The Greater Challenge Beyond (The Southern Continent Series Book 3)

by Jeffrey Quyle

  “All of you halt and stand still!” one of the assailants spoke loudly, as Hilto screamed in fright.

  “We are a peace delegation,” Grange spoke up as he stepped forward.

  “Silence!” the Bloomingian leader shouted at him, moving down the path to confront him.

  “We come to offer peace to the people of the Bloomingian camp, and we invite them to return to Southgar,” Grange ignored the order, as he gripped his wand and prepared to remove the weapons from the hands of the attackers.

  “Lower your weapons, and escort us to your camp, so that we can talk about how to reunite all of Southgar,” he said.

  “Hey!” one of the Bloomingians in the back of the group spoke. “This is the Princess Hope! She’s come back to us.”

  “And him,” another one spoke up, “He’s the one who helped her get away! I recognize him.”

  “It is foolishness in the extreme for the two of you to come back,” the leader spoke forcefully. “You will be punished for your antics.”

  “I think not,” Grange said. He raised his wand and whirled it in a circle over his head, commanding the power within to take all the weapons away from the Bloomingians and to lift the weapons twenty feet in the air.

  There were shouts among all the attackers, as they felt their weapons invisibly wrenched from their hands and thrown up into the air.

  “What demon’s magic is this?” the leader shouted.

  Grange touched his wand to his throat, to amplify his speech. “Everyone remain calm,” he said. “This is no demon’s magic; it is the power we will use to fight the demons.

  “Release your hold on our people,” Grange looked at the front of the column, where Kiergar and Remar were still held tightly.

  “We do not come to attack you. We come to talk to you, at the command of the gods,” Grange spoke.

  “Send messengers back to your camp now, to tell them we are coming, and to allow them to prepare for our arrival. The rest of you may go or stay with us, as you please, all except at least one must stay with us to be our guide to find your camp,” Grange said.

  “Go talk among yourselves,” Grange offered, “And decide who will do what.” He began to walk forward, passing by the attackers who had come out of the brush. When he reached Kiergar and Remar, he reached out to remove the hands of their captors, who had not complied with his order, but who passively allowed him to set his companions free.

  Grange waved his wand again, and all the weapons in the air moved together into a cluster, a large, hovering ball of metal and wood.

  “All of you, make your decisions,” Grange commanded the Bloomingians. He pointed his wand at the brush in front of the group, and caused it all to burst into flame, burning a lane straight ahead through the wilderness growth for several hundred feet in length, then he made a sudden breeze extinguish the flames.

  “You mean you could have been doing that all along,” Remar asked indignantly. “My shoulder aches like this for no good reason?”

  Grange!” Jenniline called. He turned to look back along the corridor, and saw that the leader of the Bloomingians had taken Hope hostage. He stood behind her, one arm around her stomach, and one arm tight around her throat.

  “Stop these dark magic tricks!” the man shouted. “Return our weapons to us instantly, or the girl will die.”

  Grange looked at the man and tried to judge how to treat the situation without causing harm to Hope. As he stood there for the moment considering what to do, Merched suddenly sprang forward from the cluster of women. She grabbed the man’s arm that was choking Hope and she sank her teeth into his hand, biting hard, so that the man shouted in pain and surprise.

  Grange pointed his wand, and caused a narrow blast of air to strike the man, passing just over Hope’s shoulder to strike her captor in the face, snapping his head back and driving him off of her.

  Grange called upon the energy again, and erected a protective wall that separated the Bloomingians on the outside from the people of his own group on the inside. He opened the wall and stepped out, as the people gasped and shouted in surprise at the sudden appearance of the glowing green wall. With another wave of his wand he created a second wall of energy, a blue one, that ran parallel to the first, trapping the befuddled attackers in a narrow ribbon of space.

  “Enough!” he shouted. “You and you and you,” he pointed at three of the men who had turned from captors to trapped captive, “I am going to release you, and you will go to your camp to let them know we are coming. Do you need anything to go, and will you leave now?”

  The men all looked at him helplessly, then looked at their leader, who was rising to his feet again.

  “Who are you? What are you? What are you going to do to our people?” he shouted at Grange.

  “He is the Champion, chosen by Acton, the god of war,” Jenniline answered.

  “He is Grange, the son of Ragnar, the leading descendant of the Bloomingians,” Halsten said.

  “He was called the Campeaodeuses by Shaine herself,” Inge added.

  “I am here to bring the Bloomingians back to Southgar,” Grange said. “War with demons is coming – you are in danger, we are in danger. We need to unite our nation,” and as he said that, he found that the reference to Southgar as his own land did not feel strange. “If we do not unite, the demons will feast upon our bodies and souls,” he said passionately.

  “Grange, you’re glowing,” Brigin piped up in her young girl’s voice.

  He was glowing, he realized. He had spoken so passionately he had inadvertently released some of the energy he held at the ready in his wand. He doused the light, and walked towards the leader of the attackers.

  “What is your name?” he asked the man, as they came face to face in the narrow ribbon of space between the two walls of glowing energy.

  “You cannot be a Bloomingian,” the man argued. “I’m one of the second order of cousins, and I know all those in the line of succession, down to the tenth man. Ragnar had no son, and this is all a preposterous lie. You are a powerful magician, who has some plot against our people.”

  “What is your name?” Grange repeated.

  “I am Logan, the son of Albinssin,” he said.

  “Logan, I tell you the truth as I know it. I mean no harm to the Bloomingians, nor to Magnus. I have here all of Magnus’s offspring, all his sons and daughters, and I am coming to visit your people to ask you to come back and rejoin Southgar. The gods want this,” Grange said. “The gods know that Southgar is where the battle with the demons will be fought, and it will be won or lost on Southgar soil, on our soil.

  “The nation must be united to fight,” he finished.

  “You know we are a nation of warriors,” Halsten spoke up. “We all know the stories, the legends that say that we are the greatest fighters in the land. We believe Grange’s story; it makes sense to us.

  “We believe not just because we have all seen gods and goddesses come to our city, and speak to us and to Grange, telling us our duty. That is why I am here supporting Grange, even though my father is King Magnus, and even though Acton has said that Grange – a Bloomingian – shall be the next king of Southgar.”

  The trapped attackers were silent in the face of Halsten’s extraordinary pronouncement.

  “Send your messengers to your people now,” Grange repeated his demand. He dissolved the outer, blue wall of energy, giving the Bloomingians freedom to move about once again. He was using significant amounts of energy in the encounter, but his wand was still more than half full of power.

  “Gather together and speak among yourselves,” Grange encouraged them.

  The ambushers clustered together near Logan and began to speak in low voices, mostly listening to Logan as he spoke to the men.

  “Bjornssen, Dahl, Klassen, head back to the camp,” Logan spoke up after the brief conclave ended. “Tell them all that you have seen and heard here, and let them prepare as they wish. The rest of us will travel as the hostages of this wizard.”
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  Grange motioned with his wand, and the embargoed weapons came swooping down from their position in the sky, to land at the feet of the Bloomingians.

  “Take the weapons you’ll need for a safe trip back to your home,” Grange advised.

  “I will announce you to your people, so that they may expect you,” he added. It was an impromptu decision, but he wanted to impress the Bloomingians, since he faced the prospect of several of them traveling among his own group for the next day or two.

  “Hear me, fellow Bloomingians,” he spoke, with the wand pressed to his lips. He watched as the faint glow of his words traveled into the air, headed to the site he remembered visiting, the collection of tents where he had been held briefly as a captive. He made the broadcast of his words loud, so that they would spread over a wide area in the camp, sure to be heard by many of the residents – sure to be discussed.

  “I am the son of Ragnar, sent by Acton, the god of war. I am coming to you to offer a peaceful return to Southgar, and a chance to prepare for a great war against demons.

  “I am sending Bjornssen, Dahl, and Klassen from your patrol, back to the camp to confirm my approach. They have met me and the others from Southgar who are coming to see you. We will join them and you in your camp,” Grange told the far off listeners. “We come as friends, and I hope we will find common cause with you.”

  He touched the wand to his mouth again, to end the transmission.

  “Those in your camp have heard my words. They will be prepared for you. Go and tell them the truth of what you’ve seen,” Grange ordered.

  He felt as though he were playing a part, a role in a play, pretending to be the king-in-waiting. He had felt that sense of pretense for some time. Yet now, as he spoke the lines of the role, trying to speak them convincingly for the Bloomingians, he found they no longer seemed as unbelievable. He wanted this duty to be successful – he wanted these people to be reunited. He wanted to defeat the demons, especially. And now it no longer felt quite as improbably, not quite as insufferable, to imagine that he would be a leader of Southgar after the war with the demons was over.

  The men who were assigned to be messengers were shaking hands and giving hugs to the others in their party, and then they departed. Everyone – those from Southgar and those from the Bloomingians – watched them trot down through the open path Grange had created, and then they disappeared. And with that, all eyes turned to Grange.

  What to do next, he wondered. He fixed his eyes on the eyes of Logan, and saw doubt in the man’s face.

  “There are your weapons,” Grange wanted to let the Bloomingians know he trusted them. “If you receive them back, do you pledge that you will not use them to attack the rest of us? Will you travel peacefully with us to your camp?”

  Logan maintained eye contact with Grange as he spoke. “You have treated us as if your words are true. I feel in my heart that I can trust you, even though I know your words are false – you undoubtedly believe what you say.

  “I will leave it to the leaders of our society to judge what is best for all. And for now, for this trip, I pledge to you that we will travel peacefully with you through the wilderness,” the man proclaimed.

  “Then pick up your weapons, all of you,” Grange ordered. “And since we have been stopped here so long, let’s have our midday meal,” he instructed. “Inge, will you and Hope dole out food for everyone?” he instructed.

  The two obediently went to the mules and began to open packs, and they handed food items to Carrell, Acco, Hilto, and Skore, who delivered the food to everyone there, including the surprised Bloomingians.

  “This is good. You travel well,” Logan commented to Grange as he began to eat the sausage and bread that was handed to him.

  “We have some among us who haven’t traveled in the wilderness before,” Grange said in a confidential voice. “It seemed best to not give them the true, full experience all at once, so we at least have decent food, and mules to carry supplies.” He smiled at Logan, who nodded judiciously and smiled back.

  Grange wandered back among the members of the party, looking to make sure that all was peaceful. There was no interaction between the two groups, but there was no evidence of immediately potential violence either.

  He walked further back, behind the caravan, and then lifted his sword from the scabbard so that he could look at the jewel in the hilt.

  “Ariana, is this the right way?” he asked the jewel. “Can I trust them?”

  You are doing well. They are confused and frightened by you, but they are impressed by the way you have shown them trust. They will travel well with you, if your people treat them respectfully, the jewel answered.

  “So we will be able to go to the Bloomingian camp without trouble?” Grange clarified.

  There won’t be any trouble until you near the camp, she answered.

  “Does that mean there will be trouble there?” Grange asked, concerned by what he heard.

  Wait and see, Ariana said. Just have faith in the gods, and wait and see. They have faith in you.

  It was not a promising conversation, though he had initially gotten the answer he wanted.

  Grange turned and walked back towards the others, and found Jenniline walking towards him.

  “I heard you two having your little private conversation,” she said smugly.

  “Then you know she said we can trust these men on this trip,” Grange said.

  “I did hear that, and I heard no guarantee for when we approach the camp,” she added.

  “We’ll trust the gods,” Grange said.

  “You trust the gods. I’ll trust you and my sword,” Jenniline told him, then separated from him to go her own direction among the others who were finishing their meals.

  “Kiergar, Remar, you two go in the lead and start chopping branches away again,” Grange ordered, as a way to start his expanded party moving. “We’ll catch up with you soon.”

  “If you can burn a nice straight road for us, why should we have sore shoulders chopping?” Remar asked plaintively.

  “Take one of Logan’s men up front with you, and have him tell you what direction to chop in,” Grange directed. “When we catch up, I’ll burn a path to give you a break, but I have some other things I need to work on,” he answered.

  “Logan, do you want to send any of your men out in front? Will we run into any other patrols who need to be told who we are?” he asked.

  “Grahn, go up front with the trail blazers and show them where to cut this road,” Logan spoke loudly to one of his men.

  “No,” he said, turning towards Grange, “we won’t cross the path of another patrol before nightfall.”

  “We’ll place your men on patrol with ours tonight then, to try to avoid trouble,” Grange suggested.

  “You’ll let us be out on patrol while you sleep?” Logan asked in surprise.

  “We’re here to ask you to live with us and work with us,” Grange answered. “We might as well start now and show we mean it.” He nodded, then walked ahead, towards the front of the enlarged party, as the whole group began to move forward.

  He looked down at his wand, then called upon the power, and began to recharge the wand as he walked. He felt certain that he would need all the energy at his disposal when he was in the Bloomingian camp, while he would be trying to make his case for a reunion of the two parts of the nation. He had a dose of faith that the offer to reunify would work, but he didn’t know how. He only knew that the gods had ordained it, and he knew that the gods had gotten very involved in his life – very, very involved.

  The group trudged forward throughout the afternoon, Grange taking turns burning long straight lanes for the party to travel through, while the other members of the group, even the newcomers and some of the princesses, rotated regularly through turns at cutting the foliage with the machetes they had brought.

  When nightfall came, Grange opened up space for the camp to be set up, and he lit a fire in the center, then he walked away and talke
d to the moon, sending Brieed another message, again giving a brief description of his journey, and all that was happening. He watched the last of his words speed away, glowing arrows aimed at the waning moon overhead; in just a few more days the moon would be gone, a new moon in a dark sky for a short period, before it returned to allow him to continue to communicate.

  “Who were you talking to? The court back in Southgar?” Acco asked as Grange returned to the group around the fire. Acco was sitting with Brigin and Paile and Skore, her cousin, as well as with one of the Bloomingians. The air had begun to cool slightly, and the fire was a welcome warmth.

  “I was trying to speak to the wizard who trained me, who lives up in Palmland, far north of here,” Grange replied.

  “They say that the people in other places do not look like us. Is that true?” the Bloomingian asked.

  “In the north, there are many more people than live in Southgar, and they have skin colors and hair colors that are different, darker than the people of Southgar have,” Grange said. “Some of them have brown hair, or black hair, or red or yellow, and they have skin that is light brown or dark. But they are still just people like us.”

  He paused in his speech, as he looked at the horizon in the southwest. A pair of faint red flashes momentarily brightened the sky.

  “What was that?” he asked aloud.

  “We saw that same thing two nights ago,” the Bloomingian said. “We don’t know what it is, but it appears to be a long way off.”

  Grange felt disquieted by the sight, but sensed no immediate danger. After watching the horizon for several minutes without seeing any further lights, he went over to where Carrel sat with Inge and Hope.

  “Shall we make some music for these folks tonight?” he asked the mandolin player.

  “I’d love to,” Carrel immediately agreed. He went and retrieved his instrument from a mule, then joined Grange by the fire, as the two began to play a number of songs that ranged from the bawdy to the romantic. They were surprised when one of the Bloomingians stood up and joined them midway through the set, singing the words for each of the songs without missing a beat.