you are protected, but no one is out here.”

  Sam felt he had been lied to, but he couldn’t do anything about it.

  “We still need to rest our horses. Rakwall is closer than the village where we first stopped. I’ll send two constables to gather our things and take them to the Armory.”

  The nomads were bound with pollen handcuffs and a huge pollen block on one foot to impair running away. Sam could see the benefit of an awkward block on one foot, and at first glance, they seemed to be better than leg-irons.

  Banna Plunk’s face looked grim and at times grimmer. Her shock had turned to anger. Perhaps that was how she dealt with defeat, and Sam had defeated her often enough. This was the first time he had saved the woman, if he didn’t count when he got her out of the harbormaster’s office after he found out there was an active warrant to arrest her.

  The constables were having a hard time removing the covering Banna had placed on the female nomad. Sam used his wand to remove the helmet and the bindings.

  “That is how you freed Miss Plunk?” Ilsur said after observing Sam at work.

  “It is, but the pollen bindings Banna made are much denser.”

  Banna grunted after Sam made his remark. He turned to her, and she looked peeved. He would have to withstand her withering glares for a long last leg of his voyage.

  The nomads began talking to each other and pointing at Sam.

  Commander Ilsur looked at them and then turned to Sam. “Your Lashak sword scared them. Draw it and see how the nomads react.”

  Sam drew his blade and waved it at the nomads. The all scurried back a few paces. He sheathed it.

  “Why are they afraid?”

  “If you had brandished it in a fight with them, you would likely be the target of their arrows. Lashakans are legendary for their fierceness.”

  “But I’m not a Lashakan,” Sam said.

  “To them, whoever holds a Lashakan sword is,” Ilsur said. “Desmon said you do know how to use it.”

  “Well enough, for a fifteen-year-old.”

  “Out here in nomad lands you better practice to live up to the sword’s reputation. There are nomad chieftains who would be pressed to fight you, so they could gain honor fighting a Lashak warrior.”

  Sam laughed. “I’ll never meet a Lashakan.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  ~

  B anna hadn’t said much about her ordeal by the time they rode under the main gate of the Rakwall Armory. The armory, it seems, was a part of a large regional fort holding the Potentate’s army, ready to do battle with organized nomad raids.

  “The armory was put out here to discourage city nobles from seizing weapons in the event of an uprising,” Ilsur said to Banna and Sam as they stopped their horses. “History has taught the Potentate that nobles have done exactly that.”

  An officer strutted out of a pale green building with a yellow tile roof. “Ilsur…” Sam didn’t understand the rest of what the man said.

  The Port Hassin commander said something to the officer, who then looked at Sam and Banna. “Is Vaarekian acceptable?”

  Sam guessed that both men knew the languages of the Holding and Polistian continents. “It is,” Sam said.

  “You can see the armory tomorrow,” the officer said. “I am sure you wish to refresh yourselves.”

  “I’d rather see it now,” Sam said. “Evidence can be obliterated if left alone and unobserved.”

  The officer looked at Ilsur and said something in Wollian. Sam thought it rude, but if he was the fort commanding officer, it made little sense to complain. Banna looked as sour as she had when they had left the spring.

  “Very well. Your belongings arrived not long before you did. They will be in your rooms when we return from the armory.”

  They walked through the fort and under a fortified gate to the armory. As Sam looked around inside, he noted that the armory was a walled building within the fort’s walls. He didn’t see any signs of a break-in until they walked into the main storage part of the building. Rubble was still strewn on the floor, but what shocked Sam was looking out through a blasted hole in both walls going out the back. He immediately thought of Banna’s daring theft of the Pr
ecious Metals Exchange.

  He looked over at Banna, who had shaken off her peeved look and had become intensely interested in the destruction. She walked off inspecting the damage.

  “Has much of the room has been disturbed?” Sam asked.

  The fort commander shook his head. “None of it. There are still broken weapons under the rubble.”

  He looked at the hole. “Wards.”

  “Unique to this theft. We don’t use them, the nomads don’t use them, the Lashakans don’t use them,” Ilsur said.

  “Until now,” Sam said. He joined Banna inspecting the holes. “The Wollians don’t use explosive wards.”

  “These are Vaarekian,” she said. “Layered like mine. I didn’t invent them, you know. I am very upset to see these here.”

  Sam looked down at the rubble for the sheen that gave a ward away, and stooped, wand in hand, to touch the ward with the iron tip. The explosion blew up a cloud of dust and peppered Sam with dust and rock fragments. He looked over at Banna. “Now I know what you mean by layers,” he said. “They make the blast worse?”

  “Much. The Toraltian army uses a thick double-layered ward that takes a while to create, while many-layered wards can be made in minutes by an expert, and this was done by one adept in Vaarekian wards,” Banna said. “Why would they attack this remote place?”

  The fort commander, joining them at the blasted wall, said, “The armory has six courses of brick, more than two feet thick, and the wall was blown apart as if it were paper.”

  “Not really paper,” Banna said. “These were powerful, deadly wards. They are very dangerous to place and even more dangerous to trigger. Sam has triggered more than a few simple ones. They were dangerous, weren’t they?” she said, looking at Sam.

  “Yes,” he said. “What do you think the purpose was?” Sam asked the fort commander.

  “To steal weapons, of course!” He replied sarcastically, which Sam didn’t appreciate, but he kept his own temper intact.

  “Do the nomads need weapons?”

  “They do. Most of what they fight with are pollen-made, no match for the steel weapons that were stolen.”