Perilous Travels (The Southern Continent Series Book 2) (31 page)

Chapter 23

“Beth yn enw duw rhyfel sydd gennym yma?” he heard a voice speak.  He didn’t know the voice, and he didn’t know the language.  He didn’t know how there could be another person within a thousand miles to even speak to him as he lay in his state of purgatory by the thermal spring.

He opened his eyes and looked up.

There were four heads on top of tall bodies looking down at him.  They all wore scarves and hoods that were pushed back and hanging down; the warmth of the thermal spring had caused them to unwrap a portion of their protection against the frigid world outside of the tiny valley.  The removal of the protective material revealed the features of the four visitors.  They had thin faces, pale complexions, and a variety of hair colors that ranged from yellow to white.  They were from Southgar, he knew, and he wondered what that meant.

“Pwy ydych chi? Sut wnaethoch chi gyrraedd yma?” one of them spoke.  The voice was feminine, and the features were as well, he realized as he looked at her specifically.

“I don’t understand,” he spoke in his own language.

The four visitors looked at each other.

“Who are you?  How did you get here?” the woman asked again, speaking in his own language, using the measured cadence of a non-native tongue.

“My name,” he paused as he ransacked his memories.  The things he knew and remembered seemed to be scattered and incomplete.  He had to dig and search to find an answer.  “My name is Grange,” he replied.  “I’ve been traveling from the west,” he knew that answer.  He tried to remember more.  “I was at a mine, and we had trouble, so I had to walk away.”   That much was true, he was sure, but he couldn’t explain any more.

“He walked into this valley from the wilderness?  Not from the homeland?” one of the others asked incredulously.  That speaker was a male.  Grange studied the others.  There was just the one woman, and the others were all males, he decided.  He pushed his hands and elbows against the ground, and levered himself into a sitting position.

“Did you drink this water?” the woman asked, motioning towards the pool of bright yellow spring water.

“I did.  I had to,” Grange answered.  He remembered the bitter taste, but he remembered the relief of finally having moisture restored to his body as well.

“There’s your answer, or part of an answer,” another man said.  “His brain is addled from the water.  We won’t get much out of him.”

“But who is he?  How did he get here?” the fourth person asked.  “He couldn’t have really come from the west.  There’s nothing out there.  And the Challenge hasn’t sent anyone else out nearly this far from Southgar.  So who is he, and where’s he from?”

“I don’t know Trensen,” the woman said.  “You don’t know much do you?” she spoke to Grange directly.

He shook his head.

“So we don’t know if you’re on your own god walk, or just a criminal on the run,” she said.

“Do we leave him here?” Trensen asked.

“Yes,” one of the other men said.

There was a silent pause.

“We’ll take him with us,” the woman said.

“Why?” one of the men asked.

“If he’s a criminal, we’ll take him back to justice.  If he’s on a god walk, we’ll take him back to the god,” she said.

“What if he’s just stupid, out here on his way to dying in the wilderness?” the man challenged.

“We’ll give him a second chance to die, but we’ll know it’s by his choice, not ours,” the woman said with finality.

“Besides, there’s something about him,” she added.  “Look at that scar,” she stooped and ran a finger along the side of his face.  “He’s got a story to tell.  Maybe we’ll get to hear it.  If we get him away from the yellow water, he may recover his mind.

“Get up you.  You can come with us.  We’ll take you home,” she motioned for him to stand.

"Jenniline, is this really right?  You're on a god walk - you're not out here to pick up stray animals.  You're already stretching the boundaries of a god walk by bringing us as an escort; bringing this," the man gestured contemptuously at Grange, "completely erases your credibility."

"Look at him,” the girl replied forcefully as Grange passively rose to his feet.  “Look at that arsenal,” her hand demonstrably swept past the knife, the sword, and the bolos that adorned his belt.  “And look at these,” her fingers poked at the numerous slashes and stab holes that were scattered across his cloak, some stained dark with blood.

“You’re a fighter, aren’t you?” she said to Grange.

“If you say so, my lady.  I don’t remember,” Grange answered wearily.

“I say so,” she answered firmly.

“The god says that the winter war is coming,” Jenniline said.  She looked at the man who had questioned Grange’s worth.  “We shall neither leave him behind to be overwhelmed alone, nor pass up the chance to bring him home to help us fight the battle at home, Burr,” she said decisively.

“As your ladyship wishes,” the other companion put an end to the conversation.

“What shall we do now?” the man asked.  “You said our goal was to reach the Yellow Spring.  Did you know he’d be here?  What’s next?”

”We’ll stay here tonight,” the woman answered.  Grange looked up, and saw that streamers of pink were crossing the sky, heralding the arrival of sunset.

“Then we’ll head back to Southgar tomorrow.  I think my god walk is complete,” she told the others.  “Set up camp.  You,” she motioned to Grange as she unslung the pack from her back, “Grange, come walk with me.”

She removed her heavy coat after her pack was off, revealing a slender, boyish frame, then she turned and walked away from the banks of the yellow spring.

Grange looked at her receding back, then looked at the three men around him.

“You heard her ladyship; go on and talk to her.  Don’t do anything stupid,” Trensen said.

“Leave your weapons here,” Burr added quickly.

Grange looked at him, their eyes challenging one another, as a spark of personality kindled in Grange.  “I’d not harm a woman,” he said, as he pulled his weapons free and dropped them on the ground.

“You’re a fool then,” Trensen said.  “Because they’ll hurt you every chance they get,” he grinned to show the humor in his words.  “That one especially,” he added.

Grange grimly returned the smile, then walked after the woman, catching her as she turned around behind a scrubby patch of bushes.

“Who are you?” she asked bluntly.

“I told you, my lady,” Grange answered, surprised by the pointless question.

Jenniline reached over and grabbed his arm, then yanked his sleeve up; he grimaced in pain from the wound in his shoulder.  They both stared down at the line of puckered, red scars – five spots that drew a line along his flesh.

“The god told me he was sending me out on a god walk in order to find the hero to save our land from the demons that are coming,” she said in a low voice.  Her words set off alarms in Grange’s foggy mind, the word demon sounding ominous and painful.

“The night before I departed, a goddess spoke to me, and told me to take warriors with me, and to go to Yellow Springs to look for arm scars to mark the great hero,” she continued.

“I expected that I was going to come here, and receive scars on my arms somehow,” she said as she released Grange’s arm.  “I thought that I was going to be the hero,” she added in a flat voice.

He stared at the marks, aware of some significance to them, some great role they had played in his life.  Frustration welled up as he failed to find any answer, any connection, any glimmer of understanding of what had implanted the marks on his arm.  He pulled his sleeve back down into place.

“I can’t tell you anything.  I don’t know what they are.  I doubt that I’m a great hero though,” he said.  “Check your own arms.”

“Believe me, I have no scars,” she said.  “It’s you; it has to be you,” her shoulders slumped in defeat.

“I wanted to be the hero so badly!  I wanted to stand out finally; I wanted to be someone, to be noticed,” she exhaled loudly.

Grange stared at her.  She was striking to look at.  Not classically beautiful, not breathtaking, but attractive and memorable.  She had a headful of thick, nearly white hair, piled in a bun at the back of her skull.  Her nose was slightly upturned, her mouth was small, and her eyes were as blue as the sky.

“A girl like you will always be noticed,” he blurted out the words.

She looked at him for a moment, then looked away.  “To boys like you, sure,” she listlessly agreed.  “My father will never care though.  He just wants to secure his dynasty.  Now, he’ll just marry me off to some noble family he needs to support him.”

“Who is your father?” Grange asked in confusion.

The girl looked at him haughtily, and straightened her shoulders.  “You’ll find out soon enough.  Now, not another word of this, not to me, and not to anyone else either, is that understood?” she demanded.

“And you’ll come with us, back to Southgar, starting tomorrow,” she added before he could answer.  “Understood?” she demanded again.  “We’ll figure out the rest when your brain isn’t so addled.  The god will reveal all.”

Grange considered rejecting the plan for just a fraction of a second, put off by her imperious manner.  But he saw no other option than to go with her, he decided.  She and her companions offered what was probably his only realistic chance to stay alive and leave the tiny oasis.

“Understood,” he agreed. 

She turned her body sideways and brushed past him to return to the others, while he stood in place, head hung, wondering what his future held.  It had to hold more than his past, he decided, for he had none that he could remember, no more than the past hour, though his scars and aches and torn clothes told an unhappy tale about that past.

After a minute of reflection, he turned and trod back to the small campsite, where the girl was speaking earnestly to her companions, talking in the language that he didn’t understand.

“We’re ready to go back home starting first thing tomorrow,” she said as Grange edged towards the outside of their circle.  “Do you have any supplies?” she asked Grange.

He knelt by his pack and looked inside.  There were some articles of clothing, a slender wand of wood, and a wooden flute, but nothing else.  He looked up at her and shook his head negatively.

“The rest of us will have to share our supplies with him,” she directed the others.

“But it’s over ten days march,” Burr protested.

“We’ll make the food last; we’ll do it in eight,” Jenniline said sharply.  She looked around at the others, daring them to challenge her, and all fell silent, averting their eyes.

“I’ll give him part of my dinner rations for tonight,” she set the tone.  “But I won’t have to serve guard duty in return,” she smiled in an effort to soften her stand.

“I’ll take the first shift,” Burr promptly said.

“I’ll take third shift,” Trensen jumped into the topic.

“I’ll take middle,” the third guard glumly accepted his lot.  “Unless the orphan wants it,” he looked hopefully at Grange.

“I am an orphan,” Grange said.  The word sounded right, and his assertion clicked as a true statement.

The others looked at him for a moment, then started digging in their packs, seeking their rations.  Jenniline handed over a handful of nuts and dried fruit to Grange.

“Don’t eat it too quickly.  That’s all you get tonight,” she warned him.

They settled into rest then.  There was no campfire – the shortage of firewood saw to that.  So they went to individual spots and spread their bed rolls.  Grange picked a spot a little apart from the others, but still close to the water, hoping to feel as much of the thermal output of the warm water as possible, and slowly fell asleep, wondering about all that had happened and all that he had learned, and especially about what he had forgotten, and when the memories would return, if ever.

He had seemingly no more than fallen asleep than someone’s toe was nudging his shoulder.

“Time to get up and pack.  We’re leaving before dawn to make this eight-day journey you’ve stirred up,” one of the men’s voices said hoarsely.

And they were on their way out within twenty minutes.  Grange was shocked by the frozen chill they experienced once they climbed over the banks of the small thermal valley and left the warm yellow spring waters behind.  The ambient air outside was infinitely colder, and Grange bundled his clothing and belongings around him, knowing that he must have done the same in earlier days, whenever he had travelled to the yellow spring oasis of warmth in the first place, but finding his clothing to be inadequate protection nonetheless.

The small band of travelers kept to a challenging pace at first, but as Grange began to fall behind from the stress of his unhealed injuries, the others, especially Jenniline, began to chaff at the delays.

“We need to get back,” she snapped frequently, as she strode back from the front of the group to where Grange was trailing in the back.  “Hasten your pace.”

Grange silently accepted the urges, and tried to go faster, despite the aches he felt in his various injuries.  The other men stoically pushed forward, and they covered ground at a determined pace.