The Southern Trail (Book 4) (17 page)

“Guards, take that man back to his assigned location,” Varsen instantly commanded.

“He’s not harming anyone.  He said he came to help,” Ellersbine spoke up.  Marco took pleasure, just in hearing her voice.

“But help which side?” Argen asked.  “He’s from Rurita himself, I’ve heard.  He may be in cahoots with these criminals, for all we know.”

Marco took a last look over at the princess, hoping that his expression showed his appreciation for her comment on his behalf, and then he led his guards out of the camp and back up to the front of the column, where they stopped at a spot much closer to the rest of the group.

Marco and the rotating shifts of guards remained in place during the day and into the night, as the camp took on a more warlike footing than it had exhibited since arriving at Tripool.  They slept uneasily that night, and the next morning the column started in motion once again.  They left the ridge and descended into a valley, where farmhouses and cultivated fields were scattered along the flat bottom of the valley.  There were no people in evidence at any of the structures the road passed.

“Burn them!  Burn them all!  These are the homes of the criminals who attacked us yesterday,” Argen spoke with outrage.

“But we don’t know which of these may or may not have been involved!” Rhen protested.

“They’re all involved, or they know who is,” Argen insisted.  “Colonel, put a squad to work to get revenge and teach these people a lesson,” Argen said as he turned to face Varsen.

Varsen promptly dispatched a squad that went back down the road behind the column and started a number of fires, creating several tall columns of smoke that rose into the still air of the valley.  Marco clenched his fists as he saw the smoke starting to rise, and he appeared ready to go back to the column to challenge Varsen and to force the arsonists to return to the force, but one of his guards placed a hand on his shoulder.

“If you go stirring up any trouble, Varsen will have grounds to have you punished right here on the spot,” the guard advised.  “Let it pass.”

Marco looked away from the guard, staring at the dark columns in the air overhead, then he looked down at the ground, and sat down in place, neither speaking nor acting until the order to resume marching was sent forward two hours later.  He felt increasing frustration at the things he was being forced – no, he corrected himself, the things he was choosing – to accept. 

Perhaps some lingering element of Iasco’s enchantment upon him still resided within his psyche, causing him to accept the ongoing abuses he saw carried out, abuses of both his own rights as well as of others.  Whatever the reason for the patience he was practicing while suffering needlessly occurred, he knew that the ultimate goal was to reach Foulata, and be present when Iasco’s plan engaged.

The group of soldiers who had set the fires returned to the column by late morning, and the soldiers ate a brief meal, then began marching again, climbing up the next ridge that was in their way as they continued to travel south.  The path they walked upon grew wider, and showed signs of having been a wider, larger road at some time in the ancient past, despite the leaves and litter that buried the edges of the stony pavement.

They reached the top of the ridge and Marco was surprised to see that they were on what was a wide plateau, whose details were indistinct as they camped at nightfall.  It was an earlier stop for the night than was usual, which surprised Marco until he realized it was their first full day to travel without the carriage, leaving the nobles to have to travel afoot.  He gave a half smile in the sunset’s glow, as he considered it likely that Ellersbine and Rhen had managed the walk better than Argen or Varsen might have.

The next day started with further walking, but at midday the character of the land around them changed.  The trees appeared younger and the forest was lighter.  The road surface remained a piece of strong evidence that at one time a civilization had traveled across paved byways.  Standing stone foundations began to become evident, until they reached a clearing, beyond which ruined city walls still stood in partial, brooding testament to an urban center that had existed at one time upon the quiet plateau they walked across.

Varsen came forward with a squad of soldiers, and led the way into the city ruins.  There were still wide boulevards that were only partially blocked by the fallen stones of buildings along their sides, and trees growing through the paving stones in scattered places.  A few small puddles of stagnant water sat in low places where the road sagged.

“This was your nation once,” he turned to say to Marco.  “This was the city of Rurita, who fell to the might of Docleatae long ago.  Now just a ruin, a few farmers in valleys, and a few disgruntled rebels skulking in the forest.”

Marco remembered Iasco’s deeply moving story of the wedding day that had become the tragedy of her brother’s betrayal.  He felt his heart break with both sorrow and anger as he thought about the catastrophe that had befallen an entire city, beyond even the personal devastation that the lady had suffered.

“It took a double-crossing sorcerer and sneaking, dirty army generals for Docleatae to defeat Rurita, didn’t it?” Marco asked.  “Is that the tradition you’re so proud to inherit and boast about?”

Varsen grew red in the face.  He seemed ready to burst into an apoplectic rage, but then grew calm.  “You’ll pay for that,” he promised Marco, and moved up ahead with his squad.

Minutes later the head of the column arrived in a ruined public square, one that had a rusting fountain in the center and the ruins of buildings along the four sides, including a large pile of stone on the north that Marco was sure had been the very palace where Iasco had stood, expecting to become the queen of the people.

“Guards,” Varsen said, “tomorrow we will put an end to your duties.

“We will have a trial tomorrow,” Varsen said loudly, turning to face all the men who were arriving in the square.  “We will put an end to the trouble this rebel sorcerer has caused us all.

“You may make camp here for the night,” he told the men, then turned back to Marco’s guards.

“Some of these slums must have some secure dungeons; go find one and put the prisoner in the deepest, darkest cell you can find,” he ordered.

“You,” he turned to a squad that was passing by as the men went towards their planned campsite, “I need for you to build a scaffold this afternoon.”  He turned back to Marco and gave a vicious grin.

Marco shut his eyes.  He could erupt.  He knew he could erupt.  He could call upon the powers that resided in his hand.  He could kill Varsen in a moment, as well as Argen.  He could construct a defensive bubble around himself.  He could take the princess in his possession and depart, leaving all the rest of them behind.  The options were limitless, but the time to choose what to do had not arrived yet.  Nonetheless, he was apparently not going to be able to remain meek and patient much longer, as he believed Iasco wanted him to be until he arrived at Foulata.

He took a deep breath.  But there was still time.  It was better to wait until tomorrow before he finally put an end to the demeaning charade that he had resorted to for so many weeks.  He would allow himself to be humiliated once again; the church at home preached the value of being humble and patient, much as Iasco seemed to have created a need for him to have humility, and so he would go along with the charade for a few more hours.

He looked at the guards, who looked at him expectantly, waiting to see how he would react.  “Let’s go,” he gave a nod of his head towards the destroyed palace.

Varsen grew red in the face with anger.  “They’re taking you because I ordered them to, not because you let them!” his voice rose to a shrill pitch as he saw Marco’s ability to control the situation.

“Anything you say,” Marco spoke back over his shoulder as he followed the pair of guards who had started to cross the square.  He heard the colonel blustering angrily as they walked out of earshot.

Without comment, the three of them entered the ruined gates of the former palace, and went into the roofless remains of a building.  One guard went in front, Marco went in the middle, and one guard brought up the rear, as they casually walked about from chamber to chamber.

“Here are stairs going down,” the lead guard said after ten minutes of searching.  He pointed to a doorway that was half-filled with rubble, and led down into darkness.

The trio stopped and looked at one another.  “I’ll go get some torches,” the rear guard said, and he left to return to the rest of the column, leaving Marco and his lead guard, Serch, by the doorway.

“Let’s look around,” Serch suggested, and they each began prying through the holes and shelves and nooks that were in the vicinity.  Marco looked into a cupboard that was dim and damp, and saw a collection of fungi growing that he knew were valuable for curing infections in wounds.  He gathered two handfuls, and as he crouched down to get them, he recognized that the walls of the cupboard were a type of sandstone that could be ground into powder for use in explosive formulae.

By the time Marco backed out of the constrained space, he heard the returning guard stumbling over the rubble in the palace space.

“Here are the torches,” he said.  “No one had a lantern.  I don’t think these will last all night,” he held out four torches.

“No,” his companion agreed, “but it’ll let us get down there at least to satisfy the colonel.

Serch struck flint and metal to spark the torch into a smoky illumination, and the three of them slowly scrambled down through the debris in the stairwell.  Beneath the palace they found a long, level tunnel.   They walked only a few dozen yards back into the darkness, then started examining the various rooms that lined the route.  All three decided they were storerooms, not prison cells, based on their spaciousness and the lack of any chains or security around the door frames.

All three climbed back up to the top of the stairs.  “Well, we know where we’ll go if the colonel comes back here,” Serch said.  “Let’s try to clear some of this mess out of the stairs in the meantime since we’ve got nothing else to do,” he suggested.  The other two agreed, and for the next two hours they removed debris and opened up an easy passage down the steps.  By the time the sun was setting, they all sat resting at the bottom of the stairs, their arms and backs aching from their labor.

“It’s time for a shift change,” Serch announced as they watched the red rays of the dusk grow dimmer in their penetration of the cellar space.  “We’ll leave a couple of torches with you if you need them.”

“Would you go back into one of the far rooms?” Serch asked Marco.  “It’ll make us look better if you’re more of a prisoner, you know,” he stated.

“I understand,” Marco grunted as he stood up and stretched the sore muscles in his back.  He walked back into the darkness as the two guards left, and then he picked a random room to sit in and wait for the next guards to arrive.

He tried to imagine what the morning was going to bring.

Varsen would have his scaffold presumably ready.  He would call a court of some type it seemed; apparently he wanted to cast a veneer of legitimacy over whatever proceedings he had in mind.  Marco tried to imagine how that would play out; he had no idea of whether there was a jury involved, or if Varsen would just cast his own prejudices – or more accurately, Argen’s prejudices – out as a pronouncement.

And Marco wondered if the princess would be present…and whether she would speak up.  The two of them had not spoken in many days, but they had been friends on the ship, and he sensed that she was not the type of person who would allow great injustice to be done to him – there was an unspoken connection between them.  He could feel it, and he knew the princess could feel it too.   He thought about Rhen, and wondered if Rhen had revealed to Ellersbine that her name was already etched on the marriage torq that encircled Marco’s neck.  That might make any conversation he and the princess had seem awkward, he realized.

There was a scrabbling noise in the room he was in.  Marco hastily raised his hand, and caused it to glow.  Only the small portion of skin removed from his palm and the scratch on the back of the hand allowed the light to shine out.  The small spot of illumination showed a pair of rats crawling across the floor on the far side of the room, two indistinct gray shapes hugging the wall as they passed through the space that Marco now shared with them.  He studied their location and course, picked up a loose stone, and hurled it at the spot where he expected them to advance to, as the light in the room swung about wildly with the movement of his hand.

He heard a thud, a squeak, and a click in rapid succession, followed by the sound of scrabbling claws on the stone floor.  Marco rose to a crouch as he hastily turned his hand around, and let the light shine forth, showing one rat lying dead, the other one gone.

Even the dead rodent could provide some useful alchemy elements he thought, before he asked himself why he had suddenly launched his pursuit of ingredients so fervently.  Whatever the results were of the events he would face in the morning, he doubted that his future time on the journey was likely to be spent as idly as the past weeks had.

He needed a blade, he thought as he hunched over the rat.  He raised his hand and wished for his sword to come to him.  There was no point in hiding such abilities any longer, he knew.  His hand stood empty for many long seconds.  He finally heard a single clinking sound out in the hallway, and then the hilt of the sword plastered itself against the palm of his hand, and he clenched it tightly.

The sword felt good.  He felt a calm confidence sweep over him as he grasped the handle and thought of Ophiuchus, who had done so much for him, and given so much to help him succeed.  He would be patient and accept Iasco’s plan in order to reward Ophiuchus, his heart told him, giving him an encompassing serenity.

Marco knelt and used the edge of the sword to delicately liberate the tail and the whiskers.  They too went into a pocket inside his sack, and then he returned to the wall where he sat down, extinguished the light from his hand, and placed his sword and his sack on the floor beside.  He was sitting in total darkness, waiting for the new shift of guards to come begin the evening vigil.