Prisoner of Fate (5 page)

S
he was conscious of him standing over her in the darkness and she could smell him. She couldn’t see him, but she could hear him breathing as she held her own breath. She waited. After what seemed a long time she heard a very faint sound and knew he was gone again. She waited for him to return, but the cottage was calm with the rhythm of a man snoring and the soft wind brushing the thatch.

In the dream, as always, the sun was setting behind her and she was gazing across a vast ruin. The colours of the stone in the light always seemed distinct—amber hues like the sunset sky. Every other time she would wander into the ruins, not knowing what she was there for, but this time she knew. She weaved between the monoliths that were heaped on each other like motionless playful puppies, moving through the lengthening shadows, searching for one stone with a simple inscription in a language she’d come to know years before in the Royal library—the language of the old empire. She didn’t know exactly what the inscription was meant to say, but she knew that she would find it.

‘You can’t go west. The Ranu are everywhere.’

Meg looked at Nathan. ‘So what are you planning to do?’

Nathan glanced at Raoul, who was waiting outside the cottage in the morning fog, his peacemaker resting uneasily in his hands. ‘We’re going over the mountains. You’re welcome to come with us.’

The memory of the dark presence in the middle of the night stirred. ‘No. I’m going west,’ she replied.

Nathan shrugged. ‘I’d rather you came with us.’

‘I appreciate it, Nathan, but I have a very strong reason to go west.’ She met his steady gaze and read a deeper concern. ‘If the Ranu catch me, don’t worry. I’ve never seen you. They’ll learn nothing from me.’

‘They have ways,’ he argued.

Meg forced a confident smile. ‘You might not believe me, but I’ve been in this situation before. The Ranu will only get what I want them to know. And besides, first they have to catch me. I’m not that easy to catch.’

‘I’m sick of waiting,’ Raoul growled from the doorway. ‘Come on. I’m going.’

Nathan glanced over his shoulder at Raoul before looking back at Meg and saying, ‘Are you sure?’

‘Go,’ she told him.

‘Look after that wound.’

‘Go,’ she repeated. ‘And I
will
look after it. Thank you.’ Nathan nodded. He hoisted his peacemaker over his shoulder and turned to follow Raoul into the fog and the grey dog trotted after him.

She skirted five villages and a host of farms throughout the day to avoid contact with anyone who might turn her in to the Ranu. Most places were intact, as if the Ranu hadn’t been there, confirming Nathan’s
observations about the Andrak people changing allegiance to avoid conflict. As she travelled, she searched for a stream, but when she didn’t find one she resolved to drink from farm wells at night and steal food. She used her simple knowledge of the terrain and her childhood tracking skills to head north-west, intending to find and shadow the road to Marella, but late in the afternoon, tired, hungry and thirsty again, she diverted her course due west when she spotted a long column of soldiers and riders in white trooping east and, drifting above them, a squadron of eight dragon eggs.

Just before sunset, she closed in on a farm and squatted in the bushes to spy on the inhabitants. A man was busily repairing a wire fence surrounding a flock of sheep, and a boy ran back and forth between the man and the house, probably on errands. Chimney smoke confirmed someone was inside, but no one other than the boy emerged. As the sun dipped below the horizon, the man gathered his tools and headed for the house, with the boy skipping beside him and two dogs trotting in their wake.
The dogs will be a problem
, she decided, as they followed the man and the boy inside, because they would bark if she sneaked up to the house. But she had to take her chances to ask for food and water, and refuse any offers to stay in case the people were willing to turn her in as Nathan had warned.

Cautiously, she walked across the field towards the house. The dogs barked as she predicted and the house door opened, throwing yellow fire and lamplight across the dark ground, mirroring the fading golden glow on the horizon. The man was silhouetted in the doorway, a peacemaker in his hands. ‘Who’s there?’ he growled, but Meg heard an edge of fear in his voice and that encouraged her.

‘A lost friend,’ she replied.

‘Come where I can see you,’ the man ordered, lifting his peacemaker to take aim.

Meg walked steadily forward, but she was ready to jump aside if she’d misjudged the man’s mood. ‘I’m not looking for trouble,’ she said as she approached the edge of the light. ‘I’m trying to get home to my daughter, but I’m hungry and thirsty. I don’t intend to stay.’

The man hesitated before lowering his weapon. ‘What’s your name?’ he asked.

‘Rees Feond,’ she replied.

‘From where?’

‘Marella. I just want to go home.’

The boy appeared as a silhouette beside the man. ‘Who is it, Dad?’

The father put a hand on the boy’s shoulder, and said, ‘Go inside.’

‘But who is she?’ the boy persisted.

‘A traveller,’ the man told him. ‘Tell your mother to serve an extra meal.’ When the boy didn’t move, the man lifted his hand from the boy’s shoulder and pushed him insistently, ordering, ‘Go on.’ The boy disappeared. ‘Come on,’ the man said, gesturing. ‘We have enough to share.’

The boy, Lee, stared from under his thick brown fringe throughout the meal, glancing furtively at his father as if he was afraid of being caught doing something wrong. She estimated him to be eleven, perhaps twelve—skinny and lanky like all boys that age—and she winked at him once as she looked up from eating, but he didn’t acknowledge her friendly gesture, just kept staring. She appreciated the stew that the boy’s mother, Esta, plopped into a chipped red bowl, savouring the meaty flavour and its warmth. The father, Bill, offered wine, but Meg wanted only water which she drank eagerly to slake her
thirst. The curious dogs pressed their snouts against her legs and she petted their wiry heads, remembering her companion dingo, Sunfire, and the warm relationship she had shared with him in Summerbrook. Forced to go on the run again by the war, her past in Shess no longer seemed distant, and memories flooded back, memories she’d almost forgotten in her new Andrak life with Emma. As Esta offered another scoop of the stew, she couldn’t hold back any longer and salty tears slid down her cheeks. ‘Oh you poor love,’ Esta crooned, slipping an arm over Meg’s trembling shoulders. ‘You’ve had a terrible time. Hush.’

Meg hurriedly wiped away the tears, saying, ‘I’m sorry. I’m all right. I’m just very tired.’

‘Your daughter will be fine,’ Esta reassured her, and turned to her husband. ‘Won’t she, Bill?’

Bill smiled ruefully as he lowered his spoon. ‘Like I told you, the Ranu aren’t waging a war against ordinary folk like us. It’s between soldiers and those who think they want to be soldiers. If plain people mind their own business, life goes on like it has here. Your girl will be all right. You’ll see.’

‘I’m not hungry any more,’ Meg said, sniffing. ‘Thank you.’

Esta straightened and lifted the red bowl. ‘You need a good sleep. That’s what you need. You take Lee’s bed for the night. The lad won’t mind, will you, Lee?’

Meg saw Lee staring silently at her and read in his face that he wasn’t as generous with his bed as his mother wanted him to be. ‘That’s a good lad, Lee,’ Esta said as she carried the bowl to the wash bucket, but Lee’s gaze remained fixed on the intruder.

‘I don’t want to be any trouble,’ Meg said. ‘I want to keep moving. I can sleep outside anyway. I just—’

‘I won’t have a woman sleeping outside,’ Esta said, turning from the wash bucket, and for a moment Meg
thought Esta looked more solid and imposing than anything in the room. ‘You can’t sleep outside in the cold. Lee is happy to let you sleep in his bed and you’re our guest so I insist that you at least stay the night. You’re exhausted and you need rest. Bill can take you to the river crossing first thing in the morning.’ The matter was settled. She would stay overnight, despite her instinct urging her to keep moving. She rubbed the closest dog’s muzzle and smiled at Lee. The boy’s face remained impassive.

The morning wagon ride was a welcome change from walking cross-country and the warm sunshine made Meg relax. At Bill’s insistence, she sat beside him when they set out, with Lee and the dogs riding in the back, and Bill talked steadily about how he’d moved from Aeluntun, where he had been a grocery store owner, to the farm because he wanted to live a countryman’s life. ‘Too many factories going up in the towns and cities,’ he bemoaned. ‘They’re polluting the air and bringing too many people into them for work. I like a simpler life. Good for the lad as well.’ He talked as if there was no war as he described how he had bought the farm cheaply and modified it to suit his plans to grow crops and run sheep, and how Esta and he were planning to have more children now that the farm was established and going strong. His chatter left her drifting through memories of conversations on the edge of Bill’s world in another place and time, another life when she was living like Esta and raising three children with her husband. There were long discussions of the future, of plans for the farm and for the children, of dreams. The Kerwyn invasion changed everything—destroyed her calm and beautiful world and her hope. Now, another invasion in a different world threatened to do the same to her again. She prayed Emma was safe. She hoped
that Marella was as untouched by the war as Bill and Esta’s farm.

The buck and sway of the wagon rolling along the track, the clip-clop of the piebald horse’s hoofs, Bill’s mellow voice and the sun’s warmth made the morning journey pass as if in a dream, and for a while she could imagine there wasn’t a war between the Ranu and Andrak people. A flock of skimmer birds traversing the sky in V-formation reminded her of the grey-and-white plovers that frequented the hills above Summerbrook in Tayooh cycle—in West Andrak the season was called spring. For fifteen years, her life in Marella had returned to the simplicity she craved and enjoyed in Summerbrook before the Kerwyn invasion—a life revolving around her daughter, her garden and her cottage. The legacy of the amber shard and the sorrow and death it brought to her was almost forgotten, the shard hidden in the jar in her cottage, but the peace was dissolving again and she knew there was a chance she would need the amber for her daughter’s safety. She prayed in her heart that circumstances would not force that decision upon her as it had before.

Relaxed, soaking in the morning’s ambience, she felt at peace with everything—but froze when she saw the white crowd massing at the ferry as they crested a hill and descended towards the river. ‘What are we going to do?’ she asked Bill as she stared at the Ranu soldiers.

‘Cross the river,’ Bill replied calmly. ‘The Ranu soldiers have no issue with us. They’re under orders to take as much of the land as peacefully as they can. They only fight other soldiers.’ He eased his foot onto the brake to slow the wagon as he gently pulled back on the reins.

‘Wow!’ Lee gasped from behind Meg’s shoulder. ‘Look at the peacemakers, Dad.’

Meg took the boy’s direction to see the five large silver-muzzled peacemakers mounted on wheels assembled on the river bank. She also saw contraptions that resembled multiple peacemakers strapped together and mounted on small carriages, and three white dragon eggs moored with ropes to the ground. The Ranu were ferrying an army across the river. ‘We’ll have to wait,’ she said quietly as the wagon drew closer to the soldiers.

A Ranu soldier stepped into their path and held up his hand when they reached the approach to the ferry. Meg noted that his head was wrapped in white cloth and that he wore a very loose white shirt and baggy white pants, separated by a deep-red sash around his waist. He had a peacemaker slung across his back. His skin was olive and his beard was black and his dark eyes scrutinised the wagon and rested on her momentarily before he spoke to Bill. Bill turned to Meg. ‘Do you understand Ranu?’

She shook her head. In her fifteen years in West Andrak, she’d seen Ranu traders from a distance in the town market, but to her, throughout that period, the Ranu were an invisible enemy beyond the war frontline, distant and unknown. She knew little about their culture and even less about the people. There was a time, with the amber magic, that she could translate any language she heard or read—but that was long past. The Ranu soldier was speaking excitedly and gesturing. ‘I think he wants us to get down,’ Meg said warily, interpreting his antics and tone.

‘Is there someone who speaks Andrak?’ Bill asked, attempting to make his question understood by speaking slowly and pointing at his ears and shrugging. The soldier raised his peacemaker threateningly and barked an order. ‘I think we’d better get down,’ Bill conceded.

‘You said they had no issue with ordinary people,’ Meg argued as they climbed down from the wagon.

‘They don’t,’ Bill replied. ‘They came through our farm two weeks ago and wanted nothing except supplies.’

The Ranu soldier was gesturing at the rear of the wagon and several Ranu soldiers gathered around the vehicle. ‘I think you’d better get down too, son,’ Bill instructed. Lee called the dogs as he slid off the back of the wagon and they obediently followed the boy, but once down they started sniffing the ground and circling among the soldiers. Some soldiers petted the animals as they followed their curious noses. ‘Get the dogs under control,’ Bill told the boy. Lee went to whistle, but a Ranu soldier’s hand caught the boy’s wrist. Bill’s shoulders straightened and he glared at the soldier. ‘Leave the lad alone.’

The Ranu who stopped the wagon stepped between Bill and the soldier restraining Lee, and he poked his peacemaker aggressively close to Bill’s face, yelling in his language. The sudden change in events left Bill awkwardly caught between choices. ‘Don’t argue,’ Meg warned.

‘But my boy,’ Bill muttered.

The Ranu shouted again and pushed the peacemaker muzzle against Bill’s chest, forcing him back. The dogs stopped their fossicking, ears erect, tense. Ranu soldiers climbed aboard the wagon and it started to move. ‘Hey! That’s my wagon!’ Bill yelled, and then he grunted and collapsed as the Ranu struck him with the butt of his peacemaker. Instantly, the dogs attacked, one latching onto the Ranu leader’s leg, the other grabbing his arm, and pandemonium broke loose as soldiers either ran to their leader’s aid or stood back to laugh at the chaos. Meg helped Bill to his feet, his lip bloodied and split, as the dogs were beaten off and Lee wrestled in vain with
the man holding him. The Ranu leader wheeled furiously and aimed his peacemaker at a dog, but before he could pull the trigger an authoritative voice stopped him. A short man in the white Ranu uniform, with a black waist sash, pushed through the crowd and the Ranu soldier lowered the peacemaker immediately. Words were spoken and the soldiers dispersed, leading away the horse and wagon, but Lee was released and he ran to his father’s embrace. The Ranu who started the incident departed without a backward glance.