***
Dawn came quickly. One would think that every living creature within ten leagues of their camp slept very well. Birds were singing, insects were constantly chirping, and several small squirrel-type creatures appeared to be playing a very noisy game of tag.
The soldiers were all up and had their gear stowed before Sarah could even poke her head out of their tent. Damn, these guys were good!
Yawning, and stretching her back at the same time, she left the tent as quietly as possible. She knew her husband hadn’t slept well. He had tossed and turned , moving about restlessly for most the night. He was finally asleep, so she let him be. No sooner had she stepped around her tent to see what everyone else was up to when she was accosted by one of the soldiers.
“So what have ye got for us today, Lady Sarah?” the soldier eagerly asked.
“Well, I don’t know. Let’s find out. You know, I’m sorry, I don’t remember your name. Was it Kern?”
The soldier nodded.
“Kern, will you help me? That pack is heavy. When it appears in my hands, grab it, will you?”
Eager to help one of the famous Nohrin, the soldier tensed, waiting to snatch the pack the instant it appeared. Holding out her arms, Sarah closed her eyes, picturing the bed in their quarters back at the castle. There, on the bed, was the pack. I want that pack to move from there to here, Sarah ordered. The pack appeared in her arms. Even before the weight could register or her back could file a complaint, Kern had leaned forward to snatch the heavy bag from Sarah’s outstretched arms. She blinked. Wow, he’s good!
Like a pack of bloodhounds converging on their prey, the soldiers materialized next to their companion, eager for their share. Kern became her assistant from that day forward, always eager to help with whatever she required.
As Kern was passing out the individual packages of food, he pulled out the final bundle and handed it to Rhenyon. The captain took his portion and started to walk away when he suddenly turned back.
“Is there anything else in there? Perhaps a message?”
Kern opened the mouth of the pack as far as it would go, leaning forward to get a better look. Sure enough, the message was there, sitting on the bottom. He handed it to Rhenyon, who opened it, reading the handwritten message in the neat scrawl of the king.
Desperately curious, but not wanting to appear too nosy, Pheron fidgeted from one leg to the other, a fact not lost on his attentive captain. How often have they been able to keep in frequent contact like this? Even the fastest methods of communication, by trained familiar, or by jhorun, could easily take several hours, maybe even a half day. He fidgeted again.
Having long completed reading the message, Rhenyon chose to read it again. Slowly. He kept no secrets from his men, and he wasn’t about to start now. However, having seen examples of his lieutenant’s impatience, he decided to read as slowly as possible. Nodding sagely, as though he was now privy to the darkest secrets known to men, Rhenyon finally straightened, tossing the message into the hearth. There, that’s what he had been waiting for. His lieutenant had actually given a small jerk, as though he was going to go after it.
“Wizards be damned, lieutenant. Ye want to read it? Fine.” He leaned over into the hearth to snatch the crumpled paper out before it caught fire. Smoothing it out, he turned it around so everyone could read it.
Excellent. Keep us posted as to your progress.
“Profound, no?”
Pheron snorted with disgust.
Kahvel arrived with a bone-jarring thud as he landed in the glade. The impact of his landing was so great that the entire camp shook, with several tents coming close to being uprooted from the ground.
With a mischievous smile, Rhenyon turned to their enormous companion.
“Ye call that a quiet approach, dragon?”
The supple neck twisted, two reptilian eyes fixing on those of the captain.
“I chose to land in this manner,” the dragon explained. “Not everyone in this camp appears to be awake. Perhaps they are now.” Kahvel extended his wings, stretching them out to their fullest potential, before folding them flat against his back.
“Yeah, roger that,” Steve grumbled, coming out of his tent. “You scared the crap out of me.” He eyed the dragon with mild distaste. Any creature that was an early riser, be it human or otherwise, had some serious medical condition that should be treated. Immediately.
Kahvel leaned down low, meeting Steve as close to his eye level as he could. “Ye appear to be a bright ray of sunshine this morning.”
Several soldiers snickered. Steve grunted. Sleepily, he looked around, judging the activity level of the camp, which was being dismantled efficiently right before his eyes. Crap. No time to relax for a bit. Sarah came up to him and gave him a quick kiss.
“Good morning. I was trying to let you sleep. Sorry.”
“That’s okay, it’s time to be moving on. What’s for breakfast?”
While Steve was digging through his parcel of food, Sarah gently nudged his elbow, gesturing at the hearth. He glanced over.
The fire had been banked for the night, but still had managed to reduce itself to just mere coals. Its primary use completed, no one had bothered to rekindle it. Darius was unsuccessfully trying to coax the fire back to life. He was desperate for a hot cup of tea. The art of fire-making had always eluded him, he thought with disgust. He hastily reassembled his tinder kit and shoved it angrily back into his pack. He gripped the small iron kettle, ready to upend the contents into the fire when he felt the heat generating from it. What was this? Curious, he flipped open the lid to look inside. The liquid was just now coming to a boil. His tea was steeping beautifully, assailing his nostrils with the aromatic scents of herbs and spices. It was then that his eyes found Steve’s. The Nohrin grinned at him and gave a small nod of his head before he walked off to help his wife disassemble their tent.
As everyone gathered once more in the clearing, about to resume their trek through the forest, the dragon’s deep voice sounded.
“Proceed northwest. Yer destination lies roughly twenty leagues from here, as the dragon flies,” Kahvel instructed. “There ye will find a clearing a little smaller than this one. I will meet ye there just before sunset.”
“How do you know it’s there?” Steve asked. “Do you really know this forest that well?”
“In actuality, no,” the dragon confessed. “But that is where I settled last night. I departed just before sunrise.”
The downdraft from the dragon’s wings blasted them all to the ground yet again.
“Confounded dragon,” Rhenyon muttered darkly, rising to his feet. “He did that on purpose. I swear it.”
True to his word, the dragon was waiting for them as they stumbled wearily into the small clearing. Travelling twenty leagues in a day was tiring enough, but complicating matters was the amount of debris strewn about the forest floor as well as the lack of a path to follow. And, of course, they were journeying uphill.
“You people seriously need to invent cars,” Steve panted, struggling to catch his breath while doing his best to ignore the painful stitch in his side.
The closest soldier glanced over. He had hardly broken a sweat.
“Kahrs, sir Steve?” Rhein asked, casting his jhorun about for a familiar. “What is that?”
“Let’s just call them horseless carts.”
“What is so special about a cart without a horse?”
“The cart can still move around,” Steve clarified. “Without the horse.”
Rhein’s jaw dropped open. “No horses?” The soldier thought about that for a moment. “Then what pulls the cart around?”
Steve grinned. “Modern technology. As soon as you discover how to do it, you’ll love it. Trust me.”
Wearily, Sarah sank to the grass-covered ground and stretched her back. As she took in the lush forest meadow she was sitting in, s
he asked herself yet again why she insisted on carrying a portion of their supplies in a smaller pack. She looked over at her husband, who had shrugged off the large pack he had been carrying. Hadn’t he insisted on carrying everything himself? Hadn’t he put up a fight about letting her borrow the smaller pack from one of the soldiers? But she had been adamant about pulling her own weight on this expedition, and damn it, she was going to do just that. Sore back be damned. Glancing up to see what everyone else was doing, she saw that most had already erected their tents and were preparing to start a fire. No, she corrected, as she watched Pheron dump armfuls of firewood into the large stone ring he had assembled. They were getting the fire ready for their human firestarter.
After providing everyone with their evening meal, and Rhenyon had written up his nightly progress report, Sarah finally sat down next to her husband by the entrance to their tent.
“Long day, huh?” he commented, eyeing his wife. “How’re you holding up?”
“I’m sore,” Sarah admitted.
“Me, too. I don’t think I’ve ever walked this much in my entire life.”
“It must be a truly alien culture indeed,” the familiar voice of the dragon rumbled, “to live in a society where one does not use their own faculties as the main method of locomotion.”
Without saying a word, husband and wife looked at each other. As one, they stood up and walked around to the rear of their tent. The dragon had approached from behind and was now resting on the ground, front forelegs actually crossed, as it studied the two approaching humans.
“Okay,” Sarah started, wondering how to best phrase her response. “I need you to visualize something, Kahvel. Imagine you live in a society where there are so many people living so close together that there isn’t enough room for them unless they build upwards.”
“The domiciles that humans typically live in? Not enough room for every human to have their own?”
“Right. You take one human’s house, and then on top of that, you build another, and then another, and so on. Now imagine a very big, very tall structure whose sole purpose was to provide shelter for hundreds of humans.”
The dragon was silent as it contemplated this.
“Now, once you can imagine a structure such as that, it shouldn’t be too difficult to imagine hundreds of such structures, all providing a specialized service, whether its shelter, food, entertainment, and so forth. Are you with me so far?”
The dragon silently nodded.
“My world has many such communities. These communities are so well structured and organized that hundreds of thousands of people can all live fairly close to one another.”
Content to listen to his wife discuss aspects of their society with the dragon, Steve sat down companionably next to Kahvel, who paid him no notice.
“If every one of these humans,” Sarah continued, “each chose to have their own horse for transportation purposes, then there wouldn’t be room for all of them, would there? So there are community services in place that facilitate the transportation of large numbers of humans from one point to the other.”
“And ye reside in an area such as ye describe?” the dragon asked.
“Well, no,” Sarah confessed, “our city isn’t that large. But the same concept goes. We have our own vehicle to get us to where we have to go. And when we go on really long journeys, such as this, it is necessary for us to use these vehicles lest the journey take many times longer than necessary.”
“You believe this journey is taking too long?”
“Not necessarily,” Sarah said quickly. “The point I’m trying to make is that the people in my world are unused to walking long distances because there are alternatives in place so you don’t have to walk that far.”
“Strange world indeed,” Kahvel commented, “where humans would choose not to use their own appendages to move them about.”
“I wish I could show you some pictures, Kahvel,” Sarah said. “You could see for yourself what I mean. Then you could see these structures are even taller than these trees. By many, many times.”
Kahvel angled his head up to note the distance to the far-off treetops. “Impressive,” the dragon growled. “I do believe I would like to see that for my own eyes. The images you describe are difficult to visualize. I will consider what ye have told me, Sarah.”
The dragon moved off, choosing a location near the far edge of the meadow to curl up. Clamping the tip of his tail firmly in his teeth, his golden eyes closed.
Steve stared at the still form of the dragon. “Is he biting his own tail?”
“Sure looks like it, doesn’t it?”
“Why’s he doing that?”
“How would I know that?” Sarah playfully pushed him towards the sleeping dragon. “You want to know, you go wake him up and ask him.”
“Thanks, I’m good.”
They settled into a comfortable routine, with the soldiers leading the procession, and Steve and Sarah bringing up the rear. Sometimes the dragon accompanied them and other times he gave directions and met them at an agreed upon rendezvous point. Sarah kept everyone well fed and in continuous contact with the castle.
She is turning out to be more useful than I am, Steve glumly thought to himself. There had to be something else he could do to be helpful. However, every time he offered his assistance to Rhenyon or one of the soldiers, he was politely refused.
“Best to not get in the way,” Sarah had told him. She was starting to detect traces of irritation from her husband, but there simply wasn’t anything to be done. The soldiers definitely had the routine down pat, she mused. Two always detached themselves from the group to scout around the area, looking for any signs of danger. Recon, Sarah reminded herself. That’s what Rhenyon called it. While the two soldiers scouted, er, recon’ed, uh, investigated the surroundings, two more soldiers unpacked the gear and setup tents. The fifth collected wood to make the fire. Well, collected wood so that her husband could start the fire.
The Prophecy Page 23
