The Caravan Road

by Jeffrey Quyle

  Aethos drew his sword and swung it wildly at Alec. With Warrior ingenaire speed, Alec ducked away from the blade and chopped his hand down hard on the back of Aethos’s neck, driving the man into the ground and into unconsciousness.

  Amos charged hard at Alec, cracking the whip he used to drive the mules. Alec ducked beneath the whip and ran at the man, tackling him as the mules continued to walk placidly past in the storm.

  They disappeared from the view of the rest of the travelers as a squall blew heavy snow upon them.

  “Alec?” Hope called. “Is he going to be alright?” she asked Bauer. Her opinion of Alec had risen since their journey in the mountains began. She appreciated the protection Alec had given her in the face of the inappropriate interest that the merchants had shown.

  “I saw him fight a demon once,” Bauer answered. “Two fat men aren’t a challenge for Alec.” As he spoke there was a break in the intensity of the snowfall, and Alec walked into view, striding along beside the mules, leading them at a faster pace than they had traveled before, even though two of them now carried the heavy burdens of the unconscious brother merchants.

  “Come closer to me,” Alec shouted to the rest of the travelers, principally the skinny wives, who had fallen back behind everyone else during the short skirmish. The power of the storm was increasing, and he could sense that the body temperatures of everyone present were dropping dangerously. Alec knew he had to take steps to alleviate the stress they were experiencing; he extended his Air energy in a shallow half shell that dramatically redirected the biting penetration of the storm around them, making even the mules raise their heads in wonder at the instantaneous calm that enveloped them.

  “What’s happening?” Andi asked, more fearful of the strange phenomena than she had been of the blizzard.

  “It’s a chance to get to the mountains and find shelter,” Alec answered. “Let’s keep moving.”

  “What’s causing it? I’ve never heard of anything like it before!” she spoke more softly, walking up next to Alec, her eyes darting in all directions.

  “It’s you! You’re doing it, aren’t you?” Hope said from his other side.

  “That’s crazy! This is something unnatural,” Andi replied.

  Keep your tongue still, Alec told her silently. Use your spirit.

  You are doing this aren’t you? She repeated her assertion silently, as a question.

  Yes, Alec agreed.

  How? The lokasenna asked.

  I have many talents, he replied.

  But this is so big; you’re tampering with nature, Hope protested.

  I’m only using what God has made available in nature, Alec corrected.

  Can you do this any time? Why haven’t you done more of this? She asked. I’ve been freezing!

  Alec turned to her and grinned; he hoped to not need to reveal all his abilities yet, so that the group would continue to move forward without coming to rely on him to make the journey unnaturally easy.

  “You are mean!” Hope said aloud and punched his shoulder angrily.

  “Here now, you can’t be punching the lord of Ridgeclimb,” Andi protested.

  “We need to take advantage of this, whatever it is, and get to some place that will shelter us better,” Alec said loudly. He walked back along the train of mules, checking each of them for any problems, adjusting bits and cinches, and urging them onward at a greater rate.

  An hour later they reached a bend in the road where it began to hug the south side of a cliff, blocking the worst of the wind and the snow, and allowing Alec to cease the use of his energy. The other side of the pathway was a steep slope downward, giving everyone reason to hug the mountainside to avoid the uneasy vertigo the open space on the left invoked.

  Alec kept a continual watch over the two unconscious brothers, and observed that they each regained awareness within a few minutes of one another. They slid off their rides on the opposite side of the mule train from Alec and muttered to each other for several minutes in an angry tone, but kept their distance from him.

  As the sun began to fall, Alec brought the travelers to a halt, and told everyone to begin to prepare for the night. “Why are we stopping now? We could keep moving with the sunlight?” Amos spoke to him for the first time, while Aethos edged away from him.

  “We’re just about to turn back into the wind,” Alec answered, “and I don’t think we want to be out exposed to the wind when night falls and we have to make camp.

  “And there won’t be a camp fire tonight, we won’t be able to find enough tinder and wood around here to burn, so use all the blankets and wraps you have,” he added unnecessarily.

  “We stop early, there’s no fire, and you beat us both when we’re paying your way,” Amos said. “It’s time we put you back in your place.”

  Alec! Help! Hope called, and Alec whirled to see that Aethos held the girl tightly, with a knife against her throat.

  Hold still, Alec answered, and then he astonished the entire group that was watching the tableau as he disappeared from view. A second later, as each person other than Bauer reacted with loud astonishment, Aethos gave a strangled cry then closed his eyes, and as his arm slumped away from Hope’s neck, a knife suddenly flew across the camp space to land firmly in Amos’s chest. Without a sound, Amos fell to the ground, and Alec reappeared behind Hope, a bloody sword in his hand.

  “Are you alright?” he asked, wiping his blade on Aethos’s cloak, then sheathing it.

  Bauer rushed over to the pair and enveloped Hope in his arms, as the girl began to cry. “I should have shifted shape and run away,” she sobbed to Bauer, “but I was frozen – too scared to do it. And now those men are dead because I didn’t act fast enough.”

  Bauer looked over the girl’s head at Alec, who stood up, and nodded for him to assure the girl she wasn’t responsible.

  “I’m responsible for using the blades,” Alec told her, “not you.

  “And they were responsible for threatening violence against you. You didn’t cause that. These were bad men; it was our misfortune to travel with them,” he assured her. Alec placed his hand on her head, and used his Spiritual energy to offer her consolation. You are the victim, not the criminal, and my God does not hold you to blame for this, he assured her.

  Andi and Marva came cautiously over. “What are you?” Marva asked. “How did you do that?”

  “I am an ingenaire,” Alec replied, “and I have special abilities. There aren’t many people of my race here in this part of the world.”

  “I know I saw what you did in the armory at Black Crag, and we both know the legends about you in the wars of succession for the empress, but I never thought I’d see something like that,” Marva said.

  Alec gave a gentle smile, then saw past her, where the two newly widowed girls stood next to each other, on the far side of the mules, looking from Alec to each of the bodies of their suddenly deceased husbands. He gave a sigh. “Excuse me,” he told the other four, then walked calmly over to the girls.

  “I am sorry that this has happened to your family. We mean you no harm; you have done none of us wrong, and we will help you in any way we can,” he assured them.

  There was a long silence. “They were awful men, monsters,” one of the two said, Alec unable to distinguish them from each other. “They would have killed us sooner or later after they were done using us. Our family never would have sold us to them if they had known how bad those men were.

  “Thank you,” the girl said unexpectedly, giving Alec pause.

  “Can we move to a new place? I don’t want to stay near them,” the other girl asked.

  Alec looked about, seeing no easy way to bury the two bodies, although the amount of loose stones sticking up through the snow persuaded him they could pile a cairn over the dead men. “Let’s cover their bodies, and then we can move a little further,” Alec agreed.

  He instructed the group to gather together stones as he and Bauer moved the two bodies together on a small shelf of sto
ne just below the edge of the trail. They worked for nearly an hour and soon had the bodies covered to Alec’s satisfaction.

  “Alright, we’re going to keep moving,” Alec told the assembled group, even though the sky was dark and the wind still howled. He used his Light powers to create a glow around them and in front of them, touched each of them using his Healer powers to warm their body temperatures, then finally called upon his Air abilities to recreate the protective shield to keep the blizzard’s worst effects off of them.

  Alec, you’ve grown tremendously, Bauer told him.

  The group started moving again, Marva and Andi assigned to keep the mules moving satisfactorily, as Alec led the way, intensifying the light in front of them that illuminated the path they followed. For an hour the group moved along the slick and slippery caravan road, Alec instructing Hope to pick up any random pieces of wood she saw along the way, so that when they stopped the second time to set up their campsite for the night, Alec lit a fire that they were able to use for cooking and warmth.

  When the time came to prepare to sleep for the night, Alec received the biggest surprise of the dramatic ending to the day. He was talking to Andi, who listened to his every word with reverence, setting the guard rotation, when he observed the two widows begin talking to Hope; in the dim light of the campfire, Alec could see the lokasenna’s mouth hanging open in surprise, then to his surprise she waved her arm in a gesture, and the girls picked up his sleeping covers, and took the blankets with them to a separate sleeping spot.

  What is happening? He paused his conversation with Andi and addressed the question to Hope.

  I think you need to ask them, she said enigmatically.

  With a sigh, Alec left Andi and trudged over to the dim area where the girls were busily spreading their blankets. “Why did you move my bedding over here?” he asked.

  “We are married to you now, so we will need to sleep with you,” one girl said.

  “No! That’s not right,” Alec said hastily.

  “The other girl doesn’t seem to mind losing you to us. If you only want to sleep with one of us at a time we can take turns,” the other girl said.

  “The merchants bought us to be wives for them. You killed them – you get all their belongings, including us,” the first girl said. “If you don’t take us, we’ll have no one to care for us; that’s the rule of our land.”

  Alec rocked back as he considered the logic they used. “What are your names?” he asked, stalling for time to figure out how to address his predicament.

  “I’m Stacha, and this is Racha,” the second girl answered.

  Alec looked up and down the line of mules, making sure that all the animals were secured. “Everything looks all set back here; did you settle all the animals in place?” he asked.

  “We did,” Racha affirmed.

  “Then if everything is secure, let’s go sleep up front with everyone else tonight – just sleep,” he affirmed, “and we can talk tomorrow about our situation.”

  “If that is your command, that’s what we’ll do,” one of them said, and the three of them walked forward with their bundles of covers.

  “It’s not a command, just a suggestion,” Alec muttered to himself.

  As they all placed their blankets near everyone else by the campfire, Alec saw Hope whispering to Marva. You know what they think, don’t you? he asked Hope.

  Yes, oh luckiest of men! the girl laughingly replied, the humor in her thoughts evident. She said one thing more to Marva and they both laughed, as Andi walked up to them. There was more whispering, and then Andi looked closely at Alec and the widows, a worried look on her face.

  The next morning, after breakfast, the group broke camp, and Alec asked Stacha and Racha to walk along with him at the front of the traveling expedition. The blizzard had ceased during the night, and the morning was bright and beautiful, though frigidly cold. Alec used his Air powers to blow the snow and the drifts out of their path as they journeyed towards Ridgeclimb. They had two long days of travel ahead of them Alec estimated, but without a blizzard and without the poisonous merchants, the journey seemed likely to be smooth the rest of the way.

  Alec had a proposal to make to the girls, one that he hoped would address the question of what the next step would be once they reached the clinic and settled in.

  “Now that Amos and Aethos are gone, the mules and all the goods they carry belong to you,” Alec began.

  “No, they belong to you, just as we do,” Stacha answered. Stacha, he believed, was the one whose face and figure were slightly fuller, with cheeks that were not so lean as Racha’s.

  “What city do you come from?” Alec asked, deciding to take a different approach.

  “Valeriane,” Racha answered.

  “Before that, when you lived in the Twenty Cities, which one was your home?”

  “We lived in Stanfell,” Racha answered.

  “Would you like to go back to Stanfell, to return to your family there?” Alec questioned.

  “If that’s where you want to take us, we will go there with you. Have you ever been there before?” Racha questioned.

  “Have you seen the Great Tower? It’s the tallest building in Stanfell, maybe in the whole Twenty Cities,” Stacha chimed in.

  “We never saw anything as tall in Valeriane,” Racha agreed.

  “Would your family be happy to see you return to live there?” Alec asked.

  “Momma would be happy, and proud, if we came back with such a handsome husband,” Racha answered, as Stacha nodded her head in agreement.

  “What if I didn’t come back with you to the Twenty Cities, to Stanfell?” Alec asked, the name of the unknown city falling awkwardly from his lips.

  “We would bring shame on our family if we were rejected and sent back. We’re no longer virgins you know, so we can’t be sold again,” Stacha answered matter-of-factly.

  “Okay, we’ll talk about this further once we get to Ridgeclimb,” Alec decided to drop the topic for the time being.

  “Leave his lordship along now. He needs his time to plan our journey,” Andi abruptly inserted herself into the conversation, shooing the girls away from Alec, after having listened to Stacha’s comments.

  “What gives you all your powers?” Andi asked after lunch, as they continued climbing towards a pass at a high elevation, the highest altitude they would reach before Ridgeclimb.

  “I was born in a land where some people are gifted with ingenaire abilities,” Alec answered, “And then, over the years, I discovered how to acquire more special skills,” he said, thinking of the amulet that allowed him to physically enter the energy realm. “So I gained some extra abilities that seemed valuable over the years.”

  “How many years?” Andi asked. “I have a bet with Marva about how old you are.”

  Alec grinned. “I am around five hundred years old, but some of that doesn’t count, so I’ve probably lived more than three hundred years, and only a little over a hundred in this land. You pick whichever one helps you win the bet.”

  Andi’s face was blank.

  “So who wins the bet?” Alec asked.

  “I don’t think either of us do,” Andi mumbled.

  They traveled on that day until shortly after nightfall, then rose early the next day and started again. The mules were much more cooperative for Alec than they had ever been for Amos or his brother, and the journey was a smooth one.

  As darkness fell on the final day of their trip, Alec felt sure that they only had a few miles left to reach Ridgeclimb. “We’ll keep on going,” he walked back along the line, informing each of his fellow travelers on the grueling journey. “We’ll have a comfortable place to lay our heads tonight,” he promised them.

  Three hours later Alec’s Light illumination faintly shone on the distant structure, leaving Alec puzzled over why no windows were lit. He jogged ahead of the caravan to look closer and prepare the return, only to stop in sudden fear. “Hold back! Don’t come any closer!” he shouted behi
nd him.

  Bauer, Hope, tell Andi and Marva to draw weapons, he sent an additional message. The clinic has been attacked.

  Chapter 12 – Assault at Ridgeclimb

  Although tired from the long day’s journey, Alec engaged his Warriors powers along with his Light and Spiritual powers, then sent a small, bright ball of light floating along the front of Ridgeclimb’s structure, examining the building from his position many yards away. The shutters over the windows had been pried away, and broken glass littered the ground in front of the windows. The gate to the courtyard lay on the ground, and a sooty shadow surrounded one forlorn window upstairs.

  Alec allowed the ball of light to move about the building, giving him time to try to absorb the shock of what he saw. His Spiritual powers sensed the presence of several people huddled together far inside the building, fearful people, presumably the survivors of whatever disaster had befallen his home. No other presence came within his senses.

  “Hello Ridgeclimb,” he shouted loudly. “It’s me, Alec, returned from the east.”

  He split his ball of light into two parts, leaving one hanging outside the building where his traveling group could see it, while the other ball of light preceded him into the clinic.

  Whatever attack had taken place, it had been some time ago; the floors inside had been swept, and an effort to superficially clean the bloody smears on the wall had taken place.

  “Hello, it’s me, Alec. I’m back,” he shouted as he cautiously walked down the chilly hallway. He descended down a short flight of stairs, and stopped in front of a closed door.

  “It’s me, Alec. I’m coming in. Don’t do anything,” he cautioned as he pushed the door open, and let his ball of light float into the room as he stood in the doorway, senses alert.

  Inside he saw a dozen people huddled together behind a flimsy barricade of furniture.

  “What is that light?”

  “It is Alec!”

  “Be careful, it may be a trick.”

  No, that’s Alec. He’s back at last!”