“We’ll wait twenty minutes before we move out,” Godfrey nodded, releasing his own sigh of relief. “Follow the creek on the eastern side and come out onto the fields a bit further on. It’ll be slow going for a few hundred yards, but the track’s beyond that that’ll take us south of Ponder. I want to make Fishwaters by mid-afternoon so we can get a good few hours’ rest before heading out for Welshpool after dusk.”
“Rough going to start with,” Lester agreed, “but this old girl will manage…” With a sly grin, he then added: “…the horse’ll be alright, too…”
Godfrey had the good manners to turn his face away before an uncontrollable smirk spread across his face, and it was a good few seconds before Nev caught up with what the boy had actually said.
“Hey…!” She grumped softly, frowning and reaching out without even thinking to punch Lester gently on the shoulder in protest.
“Oh, no…! Touched by a witch…!” He mourned mockingly, all three of them a little euphoric now after their experience as the tension began to dissipate, leaving adrenalin behind. “I’ll wake up a toad…!”
“Now… with most folks, that’s not an improvement!” Godfrey joked in return, trying not to laugh too loudly as Nev fought to prevent a smile from crossing her own lips.
“…Toad’s too good for the likes of you…!” She pretend-pouted, making a show of crossing her arms in a huff but not really managing to show any conviction. “Maybe a slug instead… or a wriggly little worm…”
“There’s no fish alive that’d lower its colours enough to take him on a hook…” Godfrey declared with a chuckle, and they were all smiling now, happy to enjoy a moment or two of relief after a near-miss with danger.
“You are so mean to each other,” Nev observed with a shake of her head and a wry grin. “It’s ‘reassuring’ that boys are pretty much the same here as they are where I come from.”
“What… big, strapping, handsome lads there too, are they?” Godfrey asked jokingly, striking a ludicrous pose that was somehow intended to show off his muscles but to Nev looked more like he was painfully constipated. “Bet your man’s a fine-looking fella…” he added, carefully choosing his words. “…A lord o’ some kind no doubt, with plenty of acres and a brace o’ servants to look after ‘im…?”
“Oh… I – uh… I don’t…” Nev faltered then, completely flummoxed over what to say next and mortified to realise that her cheeks were suddenly burning red. So unexpected was the outwardly innocent statement that she completely missed the veiled interest behind it. “There’s… I mean…”
“What, you don’t have a fella…?” Lester asked in a surprised voice. “Surely a lass such as yourself has ‘em hammerin’ on yer family’s door, seekin’ yer hand in marriage…?” He threw a cheeky wink in Godfrey’s direction while Nev wasn’t looking: much as the statement had been mostly innocent, Lester knew his friend and mentor well enough to know that there was nevertheless at least a little interest behind it.
“Um… no… not exactly…” …or not at all, being honest… her mind added silently, for no one’s benefit.
“Mad bloody world you come from, then…” Lester shrugged as if it were the simplest of logic, and Nev was doubly dismayed to realise she’d begun to blush even harder as it became clear he’d just given a surprisingly subtle compliment. Godfrey said no more for his part, and was happy to close his eyes and lean back against the sideboard of the wagon with a faint, thoughtful smile on his face.
They’d set off again after perhaps half an hour, the first few hundred metres as rough and jarring as predicted as Lester carefully guided the mare across the open fields beyond the treeline at the creek (which turned out to be more like a string of elongated lagoons than a free-flowing waterway). They found a scrubby dirt track soon enough however, and the ride – although definitely not perfect – at least settled down a bit after that.
Nev again put out her power-bank and phone to charge, then tried to settle in as comfortably as she was able. Lester was happy to watch the road ahead, and he launched into song for his own entertainment, although his words were loud enough for Nev to hear. He was half-singing, half-reciting words that fitted somewhere between poetry and true song, and laying down on the bedroll behind the driver’s seat, she let her mind drift as she listened, surprised at the depth of feeling the boy gave those strange yet somehow familiar words.
No chance for me to act a wise man
Nor live a thief among the poor
No more the burden of a blind man
No more this heartless life of yore
Remind me now what came before
Remind me now what came before
Before those heartless days of yore
Ask not falsely for forgiveness
Or give those lies I’ve heard before
Ask me not for trust mistaken
Or hearts too broken to ignore
For lying near the broken barrel
Supping wine spilt on the floor
Here lies the husk of how you left me
The day you turned me from your door
Remind me now what came before
Before those heartless days of yore
You always knew how much I loved you
I still do now, just like before
Had I been there the day they took you
We might yet have those days of yore
Remind me now what came before
Before those heartless days of yore
“That was lovely…” she said after he’d finished, and this time it was Lester’s turn to redden slightly, having been so lost in the recital that he’d completely forgotten she was even there. “What’s it called…?”
“Uh… dunno, really… it’s an old song me ma used t’ sing when I was a little kid… all the oldies in my village know it. I think their parents sung it to them to in their day. Us kids just call it the ‘Remember Song’… dunno if there was ever a real name for it.”
“Well… it was very nice… although I think it must be a sad song…” Nev observed, thinking more about the few lyrics she could recall.
“Sad enough…” he shrugged. “Old Garry likes hearin’ that one. You’d think he’d hate it, with what happened to his family… but he reckons it makes him feel better to hear it. I dunno…” he repeated, shaking his head vaguely. “Life’s tough all ‘round… maybe singin’ about it makes the hard parts a little easier…”
“Maybe it makes people feel better to know there are others that have had sad experiences too… to know that someone else understands what they feel…” She suggested, thinking of something her father had once told her about why he liked listening to Pink Floyd’s The Wall so much.
“Never thought o’ that…” Lester conceded, smiling as if they’d just shared a bonding moment – which they pretty much had “…but I guess that sounds fair enough.”
“Know any others?” She asked, happy to spend the passing hours listening to anything other than whispering winds and birdsong.
“Heaps…” he declared, eager to show off now he had an appreciative audience.
“Can you sing some more?” She asked eagerly, happy for something to relieve the boredom as she took up the iPhone and activated the camera.
Clearing his throat, he began another song in a similar vein and Nev lay back on the bedroll, holding up the phone and taking it all in. The boy’s voice was quite soothing when he sang, and it wasn’t long before she’d fallen asleep in spite of the bumpiness of the road, the phone lying by her side as she dreamed of home and strangely-familiar songs.
The rest of the journey to Fishwaters was almost as long and far less eventful. It was well into the afternoon – after three according to Nev’s phone – as they arrived at another small farm, this one on the outskirts of a smallish village. They’d quickly unhitched the mare and set both horses roaming free in a small field while all three of them, with help from a farmer and his teenage son, pushed the wagon inside a far larger barn than th
e one they’d stayed in the night before.
The house itself was almost identical in construction to one they’d seen yesterday and from a distance of a kilometre or so, it seemed that the entire village was comprised of similar dwellings with just one larger structure rising above rooftops at what appeared to be the centre of town. There was no symbol or icon she could see from that distance, but the tall, angular steeple was enough to make it obvious she was looking at a church or similar place of worship.
“Best stay in here to be safe…” Godfrey suggested, standing beside her at the barn’s open doorway as she looked out across the village. “We’re closer to the main road here than in Crookhaven and it’d be bad news for any passing travellers to catch sight of an unknown woman out and about without a blindfold.”
“This Keepsake thing again,” she huffed in exasperation, turning and stomping back inside as he nodded sympathetically.
“It’s a rum gig,” he shrugged, “but that’s of no matter if someone makes a report. That wouldn’t go badly just for us either: there’s Andrews and his family to consider.”
“The farmer…?” She asked, less grumpy now as he closed the large doors, leaving them open just enough to allow a breath of fresh air.
“Aye, the very same… He’ll be back with some food shortly, but other than that we’ll likely not see anyone else at all while we’re here. They don’t know what we’re doin’ or where we’re going, and they don’t want to know. They’re riskin’ their necks just helpin’ us as it is…”
Something to eat would be nice…” Nev admitted, suddenly realising her stomach was rumbling, and she couldn’t remember when she’d had anything to eat at all other than those few strips of dry jerky Godfrey had given her the night before.
“Shouldn’t be long,” he assured, moving across to the wall near the door and sitting down on the hard-packed, earthen floor. “Get some more rest: there won’t be much chance of any more during the night.”
“Long way to go, still…?” She asked, taking a small barrel from a pile of junk near the wagon and dragging it over as a seat.
“Long enough,” he shrugged again, resting his head back against the barn wall with eyes closed. “A little more than twenty miles but we’ll not travel as fast at night, and it’ll take longer still when the clouds come back, which they will: first clear skies in many a week and it can’t last much longer.
“Welshport’s a big town too, so we’ll need to be more careful when we arrive: lots o’ people coming and going means we probably won’t look out of place but it also means there’ll be lots of town watchmen about, checking papers and making a general nuisance of ‘emselves. A lot of goods come and go there, and where there’s business there’s also graft and corruption: we’ll fare no better taken for smugglers than we will if we’re taken as spies.”
“Where to, after that…?” She asked after a long moment of thought, not sure she actually wanted to know.
“Dunno yet… Like I said; captain o’ the ship we’re meeting tomorrow morning will though, and he’ll be in charge from thereon.”
There were a number of concerns boiling over in Nev’s mind at that moment, foremost of which was a fear that had suddenly blossomed darkly at the thought of what might happen once they met that ship.
“And – and, what will you do… um… once you’ve handed me over…?”
There were a number of reasons she wanted to know the answer to that question, not the least of which being that he and Lester were the only two people she actually knew in that world, and she knew them well enough to also know that she could trust them with her life and her ‘honour’ (or whatever Godfrey had called it the night before). For her to be expected to just walk away from that trust and place her fate in the hands of a complete stranger was not a pleasant idea. There was more to it than that of course, but none of that was as important right at that moment in comparison to her safety in the immediate future.
“I’ll go where I’m told,” he answered softly after another long pause, but she did note that he wasn’t able to look at her in that moment – that he continued to stare almost woodenly at the roof above. “I don’t want to just leave you with some stranger though,” he continued, echoing her own concerns, “so I’m hoping I’ll continue on as your escort for the time being…”
“That…” she began, then paused as she became a little lost for words. “…I’d like that…” she said eventually… honestly… and this time, Godfrey did look at her, their eyes meeting in a gaze that showed hidden relief on both sides and a bit more than just that.
“What… ah… what’ve you got in that bag, anyway…” he asked eventually, feeling almost as uncomfortable as Nev and desperately seeking some way to change the subject. “You haven’t let it get more than two feet away from y’ the whole time you’ve been here. I already know its heavy… you carrying gold in there or something?”
“Hardly…” she admitted, also happy to change topic. “Just my change of clothes, some bits and pieces and… and a present from my trainer…” she finished, having thought of the wrapped box for the first time in quite a while.
“A ‘present’… a gift, y’ mean…?” He asked with a frown as she suddenly snatched up the bag with interest and zipped it open. “What were y’ training for?”
“Kenjutsu…” she answered without thinking as she drew out the wrapped box, then went on to explain: “It’s a martial art where I come from… it’s a form of self-defence using swords…”
“So that’s how you were able to hold off those three fellas? We managed to catch part of the show and I was wonderin’ where you learned to fight like that.” He frowned as he thought a bit deeper. “Not much for defence if they only give you a wooden one though…”
“That wasn’t a sword…” she answered slowly, suddenly fascinated as she carefully tore the plain, brown wrapping away to reveal the long, lacquered box Honda had prepared, covered in its dragon motifs. “That was just a bokken: a training tool for practice…”
The latches had been unclasped at some stage during the trials and tribulations of the last 24 hours, but the box had remained closed, secured by loops of plain, white ribbon tied tightly at each end. As Godfrey rose to his feet and came over to watch with interest, she slowly slipped the ribbons from each end, forced to take some time about it due to +how tightly they were secured.
For some inexplicable reason, she found that her breathing was now shallow and rapid, and although she had no clue as to what was actually inside – her initial guess of a new bokken still stood – she realised she was suddenly feeling quite nervous. Having seen the ornate design and obvious quality of the box’s construction however, it now seemed far too luxuriously constructed to house even the most expensive wooden practice sword. With a shaky hand, she laid the box across her knees and lifted the lid.
It was a sword… a real one, of course. She later suspected that her sub-conscious has always known somehow, but the idea had been so inconceivable that she’d not been able to even consider it. As Godfrey looked on eagerly from above her right shoulder, she removed the weapon, sheathed in an equally black, lacquered wooden scabbard (saya, in Japanese) that was engraved with two golden dragons identical to the one that adorned the lid of the box.
It was almost a metre long overall, a third of which was the wooden tsuka (the hilt), traditionally covered in ray skin and wrapped tightly in criss-crossing bands of black silk that matched the darkness of the saya, and hanging from the pommel was a small omamori, similar in design to the yaku-yoke that Honda always carried with him. The meeting of hilt and blade was encircled by a circular handguard – the tsuba – formed out of solid, blackened steel inlaid with more golden dragons, this time a pair set into the outer circumference, chasing each other’s tails. She carefully, almost reverentially took the tsuka in her right hand and lifted it, preparing to remove the saya with her left.
Nev had seen numerous images of the katana – the premier weapon of choice
for the samurai – on the web and in reference books. She’d even seen real ones once or twice – authentic swords – at museums and such like. None of that could’ve prepared her as she carefully drew the blade clear of the scabbard, the sound little more than a metallic whisper as it came free and shone dully in the half-light of that musty barn.
“Now… that is beautiful…!” Godfrey breathed softly, almost as in awe of the thing as she was.
“‘Beautiful’ doesn’t even come close…!” She replied in a similarly-hushed tone, placing the duffel bag back down on the ground and then laying the box and the saya carefully across the top of it.
Rising suddenly enough to force Godfrey to jump backward slightly, she took a few steps out into the centre of the barn, moving away from both the walls and the wagon, and held the katana out in front of her in both hands, testing the weight and feel of it. Wary of her movements despite having made the same ones countless times in training, she went through a few simple practice strikes and blocks, the blade slicing through the air with soft swishes as she slashed at the empty air.
“That’s a beauty, alright!” Lester observed from a seated position up inside the rear of the wagon. He’d been catching up on rest there but had been roused by her movements.
“It’s… it’s heavier than the bokken…” she observed softly, mostly to herself. “Maybe twice as heavy, but it’s so wonderfully balanced you hardly notice…!” She completed a few more strokes, the greater mass and superb balance of the weapon quickly making her feel very confident.
A sword that was too heavy toward the point might carry great striking power but would also suffer from inertia and prove more difficult to wield quickly, whereas one with greater mass at the hilt might be faster in one’s hands but would trade power in return. The principle was the same for bokken, although at least in training that wasn’t potentially a life-or-death matter
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