Copyright 2006 Trewin Greenaway All Rights Reserved
To learn more about me and the genesis of this tale, visit my website http://www.cronnex.com/ .
I hope to post a new chapter every Saturday from now on. If you're enjoying the story, do let me know!
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Chapter 3
WITHOUT THE HEAVY PACK FRAMES, we moved quickly and silently along. Alfrund's injunction not to think turned out to be unnecessary. Even more than when we had started my thoughts were a maze of confusion, although thankfully without the murk cast by the fiction of the mysterious trader and the dread that came to finding myself in servitude to him.
Even the role of pretend apprentice was a very different thing from being a bondslave, and learning about the powers of plants and the way these could be combined had immediate appeal to me, even if the alternative hadn't been lugging packs of salt fish from one village to the next.
Of course, I was reminded constantly by Alfrund's caution and alertness that we were in some kind of danger, and that this was somehow attached to me. But what was happening to me was so much a mystery that thought broke against it, and I was content to concentrate on moving silently and conserving my strength. The soreness in my foot had ebbed from the gentle manipulation of Alfrund's hands, and while it still hurt, I was no longer forced to limp. Even with the sandals, I was very careful where I stepped.
The sun was still in the western sky when our path emerged from the deep forest and rejoined the coast. Not too far away it began to edge its way around a steep rocky spur that reached out into the sea. Indeed, in some places I could see that the way had been hacked out of the stone itself, and I longed to ask about this. Why would anyone bother to put so much work into a passage that saw so little traffic? But I knew I wouldn't be answered and probably receive a withering glance as well, so I kept my peace.
Before we ventured out onto the spur, Alfrund paused and searched both the sea and the land behind us, for we would be very visible once we began. The ledge itself was narrow and slippery, and here and there rockweed clung to it, indicating that it was under water at high tide. This, I understood, was why we couldn't wait until dark.
Another reason became evident once we had started making our way across it--the distant baying of dogs. They were far off, I knew; sound travels far over water. But the sound of it still chilled my heart. The tide still had at least an hour to rise before it would cover the ledge. If the dogs did pick up our scent again, they could easily be here by then.
We quickly hurried along the spur and passed around its point. There we found the way dipped back into a little cove and then out to sea again, around a second spur which looked even steeper than the one we were on now.
"That one we have to climb over," Alfrund said, breaking the silence at last, "using steps carved into the stone. And just beyond that is a village, so we will wait here until the night comes, for otherwise we will be seen."
"And what if someone comes along while we wait here?" I asked. Or the dogs, I thought to myself, but thought it bad luck to even say.
Alfrund nodded. "I've thought of that," he said. "Follow me." And he led me up the side of the cliff, climbing with both our hands and feet. We hauled ourselves to a shelf that was wide enough for us to make ourselves comfortable and high enough to keep us from being seen from below.
Alfrund pulled out a traveling cloak from his bag and spread it on the ground before our feet. "You have one, too," he said. "Get it out and it will cover us a bit, and perhaps we can sleep a little. We have come a long way, and we have far to go again once the dark arrives."
I found my own cloak and we lay down together, and pulled it over us, using our sacks as pillows. Alfrund looked into my eyes and I into his, which were a light hazel color flecked with green. He kissed me gently and said, "roll over, little apprentice, and try to sleep. I will hold you tightly and guard your dreams." I did as he directed and, to my surprise, held fast in his arms, fell into a deep, sweet sleep. It lasted until the dark had come and longer, for Alfrund meant to wait until the last of the villagers were soundly asleep.
IT WAS HOURS LATER when Alfrund gently shook me awake. The moon was up, or at least a thick slice of it, and its faint light shimmered on the water. The air had turned cool, and I was reluctant to let go of the cloak that covered me. When I did, I gave a gasp, for on the inside of my left arm something faintly glowed. At first I thought it was only a patch of moonlight, but I moved my arm deep into the shadow of cliff rock and still it shimmered.
"Look," I whispered, showing it Alfrund.
He took my arm, examined the mark, then pulled my sleeve down to cover it. "Haven't you seen it before?" he asked. "It first appears only under moonlight."
I shook my head. "In our village, we don't go out after dark," I said. This wasn't quite true, but the moon was hidden last night by rain clouds. Otherwise, when I'd visited Faryn, we'd have both seen it then.
"But you know what it is," I said, not asking, because I could see that he did.
He nodded. "It's the Cronnex or, rather, at this point, half of it, as you can tell from the missing part. If things go as we hope, it will eventually be made whole. The Cronnex appears when its bearer first comes into manhood, as you obviously are. And nothing more will I tell you about it, for now. But it is a sign--and the reason that I have come for you and why we're being hunted."
I shivered and wrapped myself tightly in my cloak.
Alfrund stood up. "We must go. By now everyone in the village ahead is surely fast asleep."
"What about the dogs?" I asked. "Won't they wake them all back up the moment we approach?"
He reached down and helped me up. "You forget the dogbane," he said. "Dogs see with their noses, not their eyes. With our dark cloaks we will be all but invisible to them. And our scent won't only repel them but frighten them. They may whimper a bit as we pass, but nothing more, I promise."
And so it proved. We slipped in silence by the sleeping houses, keeping to the shadows, and soon came to where the trail began at the other side of the village. Then we picked our way as best we could until the sky brightened and faint light began to make its way through the trees. When we came to another stream, Alfrund gave us each another round of bread, and we sat out of sight of the path and dipped it in the stream to moisten it, which made it much more palatable. Last night I'd been too tired to notice it but I was starving. I eyed the remaining rounds hungrily.
Alfrund noticed this and broke one in half and passed me one part. He didn't eat the other, but wrapped up the package and put it in his pack. I felt guilty--but not so much that it kept me from eating it.
"Are we low in food?" I asked.
"Somewhat," he said. "I'd planned to buy bread in your village, but I found none for sale, only dried fish. I should have saved some of that, I suppose."
I could tell from the sound of his voice that he was making a joke but I failed to see the humor. Many a time out fishing we had chewed on a hunk of dried fish and considered ourselves well fed. But I said nothing.
After we had finished eating, he took the small sack of dogbane out of his pack. "We will use up the rest of this to refresh what is on us already," he said. "Not for what comes after us, I think, but for what awaits us ahead."
Again we wet our bodies in the cold water, and again each of us made a paste of it and rubbed it carefully over our bodies. While I worked it over my legs, I said, "since once we start I can't talk or think, would you answer me one question while we do this?"
"Ask it," he said, "and I'll see."
"Yesterday, you played the trader and made me play the pack boy all the way to the stream. We could have at least emptied the packs and moved much more quickly--and saved me the pain of that fall. Did you think someone would follow us from the village?"
He shook his head. "I'd have heard them. Though if someone had, it would have been a very bad sign, and most likely we wouldn't have gotten this far. In any case, there's a long answer to your question and a short one, and the latter is the one I'll give you now. It was safer for you to continue believing that you were merely a pack boy for as long as possible. Once the war ship passed us the danger did, too, but by then we were almost in the forest. For which I thank the Four Powers, for that beard itched so much that I could hardly bear it."
I laughed. "So that's why you kept hurrying me along with your staff. I do wish I could see you again, and look more closely. You bewitched us all."
He shook his head. "I'm no master of disguise. But I have learned that strangers are objects of curiosity at a distance, but up close up they are so unsettling that they are hard to see clearly. Even so, I was grateful that the weather allowed me to stay mostly hooded. In fact, it was a poor plan, but I could think of none better."
He got up and I with him. "Now be true to your word," he said, "no talking, no thinking, at least until we rest again." And again we set off at a fast but silent pace, swiftly passing through the trees. The leagues passed, the sun traveled across the sky, and eventually we came to the place where the next mountain spur reached out into the sea.
This time, however, we didn't make our way out onto it. The sun was now sinking in the west, and Alfrund wanted us to cross around it in the dark, before the moon rose. So, instead, we found a small hollow in the woods where we could lie until then and perhaps get some rest.
It was just as well that we did this, for we had hardly settled in when our ears caught the sound of rowing galley's drum--the ship was moving back down the coast from its visit to my village. I wanted to rise up enough to see it, but when I began to stand up, Alfrund pulled me immediately back down.
"Jessan," he said, "there may be those aboard the galley who can sense our presence by divining. I want you to sit next to me and quiet your mind as best you can." I sat down and he wrapped his arm around me and pulled me toward him until our heads touched gently. "Concentrate on the pleasantness of this, as if we were sleepy lovers," he added, and gave me a squeeze.
I was tired and I found that I was able to sink into a state that seemed half asleep. The drum grew louder and louder, but I kept my awareness of it at a distance, even when it seemed to be pounding right beside my head. Then the sound slackened, faded, and suddenly vanished, as it passed beyond the point.
I felt Alfrund's arm slacken its hold. "I think that went well," he said. "Now, lie down, put your head on my lap, and get some sleep."
I spread out my cloak and lay down on it, as he had told me to. I already suspected he hadn't slept one wink the night before, and that he wasn't going to, now. "We could at least lie together as we did last night," I said.
He looked down at me and replied, stroking my hair, "If I did that, I'd be tempted to sleep, and that might be dangerous. All this silence behind us bothers me."
"Isn't it good?" I asked. "I was so glad to see the galley returning from whence it came. Don't you think all this might mean that they have lost our trail?"
His face grew suddenly sad. "No," he said. "Our adversary is not only vastly more powerful than us but at least as clever--certainly at this sort of game. We will be truly lucky to outwit them, but outwit them we must. How, though, remains to be seen."
These words, spoken so matter-of-factly, filled me with fear. I felt a surge of hopelessness. I knew almost nothing and it seemed each bit I learned was more frightening than the one before. It was partly tiredness, but my eyes began to stream with tears.
"Oh, Jessan," Alfrund said, "I'm so sorry. We are both tired and I'm not thinking clearly. It may be that this lack of pursuit is indeed a good sign. But because I have told you as much as I have, I will tell you what I fear, so you can see that it is so much and not more."
He lifted my head out of his lap, and eased down beside me. He then let me settle again beside him, lying in the crook of his arm. "Our pursuers," he said, "will have sent a large galley with soldiers to your village, along with a pack of war dogs, to pursue us from there. Whether or not the dogs can pick up our scent, our pursuers will know we have come this way, simply because there's no good way over the mountains from anywhere along this coast. Sooner or later, to escape their clutches, we have to get to Gedd.
"That means that they are coming after us along the coast. But once the dogs failed to trap us, they have to be more careful, because if they get too close behind us, they might scare us into the woods to hide and let them pass. In fact, I did briefly consider doing so, but we would slowly starve. Wild berries and small game are all very well, but they wouldn't sustain us for long.
"So right now our pursuers' plan is not to try and catch us, but just keep us moving ahead of them along the path. Because...."
"Because," I said, now understanding, "others are also waiting ahead of us, at one of the spurs where we must pass and have nowhere to hide."
He nodded, then said nothing for a bit. "It will be at the last one," he added finally. "It is the longest and hardest to get around and, unlike the ones we are passing now, it is far too steep to climb over."
"And so what do we do?" I asked in a small voice.
"Be smart, be brave, and try not to piss in our britches," he answered, tweaking my nose. "We'll figure it out. Now try to sleep. Every minute you manage to do so will be as valuable in a few hours as any piece of gold."
I thought sleep impossible to even imagine, but I was bone weary and comforted by his closeness, my face pressing against his lap. And so I did sleep, for three or four hours, until the sun was well down. When he shook me awake, it was so dark that we had a hard time finding our way back to the road.
For road it had become. No longer a path, our way was now wide enough for a cart to travel on, although the ride would have been a jolting one. And when the way came out of the woods and began to make its way around yet another cliff that jutted into the sea, I found that the passage around it was also wider and, apart from the blackness, easier going. Alfrund and I were able to walk abreast, moving swiftly, as the waves smashed onto the rocks just below our feet. It was only when we came to the point where it abruptly curved back to the coast on the other side that we proceeded with caution, easing ourselves around it a step at a time, our backs pressed against the cliff.
From there we had a long view, most of it of nothing but blackness. Woods met the track again when it reached the shore, and stretched away into the darkness. But beyond these, farther still, there was a blaze of light where watch fires had been set burning.
The furthest of these seemed to be burning out at sea, but I knew that in reality it had been lit on the road where it passed around the final spur. Of course, it was a warning to any who came that the way was blocked, but, as Alfrund had explained, that was its purpose. It was the anvil; behind us came the hammer.
We paused for the briefest moment to take all this in, and then hurried on our way. When we came to the woods, despite the darkness we didn't wait for the arrival of the moon but we continued on, using switches of wood like blind men to feel our way.