The Caravan Road

by Jeffrey Quyle

  “That is so good. Thank you,” she told Amane.

  “Thank you for going with me last night. If you hadn’t, he would have been dead,” she said.

  “But I thought he was dead,” Tarry interrupted.

  “Of course he was. That’s what an arrow through your skull will do,” Amane said again.

  “His body was dead. His spirit lived on. He came down and possessed my body, and used my body, my energy, and Amane’s energy to manipulate his body back to life,” she said. It had been an extraordinary experience, wonderful in its results, but terrifying to carry out; she hoped she would never feel anything like it again.

  “And he’s going to be okay now?” Tarry asked.

  Andi hesitated. He wasn’t going to be the same; something told her that with certainty.

  “He told me he needs to rest for a long time. One time he was in a coma for weeks after he fought a demon,” she said, calling upon one of those strange memories of Alec’s that she had retained from the time they had shared his body.

  “You look so tired,” Amane said sympathetically. “Would you like to go rest? You can have that room in the east wing as a place to nap; no one else is using it,” he told her.

  Andi considered the offer. She felt uneasy about leaving Alec’s side, yet she knew there was nothing she could do for him besides basic nursing activities to tend to his body. “Yes, thank you. A nap would help.”

  “And when you feel you need some exercise, let me know. You owe me a rematch from that bout we were in the middle of last night when you went running out,” Amane said. “Tarry, you’ve got to knock blades with this girl; she uses both left and right hands without a bit of a change in skill!”

  “Do I?” Andi asked in wonder.

  “Listen to you being so modest!” Amane said, just as a servant came to the door.

  “Sir, the prince wishes to see you,” the servant said.

  “Excuse me,” Amane said as he stood. “I imagine this will be related to last night’s events.

  “Go get some sleep Andi. Tarry will arrange for a nurse to sit with Alec, won’t you old boy?” Amane asked.

  “Go on. Of course,” the older brother said, and they each went their ways.

  Later that day at lunch, Amane and Tarry spoke. “The prince reports that half a dozen girls were taken last night. The only place there was any successful resistance was where Alec fought them and saved the one girl.

  “He’s furious. He wants his citizens protected. He’s grateful for what Alec and Andi did, but he wants the others back,” Amane recounted.

  “From everything you say, I think he’ll get his wish once Alec awakens,” Tarry answered.

  “We just need to wait for Alec to awaken then,” Amane said. “And then the rescue will begin.”

  A selection from The Journey Home, Book 10, the final volume of the Ingenairii Series…

  The return of Aja the person came as he was still in Warrior mode, running with distance-eating strides. Her weight instantly increased his load, and he heard her voice call to him. “Are we in a wind storm? What’s happening Alec?”

  He stopped and released his powers as he knelt, and felt great weariness overcome him from the expenditure of energy.

  “I was running through the use of my abilities, and so we traveled quickly throughout the day,” he told his companion as he unstrapped her.

  “Am I a hindrance by returning to this form?” she asked with anxiety in her mobile and expressive face.

  No Aja, you’re not a hindrance. I’m in need of rest, so it’s timely that you’ve arrived to remind me to reduce the stress on my body,” he replied.

  Aja leaned over and kissed his cheek. “Thank you. How far have we come today?”

  Alec computed. “The land has been gentle and the road has been clear. We’ve come perhaps fifty or sixty miles today. It’s enough to make me pleased. We can walk on a bit more, and chat until it’s time to settle in,” he told her and they began to walk together. Aja filled Alec in with her report on the little that she had seen the previous night, while Alec described the things he had passed during the day.

  “That’s the thing that made me leave Erwin. I could never stop asking about what the day had been like, and he grew so tired of answering my questions. He just wanted me to do,” she hesitated before completing the sentence, “what he wanted,” she said, revealing a sadness Alec had not seen in her before. “Well, that was one of the things,” she amended.

  “What’s that?” she asked before Alec could try to frame a comforting comment, and he looked ahead at a small cluster of lights.

  “It’s probably a village,” he told her. “There are too many lights to just be a farmstead.”

  They continued on, and in a few minutes entered the environs of the cluster of buildings, including a tavern that seemed to bustle with all the occupants in the region, judging from the amount of noise that it emitted.

  “Oh, can we go in, please?” Aja asked Alec. “I’d so love to see so many people together.”

  Alec thought about the small clutch of coins that Kendra had given him as a departing gift to help with their travels. It was little enough to stretch over many days, but he wanted to please the girl who was so excited by new experiences, and the hope of a warm meal also appealed to him.

  “We’ll get a bite to eat,” Alec agreed, and they entered the door of the building, and stopped to look at the interior, where the only two available seats Alec could see were jammed in a corner by a counter where a group of men were drinking large tankards of beer. The air was smoky and the room was noisy as Alec took a deep breath and plunged into the crowd, holding Aja’s hand tightly as he led her to the counter seats and placed her in the seat against the wall, while he took a seat next to a beefy man who he judged to be a farmer.

  He noticed Aja rubbing her buttocks vigorously. “Someone pinched me back there!” she told Alec.

  He grinned and shook his head, then leaned in close to her and whispered in her ear as his hand gently released his Healing energy to take away the ache, “I’m sorry. You’ll be safe back here in the corner, and I’ll give you better protection on the way out if the courtesy of the house doesn’t appear better.”

  She gave him a grateful smile, as a serving man behind the counter tapped him from behind.

  “We’ll have a bowl of stew and a mug of redberry,” Alec told the man. “What do you want?” he asked Aja.

  “Oh, nothing for me Alec. I just like to see the people. Maybe I’ll have a taste of your food,” she said, and the waiter left as soon as Alec fished out two copper pence to pay in advance.

  “You’re either brave or stupid,” the farmer said to Alec a moment later.

  “Why’s that?” Alec asked, turning to look at the man, hoping it was meant to be the start of a joke, and not a threat of some kind.

  “You bring a girl that pretty into this place and you’re going to have to fight at least a half dozen men to be the one to leave with her,” the farmer warned. “And I’m not sure you look big enough to work your way through that many fights.”

  Alec relaxed. “If it’s just fights, we’ll be fine,” he replied. “I’ll tell them they have to fight you to get to me,” he slapped the man’s arm with a smile, hoping to defuse any tension.

  “That’ll buy you a little time, but you’ll need to go fast when the time comes,” his neighbor agreed congenially.

  Alec’s bowl and mug arrived then, and he turned towards the food and Aja. The girl’s shifted her own attention from observing the crowd to huddling her head with Alec’s.

  “People must be friendly here,” she observed, as Alec offered her his mug of juice. “A lot of men are looking at us.”

  “This is nice,” she said of the juice. “Not as good as water, but better than the wine and ale Erwin always wanted me to drink.”

  She only tasted the gravy of Alec’s stew and decided she had no desire for more, leaving him to sit and eat his bowl of food as he turne
d to look at the crowd in the tavern. There were a few men who looked at Aja constantly, and many who looked at her from time to time, but Alec saw nothing that made him worry. As he finished gobbling down his meal he heard with surprise as Aja started to sing a song. It was a song that he’d never heard before, but the tune and the words were clearly appropriate for a tavern minstrel to entertain a house with.

  Those who sat in their immediate vicinity quickly quieted down, and the circle of listeners spread quickly around the room, as Aja stood up, and began to clap her hands to the tempo of the music, quickly leading the customers to oblige her and follow. The serving man came up behind Alec and tapped him urgently on the shoulder. “The master of the house says we’re not going to pay your bird, and there’s no begging allowed neither,” he explained with a significant look.

  “She’s just singing because she likes to sing. I can tell her and the crowd that you told her to stop. Would you like me to do that?” Alec challenged him.

  “No! There’s no reason to be hasty. I’ll go tell the master,” the servant said hurriedly, and he left.

  Aja’s song ended, and the crowd immediately applauded the beauty of her voice, then began to call for more.

  “Where did you learn that?” Alec asked her, leaning in to her and practically shouting in her ear.

  She turned and shouted something back, but Alec could not hear the reply, and then she smiled at him, turned back to the crowd, and pushed herself up so that she was sitting on the counter, now taller and more visible than she had been before, and started into another rousing tune.

  Minutes later she finished her third ballad, and then changed the tempo, singing softly, a gentle lullaby tune that a mother might sing to a baby. It quieted the crowd profoundly, as every ear in the house listened to the words of love that she crooned. When Aja finished her gentle melody the room was profoundly silent once again, then more applause, in a thoughtful and respectful manner, circled around the room.

  “Oh Alec! This has been so much fun!” she told him with shining eyes, leaning down to speak into his ear. “But you probably want to start walking again, don’t you?” she cradled his head in her hands affectionately.

  He nodded his head. “We do need to go, but we’ll do this again the next chance we have, okay?” he asked.

  “Yes, my lord Alec,” she told him, and gave him an appreciative kiss, at which the tavern broke into raucous commentary and applause.

  “We’re leaving now friends, but thank you for sharing your tavern with us tonight,” Alec shouted as he stood, to a chorus of boos and shouts.

  A half dozen men all in a cluster around a pair of tables in the middle of the room stood up, and a nervous silence descended over the room. “You can leave, but the songbird will stay and sing for us, beardless boy,” their apparent leader told Alec.

  The man had a long, bushy beard, and Alec suddenly recognized that all the other men who stood up also had beards. In fact, he realized, every man but the serving boys and Alec himself had a beard in the house.

  There was no point in trying to talk his way out of the situation, Alec concluded. He seized his Spirit energy to establish the buffer he had learned to construct between energy streams when he practiced multiple forms of the ingenaire energies. He then called upon his Air powers and his Healer powers.

  “Fellows, let us leave together in peace, and there will be no trouble,” he warned, standing in front of Aja.

  The bearded leader of the standing gang laughed loudly, then uttered an epithet.

  As soon as he did, Alec created a disk of air that lifted all six of the men into the air, and slammed them against the ceiling. The rest of the crowd stared at the men above them, and stared at Alec, then began to scramble for the corners and the exits.

  “Come along Aja,” Alec said quietly, and he led the way to where the men floated above the room. They all looked at him, bug-eyed with fear, their faces red.

  “We didn’t mean anything, great one,” one of the followers said.

  Alec created a second disk of air, and raised himself above the floor, so that he could reach out and touch each man, then did so, one by one, releasing his healing powers so that a powerful surge in hormones developed in the men’s face’s momentarily, and their beards fell out in heavy, dark showers that hit the floor in piles beneath them, revealing pale smooth cheeks and chins on them all, and depriving them of the sign of manhood that entitled them to bully others.

  Without speaking, Alec lowered himself to the floor, and escorted Aja to the main door, then allowed his Air energies to lower the antagonists to the ground. Still silent, Alec looked around the room at the witnesses who cowered in the corners, behind tables, and along the other exit hallways. He smiled, and then escorted Aja out into the darkness of the village street.

  “Let’s hurry away from here,” he urged her, and the couple broke into a gentle jog for the next half hour, until Alec grew tired and slowed down to a brisk walk, his hands on his hips.

  “I can’t imagine there was any real reason to worry about being followed,” Aja said a minute later, breathing heavily. “There aren’t any fools likely to try to follow a man who does the things you did back there,” she looked at him sidelong.

  “No, but they’d follow a girl as pretty as you,” he said with a smile, also struggling to catch his breath.

  “Well, aren’t you gallant?” she laughed.

  “That was going so well, up to the end,” she added. “You’re probably reconsidering the likelihood of letting me sing again, aren’t you?”

  Alec looked at the mournful regret Aja expressed. “We can probably manage to work something out,” he reached over and wrapped his arm around her shoulders, pulling her into a hug that he found surprisingly pleasant to maintain as they walked silently along the road in the countryside.

  “I’m sorry to leave you alone at night when I fall asleep,” he told her just a little later as he rolled himself up against a fallen log in a small wood lot.

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