“Who can tell me what happened?” I asked.
The priest opened his mouth, and I raised a hand. “Not you.”
The boy with the sword spoke. “I can.”
He had yet to put his blade away, holding it warily at his side while eyeing everyone. After what he had just been through, I couldn’t blame him.
“All right. You are?”
Blue eyes narrowed in an effort to be intimidating. Yet the floppy, black hair and the fuzz on his cheeks took away from his efforts. In another decade, he might have the look down. Not yet. “Evran. Who are all of you?” He tried to put a bit of gravel into his cracking voice.
Ira snorted next to me after placing a young girl on his shoulders in an effort to raise her spirits. “I like him already.”
“I’m Tyrus.” I gestured with my hands. “Other introductions can wait.”
He scowled at my dismissiveness, but got the message.
“About seventy-five raiders, all wearing blue sashes at their waists, attacked us two days ago,” he began.
“Was there any warning?” I asked.
“We heard rumors of groups out there, but we didn’t think much of it. We had a large number of men in town and thought we’d be safe. It was awful.”
“I know.” I had seen the evidence. “How’d everyone get to the temple?”
“My Pa and a few of his friends distracted the raiders while me and a few others my age rounded up those that hadn’t been spotted yet.” Evran nodded to the priest. “He led us to the passage and hid. The raiders came eventually, when they were done with the town I guess. They looted it, torched it, and left. We’d have tried to come out sooner but the door was stuck.”
“The altar had fallen on it,” Dekar added as we started back to the wagons.
“It’s funny,” said Evran. “When we heard of the damage caused in nearby towns after the eruptions, we thought we had been spared for some greater purpose, a place of refuge. Probably a quarter of the people living here when the raiders came were people who recently moved from other areas to start over. But all it meant was a delay to the death and destruction.”
“I’m sorry.”
He grunted. “So, why are you here?”
“Your town was on our way south. We started out at Denu Creek. Had some problems with raiders ourselves before leaving. We picked up a few of our number on the road since then.”
“You must have hid better than us.”
“We had nowhere to hide. We fought.”
“And won?”
“I guess that depends on if you survived or not.”
“Can I come with you?” He scanned the area. “I’ve got nothing here.”
“Yes.” I raised my voice. “Anyone interested in coming with us may do so as long as you pull your weight. Talk to others. They’ll let you know what we expect.”
“Where are you heading?” asked Evran.
“The Southern Kingdoms.”
His eyes widened. “Why?”
“I think it’s our best chance at survival.” I paused. “I know you’ve got a lot to process, but are there any hidden stores the raiders might have missed? Something we could take to help us on our journey?”
“None that I know of.”
I swore inwardly. “Figures. Not your fault though.” I looked away and raised my voice again so all could hear. “I know everyone wants to mourn or take care of the bodies of their loved ones. I understand that, but we can’t afford to spend any more time here. Say your goodbyes, gather whatever clothes, food, weapons, and other supplies you can. Only what’s necessary. Then refill the water casks. We leave in an hour.”
Evran nodded. His disposition seemed to have improved some. “Thank you.” He held out his hand.
I took it. “Don’t thank me yet. A lot can happen between here and our destination. We’re still months away from reaching it.”
He nodded and we parted.
Ava approached me. “Looks like our little army is growing again.”
“Huh?”
“Well, there’s about half a dozen teenagers that were hiding in that basement. Most are Evran’s age or older. More than capable of holding a sword or a club. A few elderly that could probably be all right with a bow and arrow.”
“Sounds like you’re the one recruiting. Not me.”
“Please. Don’t tell me you haven’t considered how to use everyone already.”
The thought hadn’t really crossed my mind. “Considering how many kids we’ll have along with us now, plus all the wagons and supplies, a few more bodies capable of defending it won’t hurt. Might make people less likely to bother us.”
“Those raiders weren’t scared of attacking a town with a population that outnumbered them.” Ava grimaced. “I think if anyone sees all we’re carrying and how exposed we are on the road . . . We’ll make a pretty tempting target. Especially with all the young kids. We’ll have to worry about protecting them and others who can’t fight. The raiders can just swoop in and kill.”
“Good thing we’ve been drilling everyone then.”
She smiled. “Like I said, training your own army.”
I scowled, thinking of what the influx of people truly meant. It would be a greater strain on resources when food and water was already harder to come by after the eruptions. Sending out foragers and hunting parties were hit or miss.
I could feel the stress pulling at the back of my eyes. “Why don’t you make yourself useful and see if you can gather up more weapons for our army? There should be plenty of those.”
She gave a mock salute. “Yes, sir.”
I cuffed her on the arm, but rather than respond, she paused and looked to her left.
I followed her gaze. Myra talked with Evran, helping him sort through some bags near an overturned wagon. He pulled out a blanket that she helped him spread over the body of a middle-aged woman, naked like all the rest. Evran put his head down, hand going to his eyes. Myra came up beside him and placed a hand on his shoulder.
Ava whispered. “Looks like you might be recruiting more than soldiers.”
CHAPTER 20
What the raiders of Uman hadn’t stolen, they destroyed. Crates of fruit had been trampled and sacks of flour cut open and left to spill onto the ground were just a couple of the head-scratching sights. The evidence was clear that someone completely lacking common sense led them.
The idiots even spoiled the town’s main well by tossing several dead bodies into it. Thankfully, Boaz came across a smaller well on the town’s outskirts that we used to replenish our supplies.
Despite the careless destruction of so much, we still managed to recover a few things worth taking with us. Nason came across a small cache of crossbows along with a barrel of quarrels. Sivan found a couple of sacks of rice. Ira some rope. Dekar a decent map. Damaris some feed for the animals. The two wagons from Uman still in good enough shape to use hauled the young and elderly that were now my responsibility.
We made it out of town with just enough time to manage another five miles before night fell. Those five miles seemed like a hundred due to the silence that haunted them.
Uman had a dour effect on everyone. It was a reminder that we could not completely run away from danger, no matter how far we traveled.
* * *
That night at camp, the priest from Uman gathered everyone not on watch into a large circle. He led fervent prayers and hopeful songs, shedding what looked like tears throughout. Just about everyone joined in during the refrains.
It reminded me of how that ragged priest of Molak had an immediate and positive impact on my group of veterans traveling home after the Geneshan War. Hard men had lifted their voices in song and their hearts in prayer, eager for spiritual peace when they could find no other.
Just as it was then, I recognized the impact of his efforts. Most people needed to believe their gods had not abandoned them.
I wasn’t most people.
I tried to stick around when things started, mo
stly as a gesture of goodwill to those more religious in our group. However, I could only take so much before I had to separate myself. This time Ava joined me. While I had enjoyed the company of Captain Nehab before, I much preferred my sister’s.
As we walked away, she whispered. “You had me worried.”
“About?”
“That you were going to sit through all of that and I’d have to do the same or risk being the only one to leave. Or worse, that you had found religion.”
I snorted. “Like that would ever happen.” I glanced over my shoulder. “Looks like my kids might have though.”
My son and daughter sat beside the priest as he spoke.
“Nah,” said Ava. “They’re just curious, I think.”
We found a log far out past the pickets stationed around our camp. We sat there for a long time in silence, enjoying each other’s company. For a little while it almost felt like we were kids again in the woods, hiding out in our secret place.
By Molak, we had come a long way since then.
CHAPTER 21
The next morning, I woke earlier than usual. If my worries were bad before, yesterday’s influx of people only made them worse. I knew it was the right thing to keep taking people in. However, we had more mouths to feed as a result, many of which would be able to contribute very little on a day-to-day basis due to health or age. The more I thought about our situation, the more stressed I became.
I drilled everyone extra hard. I figured if I had to suffer, I’d make others suffer with me. Misery loved company and I was feeling lonely.
I heard a few mutterings of me being cruel or lacking compassion by not taking it easy on everyone after the day before.
Maybe they had a point.
My extra drills did have one positive effect. By the time we got back on the road, their loathing of me supplanted part of the numbness from Uman. Sometimes it paid for the man in charge to be the bad guy.
I wondered if that had been General Balak’s strategy.
We stopped for lunch.
Dekar ran the squads through a short teamwork drill. I decided to remain absent after suffering their sore attitude all morning. It was good to have them dislike me in the short term, but I knew it was possible to take it too far.
Again, I thought of Balak.
I watched the activity from a distance, pretending disinterest. What I saw gave me pride. Squad leaders decided on their own to give the people from Uman recently assigned to their group an important task within their unit. Everyone made sure their new member was successful, thereby building confidence in their capabilities. Such behavior confirmed that appointments of those squad leaders had not been mistakes.
I grunted when I realized whose squad finished the drills first. Reuma, onetime employee of the Soiled Dove, had been my most controversial choice as squad leader.
I initially received a lot of push back from her appointment, especially from the men who now took orders from a woman they once paid to have a good time with. The men had gotten over their apprehension after finishing first in drills for three straight days.
Success eased many prejudices.
“What’re you looking at, Pa?”
I turned away from the squads. Zadok set down his skin of water to wipe his brow.
“Nothing. Just thinking how there are some hidden talents among us. Sort of a shame, really.”
“You mean you wish the war was still going on?”
“No. Nothing like that. It’s just sort of sad that those talents don’t always translate to something that doesn’t involve one person trying to kill another.” I paused. “Ready?”
He withdrew the dagger I had given him that first night I returned to Denu Creek. We had gotten in the habit of practicing every day. The irony of my previous comment to him wasn’t lost on me as Zadok got into the stance I had shown him when wielding the weapon.
He was a fast learner.
Zadok and Myra both participated in weapon drills with others, but I refused to assign either to squads. If for some reason we had to fight, they’d be next to me or someone I greatly trusted.
Zadok and I began, weaving about while searching for an opening in the other’s guard. I let him use his dagger while I used a blunted piece of wood about the same length.
Thoughts of holding my son soon after he was born and snuggling his small body against my chest came to mind. I had several, private one-way conversations with him then, telling him all the things I would teach him. How to be a farmer. How to be a husband. The nuances of what it meant to be a man. Not one of them had involved maiming or killing someone.
“You’re learning fast,” I said after Zadok avoided my first two moves, succumbing to the third.
“You beat me though.”
“But you aren’t falling for the obvious stuff anymore. That’s good.”
I had to stop myself before I added something like ‘Before long you’ll be knifing people with the best of them.’
Not exactly something I wanted to say to my son.
“I still lost. Doesn’t matter how someone beat me. Dead is dead.”
Zadok spoke with such a morose attitude, I frowned.
“Sorry. I’ve just been thinking a lot about Uman.”
“Oh?”
“I overheard Myra and Evran talking. Evran said there had been veterans from the Byzan Wars living in town.”
“That’s not surprising. Those are the wars Sivan served in.”
He bunched his face in confusion. “Why were we able to beat the raiders who came at us while they couldn’t beat the ones that attacked them?”
“That’s a good question. Why do you think Uman should have defeated the raiders?”
“They seemed to have had more going for them than we did in Denu Creek. More veterans. Twice as many people willing to fight. They seemed closer as a group too, not all the in-fighting Denu Creek had because of Jareb. Plus, hardly anyone had died from the eruptions. They just got sick.”
“All good reasons. So why didn’t the people of Uman win?”
He paused, thinking. Then after a moment shrugged. “I really don’t know.”
I spat, not so much angry at the people of Uman, but frustrated that they didn’t see what was so obvious to me. “They were comfortable. Rather than prepare for danger, they thought they’d build themselves a utopia. Reacting to a threat is never as efficient as planning for one ahead of time. All those efforts of the men dead in the streets were admirable, but it was too little too late. Sometimes when you’ve been around something so long, you can fool yourself into believing the world really is the way you see it. I guess a bit of cynicism goes a long way toward never getting caught up in that sort of thing. I’ve always had my fair share of that. And the cynic in me has only grown over the years, especially the last few months, to ever think things will end up all right.”
“If you had been in Uman, they would have won.”
“Perhaps. Perhaps not. It does seem like war is following me wherever I go though.”
I wondered if I’d have to cross the distant sea to escape it. But chances are it’d follow me there too, have me engaged in some massive naval conflict.
Zadok met my eyes as if he was reading the bitterness and resignation I felt. “I know a lot of bad has happened to you, to both of us, but a lot of good has happened too, Pa. You saved me and Myra from Jareb. Aunt Ava is with us even though you thought you wouldn’t see her again. Ira and Dekar are like the uncles I always hoped Uncle Uriah would be. We’ve got lots of friends now too like Damaris, Sivan, Nason, Boaz, Dinah, and Abigail. And even though I might not be close enough to call everyone else a friend, we get along now. No one treats us like they used to.”
“Saving their lives probably has something to do with that,” I muttered.
“Who cares what it took to change people’s minds, so long as it changed?”
I chuckled. “Are you saying I should be an optimist?”
He shrugged. “It wouldn’t h
urt.”
“Don’t hold your breath.”
“I guess I’ll be the optimist then. I can see all the good you’ve done and all the blessings we have, even if you can’t.”
“I see them, son. It’s just not easy to look past the bad. But keep doing what you’re doing. Maybe one day your optimism will wear off on me.”
I put an arm around Zadok.
We gazed out at a land that barely seemed real. The few specks of green sprinkling the bleak countryside of low hills with patches of rock and dead pines would soon be nothing more than an autumn come early.
However, the false autumn was absent of the vibrant colors most look forward to enjoying before the harsh winter months begin. I searched for the season’s purples, maroons, reds, and yellows in the landscape, but found none. If they were there, they resided under the dozens of shades of brown tinged with the ugly orange sunlight from above.
“What are you thinking about now?” he asked.
I waved my hand over to the barren landscape. “Wondering if the artifact affected the soil. We need to figure that out wherever we settle down. Otherwise, things are going to be pretty grim if we can’t grow anything to eat.”
Then there was the fact that water could become an issue soon.
I left that unsaid.
“You’ll figure it out.”
“You sure about that?”
“Optimism, Pa.”
Easier said than done. “Right.”
* * *
No one could say my inability to be a good father resulted from a lack of effort on my part, especially when it came to doing things I had no desire to do.
I spent the rest of the day and the entirety of the next working on my optimism. Someone spilled water from their canteen and rather than jump in and curse their clumsiness, laying a guilt trip on how every little bit was crucial to our survival, I just said, “Maybe it will help some of those roots hold on a bit longer.”
That was just one of many examples where father tried to emulate son. The looks I got in response to my efforts were almost worth the trouble on my part. Ira went so far as to ask if I needed to ride in the back of the wagon for a spell as I must be coming down with something. He made the observation from a distance as if he worried he might catch my new attitude.
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