Old Broken Road

by Alexander, K. M.

  She knew it better than I did, and she’d trap me with it.

  My options were limited. The simplest one was to disband the company and try to reform in Lovat, which would require fleeing and would probably keep me from operating in Syringa in the future. I didn’t like the idea of being on the run again. I’d had enough of running in Lovat to last a lifetime. I didn’t want to make it a habit.

  “Look,” I raised my hands in a gesture of peace. “Maybe we can avoid the magistrate and work something out.”

  She put her hands on her hips and tilted her head to the side. “Like the Broken Road.”

  “Maybe not that, but something. You want a drink? Let’s get a drink and discuss this like professionals.”

  “No!” she exploded. “I am done discussing anything with you! I’ll settle for a late arrival, but my produce will be on the road in one day’s time or I’ll drag you before the magistrate. Do. You. Understand. Me?”

  FOUR

  WENSEM’S EYES WERE NARROWED. He sat upright in his chair, his posture tense as he waited for me to finish. When I did, he slowly shook his head and spoke flatly. “The Broken Road. By the Firsts, what did you get us into?”

  “Look, we don't have a choice,” I said.

  Wensem didn’t respond. He just stared at me from across his beer. The tavern we had holed up in could seat maybe six people, eight if they were real small. Right now, it was just three of us: me, Wensem, and a dauger bartender with a flat lead mask. Outside the morning wind had begun to blow, and it howled against the wooden walls of the bar, whipping through the loose slats with thin whistles.

  Wensem still hadn’t said anything. He hardly blinked. I squirmed in my chair, feeling awkward under his blue-gray gaze. He had to understand, right? Had to see that Shaler left me no other choice. I ran a hand through my shaggy hair, traced the tips of my fingers around the rim of my glass and avoided meeting his eyes.

  “I’m serious,” I finally said. “You didn’t see her. She was pissed. She threatened to take us to the magistrate. Was going to have our assets, our license, everything seized. She’d do it too, and the magistrate would let her. He doesn’t like us very much.”

  “You.”

  “What?”

  “The magistrate. He doesn’t like you very much.”

  He wasn’t wrong. There was a minor incident. I had approached the magistrate complaining about failure for completed payment by one of Syringa’s beloved merchants. I don’t know if it had been a bad day for him or what, but he wasn’t cordial. He had said something offhand. Then my mouth got the better of me. He snapped. I snapped back. Suffice it to say we never got full payment and I spent a few nights in jail.

  “Regardless, it didn’t leave us with much of a choice. She was ready to walk right up to O’Conner’s blockade. I’m not taking any of our people near those freaks. I’d rather risk the rumors than face down the Purity Movement.”

  Wensem breathed out a sad, resigned sigh.

  Silence settled between us and we slid back into our game. Wensem staring at me, while I did my damnedest to avoid his gaze.

  I couldn’t take it. “Look, I know it was rash, but what other choice do we have? She insisted on the Broken Road. I didn’t have a reason not to take it. Not a good one at least.”

  Silence. That stare.

  I continued. “Ghosts. Cannibals. I mean, come on!”

  Nothing. He just looked at me, his lips turned down. His shoulders straight. His crooked jaw set. My words disappearing in the dusty air.

  Finally Wensem stood, breathing out another one of those sad sighs. It felt like a punch in the gut.

  “You know… I realize you have been through a lot. But this is supposed to be a partnership. Me and you. Together. Not… this.”

  He waved a hand and took a sip of his beer. My stomach tightened. Would he walk away? His eyes smoldered betraying the anger beneath the surface. The ice had cracked.

  Still silent, he finished his beer and turned slowly to push his way out of the tavern and into the blowing dust outside. “Come on,” he said. “We need to tell the crew.”

  Roaders are superstitious types—old trail hands who believe in omens, signs, and wonders. Superstition is a wild thing that grows like a weed. The longer you leave it unattended the more it multiplies, eventually pushing out the good, making room only for itself. This is why superstitious old codgers are more common than superstitious young people. They’ve had plenty of time to let their weeds grow.

  There were grumbles. Voices lowered in discussion. Finally three of them, the oldest, and except for Hannah, my most trusted, asked for their stipend. I paid it. I smiled and shook their hands, and wished them well, but down deep, a small ball of worry lodged in my stomach. I knew what their departure meant for me.

  Shaler wanted to get on the road and we didn’t have time to hire replacements. That left us trudging down the Broken Road missing most of our security. Not something I’m keen on doing even on safe roads.

  I was left with a company of six, counting Wensem and myself. I wondered if those three who had left weren’t really the smarter ones. I found myself secretly jealous of their ability to just walk away.

  “I don’t like this, boss,” said Hannah. Her voice snapped me out of my reverie.

  She walked next to me at the head of the company’s column, heading north out of Syringa. Behind us stretched the cargowains of the caravan, single file, trundling along like a procession of overweight boars.

  The day had broken much like the last: hot, dry, and dirty. The sun was high in the sky, nearing mid-day. Syringa was already miles behind us, her small towers a hazy sketch against the sky. To my right—east—the peak of Syringa Mountain wavered as a dirty, bronze smudge against the washed-out blue of the sky.

  “I don’t like it either, but she had the law on her side and I let the route slip.”

  I turned and looked at her. At twenty-six, Hannah was one of the best scouts in the territory, and I was glad she was on my side. She was human: small and lean, all muscle. Her face was heart-shaped with a button nose and friendly green eyes that matched an easy smile.

  She wore the heavy boots of a roader, along with dark rugged canvas pants, a shabby knit shirt, and a yellow patterned keff draped around her neck. She usually wore a brown leather jacket with a heavy hood to keep the rain off her dark hair and the sun off her shoulders, but had foregone it in the heat.

  “Kind of stupid, wouldn’t you agree?” She rattled off their names. “Norm, Rosebel, Horace—we lost some good people, boss.”

  “Shaler threatened to break the company if we didn’t take the route.”

  “Could she have done that?”

  “In Lovat, no. Here…” I let the sentence drop.

  Hannah frowned and looked over her shoulder at the caravan stretching out behind us. The gearwain led the column, followed closely by Shaler’s shambling prairiewain. Its plastic shell looked like a cheese box on wheels, and the contraption bobbed on the road like a ship at sea.

  “She have something to prove?” Hannah asked, turning back to me.

  “Doesn’t everyone?”

  Hannah chuckled and wrinkled her nose. “I suppose. She just seems awful willing to put her people’s lives in danger over wainloads of fruit.”

  “They don’t sell, then they’re in for a hard winter. Let’s remove the Shaler family from the picture; if those apples don’t get to Lovat, well, then Lovat is in for a hard winter.”

  Hannah let it drop.

  “Is Wensem upset? That was most of his detail who left.”

  “A little,” I said, thinking of the way Wensem had walked off earlier. Me and you. Together. With his crew three short, it left all of Bell Caravans driving wains and guarding the laager. Under normal circumstances we split the responsibilities. Guards guarded and drivers drove. It keeps the crew fresh. A tired roader is a roader that makes mistakes. I had felt his eyes on me as I had broken the news to the company. Watching from the back of the gr
oup. We hadn’t spoken since the tavern.

  Wensem’s primary responsibility was security. I was in charge of the day-to-day: routes, logistics, repairs, that sort of thing. Hannah was the only roader who remained from Wensem’s part of the crew, and she was technically shared between the two of us.

  Hannah breathed out, shifting her rifle to her shoulder. “Well, the day ain’t getting any younger. I better get to what you pay me for. I’ll see you in a few stages, but I might be a bit late to laager. I want to be thorough.”

  “All right,” I said. We shook hands. “You stay safe. Watch out for rogue shamblers.”

  She laughed. Shamblers are a strange animal. They look like naked humanoid figures: neckless with malformed heads, sightless bulging eyes, and pallid gray skin. Solitary and slow, they were more nuisance than threat, occasionally stumbling through a laager or running into the side of a cargowain. They were usually herbivorous, wandering the high desert looking for scrub brush, but occasionally they would find a prairie bird or small mammal to munch on.

  “I doubt we’ll have much to worry about until after the crossing at Meyer's Falls. But it never hurts to be sharp.” She looked at the sky. “Heat makes people crazy.”

  Despite her height, her legs were long and carried her well. I watched her move into a jog and disappear down the road. Hannah was right, it was three or so stages with bone-dry ground from Syringa to Meyer's Falls, and not a rain cloud in sight. The miles would blow by. Besides, it was after Meyer's Falls where the real journey would begin. It wasn’t much in itself: a small fort, a tiny town, an undersupplied waystation. Its crossing was hardly deserving of the designation. No massive span crossed a deep flow of water. That far north, the river doesn’t yet meet up with the fast-flowing tributaries from the eastern and western mountains. During wet seasons the river might rise to waist high, but with this drought, most caravaneers could probably walk across the river with barely a splash.

  I stopped and watched my caravan roll past, inspecting the column. Our gearwain lead the caravan, followed by Shaler’s personal prairiewain, and behind its domed roof rolled her six cargowains laden with the fruit bound for Lovat. All in all, we were a caravan of nine counting Taft’s chuckwain, which brought up the rear behind a small cart driven by our hired blacksmith, a human-dimanian half-breed named Clara Charron. One cart. Eight wains. Sixteen souls.

  This is your caravan, I thought blackly. These are the people relying on your leadership, decision-making, and protection.

  It’s common practice to register your route with the local caravan authority. Departure date, manifest, crew, expected arrival date, what caravansara you’d be unloading with—mundane roader stuff. When I informed the Syringan clerk of our route, the bufo’anur behind the counter had laughed, thinking I was joking. When he realized I wasn’t, his expression turned grave.

  “Sixteen people on that road?”

  I nodded.

  “You’re a bunch of fools. It’ll eat you alive, if the locals don’t get to you first. Last legitimate caravan registered that route was… one second…” He checked his ledger. “Over seven years ago.”

  “No choice. Client demands.”

  The clerk looked down to see who it was and winced at the name. “You know, they won’t come after you. The authorities. Your party goes missing on that road, ain’t nobody going to look for you. You’re on your own, friend.”

  On our own.

  As the caravan rolled past me, his words rang in my ears. They hung over me like a storm cloud.

  I waited for the chuckwain. On previous caravans—before I had hurt my knee—I would have walked toward the rear of the column, opposite its flow, but these days it was easier to just wait. It hurt less.

  As the chuckwain rumbled past, I pulled myself up next to Taft and extended my right leg off the edge of the bench seat. Behind me, a clutch of chickens angrily clucked in their cages. The aching throb that had filled my knee eased somewhat and I gave it a rub, trying to loosen it up.

  “Morning… or what remains of it,” Taft greeted me, lifting a blue enamel mug into the air. “Coffee?”

  “I’d love some,” I said. My stomach was rumbling.

  “Kettle’s behind the seat,” she motioned with her head, keeping her eye on the solitary ox pulling her cart. “I’d give you the reins and pour it for you, but ol’ Bart here is temperamental. And for now he ain’t decided on you.”

  “He talks to you?” I asked with a smirk.

  “More like I talk to him. Not much else to talk to back here.”

  “You keep him in line then, I can get myself coffee.” I leaned back to pour myself a fresh cup from the metal kettle, then snatched a cheese biscuit from an enameled plate. It was still warm.

  “I still think this is a bad idea,” I admitted, taking a bite of the biscuit. It was soft, with hints of sharp cheddar cheese and pepper. It hit the spot. Honestly, I longed for some of her sausage gravy, but that’d have to wait.

  Taft laughed. “You sound like every other superstitious roader. The stories about this road are a bunch of silly school-boy gossip. Ghosts. Cannibals. Death squads,” she laughed. “All a bunch of bullshit. It’ll be as boring as any other trail. Mark my words.”

  I sighed.

  “Though I am a bit confused. Why’d you suggest it to Maggie?” Shaler hated Taft using the familiar name with her. Preferred “Miss Shaler” or just “Shaler.” Taft reveled in getting under her skin.

  I shook my head. “I didn’t,” I said. “Well, not direct—… er… intentionally. She was pressing the Low Road and threatening to take us to the magistrate, I was explaining about the Purity Movement’s seizure and… well… it just rolled out. Last place on earth I want to be is taking a trip down the Broken Road with an angry client bent on making record time. It’s how mistakes happen, how people get killed.”

  “Why not the mountain trails?” Taft asked. “The ones south of the Big Ninety? Why not suggest those instead?”

  “You’re kidding, right? We actually want to get to Lovat. If we were only on foot I might’ve risked it, but the trails through the southern mountains are spotty, they twist and turn like snakes. Takes months to get cargowains through them, and if the weather turns, we’d be stuck till spring. I don’t want to winter in the mountains.”

  “So it’s the Broken Road.” Taft glanced over at me as I took a swig from the piping hot coffee. “You ever been?”

  I shook my head, swallowing the brew, wondering how she made everything taste so good. “No, for obvious reasons I’ve always avoided it. I’ve been a Big Ninety caravaneer for as long as I can remember. But I know the route well enough based off some old maps.”

  Taft laughed. “Maps? Maps! Some caravan master you are, letting a client force you into going in blind. Why’d I sign on with you again?”

  I winced, but rolled on. “Never had a reason to take the Broken Road, so like most, I… avoided its existence. My world was the Big Ninety. I grew up along the trail, saw the caravans roll by, saw my father help the masters.”

  “What’s he do?”

  “He’s a wheelwright.”

  “Ah, a wheelwright’s son. Explains the tattoos,” she said, nodding at the ink on my forearms—matching black wagon wheels. I had gotten them years before, when I spent a few nights in Hellgate.

  “Yep, bit of the past, bit of the future,” I said, motioning with the mug at the rolling caravan that stretched out before us.

  “How about you?” I asked through a mouthful of biscuit. “You ever been down this way?”

  Taft’s laugh seemed to catch in her throat and her voice took on a strangely serious tone. “Once or twice. Long ago, before your time. Before it was called the Broken Road.”

  Silence fell. I didn’t press it.

  After half a mile or so, Taft emerged from the silence to slap me on the back with a meaty hand. “History is history. Best not dwell on it.”

  “That’s something we can both agree on,” I said with a nod
. “I’m going to go find Sam.”

  “She’s riding with Tin up in the gearwain. Wanted to be at the head of the company.”

  I groaned, thinking of the walk to the front of the caravan.

  Taft laughed. “You can hobble faster than this caravan rolls, Master Bell. A walk up to the head of the company would do that bum knee some good. Don’t give it more time to seize up.”

  “Thanks, doc,” I said, slipping off the chuckwain and hobbling alongside it. “I’m keeping the mug!”

  “I’ll charge you for it,” she called as I picked up my pace and left her at the rear.

  Much to my dismay, Samantha had come along. I had explained the situation before we left Syringa. I explained the dangers, the rational ones, and told her it would be best for her to wait for the Big Ninety to open up and take a carriage back to Lovat. It wasn’t worth it to risk the trip. She hadn’t budged.

  “I came with you eastward and I’m going to return with you westward.”

  When I tried to tell her she could do some good in Syringa with the missions, she only laughed. “I can do some good with a rolling caravan as well.”

  She wanted to get home, sure, but this trip allowed her to experience life on the road and see a part of the Territories that few folks in Lovat even realize exists. Nothing I said dissuaded her. For my own sanity, I asked that she carry a weapon, at least a rifle. She refused, unmoveable. Samantha hated guns. In a lot of ways, she was more bullheaded than Shaler.

  I continued to limp up the column, passing the row of creaking cargowains.

  A typical cargowain is between fifteen to twenty feet in length and stands about a shoulder high. Usually reinforced, they can carry several tons of cargo. When loaded with that burden, they move slowly, hardly faster than a walk. In healthier times, I walked up and down a caravan’s column day and night, checking on wainloads, conversing with drivers, examining the state of the animals pulling the heavy loads. Making all manner of major and minor decisions. Now, with the bum knee, I was slower. It took a lot out of me to walk up the length of a column.