“Have you ever handled a sword before?” Alec asked Hope as they unloaded their packs on bunks in the small guest officers’ quarter they were assigned.
“Heavens, no,” she quickly replied.
“Then it’s time you started to learn,” he told her. They’d had little conversation during the trip, and Alec knew he had to start to break down the barriers between them. “I learned sword work from a woman who was one of the best guards for the Duke of Goldenfields,” he added. “I taught Bauer how to handle a sword back in Vincennes, many years ago, didn’t I?” he asked his friend, who grinned and nodded his head.
They found an armory, and Alec strapped Hope’s pads on her, showing her how to tighten them to the proper level of protection and comfort. Then he tested several of the practice blades with her, watching her hold and thrust and swing with each one to find the best balance and length for her to carry.
Hope was growing excited by the prospect of using the sword, Alec could tell, despite her efforts to maintain a cool exterior appearance.
He asked Bauer and Hope to take their positions against one another as he stood on the sideline of the mat in the busy armory. He showed her the proper grip and posture, then asked Bauer to lead her through the rudimentary forms. As they switched their poses from one to another, Hope began to grow impatient. “How much longer until we start fighting?” she asked.
“Probably two or three months,” Alec said, partially jesting.
“What?” she screeched so loudly that others in the armory briefly glanced over.
“You’ll need to learn a lot of fundamentals before we turn you loose in a match. Otherwise you’ll take such a beating you’ll never know what hit you,” Alec said reasonably.
“I am the grandasteusse,” Hope said hotly. “I must learn, and you must teach me.”
I must teach you? Must? Alec questioned. A good leader should be able to lead their subjects to seek the proper outcome, not order them, he cautioned.
I am ordering you, Hope replied. You’ve tried to lead me to listen to your slow approach, and it has gotten you nowhere.
Bauer shook his head at the exchange.
“If I beat you, will you do this my way?” Alec asked.
“I know you’ll beat me,” Hope answered.
“If I beat you before your blade ever touches me, will you do this my way?” Alec asked.
“Maybe my blade won’t touch you the first time, but the second time it will,” Hope stubbornly shot back.
“I admire your tenacity and determination, but you must learn the importance of good judgment as well,” Alec tried to be reasonable.
In reply Hope sprang at him, thrusting her sword towards him without warning.
Alec’s Warrior abilities reflexively kicked in, and his sword rose swiftly, knocking her sword from her hand, then Alec engaged his Spirit and Air powers, and used the Air energy to lift her off her feet, and to press her arms tightly against her side. He focused all his attention on the girl, and began to direct tiny tendrils of air to untie her padding, which then drifted away from her as she floated and looked at him in stunned silence. Satisfied that she had learned a lesson, he lowered her to the ground, and floated her sword back over into the palm of his hand, so that he could offer it back to her.
“Extraordinary! Who are you?” a voice asked from behind him. “What have you done?”
Alec started to turn, only to see Hope thrust her sword towards him again in another stab. He knocked the sword away again, and lifted her high into the room, holding her against the ceiling with his Air powers. That was beneath you, he told her sternly. It was dishonorable.
“I am Alec, the former Duke of Valeriane, on my way westward into the mountains,” Alec kept Hope suspended as he turned to look at the man who had spoken. He was an officer in the Black Guard corps.
The officer was backed by a dozen others from Black Crag, all wearing practice pads as they interrupted their practice to see what the explanation was for the extraordinary events they witnessed, as most of them gazed up at Hope’s position on the ceiling.
“This girl is my new student, I hope,” he glanced up. “Although we’re off to a rocky start.”
“You’re the man who overthrew the emperor?” the officer asked.
Alec hesitated a split second. “I did. I felt it was in the best interest of all.”
“And now you’re just walking away? You didn’t try to make yourself emperor or rich?” the officer asked.
“No,” Alec shook his head. “That does not appeal me.”
The officer knelt down on one knee. “Thank you.” The men and women behind him knelt as well.
“Stand all of you, please. I know the value of the guards of Black Crag. I know the good work you do to keep the caravan road open and the mountain frontier safe. I live in Ridgeclimb, and we value you. I am touched by your sign of support,” Alec was embarrassed.
The guards all stood. “Are you headed back to Ridgeclimb now?” one of the guards, an attractive woman in the back row, asked.
“As soon as we’re ready,” he glanced up at Hope. Are you ready to come down and behave? he asked.
Please bring me down. Please, the girl begged with tears in her voice. I’ll listen to what you say.
Everyone in the room looked up as Hope slowly descended to the ground. “This is Hope my new student, and this is Bauer, my longtime friend. They’ll be traveling with me,” he introduced.
“Hope, these are guards of Black Crag. They are the best warriors in the Avonellene Empire,” he stated to a low murmur of appreciation. “When I began my quest to help Caitlen regain her throne many years ago, we came first to Black Crag, to recruit the fighters as the foundation of our forces.
“There’s not a one here who would tell you differently than I did just now,” he told her, the girl’s face bright red from the embarrassment of her situation. “You must be patient to learn how to handle your sword. Practice is long and tedious and very exact. And if you follow the path I hope to lead you on, with attentive and extensive practice, you will be able to fight with the best.”
There were nods of agreement in the armory.
“So my lord, how did you make her rise to the ceiling?” someone in the back row asked.
“I have powers that allow me some control of the air; I used it to keep her aloft,” he answered simply.
“Are you going straight to Ridgeclimb?” the officer asked.
“We are; we’ll leave tomorrow unless the weather is too bad,” Alec affirmed.
“I have a favor to ask,” the man said. “We have a small group of traders, only four, who are determined to start traveling west, even though there’s no caravan ready to go. They’ve spoken to the commander and hired our squad to escort them to Ridgeclimb.
“If you’re going that direction anyway, would you be willing to take them with you? I can send just a couple of lads along, instead of the whole squad,” the officer proposed. “We’ll pay you handsomely to help us; this way not so many will have to go or make the trip back home. And it’s senseless to hire guards for that stretch of the journey anyway – from Ridgeclimb to here is the safest section of the whole caravan road, I’ve been told by every master who’s led a group across the route.”
Although he knew that unpleasant personalities among the travelers could make the journey a disagreeable experience, Alec felt no reticence in agreeing to the terms of the journey, glad to have an opportunity to provide some extra funds for his clinic while taking a route he was going to take anyway. After dinner he, Bauer and Hope went to their quarters to turn in for the night.
“We won’t get to stick around here and do any extra sword work, will we Alec?” Bauer asked.
“No, our visit here’s a little shorter than I planned, but we’ll have some extra company on the road, and that will be nice,” Alec agreed. “Hope, you’ll have to wait until we get to Ridgeclimb, and we’ll start in on proper sword-training there.
“And we
’ll have to wait a little longer to be able to relax and share stories,” he told Bauer. “Once we get to Ridgeclimb and get settled in, there will be time, lots of time.”
The next morning they arrived at the gate early in the morning, and found the rest of their traveling companions ready to go. The merchants were two burly men, Amos and Aethos, a pair of brothers who seemed identical to Alec, and their much-younger wives, who were kept away from everyone other than the brothers. They also had a train of a dozen mules, each carrying a substantial pack of goods that the merchants intended to sell in the Twenty Cities at the other end of the trail. Along with the merchants, looking with some distaste upon their charges, were two members of the Black Crag guard squad from the previous night; Andi and Marva were the two youngest members of the squad, and Alec shared a sympathetic grin with them when he recognized them – Andi was the woman who had asked the question the night before. They were attractive girls, and he wondered what would have driven them to join the rough and tumble life of the Black Crag forces; Marva was so dark-complexioned that he thought she might be from the unconquered races that lived in the tropics to the south of Avonellene, while Andi had golden skin that seemed like she carried a permanent suntan, with full cheeks and a sprinkling of freckles below a surprising thatch of short blond hair.
“My name is Alec and I will be leading our journey to Ridgeclimb,” he announced himself in front of the small assembly, as they gathered on the sunny side of the walled city. “Our journey will take about seven days, depending on conditions we run into and depending on the speed of your mules,” he looked at the merchants. “The road is relatively safe and flat from here to Ridgeclimb.
“We’ll need a daily rotation of cooking duties and guard duty. Just to get the cooking duties begun, Bauer will go first, today, Marva, you can go tomorrow, and Aethos, you can be the third day cook. I’ll announce guard duty rotation tonight,” he explained.
“Wait a minute! I’m not a cook!” Aethos protested. “I’m a merchant. You’ll have to make other arrangements.”
“Very well. We’ll be fasting on the third day. Anyone who wants to eat that day will need to make their own meals,” Alec said in a dangerously level voice.
“Perhaps,” spoke up Amos, “we’ve all misunderstood what the plan is. We’ve not made this journey before. Shouldn’t there be a cook provided by the management? We’ll do our share of the labor, but we didn’t expect this,” he seemed reasonable as he held his hand on his brother’s shoulder.
“If you were traveling in an organized caravan, you would be able to rely on having the option of paying the leader to provide your meals for you. But this is not a caravan, and you have not paid for meals,” Alec answered. “I’m just a traveler who is taking you along with me, and these two guards are hired to protect your safety. We’ll cook your meals for you from the supplies you’ve brought for yourself, just as you’ll cook our meals for us from our supplies when it’s your turn,” he explained.
“We don’t have our own food supplies; we thought that was to be taken care of by the management,” Amos spoke in sincere shock.
Alec turned to look at the two guards, who shrugged their shoulders in ignorance of the circumstances. “Would you like for me to thrash them for you, my lord?” Andi asked in a sincere tone. She clearly wanted to make a good impression on him, Alec could see.
“No, they’ll settle themselves in,” he assured her with a kindly pat on the shoulder.
In the end, the start of the journey was delayed until mid-afternoon so that the merchants were given time to grumblingly go around among the vendors of Black Crag and purchase food supplies for themselves, and then fodder for their animals. The result was that they started out walking directly into the sunlight, squinting at the bright sunshine that contrasted with the bitterly cold wind blowing into their faces.
That night they camped in a spot with little shelter from the wind, until Alec covertly used his powers to redirect the breezes around them. Bauer’s camp fire brightened the scene as darkness fell, and the group instinctively circled around the flames.
“Why would a pretty young girl like you choose to follow the dashing leader out into the wilderness, or do I need to ask?” Amos asked Hope as he stood next to the young lokasenna.
She turned and stared at him momentarily. I do not like the thoughts this one has, she telepathically told Alec.
“She wishes to learn something of the world. She is from a small village, and her guardian is an old friend, who has asked me to look after her,” Alec answered for the girl as he moved over to stand protectively beside her.
“And why are two merchants making their first caravan trip to the Twenty Cities in the middle of winter?” he asked in return.
“We have been simple merchants all our lives, running the business in Valeriane that our father ran,” Aethos replied. “Until there was trouble in the city, and our livelihood was taken from us. So we decided to become traders; we know how to do business,” he stated.
“How was your livelihood taken from you?” Alec asked.
“The emperor had appointed a Duke, and we did much business with the new duke and his friends. We sold them many things, we told them how the city and the markets worked, and they thanked us and helped us. It made other people angry and jealous,” Aethos explained.
“When a new Duke came to town and upset the city, we were attacked and told to leave. So we gathered everything we had, and we left to take a journey on the caravan road, to go to the strange cities in the west, where we can start over,” he added. “Our wives are from the Twenty Cities, so we will be able to start fresh,” he finished his story as he gestured towards the two silent girls who stood to the side.
Alec realized that they had been cronies of the false Duke he had expelled from Valeriane. He could imagine how they had ingratiated themselves with the duke’s cronies, telling them rumors about other merchants, getting the soldiers to eliminate competitors and settle old scores. And then when Alec had turned the tides, they had been thrown out by their neighbors, he imagined.
“You’re going to learn that the caravan route is not an easy one,” Alec finally responded. “And you should do your best to avoid any unnecessary difficulties while on the road.
“Hope, you and I will rest over there. I’ll take the first watch tonight,” he announced. “Andi, you take the second shift, Bauer, take third shift, and Marva, you’ll get to see the sun come up.” He wasn’t going to trust the merchant brothers to be the only ones awake at night, he decided on the spot, even if it did mean extra shifts for himself and the others.
“Thank you for your trust, my lord,” Andi told him hours later when he woke her to assume her guard shift. “I think you’re handling them just right,” she smiled as he crept into his own blankets by Hope and Bauer.
And with that the group settled into a routine of being two separate groups that travelled together and camped together, but had little interaction, other than when Alec or one of the Black Crag guards helped the brothers with some problem, typically a self-created problem that arose from ignorance, laziness, or over-frugality.
The two wives were a mystery to Alec. The extreme difference between the girls’ ages and their husbands’, their complete isolation from the rest of the group, and the notion that their origins were from the land of the Twenty Cities seemed inexplicable. The girls were prettier than average, but timid as mice, and the language the husbands used to address the girls was crude and overbearing. There was no logical explanation that Alec wanted to accept regarding how the wives came to be with the husbands, but he refrained from asking pointed questions, until the fourth day of the journey.
In the middle of the afternoon the group was traveling slower than Alec wanted, a result of the merchants’ continuing inability to properly lead their string of mules. Dark clouds were on the horizon at noon, and were soon overhead, as the constant mountain breezes began to blow small, hard stinging pieces of ice and snow into their
faces. They were atop a long saddle in the mountains between two peaks, and there was no protection from the elements on any side when the intensity of the storm grew markedly, and Alec realized they needed shelter fast.
“Can you hurry the mules?” he asked Amos. “We need to get to the next peak to get out of this wind.”
“They’re mules! They don’t hurry up for any man – not me, not Aethos, and certainly not you!” the man bristled.
Alec took a deep breath. Time and again the merchants had managed to irritate him, and he knew he needed to restrain his temper. “I’m not going to hold the others back any longer,” Alec shouted through the wind. “If you’re not going to move any faster, the rest of us are going to pick up the pace and get to someplace that’s sheltered. We’ll try to come back to get you once we’re safe.”
“Don’t you dare tell me you’re going to leave us behind!” the man roared, as his brother came up from the rear of the mule train to find out what the shouting was about.
Alec paused. He knew he was creating an unnecessary conflict; he had the power to project his Air energy over a wide enough arc to protect nearly the whole group. But he was tired of the obstinacy the two large men had displayed, or even gone out of their way to flaunt, ever since the trip began.
“We’re leaving you behind. We’ll be back when we can,” Alec said. “You can send your wives with us if you want them to be safe.”
“And you can leave your little girly ‘ward’ and we’ll have some fun with her,” Aethos shouted back. “Maybe we’ll just take her anyway.” The large man judged the distance from the other members of the group, and concluded he could isolate Alec before help could arrive.
The Caravan Road Page 15
