The Southern Trail (Book 4)

by Jeffrey Quyle

  By the time he was done he felt exhausted. The moon was high overhead, and a few sentries were slowly walking around the plaza. He went back to his cell in the basement and retrieved his knapsack that he had left behind, then fell fast asleep, in a dreamless slumber.

  Marco awoke with a start in the darkness of the cellar room, and wondered what time of day it was. He walked down the hall towards the stairs and found bright sunlight streaming from the sky above. His walk to the plaza revealed that the men there were awake, eating breakfast, and waiting for him to appear and give them directions.

  "What are your plans for us?" Hearst asked. "The men are asking me what to do. So far we've fixed breakfast and started burying our dead."

  "Sounds to me like you're doing as well as any officer," Marco complimented the sergeant. "Would you like a field promotion?"

  "What nonsense you talk," Hearst laughed. "I'm not so gullible as to fall into that trap. I just need to survive six more years as a sergeant, and I'll have a pension to my name.

  "How's Fyld doing?" Marco asked after sharing a laugh with his friend.

  "He's resting peacefully," Hearst replied. "All the injured seem to be doing pretty well. Did you have anything to do with that?"

  “It doesn’t matter,” Marco brushed the issue aside. “Let’s go see if the Captain is awake.”

  The two walked together, and as they approached, Marco saw that Duchess Rhen was sitting beside Fyld, wiping his forehead with a damp cloth. The captain was awake, and the two of them were talking.

  “We were saved by a miracle last night, I’m told,” the captain said as Marco crouched down beside him.

  “We were saved,” Marco agreed.

  “They took Princess Ellersbine, and I plan to go get her,” Marco decided to be direct.

  “You’ve got enough men to be able to finish the trip south, and we may be able to rejoin you along the way. You’ve got plenty of supplies for the number of men you’ll have. And you’ve got yourself and Hearst, so you’ve got good leaders,” he stated. “The attackers were a combination of local folks and drifter men who were passing though on their way south.

  “I’ll find their trail and I’ll follow it, and I’ll find Ellersbine,” he finished.

  “Just as simple as that,” Fyld said.

  “It may not be so simple, but I know my destiny involves the princess,” he looked over at Rhen, with who he had once discussed the name on the back of his torq.

  “I wish you all the best of luck. Take good care of one another; I want to hear amazing stories from all of you when we get together again in Foulata after all of this is over,” he told them.

  He looked around the plaza as he stood. Once, when they had embarked on their adventure aboard three ships, there had been scores and scores of men. Now there were less than a hundred, and many of those were wounded.

  “I believe you’ll do it,” Fyld said. “I saw you fight those Corsairs. I’ve seen how you’ve handled Argen and Varsen’s behavior. You’re capable of great things Marco.”

  Marco reached down to squeeze Fyld’s hand, then exchanged a hearty shoulder slap with Hearst. Last he hugged Rhen and held her tight.

  “Be careful Marco; I know you can do this. I believe it’s meant to be,” the duchess told him. She kissed him on the cheek, then smiled at him.

  He grinned at them all, then straightened his belt, and walked away from the plaza. It was touching to see and hear the evidence of friendship each of the three of them felt with him, but he felt compelled to go after Ellersbine. It was a different compulsion from the geas that Lethe had laid upon him, but he was nonetheless moving off deliberately in a direction that was challenging. Whether it was a self-imposed compulsion or one imposed by Iasco, or even if it was from some other source, he was determined to find what fate awaited him on the path he was setting his feet upon.

  Nestor was sitting up in the sunshine just outside the entry to his alleyway when Marco returned to him.

  “I was beginning to think you’d changed your mind about this,” the wounded man said. He pressed himself to his feet, shaking off Marco’s offered assistance. “Are you sure you want to do this? Are you sure you want to trust me?”

  “I am not a Docleatean,” Marco spoke in the language of Barcelon and the Lion City. “I have traveled with these men, but I am not one of them.”

  Nestor looked at him with a squint in one eye. “I don’t know what you said, but it wasn’t the language of Docleatae, was it?”

  Marco shook his head. “It’s the language of my homeland in the north. I trust you, and I hope you’ll trust me. Are you ready to go?”

  “Yes, just be patient with me,” Nestor said, and he started to slowly hobble through the ruins, moving in the direction away from the plaza at a moderate speed. Marco followed.

  They walked slowly for over half an hour, enough time to have gotten out of the ruins of the city, Marco thought, though he didn’t say anything aloud. Nestor stopped and looked around, then looked up at the sky for a long moment.

  “We’ll have to go back this way,” he said as he passed Marco and started to retrace his steps. “I missed a turn. I don’t come in here very often; none of us do. It’s supposed to be haunted with the spirits of all the people who were killed here.” He turned a corner, and suddenly there was a gateway in the city walls in front of them. Nestor seemed to gain strength from the sight of the greenery outside the stony gates, for his pace increased, and they left the city walls in just another minute.

  Marco looked up at the position of the sun; they had come out on the east side of the ruined city. Nestor was heading in a straight line, walking due east to get into the forest that lay between the city walls and the not-too-distant mountains.

  “Are we going the same way the kidnappers went?” Marco asked his guide.

  “I imagine so,” Nestor replied. “They would have almost assuredly headed back to our village, which is not far from where their camp is. They follow their own set of paths that are separate from the roads and the rivers used by the army.”

  “How long will it take us to get there?” Marco probed further.

  “We will arrive back at my village by late afternoon. We would be able to make it sooner if my health was better, but we will make it,” his guide assured Marco.

  They passed into the forest, and Nestor found a game trail that took them immediately inward, as Marco followed close behind. For the rest of the morning Nestor wove his way along the pathways through the forest, and they reached the end of the relatively level land that the city of Rurita occupied. Their path reached the mountains that climbed higher, and Nestor chose paths that zigzagged back and forth as the rose up the side of the mountain, swinging inward to take advantage of ravines as well.

  Nestor called a halt after a half hour of climbing the incline. “We’ll reach the summit pretty soon, but I need to rest for now,” he said as he sat upon a tree trunk.

  Marco offered him a drink of Diotima’s water, and urged him to drink deeply, then they sat in silence.

  “So are you a sorcerer with that finger?” Nestor asked.

  “The water from the finger is a gift from a spirit that lives at an enchanted spring,” Marco answered. “The finger doesn’t make me a sorcerer.

  “But some of the other things I can do might make me one,” he added softly.

  “Why have you not killed all these soldiers, if you’re not one of them? A sorcerer can do anything he wants,” Nestor probed.

  “I have a greater mission that I am pursuing,” Marco answered. “And I have come to learn that many of the soldiers are good men, men I would not want to kill.”

  “A sorcerer with a soft heart? There’s something wrong with you, my lord. We’ve always thought you had to have no heart to be a sorcerer,” Nestor told him.

  They walked on in silence for some time after that, following the path, fording mountain streams, rising and falling with the terrain. They walked along and Marco grew relaxed, enjoyin
g the calm of the forest, where only animals and insects made sounds, along with the rustle of leaves overhead.

  The forest suddenly grew silent, and Marco grew alert, looking around, just as a half dozen men suddenly stood up all around them, surrounding the two of them. The men all held bows, and the bows all had arrows, and the arrows all were pointed at Marco.

  “Welcome back Nestor,” one of the men said, “and thank you for bringing us a captive.”

  “He may be a captive, or he may not be,” Nestor said, as he stepped away from Marco. “I haven’t decided yet.”

  “Nestor!” Marco exploded in surprise. “I healed you, hid you, kept you alive, set you free, and now you want to tell these men I might be a captive? I’m disappointed in you,” and he was in fact truly disappointed by the man.

  “You don’t talk to our chief that way,” one of the men said sharply. “It’s not the place of a Docleatean dog to try to discipline its master.”

  “Gently, Horac,” Nestor chided the man. “Marco, I will not deny that you have been good to me, and I owe my life to you. But you traveled with the Docleateans and you fought on their behalf.

  “How am I to be sure that isn’t just a trick to find out where my village is so that my people can be killed? That’s the Docleatean way, isn’t it?”

  “That may be their way, but it’s not my way,” Marco said. “As I told you, a woman was taken hostage, and I am only interested in protecting her.”

  “Horac, is this true? Was there a hostage taken? And is there anyone following us?”

  “My chief, we saw no one following you; he is not leading others to attack us. Yes, there was a woman taken hostage by the men of the fields; she and her beloved are great nobles of the Docleateans, they claim. The men of the field have taken them and are heading south to seek ransom from the king,” Horac answered.

  Nestor sat down upon a fallen tree; he was worn out by the long morning of travel while still recovering from his injuries.

  “This woman is with her beloved? Then what are you to her Marco, if the man she is with is her beloved?” Nestor asked.

  Marco saw a pair of men grin at the apparent emptiness of his loyalty to Ellersbine.

  “The man who was taken with her is her fiancé, but he is not her beloved,” Marco answered.

  “She has told you this? She has told you that she secretly loves you, not this other man?” Nestor questioned.

  “She has not told me any such thing. I do not know that she loves me yet, but I believe she will,” he blushed slightly at the claim. “Her friend has told me that she does not love her fiancé.”

  “This gets curiouser,” Nestor said. “You are chasing after a group of armed men so that you can rescue a woman who does not love you. I’m glad I’m too old to be in love,” he grinned, and the others grinned in appreciation of his gest.

  “Nestor, I ask you to be fair, and to simply take me to their path, and let me follow them. Whatever else happens is none of your concern,” Marco replied.

  “If it happens around my village, if it endangers my people, it is my concern,” Nestor spoke more sternly.

  “Enough!” Marco shouted. He was tired of the verbal fencing. He wanted to follow the trail that would lead to Ellersbine, and he was ready to go immediately. He raised his right hand, and as he did, he noticed in passing that the fingertips were golden now. He closed his eyes momentarily, and thought of the great blue protective dome that Iago had thrown up over the pier at the Lion City, and he threw a similar dome, a much smaller dome, up over himself, to protect him from the arrows of the men who surrounded him.

  All of them immediately released their arrows, which struck the shield around Marco and bounced away.

  “Nestor, stop this fencing and foolishness,” Marco spoke intensely, staring at the man. “I told you I was a sorcerer, and yet you’ve carried on this foolish waste of my time. Are we going to proceed, or shall we do something else?” he growled threateningly.

  “I’m not here to harm your people. But if you don’t move us to where I want to go, I will grow angry,” Marco told his wide-eyed companion. “Now, you and your men proceed, and I will follow,” he told them. He raised his hand again and whirled it once in the air over his head, making the dome shrink down to no more than the size needed to protect his body.

  “Let’s get going,” he told them.

  Nestor nodded curtly. “Come along men,” he said.

  “But Nestor! He’ll kill our people!” one of them protested.

  “No, I don’t believe he will,” Nestor answered. “He could do many things, but I believe he is not a murderer. He hasn’t shown me that so far, though he has shown me something here I hadn’t expected. We’ll go to the village, and watch him pass on.”

  The men fell in, stepping onto the path, then following Nestor as he began to move forward once again.

  "We're approaching our villages," Nestor said as he halted the column’s progress several minutes later. "Do I have your pledge that no harm will come to my people?"

  "I will do them no more harm than I have done to you yourself so far," Marco agreed. "Is that fair enough?"

  "Fair enough," Nestor agreed. He looked in Marco’s eyes and nodded acknowledgment.

  He turned and resumed walking; five minutes later the forest gave way abruptly to small open fields and gardens, beyond which Marco saw the structures of a village. An open fire burned in a cooking pit, and clothes hung from lines, drying in the sunlight.

  "Nestor?" a woman's voice rang out. "Nestor!" she repeated, and Marco watched a woman with a careworn face come flying out of the village. She threw herself into his arms, and the two of them stood still in a silent embrace. Marco could see the woman's face over Nestor's shoulder; she was crying, but the careworn features were revitalized and hopeful.

  "Just because I took the long way home, you don't have to cry," Marco heard Nestor say gently.

  "They said there was no hope, that a sorcerer had fought from where you'd been stationed," the woman told Nestor as they disengaged from their embrace.

  "There was," Nestor agreed. "He's standing back there," he pointed to the rear of the patiently waiting line, where Marco stood with his faintly glowing penumbra around him.

  "Oh gods, Nestor! Have you brought him here to kill us all?" Marco saw a frightened expression on the mobile features of the woman's face.

  "He saved my life Corinne. He magically healed me and hid me. Now he's on his way elsewhere; he told me that and I believe him," Nestor told the woman. "Let's go in the village and let him move on," he placed his arm around her shoulders and set the group in motion again.

  The other members of the squad were greeted as they entered their home village, though not as warmly as Nestor had been. All eyes turned warily towards Marco.

  "He is not here to harm us; this sorcerer is merely passing through," Nestor told the ring of observers, as Marco stood quietly nearby, wanting only to pass through the village and continue on his quest.

  "Marco," Nestor's voice addressed him, catching him by surprise, "would you pause in your journey and help our village?

  "We have suffered a plague that has struck our children; it weakens their legs so badly that they can no longer walk. Would you use your powers to help them walk again?" Nestor pleaded.

  "Impossible!" someone called.

  "Marco can do this, can't you Marco?" Nestor asked.

  The man had boxed him in, Marco realized. "You know that I'm in a hurry, don't you?” Marco asked.

  "They are such small children, and they're in a hurry too, a hurry to run and jump and play, the way they used to," the woman at Nestor’s side pleaded. “If you can do this, please help the children.”

  He capitulated. It was surprising, he reflected, that when Diotima had first offered the blessing of the unceasing supply of water, he had imagined it would be a boon for himself, enabling him to travel through hostile, desert environments. He had never envisioned the use that had proven to be so importan
t, as a healing agent for others. He could not refuse to spread the blessing to assist others, he knew; his heart told him so, and he wondered if the spirit of the spring had known what her surprising boon was fated to accomplish when she had bestowed it upon him.

  “I’ll treat your children,” Marco told Nestor. “Provide me with a house I can work in, and start bringing the children to me.”

  He was quickly led to a wooden home, one with three rooms, and he took a spot in the middle room, then finally released the power he had used to protect himself. The glowing shield around him disappeared as he stood there with Nestor. When Corinne entered the room, she stopped to stare of him.

  “You don’t look any different from us,” she said.

  Marco thought about the spots of gold that were showing through the covering Iasco had placed over his right hand. In those few small places, the scratch on the back, the opening on his palm, and the tips of his fingers, he was displaying the shining physical evidence of the differences between them.

  “I’m not much different from you; my heart’s not,” Marco said.

  “Bring your children in, and we’ll try to treat them all. Hurry though. I want to finish quickly,” he said.

  “I’ll get some bread and cheese for you to eat,” Nestor offered after Corinne left, and Marco found himself alone in the room.

  It was maddening, he thought, the idea that he was stuck taking care of children.

  There was a sound behind him, and he turned to see Hector carrying in a platter with ham and bread and cheese. There was another sound at the other door, and he turned to see a young boy, perhaps ten or eleven, standing at the threshold, using crutches to drag himself into the room.

  The boy looked both pitiful in his physical state, and he looked as though he were contemptuous about the idea of presenting himself to Marco for healing.

  “So you’re the magician who’s going to use magic to heal me?” the boy asked. There was no trust in his voice.

  “Come here,” Marco waved the boy over negligently as he took a bite of the bread. He was instinctively aware of the boy’s attitude, and knew that he needed to open their interaction by appearing as disinterested as the boy was.