by Philip Blood
Enolive sighed, "Milord, the Captain is under the direct orders of the Regent. The Regent is the current ruler of the country, until such time as the King is finally declared dead. Being the Regent he outranks the Warlord and certainly outranks the heir to the Warlord's seat. Now, the Captain certainly doesn't outrank you, since you are the heir to the Seat, but since he is here under the orders of the Regent it could be an act of treason to disobey his orders, no matter how perfunctory, insulting or rude they seem."
"He is a pompous man, this Captain. He acts as though we are barbarians, hardly fit for his nose to smell. When I told him we were recovering from a siege, and that travel could be dangerous he practically called me a liar and a coward! ‘Border skirmish with some rabble,’ he called it! Like his meager troops could mop up the entire Togroth horde if he were to run into them. I think his men are unblooded peacocks and would fall to the first squad of Togroths that wanted a meal!"
Enolive shrugged. "I doubt they are that bad, for all their finery. However, regardless, the Regent has summoned you to go before his court to be judged for the post, as is required by the law of the land. You cannot refuse, and quibbling about time will just put you in a worse position when you come before the Regent."
"But he won't let me bring my Guardsman!"
"Actually, he agreed to let you bring along a contingent of your personal guard," Enolive reminded him.
"Just twelve men; imagine if we run into a band of Togroths from that hoard. We don't know if they all went into the wastelands after they left the city, my scouts reported various bands breaking off into the countryside."
"I'm sure you are worried about nothing. The Bluecoats found no resistance on their march here from the Eigen Pass. Any Togroth bands would most likely be in the opposite direction, towards the wastelands."
"We can't be sure, and my father said to always expect the unexpected when it came to planning a battle against the Togs."
"Everything will be all right , Milord. You will be in the center of the Bluecoat army and you will have Niler Corbin and your priest, Hork, along to give you advice and continue your teachings."
"What about you, Enolive?" Gandarel asked.
"I had thought to stay here unless you feel you need me?"
"Please come along, I don’t want to be the taffy between Hork and Niler."
Enolive chuckled. "That’s an interesting analogy, but I see your point. All right, I'll clear it with Niler if you will make the request formally."
"I'll do it right now! You better go pack your things."
"Indeed, this will be an interesting journey," Enolive foretold.
Chapter Fourteen
"And with surprise on their side, I saw them come like locus, descending to slaughter the King’s army to a man. The trap was sprung between east and west, near the pass that bears the name of its discoverer, Eigen."
- From the Dark Prophecies
They were two leagues outside of town when Yearl and Tocor showed up on horseback. They had two extra mounts with them. They tied the two extra horses to the back of the wagon and then rode alongside.
Mara called her four students to the front of the wagon, as they moved up the dirt road going west. "Well, it is time we got your lessons started again."
"Lessons... now?" Dono asked.
Mara raised a gray eyebrow in his direction. "Yes, did you think you had learned everything there is to know?"
"Well no, but weapons practice would be kind of hard in the back of a moving wagon."
"Actually, you might have to fight from a moving platform someday, but that is not what you are going to learn today," Mara explained.
Aerin nearly missed the next thing Mara said, as he relived the horrible chase in his parent's wagon. Traveling outside the city, after all this time, had brought back old memories and Mara's words brought back that horrible day. With a conscious effort, he brought his attention back to Mara.
"Yearl is going to teach you to ride."
"Horses?" Lor said as if describing some bizarre creature best left in a steel cage.
Yearl smiled from his mount next to the wagon. "They won't eat you if you show them who is boss."
Lor looked at the large animal dubiously.
The rest of the day's travel went quickly, as the students took turns acquiring both riding knowledge and sore muscles while they practiced riding on the spare mounts.
As busy as they were, wrestling with their horsemanship, none of the kids noticed the dust cloud on the road behind them, as they crested a rise in the sparsely tree covered grass hills of the countryside, but Mara did.
They made their first camp in a small clearing in a glade of trees. Yearl was not evident around the camp, once Mara had cooked and everyone had eaten.
It wasn't odd for Yearl to disappear, so no one mentioned it, but as they arranged sleeping mats on the ground Katek looked around and asked a question. "Are we going to set a watch? Or do you think we are safe being within a day's ride of Strakhelm?"
Tocor chose to answer his question. "No lands are safe east of the Dragonback, but Yearl is out scouting the area, and when he returns I will watch during the night and rest some during the day tomorrow. I prefer the night anyway."
"Tell us about the Quarians, Tocor," Aerin requested, and then sat down near the subdued campfire while pulling his blanket around his shoulders. The other students also sat down and looked Tocor’s way expectantly.
Tocor's golden eyes considered them for a moment, and he filled his large mug with tea from the kettle that sat on a flat stone near the edge of the flames. "My country is to the south of the wastelands, in the hot sands of the great desert. There we have lived for as long as history recalls."
"How hot is it?" Dono asked.
"If you are going to interrupt me, perhaps I will let you tell this," Tocor noted.
Dono looked sheepish. "Sorry."
"It is hotter than you have ever experienced in the Borderlands, but not so hot that you would die of the heat. On a hot day, at noon, you could cook eggs on a rock exposed to the sunlight. For that reason, and others, my people are nocturnal. Our eyes are better adapted to seeing at night than humans. We can eat plants, and do, but our primary diet is meat. This comes from the lack of croplands in the desert. There are many reptiles and large insects living there, some quite large and fierce. The deeper you go into the Great desert the larger the creatures you meet. It is a wild and deadly place where creature eats creature in a survival game, and we are the best survivors.
"Our customs would seem harsh to humans as our females are even fiercer than our males."
"How can a woman be tougher than a man?" Katek asked dubiously.
Tocor appraised him with his golden eyes for a moment and then answered. "We are a matriarchal society."
"What does that mean?" Katek inquired.
"It means that the women rule," Aerin informed him.
"That's ridiculous!" Katek stated.
"Oh... and why do you say that, Katek?" Mara asked in a dangerous voice.
Katek didn't pick up the tone. "Because men are the strongest, and women need to be protected so they can bring the young to term and nurture them as they grow. It is up to men to protect them, and therefore rule them."
"Human men do typically have a stronger build than women, and in humans it is true the woman must be protected during the long pregnancy, however, why does that preclude them from ruling?" Mara inquired.
"It just does," Katek stated as if the words alone were proof that it was true.
Mara sighed, "Katek, you will have a rude awakening one day, mark my words. However, I do understand where your prejudice comes from."
"I'm not prejudice," he defended.
Mara just chuckled.
Tocor spoke again. "Katek, there is a difference between Quarian women and Human women, our young are not carried inside the womb."
"What?" Katek and Lor both said.
"An egg is hatched one month after inception a
nd the baby grows within, kept warm by the hot sands of our home. During that period, the men protect the nest area, and I wouldn't suggest tangling with one of them if you value your hide."
"But how..." Aerin said, trying to picture an egg large enough to hold a baby coming out of a human-shaped body.
"Our women are larger than human women. They stand over nine feet tall on the average," Tocor explained.
Tocor was large compared to an average human, but the students looked at him trying to imagine a woman that dwarfed Tocor. It was almost incomprehensible.
"How big are your houses?" Dono asked, trying to picture doors large enough to cope with the women's height.
"We do not live in houses, but tunnel and build with stone into great outcroppings of rocks in the desert dunes. Natural caves are expanded, walls added and canyons sealed off and covered. When necessary we bore into the very stone to make our dwellings."
"I'd love to see that someday," Aerin noted, picturing vast castles as part of the living stone.
Tocor considered him for a moment. "If you ever find yourself in the Great desert, make sure you take a Quarian as a guide, it is not a place where the uninitiated can survive. I miss my people, but I can't say I miss the desert, it is a hard place."
"That is enough for now, Tocor," Mara stated. "These curious youngsters need to get their beauty rest. Tomorrow will be an interesting day."
There were moans from the listeners, but they started moving to their bedrolls. Only Lor stayed at the fire and stared into the flames.
Mara squatted down by her and looked into the flames. "What do you see Lor?"
"It's not what I see now that worries me. Will the future burn me worse than these flames could now?"
"I don't know for sure, Lor, but trust in your friends, only they can bring you through the fire."
Lor looked at Aerin, where he was laying down on his bedroll.
"He saw something, Mara."
"Aerin... what do you mean?"
"He saw a vision where I was killed; I don’t want to leave him alone."
Mara didn't answer; her eyes were locked on Aerin. Many thoughts were dancing behind her eyes as she gazed at the young man.
"What are you thinking?" Lor asked.
Mara broke her thoughts away from Aerin and stood up, "I'm thinking that he has an overactive imagination and that you need to quit worrying so much and get to bed."
"Yes, Mara," Lor said and then got up and headed for her bedroll.
But Mara did not hear her reply; the old teacher’s mind was on Aerin and his vision.
They were up before the dawn, much to Lor's disgust.
"What, in Gedin's name, is wrong with you people? The sun isn't even awake yet!" Lor grumbled, sitting up on her bedroll with her blanket wrapped around her and her short hair in disarray. Around the camp, everyone else was busy cleaning, rolling and packing their gear into the wagon.
"Get a move on, slug-a-bed," exclaimed Katek, cheerful to be traveling again.
Lor growled something unintelligible and primordial.
"Careful," Dono noted, "I think it bites."
Lor stood up and dragged her blanket into the back of the wagon, where she proceeded to curl up and do her best to ignore the morning.
Three hours later the sun had crested over the high jagged teeth of the Dragonback Mountains, far ahead to the west. Lor's face poked out of her blanket and found Tocor stretched out next to her resting. When she stuck her head out of the front, to see where they were headed, she found Dono and Katek walking beside the wagon, while Aerin and Yearl rode horses in front of them. Yearl was busy giving him occasional advice.
"It lives!" Katek noted, seeing Lor's disheveled head poking out of the canvas covering.
"Barely," Lor noted, "I think this wagon has a curse on it."
"Curse?" Dono inquired.
"It finds every rut in the road, it must be cursed," Lor muttered. She climbed over the front bench and plunked herself down next to Mara, who was steering the team.
"Where are we headed, Mara, and how soon will we get to civilization?"
Mara appraised the young city girl next to her and wordlessly handed her a comb. "As I told you, we're headed for the Eigen pass."
"Is that our destination, or is it just a place on the way?"
Mara pursed her lips, it was obvious she didn't want to discuss this, but Lor was feeling feisty.
Mara finally answered, "It is not our destination, merely the direction in which we travel."
"So, what is our destination?"
"Don't you already know?" Mara asked in return.
Lor rubbed at her sleep encrusted eyes. "I suppose you are going to tell me that I should have figured it out from things you have said, and maybe you are right, but the truth is, I'm just too tired to figure it out, so please tell me."
"We're headed for the Chamber of the Nexus where Gandarel will become the new NexLord."
Mara delivered the statement as if it carried the weight of the universe behind it, but Lor's response didn't sound too impressed. "Shouldn't we have Gandarel along for that?"
Mara smiled. "He's coming."
Lor looked around as if he would pop out of the wagon somewhere. "What did you do, turn him into a reptile?"
"No, I haven't altered him into some creature and placed him in a box in the wagon, he is traveling with the Bluecoats behind us on the road."
Lor leaned out and looked back down their trail.
"I don't see any sign of them."
Mara smiled, "That's because you don't know how to look. I'll teach you that later today. We had to leave early..."
"You're telling me," Lor muttered.
"…because I want to stay ahead of the Bluecoats," Mara explained.
Lor looked out over the rolling hills around them. This was grazing land, it was sparsely covered with rocks and trees but the majority of it was covered with long brown grass. To their left the hills were rounded and she couldn't see beyond the next hill, but to her right there was a large plain with a mesa rising up five leagues distant. Jagged rocks showed around the top of the steep sides just before the level area above. To Lor it looked like an ancient giant's jawbone, laying on the ground, the teeth pointed up to the sky.
Lor caught a glint of metal reflecting sunlight from the edge of the mesa.
"There is something on top of that hill, over there," Lor pointed out the place to Mara.
The older woman squinted and held her hand at her brow to shade her eyes.
"Yearl!” she called to the Willowman, who was busy teaching Aerin horsemanship.
Aerin and the lavender-skinned man arrived, cantering their horses back to Mara's position.
"Lor caught some movement from the top of that mesa. It would be a good spy post. Why don't you get over there and see what there is to see? You can catch up to us along the road."
Yearl nodded and started to turn his horse toward the mesa, and Aerin made to follow, but Mara spoke up, stopping them both, "Just Yearl, Aerin."
"How am I supposed to learn if you won't let me ride?"
Mara ignored him and spoke to Yearl. "How is our young equestrian doing?"
Yearl smiled at Aerin's wide-eyed appeal to speak well of him. "He's not bad at all; I think he could stay in his saddle during a ride."
Mara considered. "All right, Yearl, but you keep him out of mischief."
Yearl bowed from the waist in his saddle and then headed them off at an angle away from the wagon, but not right towards the mesa. He didn't want to scare off the watcher, whoever they were.
Aerin felt his heart pounding; this was more like it! He was off on an adventure with the mysterious Willowman. He pictured them finding a spy from the Drakwolfs or some kind of bandit squad bent on highway robbery.
They rode slowly, using the trees for cover to mask their approach. Yearl explained each thing he did, and why, so that Aerin would learn. Eventually, they reached a set of rocks that were near one end of the mesa. At
this point, they would have to expose themselves occasionally, as they moved between the large rocks piled along the base, but the place where Lor had seen the reflection was around the corner, so Yearl thought it unlikely they would be spotted. The slope of the mesa was not as steep here, so they could ride nearly to the top.
Aerin pictured a secret bandit camp on the mesa and wondered how many they would run into when they got to the top.
They started their climb up the increasing slope toward the flat top above. When they neared the crest they had to get off their mounts and lead them by the bridle between two large rocks that rimmed the crown of the mesa.
Once on top Aerin looked around for signs of the bandits, or whoever else was up here. The area was much larger than he had imagined and went off into the distance a few miles.
Suddenly Yearl grabbed Aerin by the upper arm.
"Wha..." Aerin started to say when he saw what had grabbed Yearl's attention.
The blood drained out of Aerin's face as if there were holes in the bottom of his feet.
On the other side of the Mesa, down below and out of sight from the road, was a massive army of Togroths. Aerin tried to count, but in the end had to guess at a few thousand.
"Come on, we're getting out of here!" Yearl whispered, though the Togroths below would never hear him from this many miles away.
"Aren't we going to see who was up here?"
"Togroths, or their masters," Yearl noted. "No need to let them see us now, it could set off an attack. Let's head back down and warn Mara."
Quickly Yearl led Aerin down the Mesa slope, following their own tracks back toward the anonymity of the trees.
When they caught up to the wagon Yearl wasted no time. "Mara, there is a Togroth army, of over four thousand, on the other side of the Mesa! They were camped, but I estimate them only an hour ride from our position."
Mara stopped the wagon and thought for a moment. "Tocor, Yearl, we're going back. Let's get this wagon off the road and out of sight. The kids will have to stay here until we can return."
"You're going back!" Lor exclaimed.
