by Guy Antibes
“Suit yourself, but I want you out of here before the noon meal, then. You’ll get no refund!”
Unca laughed. “No problem, sir,” as he ran up the stairs to get the rest of his things. He didn’t even breathe hard when he got up to the top. He finished collecting his clothes. They were a bit tight in some places, but other than that, Unca could wear these all the way to his holding.
He collected his mount from the stable where the horse had been for a week and walked it through the town proper. He passed an armorer’s shop and walked in. He had arrived with magic and a longish knife for protection. Without his magic, he’d need more, if mercenaries were coming into Happly from the opposite direction. He had always been less than an indifferent swordsman, but any sword was better than none.
“I’m heading towards Gensler and will need an outfit of some kind. I only have this knife.”
The armorer shivered. “I don’t recommend leaving Happly with all of those cutthroats coming in from the west, but if you’ve a mind to leave, I can set you up. It’ll be dear. A gold and fistful of silvers.”
“It may wipe out my funds, sir, but I’m better off armed.”
The armorer nodded and then looked him up and down. “What do you fight best with?”
Unca had trained with the King’s Guard when much younger, but he hadn’t held a sword in twenty years, but he had fancied himself as a decent shot with a bow.
“Sword, bow and arrows and some leather armor, I suppose. I’ll be traveling on my own.”
“Fine. I’ll give you the best of what I’ve got laying around.” The man left Unca alone in the shop. He looked at the swords on display and found them to be inferior. He refused to pay good money for cheap weapons regardless of how rusty he might be with them. He might not be proficient with a sword, but Unca knew good steel when he saw it.
“Here you go. Take your pick.” The shopkeeper dumped an armful of weapons and leather armor on a long table.
Unca examined the gear. “Used.” One of the swords stood out. No weapons out in the shop were made like this one. It looked like an officer’s sword, but it had an unfamiliar shape. The blue cord-wrapped hilt showed quite a bit of wear, but it might still be serviceable. He examined the other items. “Acceptable. Used, but better than anything out here.”
“I’ve sold plenty of the junk to the mercenaries and would-be soldiers. You’ve got a more noble look about you. I figured I’d give you a chance with some of the better stuff. You’ve gotten the best I have. That sword is from Zarron; an officer’s sword, if my guess is correct. It’s made from good steel.”
Unca laid a gold and six silvers on the counter. “Will this do? I’ve got to buy some more supplies.” Which wasn’t true, but Unca always enjoyed a bit of a haggle, even with the bookseller.
“Enough. You take it and take care.”
Unca put on the leather breastplate and cuffs. They fit well enough. He put the studded leather helmet on his head and it didn’t fit. He probably looked like the rest of the mercenaries. Armies no longer fought with plate armor, but Unca wanted something that might turn a knife from a thief and he wasn’t in the army anyway.
The shopkeeper left and returned with a rusted steel helm. “There’s a leather liner that’s in better shape. Try it.”
He strapped the helm to his head and nodded, then unstrapped it. “I’ve got a waxed cloth sack I’ll use to tie it to my horse. I hope my hair doesn’t rust like this pot will in this wet weather.” Unca smiled and left the armorer.
He passed a closed shop that had recently cleaned windows and looked at his face. Unca had to stop himself from taking a step back. He recognized the face that looked back at him, but the last time he had seen that face was forty years ago, but without the beard. Still, when he tried a spell, nothing happened. The loss of magic dampened the exhilaration that his sudden youth brought. In a few hours, he had taken the fork that would lead him to southern Gensler. Unca sensed the loosening grip of winter as he went and wondered yet again how Sallia would accept his new appearance.
~~~
CHAPTER EIGHT
~
WILLOW RUSHED INTO THE HOUSE. Sallia didn’t like the alarm on her face.
“Now that winter is losing its grip, Duke Histron has hunting parties out again looking for you, Princess.”
The housekeeper hadn’t mentioned her title before and that alarmed Sallia as much as anything else.
“Can’t we stay here?”
Pacing the floor of the sitting room, Willow chewed on a fingernail before answering. “We can, but we’ll have to be prepared to leave at a moment’s notice. I’ll show you a passage in the cave that will take you to out into the forest. It’s a little longer to Sally’s Corners, but the trail doesn’t follow the cart path.”
“I can take care of myself. You’ve taught me so well. You should stay with Hal until the duke’s men search Unca’s house.”
“Hal won’t take me. After he heard about the duke’s men, he threw me out of his house. I can’t go back and I’m afraid he will reveal that you live here with us.”
“Then we will leave now and flee into Gensler.” Sallia didn’t present her plan as an option. She knew how to command and she hated to command Willow, but their lives depended on it. She thought of Unca’s puzzle pieces. The solution was simple. If she didn’t want to be caught in his house, she would leave his holding.
Willow could only nod.
They decided to lock up the house and take the back way even though no one pursued them. The melting snow made the cart path muddy and anyone would have been able to follow their footprints.
“We will burn all of my extra clothes. No one should know that I have stayed here.” Sallia didn’t like leaving the house and she regretted burning the clothes she had worn the night she fled from Foxhome.
Willow made her burn her first needlework attempts as well. “Any fool man will see that I didn’t do these, but you can leave your later ones.”
“I will leave a note for Unca,” Sallia said taking a pocket square of Unca’s and embroidered a green ‘G’ in the corner. She laid it on Unca’s reading table in the sitting room. She couldn’t risk any other note saying that she had fled to Gensler.
Both women made a last tour of the house the night before they left. Sallia’s eyes watered the entire time and she had to hold her emotions to keep from sniffling time to time. She heard Willow crying herself to sleep. Sallia wanted to but lifted up her chin as she heard the sobbing finally stop, replaced by Willow’s gentle snore. Where was Unca when she so desperately needed him?
The day dawned bright. The clutches of winter would soon leave the meadow and Sallia would miss seeing spring unfold. She sighed as they moved the hinged rock that took them out into the chill morning air.
“I’ll lead the way. I helped Unca make the trail years ago.” She took the lead and Sallia followed. Neither woman spoke for long time.
~
Rumors of Histron’s searchers had reached Sally’s Corners by the time Sallia and Willow took rooms at the Traveler’s Rest. They had been to the village enough times that all knew them. They stayed at the inn and kept their things prepared to flee at any time.
“I’m so nervous,” Willow said. “Soldiers could be on us in moments.”
Sallia had noticed that the woman had left her good humor somewhere on the trail into the village.
“I’m nervous, too, but perhaps we should head into Gensler.”
“I just can’t go there,” Willow said and took Sallia’s hand. “I’ve lived in the Red Kingdom all my life and I can’t leave Hal. He may be a rogue and his wife a shrew, but they are all I’ve got. I’m so sorry. I really wanted to help you.”
Willow nearly crushed Sallia’s hand in her grip. How could she take the woman away with her? The sentiment shocked Sallia. She had often entertained thoughts of running away from the castle, but her selfishness had always squashed such intentions. Should she stay in Sally’s Corners with Willo
w or find some way to live off the trails? She now knew the duke wouldn’t rest until he knew she died or until he killed her himself. The simplest solution presented itself again.
“I have to go. You can stay here.”
“Here. Take this money,” Willow said.
Sallia sat down with the woman while they split their funds up.
“We both have to live through this.” Sallia tried to keep her eyes dry. “I don’t know what happened to Unca, but we won’t be able to depend on him.”
~
After a fitful night’s sleep, Sallia left early the next morning with more food in her pack than anything else. On her way out of town, she overheard that the searchers had made their way to Chapel Vale and would soon arrive in Sally’s Corners. She hurried out of town and headed north. With a cobbled surface, she slipped a bit on the wet rocks but the muddy verges would have slowed her up even more.
She spent each night away from the road on bunched needles underneath the pine trees that became more common as the road twisted its way through the hills rising into Gensler. She even spent a night in an abandoned Gensleran border fort and chanced a little fire to keep her warm in the cold confines of the empty common room.
Days later she came to a dreary village called Five Mills. Sallia couldn’t go any further without a rest and she had just about run out of food. She passed a cottage with a sign out in front advertising room and board. She didn’t know what to do now that she had reached Gensler and thought that a week or two of rest would help her decide.
“Do you have a room available?” Sallia asked the older woman.
“Silver a week if you want the best room, seven coppers if you don’t.”
Sallia rummaged around in her purse and pulled out a silver. “I’ll take the best room if I can have a bath.”
The woman snatched the silver from her palm. “Bath’s once a week. You can have yours today. Consider using the waste water to wash them clothes,” she said looking at the disheveled state of Sallia’s apparel.
“May I come in? My name is Sally Holding.” She took her last name from the Unca’s house.
“Bertel Mills” the woman said and softened enough to nearly smile. “It will be nice to have another woman about for a change. How long will you be staying?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps a week or more. I’ve run away from home and need to decide what to do.”
Bertel looked at the silver. “Red Kingdom?” She reached for Sallia’s hair. “They might think you’re the escaped Princess, eh?”
“The search for that girl has upset my life,” Sallia said. “Now they have search teams looking for her. I didn’t want any part of it and now the master’s eye has begun to rove. I left while he was on a hunting trip.”
The landlady nodded. “Good timing. Spring is wrapping her arms about winter and men have the same kind of itch as the rest of the beasts.” She laughed. Sallia tried to join in.
“Come this way, little lamb,” the woman laughed some more as she led Sallia to the back of her cottage.
The cottage ended up being much larger than she thought.
“My husband, bless his soul, sired eight children on me. They’ve all gone and left me with this big cottage and a little set aside. I keep my little nest egg topped up with my boarders. There are three others here at present, all apprentices working at the mills. We’ve got a set of falls on the other side of the village that turns five mill wheels. It’s something to see, but the mist keeps the town damp except for a week or two when winter has frozen them all up. The next large village north is called Everwet, but Five Mills takes the prize for the most dreary village in Gensler. Even if we are the closer one to the border, most folks stay in Everwet. Those boys are gone from just after dawn to dusk. I don’t suppose they’ll bother you any. Mostly I leave food for them and don’t see ‘em myself. All I’m good for is a place for them to lay their heads at night.”
“I can help around the house, if that might help.”
“Maybe.” Bertel opened the door to a whitewashed room a little smaller than her bedroom at Unca’s house. “Here it is. Narn and I shared this room for most of our time together.” Bertel sighed. “Once he left, I took one of my girl’s rooms. I like it smaller. More comforting for me. I don’t suppose you understand.”
Sallia felt sorry for the woman. “I don’t suppose I entirely do. This will be lovely.”
“Put your things down and you can help me with your bath water.”
~
The next few days passed quietly. Sallia helped Bertel around the boarding house and as a result could take as many baths as she liked. She even helped with the cooking and felt proud of herself for doing so.
She returned from her walks into the village as damp as if she walked in a rainstorm. At the north side of town near the waterfalls, a perpetual drizzle washed out everything. The place smelled of mildew and she didn’t like it at all. Spring had forced some trees to leaf out and Sallia regretted not getting to watch the meadow come to life after winter.
After eleven days, Sallia had decided to move on to Crackledown. She felt her money would take her that far. She would reveal her identity to the duke and ask him for sanctuary. Even as close as Everwet was to the border, the people had no regard for Duke Histron and worried about an invasion if the Duke Jellas of Gensler didn’t fortify the border forts. She could tell him of her stay in the abandoned keep.
She had returned from buying a few food items that she could take north and had put them in her pack when men threw open the door to her room. They wore the colors of Duke Histron. As they took her out of the village, Bertel smiled at her and showed off a shiny gold piece. She looked back as she struggled with the men, but Bertel had disappeared from her life.
The men bound her and tossed her in a wagon with three other young women. All had blonde hair of various shades.
“Let me go!” Sallia yelled at the men as they mounted their horses and made their way into town.
“They’ll just beat you if you go on and on like that,” one of the girls said, her face streaked with tears.
“What are they doing?”
“They are sweeping the border for Princess Sallia. A man in Chapel Vale claimed she lived in the vicinity and the local guards decided to round everyone up from miles around. They’ll travel deeper into Gensler until a wizard from Foxhome catches up to do something to us to see if we are the princess,” another girl said.
“Then what?”
They all shrugged. “Go home, we hope. They haven’t tried to have their way with us. The Duke seems to have been very insistent about that, although we’ve been searched with a little too much enthusiasm.”
“I’ll say,” one of the girls said.
“Just hope it doesn’t rain.”
“In Five Mills, it never stops!” Sallia said.
She looked up into the sky. At least that didn’t seem to be a possibility in the very near future. The blue sky only clutched a few clouds. The weather was the least of her worries. At least Unca had taken the Bloodstone. Where could he have gone? Could the wizard have died or been killed in his travels? Perhaps he contracted a fever and his frail body had succumbed to the sickness. She sat in the back of the wagon, silent as they stopped and started on their way north in Five Mills. The guards threw another girl in the wagon on the other side of town.
The new girl looked mean and indignant. “The nerve of my father. The guards wave a gold piece under his nose and he sells his only daughter to them.” Her eyes narrowed as she slammed a fist into her hand. “I’ll get him when we’re released.” She looked around and lost a bit of her anger. “We are going to be released, aren’t we?”
Sallia found herself shrugging along with the other girls.
The guards stopped at dusk at another abandoned border fort. The guards gave them a chance to use the stinky privy and offered them a bit of bread and some cheap watered wine along with a blanket to lie down on and another blanket to keep them warm.
“I hope the magician shows up soon so we can get back to the Red Kingdom. We’re just lucky that the guy who really runs the Gensler is allied with the Duke.” The guard looked around at the common room. “Still, I’m looking forward to getting back home.”
The other men grunted and started bragging about their exploits. Sallia had heard enough of that kind of thing in her father’s court. The only difference was that the men in Foxhome were better dressed. Their comments alarmed her. Duke Jellas must not rule Gensler with a very tight hand. Someone was subverting his rule. She’d have something to tell him, if she could only escape.
Four days on the road brought them to the village of Everwet. The village was much drier than Five Mills and the only ‘wet’ came from mists generated from the river rapids that ran along one side of the village. It must have been the same river that Five Mills used to power their waterwheels. They had picked up another girl at a tiny hamlet along the way and found another in Everwet.
A guard in Histron’s colors rode up. “Wizard is half a day behind. He wants you to find an inn and he’ll take care of his part of the business there, tomorrow morning.”
The guards told the women to sleep in the wagon at a little clearing just outside of the village. Sallia didn’t want to spend another night sleeping with five other women, so she climbed down and slept underneath the wagon. Most of them would sob at some time during the night and that made Sallia try even harder to be brave. If the wizard discovered her, she would fight to the death. Sallia vowed not to give Histron the satisfaction of killing her.
She slept poorly on the ground and morning came all too soon. The guards yelled at them to get up and took them to an inn. It looked well-run, but the guards visibly intimidated the villagers. It appeared that Duke Jellas did, indeed, have no interest in protecting his southern border. They sat at a table and were given oatmeal for breakfast. Sallia ate as much as she could. She’d need the strength for her fight to the end. They waited until a bit before noon when they were given bread and water.
