Against the Empire: The Dominion and Michian (43 page)

“We can,” Alec looked up. “We’re going to have to go through the ruins of Riverside. It’s a little less than a half day away. It’s just superstition on my part, but I’d rather not spend a night there; I have too many memories. So we can just stay here, which is a good camping spot, or we can travel north for a while, and find another spot between here and Riverside,” he left the option hanging.

“Let’s walk some,” Rief said. “I don’t want to just sit around here.”

“I agree,” Bethany said.

“That’s good for me,” Alec agreed. “I think Walnut will be able to carry two of us generally, while one walks. But no one has to ride him now,” he conceded, seeing the set looks on their faces. He took their bags and strapped them on Walnut, then untied the horse from the branch, and began leading them north along the east bank of the rippling waters of the young Giffey River.

The sun was starting to set when they came to another mountain stream that had carved a shallow valley into the ridge they were following. “Let’s camp here,” Alec suggested. “I’ll go collect some fire wood if you want to set up a fire pit.” The two girls looked uncertain. “Or you can collect fire wood and I’ll set up the pit.” He gathered stones and arranged a pit in the earth, with a pair of large logs pulled near to provide seating, as the girls returned with their arms full of tinder and tree limbs. Alec unloaded Walnut, then led him down to drink from the stream. When he returned, the two girls were looking at him.

“What’s for dinner, mighty leader, oh protector of the crown?” Bethany asked.

“We bought some food back in Frame, for it’s not enough to last very long,” Alec said. “I don’t have a bow and arrow or even a knife, so we can’t do any game hunting. There are edible plants all around us, as I’m sure your health vision can tell you. Why don’t you go find a few plants up the valley, and I’ll go down by the river to get some tubers,” he suggested, not thrilled with the idea of roast tubers again, after eating too many on his last river journey.

“How are we going to eat crossing the prairie?” Bethany asked, when they came back with some wild celery and other plants.

“I hope that in Riverside’s ruins we’ll find some hunting goods, like a bow and arrow, that we can use out there,” Alec said. “The town has been in ruins for two years, so there won’t be anything edible.” He began striking his flint, and soon had the fire burning. “These can be tolerable,” he said as he cleaned and placed tubers on a thin flat stone that he placed in the flames.

As they sat and cautiously ate their meal a few minutes later, Alec suggested they take turns keeping watch, and he gave Rief the first assigned watch, with himself in the middle, and Bethany last. He gave Bethany the blankets that he had rolled up on Walnut, while he and Rief used the items they had purchased in Frame, though not intended as night blankets. Before the sun had even set, Alec had his eyes closed and was falling asleep.

Alec served the middle shift, then went back to his blankets and slept further. He awoke suddenly to find John Mark beside his bedroll in the middle of the night.  Bethany sat awake on the other side of the fire pit, while Rief remained asleep.  “What are you doing here, master?” he asked

            “
In your bag Alec, you will find one more jar of dust from my cave,” John Mark told him.  “There is likely to be a time when you will want to come back to my cave once again, and this dust will make it possible.  Keep it with you.  You will know when you need to return,” he spoke directly, then touched Alec’s forehead, who fell immediately back to sleep.

The next morning Bethany woke Alec after the sun rose; he said nothing to her or Rief about John Mark’s visit, but checked his bag to confirm that the jar was there. He was groggy from the interrupted sleep of the middle watch, but gamely rose and piled his makeshift sleeping roll onto Walnut. They each ate a small nibble of the travel bread Alec had purchased, then resumed following the game trail that led them north in the shadowy bottomlands of the river valley.

A very short time later they saw the Riverside bridge. “It’s so strong looking! How did the people of Riverside build something like that?” Bethany asked.

“They didn’t,” Alec said. “I think Ari told us it was a remnant of the ancient civilization that used to rule these mountains. The people of Riverside built their town here because of the bridge, and where ever the ancient road goes to in the mountains in the east, I think that’s the way the lacertii came when they ravaged the town.” He led Walnut up and around the slope of the levee and arrived at the approach to the bridge. As he crossed it, he looked down to the weedy river bank below, where he and Noranda had been reunited with Aristotle following their flight through Riverside. He thought about Ari, and Noranda, each, he hoped, sitting comfortably in their respective cities of the Dominion.

The lacertii had not held the town after ransacking it, or at least not held it recently. Weeds and creeping vines hid much of the face of the burnt buildings, and as they walked along the main street, they came to the remains of Richard’s traveling carnival, still sprawled along the middle of the town.

“This is where I saw Ari perform an ingenaire feat for the first time,” Alec narrated. “And in there is where Noranda killed a lacertii. That,” he pointed to a burnt wagon, its roof gone but traces of paint still clinging in small strips to its sides, “was where the dancers usually rode, but I invited Natalie to ride with us that afternoon, and so she is alive.” He realized that tears were starting to well up in his eyes, and he knuckled them to clear his vision. He thought of the many people he had known in the caravan. They had been a family for him as he traveled – the performers, the workers, Richard, the owner and leader. He had not thought of them for a long time, and he felt consumed with the memories.

A movement startled him, and he saw a dog trotting across the street cautiously watching the three travelers. Alec bent, held out a hand, and called gently to the animal. It stopped and sat on its haunches, its ears erect with attention, but it would not come any closer, despite Alec’s attempts. “I wonder what it’s lived on for the past two years?” he asked out loud.

“It’s a dog. They know how to hunt,” Rief replied

“That reminds me,” Alec said as he stood. “We ought to try to find some weapons we can use to hunt with for the next few weeks, like maybe some throwing knives, or a bow and arrow, and I’d be comfortable with a sword.” He began to look into the doors of houses as they passed, and carried out a bow and arrow from one, and two knives from another. The other houses he examined were empty of weapons but he was satisfied he had enough to secure wild game for their meals.

“This was Ari’s wagon,” Alec said, stopping by the last pile of wreckage in the street. “We were always the last wagon in the caravan. Ari wanted it that way.” He looked into the charred rear of the wagon, and pulled out a blanket that was covered in soot. “This was mine,” he explained as he held it up.

“Let’s get moving on out of here,” he said at last, as he realized how long he had been lost in contemplation. “They were all good people, may their souls rest in peace,” he said of his dead companions, and Rief and Bethany bowed their heads in prayer.

Alec carried the two knives in his belt as they walked along the road out of Riverside. Even after two years without use, the trail was easy to follow, and by early evening they had climbed up onto the ridge that provided a view down at the Giffey River valley.

“Let’s take a break,” Bethany suggested, and neither of the other two gave a hint of opposition.

“Let’s spend the night up here. We’re just a couple of minutes away from where the carnival camped,” he gestured forward, and they walked to the spot where the road entered an opening among the trees. Alec took the bow and the few arrows along with it, and went into the forest to hunt some game for dinner. When he returned, all three of them looked at the deer carcass he was dragging, and they realized that none of them knew how to dress it or prepare it. Both girls agreed that Alec had shot it and had the knives, and so he therefore deserved the honor of preparing the meat while they went in search of plants, tinder, and stones for a fire pit.

“What will the mountains be like?” Rief asked that night as they sat around the fire eating their meal.

Alec thought. “Based on the carnival’s trip into here, I’d guess we’ll be walking through the mountains for three or four days. It’s rugged, but there’s no one out here at all. There might have been a miner or trapper at one time, but after the lacertii came through, they’ve probably all been cleared out.

“There are cabins out at the edge of the mountains where some folks may still be living. We’ll have water and food in plenty while we’re in the mountains, but once we get to the true prairie, things get scarce and dry,” he told them.

“What was it like, the carnival you were in?” Rief asked, and Alec began telling tales of the entertainers, remembering more as he told more, so that his stories lasted well past sunset. “Bethany, you take first watch, I’ll take second, and Rief can have the last,” he suggested after several seconds of silence around the dying fire embers.

“Alec, it’s time to rise,” Rief told him the next morning. They ate left over deer haunch, then resumed walking, following the switchbacks of the trail as it descended steeply into a valley. Alec noted the still-evident signs of the branches that had been cut and trimmed two summers earlier to widen the trail, and at one point mid-day he remembered his panic when they passed the location where Jonso the clown had disappeared.

That evening they reached the treacherous location where the road was missing as a result of the earthquake that had struck Richard’s carnival. They camped atop the ridge that night, took a full day to find suitable game paths they could descend with Walnut just to reach the bottom of the mountain, and then the fourth day since leaving Riverside they resumed traveling over the road.

“Look out there,” Rief said from the lead when she reached the top of the ridge. On the western horizon the view was not another large ridge that they would have to cross; instead it was a lesser ridge, and foot hills beyond. They hurried down the slope, and continued to travel well into dusk in order to reach the top of the smaller, last ridge they would surmount in the Pale Mountains.

The next day they started down the gentlest slope they had faced yet, and then followed the road among the foothills. They passed a cabin late in the afternoon, empty and clearly deserted, but not burnt and ransacked as if by lacertii. “How do you interpret this?” Bethany asked.

“I would guess a settler wasn’t attacked, but found out that Riverside had been, and decided to flee,” Alec guessed. “Why don’t we spend the night here, under a roof for a change? We won’t have anything like this out on the plains.

“I wish we had Alder or Shaiss to give us some light,” he said as they put Walnut in the shed behind the house.

“Alec, Allisma wrote in her letter that Alder was killed in the battle with the lacertii,” Bethany said softly.

Alec’s hands froze in the middle of latching the gate. He stood with eyes unfocused, trying to remember the confusing events of the battle. Had he ever seen Alder, he wondered? He had tried so hard to save all his friends.

“Alec?” Bethany called gently.

He wiped his cheek hastily. “I didn’t know,” he said. “I think I’ll go take a walk,” he said abruptly, and headed out the door. He left the homestead behind as he loped among the scattered trees and abandoned fields, until the house was no longer in sight. He sat down with his back against a tree trunk, and thought about Alder. The light ingenaire had been a boy with a good sense of humor, and had taken to life with the cavalry from the time Alec had asked him to go on the first trip to Bondell. He wondered how he had missed him out on the battlefield. He wondered how he had found anyone among the chaos of the battle, but once he found one of his friends, he thought he’d have found them all.

Looking up, he saw a plume of smoke rising from the cabin into the darkening night sky, and he walked slowly back, stopping in the kitchen garden that was going wild to pull up some small carrots and potatoes. He gave the roots to Bethany, and dressed a rabbit he had shot earlier in the day, giving them the start of a hardy stew, cooked in a pot they found. That night they slept in bunks, with little talk as Alec’s melancholy mood infected them all.

The next morning they ate left over stew, packed some useful items from the cabin onto Walnut, and set out again, walking west with the sun behind them. They passed another cabin that appeared to still be occupied, though they saw no one around. By mid-morning the foothills were turning into swales and undulating ground, so they could see further ahead towards the horizon, and saw a man leading a horse back and forth, pulling a plow across a field.