The First Spark

by T J Trapp

  Erin, in tears, jerked free of Alec and ran to the Caravan Master, tripping and ending on her knees in front of him.

  “Please Sir, help me!” she sniveled. “He is just awful! He wanted me to sweep the wagon. He makes me wear these dirty clothes because he won’t hire a wash girl or buy me new clothes.” Erin looked up at the Caravan Master. “You look like you would be so much nicer,” she said, wiping her eyes.

  Maybe this will work, the Caravan Master thought. If this rich girl wanted to leave the tall man, and come to his wagon, he wouldn’t even have to dispose of a rival. He drooled at the thought of a new conquest in bed this afternoon. It had been at least a week since he had enjoyed a woman.

  “And he didn’t provide me any food this morning. I am so hungry.”

  “We don’t have any coins left for food!” Alec said, feigning anger. “You spent all the coins you brought!”

  “Oh! Please help me,” said Erin to the Caravan Master. “He won’t prepare my food. He wants me to cook! Even after I let him touch me and do his thing, he still wants me to cook! Please take care of me.” Erin crawled closer to the Caravan Master and grabbed the leg of his loose trousers. “I will be good for you,” she said coyly. Then she sniffed his trousers and wrinkled her nose. “But you must take a bath first. And I hope you are not like him because he smells like a drung and sweats all over me.”

  The Caravan Master looked down at Erin and helped her to her feet.

  “Take her if you want,” said Alec, “but I am keeping the wagon.” He tried to spit on the dust like he had seen so many men do, but his ‘insult’ was ineffective. He discretely wiped his chin on the back of his sleeve. “She was okay when she had her father’s coins and could buy me food, and new clothes, but now that she has spent all the coins, all she does is complain. You can have her!” Alec turned on his heel. “She can come to pick up her clothes anytime,” he said, over his shoulder.

  “I don’t care about the wagon!” Erin screamed. “You can have it!” She took the Caravan Master’s arm and glared at Alec. “He is a good man, a wealthy man, a Caravan Master, and will buy me a new wagon when I need it. And my clothes – there are too many for me to carry! He will send a girl to get them for me.” Then she wrinkled her nose again. “But they are so dirty and old.” She leaned on the Caravan Master’s shoulder and looked up at him adoringly. “Throw those old rags away. I am about to get all new clothes.”

  By now the Caravan Master was having second thoughts. The last thing he wanted was a whinny, expensive woman. Why would he want a lazy woman who wouldn’t do any work, when there were half-a-dozen compliant camp followers who would do anything to get in bed with him?

  “You will miss me,” Erin said pouting at Alec. He turned to face her, hands on his hips.

  “Hah!” Alec said. “That little girl who serves breakfast at the meal tent is a little cutie. She has looked at me. Maybe I will go talk to her.”

  Erin burst into tears again.

  “He keeps telling me I am ugly – not round and plump enough. It’s not my fault that I am skinny! I try to eat more, but I can’t get any good food. There is no good cook to make me breakfast or serve it to me in my wagon.”

  The Caravan Master looked at Erin. Maybe she wasn’t as attractive as he first thought. She was skinny. And hard. He knew exactly the camp follower that Alec was talking about. She was cute and had been in his bed a few times and would do anything to be in his bed permanently. She didn’t whine, and she was plumper, and she would cook and clean.

  “Just a minute,” the Caravan Master said to Alec, disentangling Erin’s arm from his. “You can’t just leave her. She is your responsibility.”

  “She wants you, not me,” Alec said, turning again to walk away. Erin rolled her eyes longingly at the Caravan Master and tried to take his arm again.

  “She’s your problem! You must take her!” said the Caravan Master, shoving Erin towards Alec.

  “And if I don’t?”

  “Then the wagon stays with me! I won’t let you keep her wagon without taking her.” The Caravan Master looked at Alec smugly. He could see that he had Alec in an awkward position.

  Alec let out an exasperated sigh. “Ok, I’ll take her – but only until I get to where I can send her home.”

  “Then take her and wait until we have a load for you.”

  Erin grabbed the Caravan Master’ sleeve.

  “Don’t make me go with him,” she wailed. “I know you will like me if you take me. I know – I will come to your wagon and recite the old poems of our people! My father likes that – he says it calms him so that he can sleep!” Erin launched into a loud chant-like monologue. “‘In the beginning of time, when the time was mine, we learned this rhyme …’ No, wait. That’s not right. ‘In the beginning of time, when …’ Are you listening? I will speak louder. ‘In the beginning of night, when might was right …’” Erin kept stumbling on the words, repeating herself, getting louder with each iteration.

  The Caravan Master thought quickly, again pushing Erin away from him.

  “Maybe I can find you a load,” he said to Alec, speaking loudly over Erin’s ‘chant.’ “I need a load of scrap lumber hauled back the way we came. It doesn’t pay very well, so no one wants to haul it. You have three drungs, so you should be able to pull the load.” Alec came back to the Caravan Master, ready to bargain, as Erin continued to try to remember the words in her poem.

  “I will let you do this as a favor; given your situation, I will require only three coins of four of your profits as my caravan fee.”

  “That is too much,” said Alec loudly, over the chanting. “I will have to give the wagon back to her father when I drop her off, and then I won’t have any coins left for me.” He again turned away. “I will just suffer – I will leave her with you and wait for the regular load.”

  “Well, just because I want to help her, pretty thing though she is, I will only charge you two coins of four,” the Caravan Master offered, desperately wanting Erin to shut up.

  “Oh … I guess I will do it,” said Alec.

  “Take her and go load your wagon. Come by after you are loaded – but make sure you come without her! Then I will give you your passes and seals.” With that, he paddled Erin several times on her rear, gave her a shove towards Alec, and said, “And at least make her sweep and do your wash!”

  “Lazy drung,” he muttered to himself.

  Alec grabbed a reluctant Erin’s arm and pulled her angrily along with him. Erin looked back imploringly at the Caravan Master, who studiously refused to look at Erin.

  They made it half-way back to their wagon before they broke out in laughter.

  “So, you call that ‘acting,’” said Erin.

  “Yes, and you did it quite well!”

  “My people do not do anything like that – but it is fun to pretend to be someone you are not! It is easy to do when you can sense the other person’s feelings.” Then with a serious expression, Erin added, “You know I can chant better than that. And I do remember the words.”.

  27 – Through the Grasslands

  “All loaded?” Erin asked.

  “Yep, every last board and scrap!” Alec replied. “Time to be off!”

  Only a few other wagons were carrying shipments from the Alder warehouse, headed back in the direction they had come from. The reduced number of shipments didn’t seem unusual to the people around the warehouse since often there were days when the transfer point could not operate. Only Erin and Alec knew that no new supplies would ever again come through the transfer point.

  The main gate of the Alder camp was an intimidating arrangement of death rods and guards but the guards at the main gate allowed them to proceed after a perfunctory check of their load and their seal from the Caravan Master.

  By the next afternoon, they had returned to the village where they had purchased their wagon. They had been stopped three times by Alder patrols, but their credentials satisfied the Aldermen. At one stop, one of the patr
olmen looked leeringly at Erin but did not attempt to approach her.

  They delivered the load of scrap wood as required, and then, having no further use for the wagon, looked for a buyer. They took it to the wagon dealer they had talked to before; he offered them five gold coins for the wagon. They weren’t concerned about the price but haggled until they received fifteen large gold coins for the wagon and three drungs. They collected their trogus from the stables and were on the road, heading into the Grasslands.

  Their first concern was to avoid Alder patrols as they tried to reconnect with the Theland riders waiting for them on the Grasslands. As they moved away from the transfer point, the Alder patrols became widely spaced; evading them became easier.

  Alec couldn’t resist playing with the new device he had taken from the Alder warehouse. He laid out two circular areas about a hundred paces apart. Then he took his hex rod to both locations and created a portal at the two ends. First, he started by moving a rock between the two locations and bringing it back. Then he moved a trogus back and forth; the animal brayed in consternation when it realized it had moved through no action of its own and shook its head and mane mightily until it regained its senses. Finally, he felt that he understood the mechanics of moving objects between portals.

  “Ready for some fun?” he asked Erin.

  The two of them stood in the center of one of the marked circular areas. Alec fed dark energy into the hex rod. The world started to dim, went momentarily black, and then lightened back to normal.

  They were at the other portal.

  “Presto!” crowed Alec, thinking he sounded like a Wizard – a pleased Wizard at that. “Much easier to use a portal than to transport across dimensions.”

  “I could have walked between these two circles faster than that!” Erin exclaimed.

  “Well, yeah, but if the two portals were farther apart, then you couldn’t,” Alec said, slightly crestfallen.

  “I do see that it could be useful,” Erin said, trying to mollify him. “It could be used to link Freeland City in Theland with our villages on the outskirts. They always complain about being out of touch.”

  With Alec’s experimenting finished for the day, it was time for supper. Alec offered to cook, but Erin steadfastly refused.

  “That Caravan Master told you that you should make me cook for you,” Erin said, teasing him. “Besides, no one at home will let a Princess cook,” She tested the hot rocks that Alec had prepared for her. “Besides,” she added slyly, “we want the food to be edible.” And it was.

  The next morning, they were up early and riding again, making their way across the sea of gray-green grass at a good pace. About mid-morning they saw a plume of smoke on the horizon.

  “What’s that?” Alec asked, pointing at the smoke. “Is that our boys?”

  “It does look like a burning caravan to me,” said Erin. “But we are too far away to tell – by the time we get closer, everyone on the Grasslands will be headed there to see what is going on. Plus, our riders will not stay around, if it is a burning wagon, and if our riders were the ones who set it on fire.” She stiffened and looked around, suddenly wary of the waving clumps of grass.

  “Besides, I think we have a tail.” She paused to get a better bearing on what her senses were telling her. “A group is about four or five els behind us, probably on our tracks.”

  “You know this business,” said Alec. “What do you suggest?”

  “I think we need to ditch our pursuers and see if we can figure out where our riders are,” she answered.

  Alec agreed.

  “Every Alder soldier within sight will be heading towards that smoke column. Let’s change directions and see if the bunch behind us is trying to follow us.”

  After about a half hour, Erin stopped again.

  “They changed directions at the same point that we did. They have a good tracker if they can follow us and not lose speed in the process. “

  “How many are there?” asked Alec.

  “I think there are only five of them, so we shouldn’t have too much of a problem if they want to take us on. Let’s see what we have.”

  “If they are still a few els behind us, we should have time to lay out a good observation post.”

  They picked out a place that would suit their needs. Then they rode a few hundred arns past the spot before they made a wide arc and circled back to the new observation point. Alec obscured them from view. They did not have long to wait until the five riders came along. They looked more like a band of ragged hoodlums than Alder soldiers – they were not in uniform, wore old and torn clothing, and had little sense of organization. One of them was clearly an excellent tracker and was leading the way, following their trail from his small Grasslands drunglet.

  The ragged band passed within thirty arns of the observation point. Alec’s obscuring lens kept them from noticing Alec and Erin.

  Following us, Alec thought, and not Aldermen. Or Gryg.

  Then we should confront them, Erin thought back. They have no business following us.

  Alec dropped the obscuring lens and they rode forward, their hungry trogus making slight growling noises at the sight of the men and their animals.

  “Hello, strangers! Are you looking for us?” Alec called out.

  The five saw them with a start. The lead tracker forced a smile. The nearest man turned towards them.

  “We are poor men riding through the Grasslands, in search of animals to trap for their hides. We mean no one any harm,” the man said, shifting uncomfortably on his little spotted drunglet.

  “And why are you following us?” Alec demanded.

  “Following? You? Why no. Just an unfortunate accident of direction,” he said. “We will be going about our business now if you don’t mind.”

  “I don’t want any hint that you are trying to follow us,” Alec said sternly.

  The lead tracker was starting to get worked up.

  “A lone bloke out here on the grasslands with a lass, and you are telling us what to do.” He ran his tongue over his ample lower lip. “If you don’t watch your words, we may have to teach you a lesson or two.”

  Alec let his trogus paw the ground; it emitted its low, guttural growl.

  “You think you could take us on, mounted?” Alec said. “Maybe at midnight you could do some damage if you slunk up and stabbed us in the back under cover of darkness. But not out here in the full light of day.” Alec tried to look as menacing as he could. “You don’t look like much. Now be gone! Or I will have my lady teach you some manners.” He motioned towards Erin. The five men knew they were being insulted but weren’t sure which way to take the conversation.

  “We will be off and leave you be,” the lead tracker finally said. He kicked his little drunglet, and it trotted off, the other men following.

  “Jackals!” spat Erin. “If they could, they would sneak up on us to rob and kill us, but they won’t try to tackle us directly.”

  “We will have to watch carefully to make sure they don’t continue to follow us,” Alec said.

  ✽✽✽

  About an hour later, Erin stopped.

  “They are back on our track again. This time they are staying a little further back and seem warier.”

  “I guess we will have to have a second conversation,” Alec said.

  They found a good spot to pull the same maneuver again. This time they had to wait several minutes before the five men came into view, looking in every direction as they shambled along the trail. Again, the obscuring lens served its purpose. As soon as the men passed, Alec dropped the lens, and he and Erin moved forward where they could be seen.

  “It doesn’t look like you follow directions well,” Alec said. “Why don’t you dismount.”

  The five just looked at them; one of them laughed, drew out his spear, and spurred his drunglet towards Erin.

  Erin goaded her trogus forward. The trogus charged, taking the little spotted drunglet down with its claws. The rider was thrown from
his mount in front of Erin; he grabbed his spear and tried to lunge at her trogus’ throat. Erin caught the spear with her sword, breaking it into two pieces. Her trogus reached out and grabbed the man’s arm with its teeth – there was a sound of cracking bones and shredding flesh. Erin pulled her trogus back and spun it around to make sure there were no more threats.

  “I said, dismount!” The men slid off their mounts. Alec herded the men into a little group, their small drunglets hovering nearby, nervously eyeing the two trogus.

  “Now – why are you following us?” he asked.

  The tracker, standing on the ground, looked up at him.

  “You know the truth, so why do you ask?” the tracker said.

  “I guess just politeness,” said Alec. “My mother always told me to be nice. She would have told me that I shouldn’t kill anyone without their permission. Now, what are you trying to do?”

  The tracker stepped forward, “Look,” he said, nervously eyeing the growling trogus. “The Alder hired ten of us – all of us are expert trackers. Our job is to find a marauding gang of trogus riders that are terrorizing the caravans out here on the Grasslands. We found their trail two days ago. Three of my companions are staying on their trail, along with a tailing Alder force. They will keep an eye on the marauders until the Alder collects enough soldiers and death rods to destroy them.”

  Our riders, thought Erin to Alec.

  “When is that going to happen?” Alec asked.

  “I think they plan to corner them a half a day from here along the Aleinte Escarpment. The rest of us were sent to look for stray riders who might be part of the gang. We are just doing a job.” The tracker shrugged his shoulders and eyed Alec. “We found your tracks this morning and were following you.”

  “If you aren’t part of the marauding gang and you haven’t done anything wrong, then come with us to any Alder camp, and they will pay us and let you go,” another man chimed in.

  Erin and Alec looked at each other with concern.

  We need to see if we can meet up with our riders quickly, Erin thought to Alec.