by Greg Curtis
In fact, he realised, he could turn left instead of right and the castle would only be a dozen more leagues north. But he had to turn right, head south from here. Because that wasn't an option. For a start he didn't know how to assault a castle, magic or no magic. And it would be at least a week before the enemy reached it. Anything could happen in that time.
So he should just head south, set up a camp at the edge of the Hallows, lay down some traps, and wait for them to emerge from the trees. Assuming they emerged somewhere close to where this road ended.
In the meantime he needed to rest. It wasn't just tiredness that assailed him. The bone weariness of having driven the wheeler right through the night. It was was the pain of having been pounded by the roads for all that time. The manager at the chariot works had said things to him about springs and suspension and rubber tires, but he hadn't really listened. But whatever they'd done to the iron beast to make it comfortable enough to ride, it clearly hadn't been enough Baen thought as he climbed gingerly off the machine and hobbled into the store. Just then he felt like the steak after the butcher had finished pounding it with his hammer.
The strange thing was that although he'd never ridden a wheeler before, the pain was familiar. It was the same as the pain he'd felt when he'd first learned to ride a horse. Except that now he was saddle sore over every part of his body.
Still he managed to buy his fifty weight of good quality coal and fill the tank with another fifty weight of water without complaining too much. He even managed to refrain from snapping at the crowd of spectators that had gathered around his wheeler to stare at it as he mounted up once more. But it did seem odd. Surely they'd seen steam powered vehicles before? They lived in the age of steam and electricity. There were dirigibles in the sky and lights that glowed with the lightning in the wires. But then he supposed, this was a small country town. Maybe they didn't have electricity in their homes? Or dirigibles in the sky. Maybe horses were the only way they travelled.
In any case if they'd known where he was heading, they would have been more curious about that than the machine.
The Hallows were considered a place of nightmares for most people in this realm. Short for Hallowed Grounds, they were talked about as a place where an endless forest lay, filled with monsters and witches; demons and brigands. And as for the Fae! Well they were described as a people of great and terrible magic. Some called them demons. A few even said they ate people!
The Hallows were also beyond the edge of the realm. No one from Grenland wandered any further south than where the road ended. No one would save those with gifts like his. The gifted. To them the Hallows called.
Soon Baen was off again, the huge barrel like back wheel sending dirt spraying behind him in all directions and making the crowd scatter with an outcry of shock. It wasn't his fault he told himself – he'd told them what would happen. They should have listened!
But he didn't drive very far. Just far enough to put the town behind him and find a small clearing on the side of the road where he could pull over and rest under the shade of a willow tree for a few hours. He had the time and a few hours of shut eye would help.
Baen dampened the furnace and then found a comfortable tree to rest against before he finally closed his eyes.
He didn't open them again until he felt something tickling his nose.
“Get up!”
Baen opened his eyes to find the barrel of a rifle pointing at him from about an inch in front of his face. Seeing it he was suddenly wide awake! Though somewhat confused, as he didn't normally find himself quite so close to the wrong side of a gun. He couldn’t say the experience was pleasant. Baen shifted his eyes to the owner of the gun.
“Get up!” the woman repeated herself even louder than before.
It was a shocking thing to wake up to. And then Baen turned his attention to the owner of the gun who was busy threatening him and grew even more confused.
She didn’t look like a highwayman, Baen thought, and not just because she was a woman, though her demands said otherwise. Because soon she was shouting at him, demanding he show her how to drive his machine, if he wanted to live to see another day. If he didn't want a bullet in his brain. Luckily after a few panicked seconds, he realised he didn't need to be worried. He had his wards up. No bullet would hit him – not that he'd ever actually tested them by getting shot at, and certainly not at such close range. He was a book seller after all! But still the wards should hold.
And in any case he didn't think she would shoot. She just didn't have the look of a cold blooded killer. More the look of someone who was desperately trying to pretend she was. After all what sort of brigand took the time to wash and braid her hair? Wear clean and pressed clothes? Polish her boots? Soldiers in proper regiments did that. Not brigands.
“Lady,” he rubbed at his eyes trying to get the sleep out of them and then yawned a little. “Could you go over that again. It seems I might have slept through some of it.”
In hindsight it probably wasn't a clever thing to say. Especially when her face turned bone white and she started screaming at him at the top of her lungs. But he was still half asleep. That had to count for something he told himself.
But at least while she shouted and screamed it gave him the chance to take stock of things. And the first thing he noticed was that the sun was high in the sky. He'd slept the morning away! The second thing was that his body was still aching from the ride through the night. In fact his very bones were hurting.
“I said, show me how to ride that machine of yours! I need to use it!” She finally found enough self-control to spit the words out at him.
His previous answer clearly hadn't pleased her, and things only grew worse as he started stretching and then slowly got to his feet and stretched some more. She liked it even less when his coat flew open and she could see his pistols on his belt.
“You're armed!”
“Well, yes,” he agreed, and then yawned properly and started stretching. By the Lady, he thought! He really was tired.
“You're a brigand!” She accused him.
That seemed a little unfair to Baen as he finally got the last of the stiffness out of his bones. He wasn't the one pointing a weapon at anyone. But she clearly wasn't in a fair mood. “No. That's you. I sell books.” Baen started adjusting the straps of his pack and in the process caused his staff to swing around, catching the eye of the would-be thief.
“Why have you got a metal stick?” she yelled, her eyes so wide they looked like they might be about to fall out of her head.
“Doesn't everyone?”
“Only damned wizards from stories you muck spouting oaf! You going to do some tricks in the market, Boy?”
“I don't do tricks.” Baen wasn't impressed at being called Boy. He was a grown man! Certainly no damned “Boy”! And really, he'd had enough of this conversation. He gave up on worrying about the woman – she was clearly no threat to him – and went to his machine to open the furnace and let a little more coal from the hopper slide into it. Then he poured a little water flow into the boiler.
The woman watched him, clearly upset that he was ignoring the fact that she was armed and threatening to shoot him.
“Hand over those damned weapons!” She shouted again, brandishing her rifle for good measure.
“No.” Baen didn’t bother to look round. Besides, he was beginning to think she wasn't what she pretended to be. A real highwayman would probably have shot him by now. And she was dressed too well. Her clothes from her trousers to her vest were simple but well-tailored. Her boots had clearly seen some polish now and again. Her coat was neat and tidy. As far as he knew brigands didn't bother with such things.
“You do realise I have a gun pointed at you?!”
“Oh?” He finally turned to stare at her again and yawned again. “I hadn't really noticed. Silly me.” He went back to caring for the wheeler, leaving, her mouth opening and closing silently like a guppy in a net. This woman, whoever she was, wasn't really
dangerous as far as he could tell. Just annoying. But he wasn't really sure why she wanted his wheeler. Not when he had now had the chance to survey his surrounds and had spied her horse grazing nearby.
“I'll shoot you!”
“Oh? Do you do a lot of that sort of thing? Do you kill a lot of people?” She didn't seem like a killer to him. If anything, she seemed like the sort of woman you found in an office. The sort that often had ink on her fingers from working on the accounts and eyes that grew tired from reading reports all day. But she was quite pretty. She might have been even prettier if she let her hair flow freely instead of binding it up with braids.
“I could be!” She blustered, trying to sound threatening. “I'm the desperate type! I have to go somewhere and my horse is lame.”
“Ah! Is that why you thought to steal my wheeler? I hadn't realised.”
Baen left his machine while it continued to warm up and walked over to the horse. then he started examining it carefully, running his hands up and down its legs, looking for the soreness. Then when he found it he gestured to the animal, said a couple of words and with that a little healing magic was sent into the bruised flesh. Not much, as he didn't have a lot of healing magic and casting any magic, even healing magic, directly from his fingers was risky, but enough that the horse would recover quickly. The horse nickered appreciatively as it felt the warmth flowing into its aching muscles.
It was a fine animal he noticed as he worked. A thoroughbred by its form and in top condition. Clearly the horse had spent most of its days eating good food and living in a proper stables. This was no farmer's working horse left out in the fields day after day. And the saddle was of the finest, softest leather. The woman might dress as if she was more common, but clearly she came from a wealthy family.
“What did you do to my horse?” the woman asked suspiciously.
“Nothing much. But I can tell you that she's not lame.” He told her as he patted the animal. “Just a little sore in one leg from having been ridden too hard for too long. Let her rest. She'll be right as rain in the morning.”
“And what are you? A physician for horses?!” She asked him with a voice full of scorn.
“Something like that,” Baen answered her. “Either way she'll be fine in the morning.” And then a thought occurred to him. “But why were you riding her so hard?”
“I told you. I have to get somewhere. Fast.”
“Where?” He didn't know why exactly, but he suddenly had a feeling that he knew exactly where she was going. They were both on the same road after all. And they were both in a hurry.
“You wouldn't understand book seller!”
“Try me.”
“The Hallows. Satisfied?!”
He was actually. Or rather it confirmed what he'd suspected. She was on the same journey he was. The only thing he couldn't work out was why. She didn't seem like she had any magic to her name and he couldn't imagine that she'd spent any time with the Fae. As far as he knew the only ones who ever did go to them were those like him with gifts. At least that was what the stories claimed. So he asked.
“I told you dullard, you wouldn't understand!”
“And I told you, try me,” Baen retorted, annoyed at her tone and her repeated assertions about what he would and wouldn't understand.
“Fine!” She snapped out an angry retort. But as if to make up for it she lowered the tip of her rifle a little. “My uncle sent out some men to do some bad things to some friends of mine. I need to stop them.”
“The Duke's your uncle?” Baen was shocked by that. He hadn't thought the Duke had any family. He certainly didn't have a wife and children. The gossip was that if he had had any, he would have killed them. Actually, some claimed he would have eaten them! It was true, he did have a sister – Amberlee. Most people referred to her as Amberlee the Wicked. But she had no child as far as he knew. They claimed she'd murdered her husband and that she had actually become her brother's paramour. Baen wasn't sure he believed that. It was simply too awful, even for the Featherstones. But whatever the truth the pair truly were reviled.
It was for good reason. Duke Barnly had tried to kill his nephew the King. Simply seizing the throne hadn't been enough for him. He had in fact tried to murder King Richmond and his entire family. The children too. No one really liked the King, and he was considered a poor ruler – but murder was beyond the pale. Murdering the King's entire family however, was far worse. The very thought left a bad taste in the mouth. Thankfully the Duke's attempted coup had failed and he and his sister had been banished to Castle Alldrake for the rest of his life. Truthfully most people would have preferred it if he had been hung His sister with him.
“How did you –?” She began.
“You're too late,” he cut in, not wanting to waste any more time. “The attack was last night, about ten bells. The Fae were attacked in one of their glades, Illoria, deep in G'lorenvale. However, you can be certain of one thing. I will stop your uncle's murderers and save the Fae he captured if at all possible!” He put it bluntly. And then, having decided he'd had enough of the conversation, he gestured at her and put her to sleep just as he had done the previous night to the guard. That was a useful trick he thought. Especially when he could cast it directly because it was such minor magic.
He doubted she would agree though. But she had left him little choice, waving that weapon around as she was. She might not be able to hurt him, but she could have damaged his wheeler and drawn attention he didn't need. And she was annoying!
She collapsed to the grass in a heap and immediately started snoring, leaving him standing there, pondering this turn of events. This woman claimed to be the Duke’s niece and was also apparently working against him? That didn't seem likely. Because at the least it would mean she was cousin to the King if not his sister and he was sure he knew all the Royal Family. Nor did the idea that she was on the side of the Fae make any sense. Or that she called them friends. Most people thought the Fae were a myth. But it did explain why she was riding hard in the same direction he was.
It was, he thought, much more peaceful without her shouting at him and waving her weapon in his face. Still he decided as he enjoyed the peace, he couldn't just leave her there, sleeping out in the open. If he did she would be left completely vulnerable to attack. He wouldn’t wish that on any woman, but particularly so if she was, as she claimed, some sort of connection to the Royal Family. That might be considered some sort of crime. And the Featherstones were harsh on crime. The King made a point of hanging anyone who offended him. He had hung a lot of people.
Baen picked the woman up and carried her back to the tree he'd been sleeping against only minutes before. He even did his best to make her comfortable and then offered a quick prayer to the Lady to watch over her. She would be safe there he thought. Out of sight of the road. And she'd wake up in half an hour or so. It was a very minor enchantment. He needed to get moving before that happened. The woman had a predilection for guns after all.
Fortunately the wheeler had warmed up by then and he was able to climb back on the iron beast and continue his journey. As he raced south towards the Hallows though his thoughts stayed with the annoying young woman he had left behind.
He was less than a day out and already he'd been waylaid by a mad woman – and possibly a royal one at that. Just what else or who else was he going to run into on this ride?
Chapter Four
Evening brought Baen to the end of the road – literally. He'd reached the end of the South-Central Trail and was at the point where it intersected with the Great Eastern Line. From here the road would take him left to the east or right to the west. But he could not go on. But he'd known that was coming. The Great Eastern Line after all bordered the Hallows for three or four hundred leagues. There was nothing south of it save a few leagues of grasslands and then the start of the forest – at least until you reached the coasts. There, both on the east and west coasts, Grenland extended a little further south.
Ahead o
f him were six or seven leagues of relatively gentle rolling grasslands before he hit the great forest that represented the edge of the Hallows. At that point he would have to abandon the wheeler if he wanted to continue. It could never make it through a forest, and G'lorenvale whatever else it was, was a land of forests.
The land bordering the edge of the forest was nearly deserted, though not for any obvious reason. The land was fertile; good land for raising crops and livestock. But nobody from Grenland wanted to live too near to the Hallows and whatever they feared lived inside them. The land was therefore largely left alone. A few farmers ran vast herds of sheep and cattle along it, but stayed as far away from the trees as possible. They were deathly afraid of what lived within their dark green embrace. The animals though, didn't seem to care.
Baen had last made this journey a dozen or more years ago, and so he knew what lay ahead. And it wasn't monsters or ghosts; witches or demons. The Hallows were actually fairly safe lands. The greatest danger he'd faced among the seemingly endless trees was getting lost. But then when he'd come here before, he'd been called. Not by the Fae, but by the magic of the land itself.
