The First Spark

by T J Trapp

  Then Lily walked by, carrying a dirty bowl as a ruse, and said softly, “Wait a few moments, and then do something. This may be his best chance.”

  Erin waited until the shadow of the feeding plank moved about a hand’s-width, pushed by the morning sun. It must be time, she thought.

  Suddenly Erin leaped to her feet, half dragging her startled ring-mates and lunged at a near-by girl in the next ring.

  “You! You stole my man!” Erin screamed. “You purple-striped trogus!” The girl recoiled in surprise.

  “What?!?” she said, flabbergasted by Erin’s assault.

  Erin grabbed the girl’s hair and started to pull her to the ground. The girl reached over her head for Erin’s arms, and the four other women tethered to her ring fell on top of her. One of the women on Erin’s ring tried to punch Erin, but again, the ring of women fell into one another. Soon it turned into a shouting and wrestling match, with some of the women trying to pull away and some of the women fighting each other. Because of their tethers, all nine of the women were quickly entangled with each other, and it wasn’t clear who was fighting and who was cowering.

  The slave-keepers, hearing the commotion, ran over to see what was happening. “The bitches are at it,” one yelled in delight. The women’s slave-keepers were joined by some of the other camp men, amused by the spectacle of nine naked women engaged in a mud-wrestling match, cheering the women on and occasionally poking them with a spear handle or slapping their backsides. The other rings of captive women also began to yell, some enjoying the fight, some wanting it to stop, and some yelling just to release their pent-up voices.

  However, after a time it was clear that Erin was getting the upper hand and might kill the long-haired girl. The slave-keepers decided it was time to break this up and started whipping the women to stop the fight. Two large men grabbed Erin’s head, pulled it back, and stuck a bit and harness in her mouth to pull her off the other woman. They spread Erin on the ground, beat her with their short whips, and then beat the rest of the women involved in the fight. All of them lay there on the ground, panting, bloodied, and beaten.

  I hope that worked, Erin thought, wincing from her lashing. I hope Alec got away.

  “Why did you do that!” one of her ring-mates asked angrily.

  “She stole my lover back home,” Erin said, gesturing towards the long-haired girl. “I hate her for that. I saw her and couldn’t hold myself back anymore! My emotions got the best of me.” Erin hoped she sounded a bit contrite.

  Erin’s lie seemed to quell the anger of her ring-mates but did not make them happy. From then on, they treated Erin more harshly.

  ✽✽✽

  Alec heard a commotion coming from the women’s side of camp: women screaming and yelling and men cheering. The few slave-keepers guarding the men went over to see what was happening. A serving woman appeared from behind a wagon and bustled over to where Alec and his mates were sitting. She reached down, and using a small tool, sprung the leather collar from his neck. Alec rubbed his chafed neck, gingerly feeling the raw spots, and looked at her in surprise.

  “You! Come with me, and be quick and quiet about it,” the smocked figure said loudly. “I need something carried.”

  Beneath the woman’s bonnet, he recognized the face peering intently at him. Lily! He quickly scrambled to his feet – painfully, because of the cuts and welts – and followed her.

  As he limped off, he heard one of his ring-mates say, “Too bad – the ones they take off alive are used to feed the trogus.”

  “I didn’t like him anyway,” grunted another. “Too tall. Too inquisitive.”

  Lily pushed him along in front of her. Soon they were past the edge of the camp and over the knoll.

  “Go,” Lily said urgently. “This may be your only chance! The soldiers are off on their raid, and they have taken most of the dogs with them. Only the dogs they left behind the caravan path remain, in case the Aldermen are followed. Now run! Or risk being caught and killed!”

  “What about Erin?” he blurted.

  “You fool – she is giving you this opportunity to escape. Now go!” She shoved his naked body towards the open grassland. He almost fell headlong but recovered his footing and moved as fast as he could into the cover of the tall grass.

  He walked very warily through the clumps of grass for the first few hundred paces, expecting the dogs to find him after each step. Then he broke into a slow trot, running as fast as his sore feet and legs could take him. Eventually, he felt he was outside the dogs’ range. I’m free, he thought. I hope.

  He hunkered down next to a clump of brush on the lee side of a small hill and inspected his legs and feet. Okay, I’m out of the slave camp. But – so what? And then there was the question that haunted him: What about Erin?

  One part of his brain said, ‘Forget about Erin and just take care of yourself.’ He could make it out of here on his own, and then maybe – maybe – find a way home. And back to Sarah. And his apartment. And a shower. And his clothes. And his life.

  But … The rest of his brain told him that was ungrateful – he had to help Erin. And, going through his thoughts, he realized that he was deeply attached to her, and in a much stronger way than he had ever felt with Sarah. Whatever happened next, he knew he had to find a way to free Erin and get her back to her home.

  Then reality struck as he felt the deepest cut on the bottom of his foot. Ouch. Here was one naked guy with sore feet and infected legs against fifty or more well-armed soldiers, some of whom had long-range repeating rifles. And he was going to take them on? Maybe when he had his medallion, but not like this.

  First problems first, he thought. How am I going even to survive? What was there to eat, where was water, and how was he going to keep from freezing at night?

  A low growl brought Alec back to more immediate problems. A small hyra had come out of the nearby thicket, only twenty paces from him. Erin had told him they were opportunistic. They would not take much of a risk to bring down game, but if there was a hurt animal, they would willingly kill it. The hyra was approaching carefully but confidently – obviously, it put Alec in the ‘hurt animal’ category. Got to change that impression, Alec thought. He picked up a rock and flung it at the creature. Without his sling, the projectile didn’t have the power he was accustomed to, but his natural athletic ability sent the rock straight at the animal. It hit the hyra in the side with a reassuring pufft! The small creature jumped and pulled back to the edge of the clearing, looked at Alec for a few seconds, and then vanished.

  Good for now, thought Alec, but knew it would come back under cover of darkness to see if he was vulnerable. If I sleep, I may be hyra food. He sighed. Need to do something, he thought.

  As Alec sat on the hillside, with the smallest moon crossing the sky at an oblique angle, his mind slowly sank into despair. He was tired and hungry and been captured by slavers and beaten. This was barbaric. He was supposed to be a premier research scientist, working in a safe, comfortable Lab with proper restrooms. Instead he was out here in God-knows-where, having to kill people and eat dead animals. Tears welled up in his eyes. It’s hopeless, he thought. I’m no Boy Scout! I don’t know how to do this! What could he, a university research genius, do out here to survive? He didn’t even know how to make a safe place to sleep. Erin always did that part. Erin knew how to survive. Erin. If only Erin were here, she could show him. Erin. And with Erin, he could keep warm at night. Erin. The thought of Erin gave him a feeling of hope, an anchor against the sea of his fear and darkness.

  No, I can’t give up. And be eaten by dogs or those fanged trogus. I must figure out how to make it. Alec looked up at the waning moon, crossing through the sunlight, and took a deep breath. Then he realized that it was no chance opportunity that allowed Lily to get him out of the slave camp. Erin did something – something – to set me free. He smiled a bit ruefully. Erin thinks I am a ‘Great Wizard’ – but she is the one who knows how to succeed! He gingerly slapped his sore thigh and stood
up. She is counting on me. With that, his spirits lifted, and he felt as ready to tackle his situation as anyone who is naked and hungry, on a lonely plain with wild beasts waiting to eat him and slavers ready to re-capture him, could possibly be.

  ✽✽✽

  Late in the day, the Aldermen soldiers returned from their raid. First, the war party returned. Then a second party arrived with stolen wagons and goods from the village. Slightly later a third party returned with captives from the village. The captives had been stripped naked and pulled along behind the drungs. Erin guessed there were another twenty women added to the group. She could see they were divided among the various rings so that they would not be with people they knew.

  One of the captured women had not been able to make the walk. Somewhere she had fallen and been dragged the rest of the way. Erin could see a trail of blood where her mangled body had been pulled across the rocks and saw-grass. The woman was still alive, although breathing raggedly, and had been left, unattended, lying on the ground while the slave-keepers attached the other women to rings. Now the slave-keepers returned for the downed woman. The dragged her to a butcher’s block near the animal pens and laid her across it face down. They stuffed a rag in her mouth. One of them took an ax and chopped off her arm. The woman reflexively screamed, but the rag muffled the sound. Then her body shuddered a couple of times and went still. The slave-keeper chopped the arm into two pieces. Then he chopped the hand off. He tossed the hand to a nearby trogus. The beast caught the tidbit in mid-air and messily chomped it down. Erin watched with horror as the man continued to chop the body into pieces.

  “Trogus food,” said her ring-mate. “Cut up parts like that are how they usually feed them. If the soldiers get bored and they want a spectacle, they will put a live person in the pen with the trogus and let several of them feed at once. The trogus like to eat the hand and feet first, and they like hot blood. The soldiers like to hear the person scream for a long time, while the trogus eat their arms and legs.” Erin thought she was tough, but this turned even her stomach. Also, she suspected that her ring-mates would not grieve if she became trogus fodder.

  ✽✽✽

  Okay. What first. Alec exhaled heavily. Maybe some way to defend myself. He looked around the clumps of tall grass – not even a good long stick here – although there were plenty of rocks around. If only I had my medallion, I could take care of this.

  A new thought came to him. There is so much natural dark energy on this world that I can feel a small amount of dark energy even without my medallion. Can I use the local dark energy to make a new medallion to use as a focus? I know how to make tricrystals.

  Alec thought back through his research notes. The theory of dark energy implied that the stronger the focus, the easier it would be to work with dark energy. Let’s see. Dark energy and time are related. Dark energy is related to time. The amount of dark energy available and the strength of the focus would reduce the time required to use it effectively. Anything could be done; it was just a matter of how long it took. And, oh yes, there is that one little problem. If I lose my mental concentration, the dark energy will move away from the focus and into an unstable form. It will release itself energetically, but I won’t be here to worry if that happens. Boom!

  Alec couldn’t think of any other option, so he got to work. Sitting in front of a flat rock, he carefully put a small pile of rock-dust in the center of his rock. Start with something simple.

  Focus. It was very difficult to feel the free-floating dark energy, but finally, he found it. Focus. The dark energy concentrated. Alec felt himself right on the fringes of losing control; he strained to maintain his mental stamina. And then he was done.

  He looked at his rock. Success! Sort of. Barely visible was a tricrystal on the rock, not much larger than the head of a pin. Alec could feel that it was a focus crystal, but it didn’t provide much more focus than he could create without it. Let’s try again, he thought. He made a second tricrystal and then a third, each of the three about the size of a pin-head.

  The next step was to put them close together and see if anything happened. He moved the three small tricrystals close together and was disappointed with the result. Slightly more power than before, but not enough. He sighed and idly picked a louse from his hair.

  He looked up. While he was making tricrystals, the day had gotten away from him – the sun was starting to dip towards the horizon, and already he could feel the temperature begin to drop. Let’s see. Alec did a quick mental calculation. I would need … oh … about … around twenty thousand of these to replicate my medallion. He thought a bit more. If I can make, say, six of these a day, how many days will I have to be here on this godforsaken plain before I have twenty thousand tricrystals? The answer was disheartening.

  Damn, he thought and slapped his rock in disgust. The three crystals moved slightly from the force of the slap. Alec felt a sudden jump in power, and then a decline as the pebbles slid away from each other.

  What just happened? he thought. Have I got the shape wrong? Maybe I don’t need them all to be close together. Maybe a spread-out array of crystals would work.

  Where should they go? He reviewed the dark energy theory in his mind. Maybe they should be placed along the lines of the attractors. With a supercomputer and a couple of days’ time, he could calculate those points exactly. But that’s not going to happen. He didn’t even have a cell phone here, much less a computer. Was there another way to do it? Maybe he could let the field strength tell him the right locations.

  He broke a twig from the bush and began to move his tricrystal pinheads gently. First, nothing happened, and then the focal strength increased dramatically. That’s close, he thought. It was still much weaker than his medallion, but it was almost usable.

  What now?

  ‘Make more crystals,’ was the obvious answer. Using the three tiny crystals as a focus, he made another twenty small crystals. He looked up at the sun. The last twenty had only required a few minutes to do, unlike the whole afternoon for the first three.

  The pattern for twenty-three was different than the pattern for three, so it took most of the next hour before he found the right arrangement. The tricrystals were still laying on the flat rock. The next step was a container for them he thought.

  A snarl interrupted his thoughts. With the last light of day, the hyra had returned with two others. Alec was about to be their fine dining experience, he could tell.

  Not tonight guys, he thought. Earlier, he couldn’t have done much, but now he could. Focus. His initial thought was to boil the creature’s blood. How dare someone try to eat me! he thought with unexpected anger. Nah, the little guy is just trying to live. He thinks I’m the best thing for dinner. Maybe something less dramatic.

  Focus. Alec’s hands were on the sides of the flat rock. Dark energy swirled. A patch of hair on the rump of the first hyra burst into flames; it jumped in fright and went squealing off into the brush. The other two followed it. That should teach you not to invite me to join you for dinner, he thought. Ha!

  Now back to the next task. Focus. He created a large flat diamond, about the size of the palm of his hand, to enclose his tricrystals. Might be the world’s largest diamond, he thought. He tested the focal strength. It was good – as strong, or stronger, than his original medallion. The focal lines felt cleaner also. Quite a step forward, he thought. I need to write this up. This will change a lot of thinking when I get back to the Lab. Then he stopped himself. The Lab. The Institute. Would he ever get back? And deeper down was the question that he hadn’t yet asked himself: if getting back to the Institute and the Lab meant leaving Erin, did he want to go back?

  But for now, naked, sore, shivering, and exposed to the elements on a cold night, he was a long way from making any kinds of long-term decisions. Got to survive the night. How would Erin do this?

  Alec found a suitable place under one of the low bushes, as Erin had shown him, and made a clumsy cave. Without her body heat, he would need
something else to keep warm. There was some dried grass that he could use to cover himself, but it would not be enough. Rocks. He carried several medium-sized rocks and put them next to his sleeping spot. Then he heated the rocks. They gave off enough warmth that he wouldn’t freeze. But it’s still cold. He missed Erin’s softness curled next to him.

  As he lay under his grass blanket he was keenly aware that the hyra were right – he was a wounded animal. His legs throbbed where infection had set in and the bruises and welts ached. What can I do to stop this, so I can sleep? Could dark energy help? Focus. Alec let the dark energy flow through his body. After a few minutes, he started to feel better. The dark energy gave him a feeling of calm, and gradually a sense of euphoria. Even if he didn’t know how to perform medical miracles with dark energy, he could at least minimize the aching.

  9 – Rescue

  Alec awoke to a bright sun shining into his cave. He had slept far longer than he was expecting and felt much better, but he was shivering from the morning cold. He rolled over onto his rocks – they had lost their heat and were cold. Focus – the rocks were warm again and he could feel the heat soak into his body.

  But the first thing on his mind was not the cold. How is Erin doing?

  He brushed the grass from his body and looked at his legs. Much better this morning! The infection was gone and the cuts no longer oozed pus. The scratches were still present but partially healed, and even his feet had recovered to the point that he felt like he might be able to walk comfortably. Did bathing myself in dark energy have healing capability? Was it some other unknown effect of dark energy, or just the result of a good night’s sleep? He didn’t know and didn’t have any way to figure it out right now.

  His stomach was growling. Even the slave-camp mush sounded good. He crawled out of the cave and started looking for something to eat. Within a few minutes, he spotted a small bounder. Focus. The rock went true to its aim, and the animal was down. He walked over and picked it up. Now what? He wasn’t going to skin it without a tool. He knew that in the Old West, the natives could skin an animal using a chip of chert or sharp rock – Alec had tried to do that once as a boy and only succeeded in cutting his hands.