Their home, Maison de la Cloutier, and he sobbed, thinking of how he had taken it all for granted. The soft bed with clean sheets… the freshly washed nightshirt, every night... the never-ending series of delicious meals, prepared and ready almost in an instant, and never once going hungry… the safety of the house, the guards, the roof overhead, never being too cold or too hot, and being safe from the harsh snows in the winter, and the cold rains in the spring and fall…
Armand remembered how he had pestered his father like a spoiled six-year-old, over that trip to Potomick. He took out the coin of Father Abram, held it in his hand in the dying light. Yes, that cursed trip south. And what had it gained him? Better for all if he had never gone, if he had never left Toronto, for all that had happened since that trip was being filled with stupid ideas of life and society, of thinking he ---- a teenage boy! ---- could make changes, could make a difference! And what had happened instead? Arrested, tortured, having Windsor Senior executed, exiled, overworked, nearly murdered twice, and now an escapee, with a death sentence on his head.
And his father? Dying alone at work, his life shattered over the arrest and exile of his son, sole heir to the Ministry position that had been in his family for generations.
He balanced the old coin in his hand. And for what? A myth, a legend, a dream that slaves were once freed, all over the lands to the south.
Armand clenched his fist, and made to toss the coin out into the streambed, but he couldn’t do it.
But he could weep some more over his father.
Dusk turned to night and it grew colder. He pulled out his blanket and wrapped himself in it.
Henri was late.
He had said just a few hours, and even without a watch, Armand knew he was overdue.
A little more time, Armand thought, and then we leave to whatever is out there, for it --–
A light, bobbing, coming up from the road.
He rolled up his blanket, tied it back to the rucksack, quickly got up on his feet. The light grew brighter and he could hear the sound of hoof beats. But it sounded like more than one horse.
A patrol?
Maybe so.
Damn!
Armand moved quietly away from the tree, heading for the dry brook bed, when a voice came out from the darkness: “Armand! If that’s you, hold up! It’s me, Henri…”
Armand turned and went back to the road. The light grew brighter, revealing itself as an electric lamp hanging off the side of a saddle. Henri was in civilian clothes, a holstered short sword and pistol about his waist. Behind him were two horses. He quickly grasped Armand’s hand. “This has to be quick, I’m afraid.”
“You’re late.”
“Be grateful I’m here,” he snapped. “The whole town and fort is on alert. Seems one of the fine townspeople saw you earlier and then noted your Wanted poster at the fort exchange. Since then, the place is in an uproar.”
Henri took the electric lamp, flashed it at the second horse, tethered to the first. This one had a saddle as well as the first one, but there were saddlebags and a pack bundled at the rear.
“That there’s Jasper,” he said. “He and that gear are now yours.”
“Henri…”
“I was volunteered to go on an overnight to search for you,” Henri said, going back to undo the tether. “Jasper is here, and he’s not coming back. He’s going on with you. I’ll tell my post commandant that he was spooked by a coyote and ran off.”
Armand went to the horse, touched his face. “Henri, this is --–“
“Damn it, Armand, when I said there’s no time, I meant it, there’s no time. Look here now.”
From inside his coat he took out a folded piece of paper, which he placed against Jasper’s saddle. “You thinking of going east or west?”
“Not sure,” Armand said. “Probably east.”
“West might be better,” Henri offered. “Lots of hills and mountains to get lost in, before you get to the Pacific.”
“True, but I was thinking of heading east, hugging the border, maybe find a small town with a telegraph office. Even at my age, Henri, I’m now the Hereditary Permanent Deputy Minister of Trade. If I can get a telegram off to the Lord Chancellor, there’ll be some sort of hearing. That’s how it works. Once I’m in my father’s office… things will change. Starting with me finding out who betrayed me, who got me sent to the oil sands.”
Henri grunted. “Sounds like a fair plan, my friend, but Toronto is getting churned up. The emperor’s nephew was named Crown Prince last spring. There’s rumors are that he might be ill. So there’s a lot of jockeying and scrambling for position among the Imperial household, the trading companies and the nobility. The Lord Chancellor might be too busy to take care of you.”
“Still, it’s a chance,” Armand said. “What do you have there?”
“It’s a hand-drawn map, best I can do. If you’re going east, make sure you swing around here, and you’ll pick up the Scragnon River. All right? Follow that and you’ll eventually get into Saskatchewan. Maybe you should try a rail station. You could probably smuggle yourself back east on a train if you’re smart enough.”
On the map a thick finger traced a dotted line. “Here’s the border. If you decide to swing south for any reason, be sharp, be aware. There are Indian tribes there --– the Sioux, the Cheyenne, and others. Stay away from their villages and you should be fine. But it’s the others you should worry about.”
“What others?”
In the darkness he could sense a chill coming over his friend. “The Indians. If you fight them, they fight fair. Tough but fair. You may be captured, but your freedom can be bartered. But the others… true barbarians. Ayans, they’re called. They believe they are the true master race of all mankind. The tales I’ve heard… Once, a cavalry troop destroyed one of their bands, rescued an Imperial surveyor who had been working on the border. His legs were gone. They took off his legs, for sport, or for food, or something. Poor devil went mad, of course.”
Armand’s voice was faint. “Of course.”
“And another thing. There are places, further south, where the sun bombs were used, during the War of the World. If you come across a flat plain, that looks like a paved large area, that shouldn’t be paved, don’t go near it! Find another way around, for if you cross it, even now, you can get sick and die. Sometimes they are marked by poles that have three skulls, arranged in a triangle. Do you understand, Armand? Don’t go near it.”
Armand nodded and Henri folded the map and handed it over. “How do you know all this?”
“What?”
“Your heard me, Henri. How do you know all of this? The Imperial Army is supposed to defend the border. That’s it. But it sounds like you and your troopers have been doing a lot more than just defending.”
Henri went back to the horse called Jasper, untethered him. “Here. Get going. There’s no more time to talk, Armand. You need to get going… and so do I.”
Armand took the tether, undid it and looped it about the saddle, and then took the reins. Jasper ducked his head twice, like he was accepting Armand as his new mate. “You still didn’t answer the question, Henri. What’s going on?”
Henri got up on his own horse, reins in hand. “I’ll be moving west, along the road here. If you’re going east, then for God’s sake, get going. It’ll be light in a while. Some of the trackers we have can track you over stone. And Armand…”
His friend whirled his own horse around. “Stop asking so many damn questions, and maybe you’ll have a long life ahead of you. Right?”
“Maybe so, but I can’t help it. Henri, I owe you everything.”
From the light of his electric lamp, he offered Armand a salute. “So you do, so you do. Now move!”
With that, Henri reared back his horse, switched off the electric lamp, and cantered down the road. Armand put a boot in the near stirrup, rolled himself up and gently scratched the ears of Jasper. “My friend, let’s do as he says.”
They
started moving, as well.
South.
Not east.
After an hour of so it was still dark, and Jasper, a well-trained cavalry mount if there ever was one, had gotten Armand some distance away. With the starlight and moonlight, it was fairly easy to see their way across the prairie. At one point, they were up a long rise, and at the top, Armand looked back, where he could make out the lights of the still unnamed village where his friend was stationed. He saw other things as well: to the east and west, little dots of light, moving along where Armand guessed the roads were.
Searchers, moving by night by electric lamps.
Looking for him, a wanted escaped prisoner with an expensive price on his head.
Armand looked for a few minutes, breathing hard, feeling the comfortable sensation of Jasper underneath him. It had been a very long time since he had ridden a horse, and it was amazing at how quickly he had picked up the rhythm and sense of having a horse beneath you. Even in the short time Armand had spent with him, they were a team. He patted the side of his head. “Another trick, I’m afraid, telling Henri where I was going. I trust him, as much as I trust anyone. But if that bastard Jacques Templair were to get a hold of Henri, even he wouldn’t hold up. So I had to lie again. Like the escapee that I am. And a noble, as well.”
Armand grabbed up his reins and took a breath.
“South, my friend,” Armand said, trying to make his voice sound stronger and braver than it was. “To the badlands. The barbarians. Amerka.”
Chapter Nine
It was worse in the early morning, when Melinda was barely awake, when she could fool herself that all was well, that she would soon wake up with her family, with Dad already out hunting or fishing or meeting with the tribal elders, Mom making breakfast for her and her three brothers. In those moments when she wasn’t fully awake, she could fool herself that all was well, that she was protected and comfortable, and that she would wake up in her safe home, or in her tidy dormitory room at University, or the clean spare room at the Donovan farmhouse.
Then it would happen. A bark, a loud noise, a bellow, and Melinda would wake up, more often than not chilled. She would toss off the buffalo robe and filthy blankets, and her dreary existence would come roaring back at her with a vengeance. Like now. Over her head was a thatch roof and about her was her little bit of existence: a cage, made of thick wooden branches, held tightly together by strips of rawhide, and similar door, fastened by a lock and chain.
The cage next to her was empty, and the one beyond that held other captives, three young men. Out beyond the wooden cages was the camp that was her current… home? She wouldn’t allow a sweet word like home to describe the obscenity around her: the cages, the tents, the other huts, the horses, and the fierce men and women who lived here, quarreled, fought, and… owned her. That phrase was hard to wrap her mind about, but after months here, she could no longer ignore it. It was the truth.
At one time she was a child of privilege, a fortunate and hard-studying student at University, and now she was nothing more than a slave.
Property.
Melinda tossed off the robe, went to the wooden bucket of water next to her coverings, washed her face and hands with cold water. A good morning. Other mornings she would have to break through an ice film to get to the water. She looked at the men strolling by outside, most giving her a knowing, leering smirk, and she turned away, once again ashamed of what she had done to keep herself alive over time. The shame… the cold, slimy feeling in the pit of her stomach that sometimes kept her awake at night, even if she was exhausted from cleaning up the pots and pans, or helping serve food to the loud and powerful men who were her captors.
But what was awful was that in their own twisted way, the men thought they were worshipping her, for sweet murdered Christy Donovan had been right. The men thought Melinda was unusual, an alien, an outsider. In their way of thinking, having her as a captive meant they had a special power, that their tribe was strong and unbeatable. During the times when she was brought before this band of barbarians --- only when the men were around, never the women --- she was stripped and put on display, as they jeered her, taunted her, danced about her with their sacred book, and in a few terrible times, they had placed their mark upon her. And why not? For she was property, a slave. On those occasions, some times she would fight back, even if it meant spitting in the faces of her captives.
But if she had to be grateful about something, it was one thing: not once had the men here ever violated her.
Now it was all about living, of making it, day to day, but as she sat down back on the old, smelly buffalo robes, she took a deep breath. During the first days of her captivity, she had dreamed that she would eventually be rescued. Not by the Imperial cavalry; the betrayal that first full day of being captured by that arrogant cavalryman still burned inside of her. No, she had dreamed that Dad and his brothers would make the effort to track her here, to kill her captors. Or that great-auntie Sophie’s feelings would come true, that she would be rescued by some prince, riding in to make it all right.
But over the past weeks she had come to the cold realization that no help was ever coming. That no prince or savior on a horse would come here. And that if she were to escape, it would be up to her… and her means of escape would be a final one, for her ultimate goal was to deprive her captors of something to worship, to humiliate.
Her cage rattled and she jumped. Kneeling at the outside of the cage, scarred and tattooed hands holding onto the wooden stakes, was the man called Joe, who was the tribe leader and her owner.
He smiled, showing broken and dark teeth. His head was shaved and he had a full beard, and there were tattoos as well on his face and skull.
“Soon,” he said, speaking slowly so she could understand him. “Very soon my woman will leave. Then we will visit, eh? We will visit and we will worship you, my sweet one.”
Melinda bit her lower lip, nodded and tried to keep her emotions in check, like trying not to shiver when the cold winds came down from the north. Joe laughed and rattled the cage one more time, and then got up and sauntered off.
She looked over at the kitchen area where the cooking utensils were kept, near were Joe was going, which was her chance at saving herself. When she had first come here she had been closely watched as she worked among the pans and plates, but now, used to her captivity, the women mostly left her alone. Which meant she could steal something, said something being a very sharp knife.
Melinda started silently weeping. Her only chance. Her only chance to escape being a slave for the rest of her life, and to take away something that these men found so valuable.
She looked at her bare wrists, hoping she would have the courage to see it through.
Chapter Ten
When dawn broke Armand made camp under some willow trees, by a small stream that sounded graceful and soothing after their long ride south. Jasper was so well-trained that he didn’t bother tethering or hobbling him after Armand took off the saddle and the gear. Armand opened up the leather bags and satchels and found oat feed for his mount, but since he was doing so well with the grasses, he saved that for later. There was flint and matches and a knife and a short sword, which he strapped to his side. In other satchels were water bottles and cardboard boxes of Imperial Army field rations. There was also a compass, a true thing of value.
Armand ate a simple breakfast of bread, cheese and dried fruit, and drank deeply from the stream and rested, wrapping himself in a blanket and waited, looking at Jasper quietly munching on the prairie grass. He tried not to think of Father’s death, tried not to think of his older sister betrothed --- officially or unofficially --- to Randall de la Bourbon, tried not to think of his younger sister, tried not to think at all.
But it couldn’t be helped. A thought popped up and Armand actually laughed out loud. Jasper looked over and Armand said, “It’s the truth, my noble steed. I’m pretty sure today is my birthday. Isn’t that something? My sixteenth birthday! At home the
party would last all day, with cakes and ice cream and presents and my favorite foods and drinks…”
All served to me by slaves, he thought. He went back into the rucksack, took out a dried apple, and cut it in half. He tossed one piece to Jasper, who deftly picked it off the ground and ate it, and Armand ate his half.
“Happy birthday to me,” he said. “I’m sixteen.”
Armand woke up with a start, with an odd sound, and it was Jasper, looking down, breathing softly. He looked up. “Yeah, we’re burning daylight. Ready to head south?”
Maybe it was just a coincidence, but the damn horse nodded his head. Armand got up and broke his meager camp, strapped on saddlebags to Jasper, and started heading south. His legs and crotch were sore --– it had been a long while since he had ridden a horse any distance --– and he grimaced as they bounced along. The sky was deep blue and there was not a hint of breeze, and all about them were rolling hills of prairie grass and a few groves of trees where water was near the surface.
After a half-day of riding Armand stopped for another quick meal, and then kept on moving, and as the day grew longer, he stopped at an odd area, where scraps of machinery and broken and burnt metal were scattered about. Even with the grass having reclaimed it the land was torn up, and he leaned on the saddle’s pommel. There were old, rusting wheeled vehicles, and long barrels and tracks again. Armand said to Jasper, “A battle was fought here, my friend. A long, long time ago. We must be getting close to the border.”
The Noble Prisoner (Empire of the North Book 2) Page 11
