The next morning broke fair, bright and cool, but the day promised warmth. Despite the fact that summer had come in fullness, the water of the river was quite cold as Flinneran waded the crossings an hour after sun-up. Slipping into the woods east of the ruined road, he went far enough that he could see up along the river where it curved back into the north at the eastern edge of the valley. There he sat and gazed across the stream for a while, watching for any sign that he had been seen, and that anyone had become suspicious and followed him. Or worse, had alerted the wolves and sent one or more of them after him.
From where he sat, he could see a good half-mile of the opposite bank toward the west and perhaps a mile along it where it curved back to the north. From this vantage point he could also see most of the town and the fields that surrounded it. As the day brightened, the fields filled up with workers and the townsfolk went about their daily mundane lives. There was no hint that any of them knew – or cared – what Flinneran was up to, if anything. After watching them for the better part of an hour, he became firmly convinced that no one had seen him, or if they had, did not care what he was about. He smiled to himself. It was one great advantage of being despised.
He angled southeastward to the top of the ridge and then turned east, surprising himself by the extent of his stamina as he moved purposefully to the east throughout the day. He had no energy for farming or any other of the mind-numbing tasks in which others seemed willing to engage, but give him something to do that that might be world-changing and he was, after all, a dynamo.
He could not stop grinning, at the sky, at the forested landscape, even at rocks in his path. The Lord of the World had found in him a valuable servant and after the completion of this appointed task, those that spoke his name would do so with respect and awe. As he walked rapidly onward, he thought about the task he’d been given. After mulling it over, he concluded that there was only one reason that his master would seek something containing the scent of Aram’s woman.
He meant to kill her – or have her killed. Probably by wolves.
Flinneran’s grin widened at this thought. The death of his precious woman would teach the high and mighty “prince” the true state of his position in the world. And Flinneran would be honored with a central role in the matter.
As he went eastward and gained altitude, the river fell away to his left and the canyon deepened and grew rougher, forcing him ever higher up along the spine of the ridge. The hardwood trees gradually failed and were replaced by evergreens that grew thicker the further he climbed. He slept that night beneath the shelter of a massive fir with sweeping lower limbs which touched the ground, hiding him and blocking the wind that came out of the northwest. Because he’d built no fire for the sake of safety and stealth, he suffered a bit as the night deepened and grew cooler; sleep was intermittent. But each time the chill awakened him he sat up and listened carefully out into the night. All was quiet. He could discern no evidence that he was being followed or watched.
The next morning he turned southward and almost immediately began to lose altitude. Though the evergreens still held sway, hardwoods began to be interspersed among them. He moved more quickly than he’d thought himself capable, striding southward with hard purpose and sleeping only when darkness required it. Before evening of the third day, he spied a large round valley through the trunks of the trees to the southwest. Further over to the southwest there rose the wooden structures of a sizeable town.
He slowed his pace and angled west toward the town, advancing with extreme caution, moving stealthily from tree to tree, listening for the sounds of alarm being raised. All he heard were the distant noises of the townsfolk’s daily business being conducted.
Easing down over the rocky, heavily wooded hillside, he found a small promontory covered with brush and slipped into the cover it provided. From the cover of thick, leafy, low shrubs, he studied the town, most of which was to the west of his position. From where he lay hidden he could not see into any of the streets. It appeared that the town was oriented away from him, toward the west, and as there were no roads or outbuildings between him and the walls of the houses on the outskirts, it was evident that he had come out of the wilderness upon the town’s less busy side.
The only structure immediately in view was a large, three-story affair, with verandas running across the back at the second and third stories that continued around to the south and disappeared. Nothing moved along those wooden porches, nor could he discern any activity occurring behind the glass of any of the windows.
He was about to look for a way to move westward to a place where his view would encompass more of the town’s structures when a woman stepped out into his view.
It was her – the woman.
He froze in place and stared, amazed at his luck.
There was no doubt that it was the woman he sought. This was she – the woman that always accompanied Aram. Flinneran recognized her easily from the time when Aram had accosted him in his house after his snakebite in the previous year. Though he had played the bite for more than its worth, in fact, the great bird had told the truth of it. Other than being painful for a time, the bite had done no permanent harm, serving only to grant him the ability to converse with members of the slithering races. That truth had served to make him trust implicitly the wishes and commands of his unseen master.
Which was why he was here now, hidden in the thick brush of a distant hillside, gazing across the open meadow at Aram’s woman.
The woman, who wore a long dress and was clearly in the middle stages of pregnancy, had emerged from a door on the second floor of the large building immediately in front of him. She pushed the door closed, arched her back with her hands at her waist, stretching, and then walked along the veranda toward the south, to Flinneran’s left. She paused to stretch her back once more, then turned the corner of the building, and went out of sight.
He settled back into his hiding spot. There was obviously no need to relocate.
Things were progressing unbelievably well. Good fortune had evidently made the long journey from the valley with him as his unseen companion.
He inspected his hiding place for suitability as a camp. He had no intention of starting a fire, so all he needed was a relatively level place, and rudimentary shelter. Satisfied that his present hiding place would suffice, he decided that he would remain right here until he could determine whether or not the woman lived in the unseen apartment behind the door. If so, he would learn her habits of coming out and going in – and, most importantly, if Aram was there as well. He stayed still and watched the house as the sun slid down to the west and dropped below the horizon but the woman did not return before the deepening twilight compromised his view of the rear of the building. A short time after full darkness fell, however, he heard a door open and close.
There was no moon; the darkness was complete. He pulled his cloak close around him and prepared to spend yet another night outside without the warming companionship of a fire. The chill in the wee hours awakened him several times, but again there was nothing that stirred in the blackness around him except those subtle sounds of nocturnal creatures which were to be expected.
At dawn, he ate, checked his diminishing stock of food, and settled in to watch the house. About two hours after sun-up, the woman appeared, went around the veranda to the south, and stayed out of view for the rest of the morning. Flinneran sat as still as if he were just another rock on the hillside, only glancing up on occasion to check the position of the sun. His excitement had not succumbed to the rigors of the last few days and as a consequence, he had developed the patience of the serpent lying in wait at the entrance to the mouse’s hole. When the sun had slipped an hour or so past mid-day, Aram’s woman returned with a female companion, entered the room at the back of the house and remained there for the duration of the afternoon.
He spent this time gauging how he would cross about fifty yards of open meadow that lay between the edge of the woods and the house, climb
to the second floor and get inside. There were no guards that he could see, and none had shown themselves throughout the day, so probably he needn’t worry about human security. There were several windows on the bottom floor of the house, though the bottom sill of each of these was at least four feet off the ground. Evidently the house was founded on a rather high foundation. If there was activity in those rooms behind the windows, he could see no evidence of it.
To his right, running westward down the slight slope and then angling off to the north of the house there was a shallow ravine slicing through the meadow. It wasn’t deep enough to conceal a man but it did contain several bunches of scraggly brush and even a large rock or two. These rocks and clumps of brush were scattered along the tangent of the ravine, but if a man sprinted between them, he would be in view of those bottom-floor windows for only seconds at a time.
There was no way to know what lay behind those windows. Some of the panes had been broken and replaced with wooden panels which allowed him to surmise that they were probably not rooms that saw a lot of activity throughout the day. Without knowing the truth of it, he decided to trust his instincts on the matter. When the opportunity came to approach the house, he would dart along the ravine without hesitation.
Once at the walls of the house, however, there was the problem of how he would gain the veranda on the second floor. The ravine would bring him to the house, but then he would have to climb, and there was no stairway or even a ladder in sight. He turned his attention to the resolution of this obstacle.
On the side of the house exposed to his view, the second-floor veranda was held up by six fairly thick posts spaced equidistantly along the span. There was one on the near corner which, though it had been worked to a relative smoothness, was nonetheless weathered so that a determined burglar might find grip enough to shinny up it without too much effort. The only thing that troubled him was that it was in clear view of at least one of the ground-floor windows and obliquely in view of another.
After studying the problem for hours, he decided that there was no other workable means of gaining the woman’s room. Besides, the lack of noticeable activity at the back of the house convinced him that there was little risk inherent in his plan’s execution.
Toward evening, as Flinneran was eating a spare meal of dried fruit, the two women appeared in the doorway. After speaking with Aram’s woman for a moment, the second woman, the companion, went away around the south side of the house. The object of his mission stayed, going back inside. Then, after another hour, she also emerged, clothed in a different dress and again went out of sight to the left.
Once more, night fell before Flinneran heard the opening and closing of a door that coincided with the position of the woman’s apartment. He found himself somewhat surprised that Aram himself had not showed. No doubt the “prince” was abroad somewhere causing difficulties for Flinneran’s master. So much the better he thought, for he intended to slip into the woman’s room on the morrow and gain his prize before – hopefully – Aram returned from wherever he was at the moment. It was preferable that he not have to worry about coming face-to-face with that man and his wicked steel.
The next morning, he waited for the woman to leave as she had on the previous day, but she did not appear. Then, two hours or more after dawn, a girl appeared carrying a tray of food. She knocked at the door, went in, emerged again without the tray, and went away. Still the woman did not appear.
Flinneran’s patience began to slip. Was she ill? How long would he have to wait if she were? Or could he find the courage to be brazen and enter the apartment even with her in it, take what he wanted and get away before she could summon help? How would he keep her silent if it came to that? Instinctively, he knew that it was not part of his mission to kill or even harm the woman – the master had plans of his own and Flinneran did not want to displease him now when he was about to elevated.
But then, just before mid-day, as he was starting to fidget, a man appeared around the corner of the veranda and approached the door of the apartment. This was not Aram. But it was a man Flinneran recognized as one of Aram’s companions – the brother of the woman.
The man knocked at the door and then entered. A few moments later, both he and the woman left the room and went to the left and around the corner out of sight. The sound of soft laughter carried across the open meadow to Flinneran’s hiding place and then faded away.
Hidden in the underbrush, Flinneran abruptly realized that this was it.
Now was the time.
It seemed a reasonable thought that the man had come to take his sister down to luncheon. There would be an hour or so allotted for him to enter and find what it was that he sought.
Screwing up his courage, he slipped to the edge of the woods, drew in a breath and sprinted along the ravine to the first clump of brush where he stopped and listened for a long moment. Nothing. No cries of alarm or warning arose from any quarter. Rising, he ran on to the next and listened again. Silence. Emboldened, he stood and jogged the rest of the way to the post where he stood again for a time and listened in full view of the window. He stared into the squares of glass that remained in the opening but could discern no movement in the dimness beyond. Nor was there any outcry from anywhere around the house.
Wrapping his arms and legs around the post, he laboriously hoisted himself upward and a few moments later stood on the veranda. He went to the door and tried the latch. It opened and swung inward.
Leaning around the jam, he peered inside. The room was well-lit by the sunlight of the bright day. No one was inside. Leaving the door slightly ajar, he went in and quickly took stock of the room. The furnishings consisted of a bed, two chairs, and three other pieces of furniture whose purpose he could not discern. There were five small mounds of clothing on the bed within easy reach. As he was searching the nearest pile for an article small enough to carry easily yet large enough to serve its purpose, his eye fell on a piece of furniture that stood against the interior wall.
On the flat top of this rectangular wooden construction, there were several items; a small round piece of glass in a silver frame, a bowl with a pitcher by it, and two small flat things with bristles attached and smooth, elongated handles. Flinneran had never seen a mirror or hair brush but a cursory inspection of the items told him without question exactly what purpose was served by each item. After gazing curiously at his reflection for a moment in the glass, he set it down and examined the two hairbrushes.
One held a few long, dark, golden-brown hairs gripped in its bristles. He picked it up and sniffed. There was a faintly pleasant smell, as of flowers. The woman’s essence.
There was no need to look further. He slipped the brush inside his cloak and went to the door where he paused to listen. All he could hear was the sound of a bird singing brightly down in the thickets. He slipped out of the room, closed the door softly, slid down the post, and returned to the hillside in one quick sprint back along the ravine. Once safely back in his hiding place, he squatted down and watched the house long enough to know that he’d been successful. No one had seen him.
He glanced upward. The sun was still high in the afternoon sky. Time to leave this place, go into the far north, and complete his mission.
Flinneran made certain the hairbrush was secured, hoisted his pack, and turned uphill toward the distant land of his master and his rendezvous with destiny.
40 .
Aram, Boman, Edwar, and Matibar, along with Wamlak, Jonwood, Mallet, and thirty mounted men swung into the gap on the border of Cumberland that led northward onto the great plains whereupon they would turn west. Aram had three goals in mind. The first was to discover the route on the southwestern part of the plains where Manon had diverted the slave trains and disrupt any of that activity he found being conducted. Unable to transport them any great distance, he intended upon simply freeing the women and the drivers into whatever local populations of free people that might be round about. He would slay the attendant lashers and ov
erseers, burn the wagons, and give the oxen to nearby farmers, if there were any. If there were no such populations, he would be tasked with moving the women and drivers eastward through dangerous and unknown territory. It was a problem which he’d decided would be resolved as – and if – it arose.
While in the west, he also wanted to look upon the ravaged land of Aniza and see whether or not there were yet people in that region to which he might give aid. Or perhaps they could be rescued and folded into the ranks of the free people – in Cumberland maybe. Marcus had told Aram of his suspicion that Governor Kitchell was rapidly hardening toward making a decision to stop the flow of his young women into the north, so any people that he and his company made free and then released into the Governor’s care would very likely be protected.
In conjunction with those other purposes, this journey would also enlarge Aram’s knowledge of the geography of this part of the world; knowledge that he might use to his advantage in the war against Manon.
At least as important as any of those other reasons, and perhaps even more pressing, was his desire to gain a clearer idea of the number and conditions of the people that dwelt on the southern fringe of the plains, and how he might begin the process of their liberation.
In any event, he was determined upon the killing of any lashers and overseers they encountered, thereby lessening the amount of evil in the world and helping to render the troops that rode with him as yet another cadre of hardened veterans.
They exited the gap and rode up the road by the valley where they had met Manon’s forces in the spring. As they thundered over the bridge past the battlefield, every head was turned to the left, staring at the ground where so much blood had been spilled. Much had been lost upon that piece of ground, but much of lasting substance had also been gained. Though every man in the column had been engaged on that day, each of them other than Aram and Matibar felt, strangely enough, that he was gazing upon something mysterious of which until now he had heard only rumor.
Kelven's Riddle Book Four Page 30
