“According to the map, yes,” Bruno answered, “two thousand by road.”
Aleron did a quick calculation and said, “I believe there is a way that I can do it in about four weeks, if I have your leave Sir. If I am wrong, I will return straight away and rejoin the crew.”
“I don’t understand what you are planning,” Jorum said, “but it can’t hurt to let you check it out. Just make sure you make it back before we shove off, if it doesn’t work out. I don’t want to be held responsible for you not making it back as early as possible.”
“You may rest assured, Sir, that if we do not make it back in time to leave with the ship, we will be on our way, by other means.”
“Go then, but first, take this, then go round up your crew.” He tossed a small sack to Aleron, who upon catching it, realized it was a sack of coin. “It seems that Steward Gealton assumed you had something up your sleeve and sent cash for the journey.”
“Thank you, Sir, Bruno; I have to go find the lads now.” He saluted, turned on his heel and bolted out the door.
“He’s a bit of an odd lad, that one,” Jorum commented, “spectacular fighter, but odd. Where do you know him from?”
Met him and his grandfather on a ferry, a bit over five years back,” Bruno replied. “Then, he bested me in a friendly pickup bout of sword and dagger.”
“He just turned twenty the other day, I believe. Wouldn’t that have put him at fifteen?”
“Not quite fifteen, Sir,” the courier corrected him. “He and his grandpa said he’d been training since he was nine.”
“Did you know his ‘grandpa’ is Lord Marshal Hadaras, of the Sudean Royal Guard, retired twenty five years ago?”
“At the time, Sir, I had no idea. It wasn’t until afterwards, that the name clicked. I should be flattered though. He said I was almost as fast as his grandpa.”
“That’s a compliment indeed,” the Captain agreed.
***
Aleron ran back to the Tavern to retrieve his friends. Bursting through the front door, he made for the stairs before the proprietor could say anything to slow him down. “Barry, Gel, we need to go, now!” he shouted down the long hallway upstairs. He continued to shout for them, causing other patrons to shout obscenities back at him, until he heard a response from Geldun.
“All right, already, what in Zorek’s name do you need?”
Aleron stopped at the door the voice emanated from and opened it without considering the consequences. The young woman in the room was totally nude and made no effort to cover herself. “Oh, excuse me Mistress,” he apologized, his eyes lingering a bit too long as she rolled off the bed and sauntered towards her robe, where it hung on the wall, smiling seductively the entire time.
“Damn it Al. Can’t you knock first?” his friend demanded. “I was just getting started.” Geldun had the bedcover pulled across his hips.
“Such a polite man,” the woman exclaimed, “and cute too. Of course you are excused.”
“We need to go. I need to get to Arundell as soon as possible and I’ll need your help.”
“What for, what’s going on in Arundell?
“They have Ellie and I need to track her down.”
“What do you mean? Who’re ‘They’?”
“The Kolixtlanis, at least that’s what the Steward thinks. Ellie was kidnapped two months ago and they haven’t been able to find her.”
“Corball’s Balls! All right, say no more, I’ll help. Just give me a chance to get dressed. Gotta find my coin purse. ”
“Just get dressed Gel. We need to find Barry. Mistress, how much does my friend owe you?” Aleron began digging into his belt pouch.
“We weren’t long at all Sir, so one silver piece will do.” He handed her the coin as Geldun finished tying on his pants.
Soon, his shirt and boots were on and he was ready to go. “Goodbye Carine, see you when I come back through.
“Sure, if I’m still here, love. Take care and don’t let your well mannered friend get you into too much trouble.”
After a bit more yelling, searching and banging on a few wrong doors, they located Barathol and much the same sort of thing ensued as with Geldun. The main difference being that Aleron had to pay off two women and apparently, Barathol got more work done as well, because it cost him three silver. As they made their way back to the ship, Geldun said, “It occurs to me, that the fastest way back to Arundell is to take the boat that we were going to board tomorrow anyway.”
“Hey…yeah, that’s right,” Barathol sluggishly agreed. He drank enough for the other two as well that afternoon in the tavern. “Why we in such a mad rush, anyway? I wasn’t done back there…mebbe if I go back now, we can pick up wh…”
“No, trust me, lads,” Aleron said, cutting him off. “I have a way that should get us there in four weeks.”
“What? You’ve gone stark raving mad!” Geldun exclaimed. “What are you planning to do, fly there?”
“Exactly,” Aleron replied.
Chapter 28
Carpathday, Day 16, Haymaking Moon. 8765 Sudean Calendar
Morning broke with Aleron, Geldun and Barathol heading into the open desert, north of Cape Town. They left on foot, with their gear, a week’s supply of food and not nearly enough water. The rest of the crew, plus quite a few townsfolk thought the trio had lost their minds for heading into the open desert with no horses. Even with horses, survival was unlikely. On foot, death was all but assured. “This had better be good Al,” Barathol commented. “I think you’ve finally gone off the deep end. Must be all those books our grandpa shoved down your throat addled your brain.”
“Trust me lads,” Aleron assured them, “I won’t let you down.”
“If you turn out to be nuts, we’re knocking you out and dragging you back to the boat,” Geldun added. “This is not how I wanted to spend my shore leave.”
“Grandfather is not really a man, just so you know,” Aleron announced, as neared a group of granite outcrops.
“You’re saying he’s been a woman, posing as a man all this time?” Barathol enquired, barking a laugh afterward.
“No, not that, you twit, he’s an elf, as was my mother.”
“You mean to tell us you’re a halfblood?” Geldun asked this time. “Does that make you some sort of a wizard or something?”
“Something like that,” Aleron replied.
“Yeah right, prove it,” Barathol demanded.
As they passed into the outcroppings sufficiently to obscure them from sight of those in the village, Aleron released a sliver of blue energy, neatly splitting a boulder in two. He followed on with a flash of red, instantly reducing the split stone to fine gravel. “Believe me now?” he asked his now slack-jawed friends.
“Ahhh…” was all Geldun managed to spit out. Barathol was still speechless.
“Good, now that I’ve made my point, there’s something else I need to do. I will have to talk to you like this from here on out, because I won’t have a voice. Do you both understand me?”
Both of his companions nodded and he heard their unvoiced “yes.”
In a shimmer of white, Aleron veered into the form of a raven and then began clumsily walking and hopping about on the sand. “This is the first time I’ve tried anything like this. Now the trick is to see if I can change myself back.”
“You mean you don’t know if you can change back?” Barathol asked. “What kind of trick is that anyway?”
“Nobody has ever done this before,” he replied. “According to my grandfather, I’m the only one who can do this. I’ve changed other things, but never myself.”
“Change yourself back then,” Geldun insisted. “This is crazy.”
In another shimmer, Aleron veered back to his normal form. “I just needed to see if I could change myself back again. I never dared try before.”
“What if you couldn’t change back,” Geldun asked, “what then?”
“I’m not sure. I guess I’d stay a raven and you would go back t
o the ship and explain things to the Captain.”
“Oh, that would be really great,” Barathol responded, “Our stupid crazy friend here is really a wizard and changed himself into this here raven. That would have gone over really well.”
“I had to risk it lads. It’s the only way I’m going to get on Ellie’s trail quickly. A raven can fly six times the distance a horse can run in a day.”
“And just how do you presume to take us with you and all our stuff too?” Geldun inquired.
“Well, my stuff just seemed to go away, when I turned into a raven and I didn’t come back naked, when I turned back, so that’s not an issue. As for you lads, I’ll just turn you into ravens too.”
“I was afraid you were going to say something like that.”
After some extensive bickering negotiating and persuading, the other two conceded to Aleron turning them into ravens. He transformed the pair, followed by himself. “There, now that that’s done, all we need to do is learn how to fly.”
“You mean we don’t know how to fly yet?” Barathol asked, surprised.
“I’ve no idea how much comes naturally and how much is learned. I remember it took Bob a day or two to figure it out.”
“Bob wasn’t really a raven?”
“No, he was a rat first,” Aleron replied.
Geldun was the next to ask, “Why didn’t you turn him back?”
“Once he was a bird, he didn’t want to go back to being a rat. I think if I made him a dumb bird, he would have never known the difference, but I made him a smart bird and he didn’t want to go back to being a dumb rat.”
“Let’s get on with this then. I don’t care to stay this way forever,” Barathol interjected. “Let’s go find your girl, kill the guys that took her and anything else that gets in our way and get back to Arundell in time for furlough. Now, how do you suppose we find her?”
“If she still has my engagement present, I have a link to her. If they took it from her, I have a link to them and then to her.”
“What if they don’t want to tell you where she is?” Geldun asked.
“They’ll tell me when I set their feet afire.”
“Oh, all right, I just didn’t take you for the torturing type, but that works fine for me.”
The remainder of the morning was spent flapping about, attempting to learn the intricacies of flight. They discovered that while becoming airborne and flying in a straight line was not too difficult to learn, landing gracefully was more of a problem. After several tumbles through the sand, Geldun discovered how to brake to a near stop and shared the technique with the others. Once they had landing somewhat mastered, they took to the air and headed northwest towards Arundell. Thirteen hundred leagues, at sixty to seventy leagues a day, would take them three and a half weeks.
By mid-day, the summer sun at its zenith, the trio developed a serious thirst and hunger. The raven’s physiology, though much better than a man’s at shedding heat and conserving water, can still go only so far before replenishment is required. “Let’s land in the shade of those rocks over there,” Aleron suggested to the others. Upon landing, Barathol asked, “Do you turn us back now, so we can get to our food and water?”
“Not quite,” Aleron answered, “I just need to be in contact with the ground for this next thing.” A golden glow surrounded the three for several seconds and then he asked, “Anyone still tired, thirsty or hungry?”
“No, as a matter of fact,” Geldun answered.
“I feel empty, but not hungry or thirsty, for some reason,” Barathol added.
“Good, Then we can get going again. I don’t know if there’s any limit to how many times I can do this, but I’ll use it as much as I can until we find out. And so they continued on their way, until nightfall, when they found a tall outcropping on which to roost for the night.
***
Gealton stayed up late in his office, as often did these days. His daughter was still missing, though troops had combed the countryside for her since her disappearance. Ebareiza proved to be no help in the effort, so she was likely in Castia by this time. I only hope Aleron has something up his sleeve. Hadaras spoke of visions of flying. I hope the lad figured that trick out by now, or there’s no hope of saving her before she reaches Kolixtlan, or wherever they intend to take her. The Steward knew that they likely intended to use her as a bargaining chip and no harm would come to her if he complied. He also knew that he could never jeopardize the welfare of the kingdom in the selfish protection of one of his offspring. A knock at the door prompted him to respond, “Yes, Forquin, is that you?”
“Yes, Your Eminence, one of your operatives to see you Lord.”
“Send him in.”
“Your Eminence,” the spy greeted him, as he entered, “I have news of your daughter.”
Gealton shot up from behind his desk. “Enter and please sit.” He gestured toward the empty chair opposite his desk. “Tell me what you know.”
The man, who most would recognize as a minor functionary of the palace staff, took the seat, as the Steward returned to his.”
“Milord, as you well know, Ebareiza has no elvish emissaries and our relationship is strained as well, so there has been little cooperation as to our investigation into your daughter’s disappearance.”
“Yes, go on.”
“This is not the case with Castia and Coptia, however and they have been cooperating well, though until now, there has been no news. Tonight, we received a message from Kaas, through the elvish emissaries.”
“What did they have to say?” the Steward asked, eagerly.
“A girl matching your daughter’s description passed through the wall eleven days ago. She was in the company of two men. They were dressed nondescriptly and claimed to be merchants on a purchasing trip to Kaas. They were definitely Sudeans and the men had the look of professional soldiers, not merchants. They have had ample time to make it to Kaas, but no group matching that description is known to have entered the city. Sudean merchants travelling without goods to exchange are rare enough to draw plenty of attention, since it means an influx of foreign currency, “new gold”, so to speak.”
“I understand. So, they never made it to Kaas, meaning they are likely on a straight course to Kolixtlan.”
“Yes Lord, they should reach the border in about three weeks. Castian forces have undertaken the search, but the wilderness bordering Kolixtlan is difficult at best.”
“Well, this is not the best news, for sure, but it is better than nothing at all. I want a message sent to Kaas and the elves as well, thanking them for their assistance. Also, I need a message sent to Lord Marshal Hadaras, at Swaincot, bidding him to come to the capital at his earliest convenience. Do not send it by royal courier. I wish for it to be unobtrusive, so use one of our people. Tell him that his grandson is on his way, and I would like for him to be here to greet him. Odds are good, that he already knows, but send the message anyway.
***
“Yes, Grandfather, I’m flying,” Aleron said to Hadaras, as his friends dozed beside him.
“So, you finally braved changing yourself. Have you tried changing yourself back yet?”
“Yes, Grandfather, that was the very first thing I checked. So Steward Gealton has not sent word to you about Ellie being kidnapped?”
“No lad, he probably didn’t think it as important to inform me as it was you. He likely didn’t realize that I could have gotten you the message many weeks earlier.”
“I know, you could have told me when I was still in Corin, most likely and I could have set out across the Castian Sea and headed them off.”
“True lad, but you would have done it as a deserter, without the official directive of the Steward. This is probably best.”
“I understand, Grandfather, but I would have done it anyway, if it meant getting Ellie back safe.”
“I know you would have, lad. Now get some rest, while you can, but keep your feelers out. There’re more dangerous things than serpents and scorpio
ns out in that desert.”
“Thank you Grandfather. Good night.”
“Good night to you, my boy. I will be waiting for you in Arundell.”
Chapter 29
Zorekday, Day 18, Haymaking Moon. 8765 Sudean Calendar
With the ship finally underway, Zormat was more content than he had been in ages. In a few short weeks, they would land on the shores of Mount Norwyyl, allowing them safe portage to access the icebound Northern Continent. They laid in three months supply of dry goods, mostly fat, dried meats and fruit, on top of the usual ship’s stores. His people would be waiting for them with guides, dogsled teams and cold weather clothing unobtainable here in the tropics. Temperatures would be brutally cold at the height of the polar winter and darkness would be absolute. He knew that the dogs and men would take him only as far as the shoreline of the continent, over seven hundred leagues across the ice. After that, he and his elves would be on their own to find the cave rumored to exist deep in the mountains of the interior.
A warm breeze blew in from the East, propelling them northward at a steady clip. Zormat knew the warmth would be short lived and enjoyed it for what it was. His own people were of the North and could easily bear the cold that was to come, but for now, they could enjoy the comfort a tropical breeze afforded. It would take at least a month and a half to reach their ship borne destination and then another three months by dogsled across the ice. After that, it might take another month to find what they were looking for. All told, they could be away for a year or more, but after that, we will truly bring the fight to the Sudeans and whoever else stands in our way. Now, all they needed to worry about was running the blockade at the Wabani Inlet.
***
From her limited familiarity with Castian script, Eilowyn knew from the road signs that Kaas was to their east. They stayed in the foothills of the Blue Mountains, avoiding major roads and populated areas. After all this time, she was more accustomed to the saddle and they could ride further each day without rest and if she remembered her geography correctly, they would be entering Kolixtlani territory in another month. She prayed to the Allfather for help to arrive before that time.
The Halfblood King: Book 1 of the Chronicles of Aertu Page 20
