At the Queen's Command (17 page)

Owen nodded. “And the charts sent back from those who came before me? Their distances?”

Nathaniel shrugged. “Made up mostly, I ’spect. Ain’t never run into any of the Branches outside Bounty. Only true distance they know is between alehouses and stills.”

The Altashee chuckled. “They measure in dizzy-walks.”

Owen fell silent and listened to the sound of paddles in the water. A dragonfly zipped over, paced them for a bit, then lighted on a gunwale. Its iridescent wings sparkled in the sunlight. The insect’s mahogany body hue reminded him of Catharine’s eyes for a moment, then his thoughts abruptly shifted to Bethany Frost. He thought she would be entranced by the insect.

Catharine would want me to save her from it.

The dragonfly took off, zigzagging toward the shore. Owen followed its flight, then looked up and gasped. “My God, what is that?” He reached for his musket.

Nathaniel turned and signaled for him to leave the gun alone. He lowered his voice. “It’s a tanner. This range your ball would bounce off.”

Owen stared. The creature appeared to be an elk, but one of prodigious proportions. It stood taller than he was at its shoulder, and he was certain he could have lain straight out on its vast rack of antlers with plenty of room for his head and feet. It grazed, still chewing, as it lifted its head to regard them.

“A tanner?” The brown coat with white throat blaze provided no clue about its name. “Why do you call it that?”

“One of the first explorers through here, Blackston, I’m thinking his name was, called it the ‘Titan Elk.’ Cumbersome name.”

“Ti-
tan
becomes tanner, I see.” Owen shot Nathaniel a sidelong glance. “And I could hit it from here.”

“Hitting ain’t killing.” Nathaniel nodded toward the elk.
 
Tanner’d take more than one ball. Wounded, it would run a fair piece. We’d be all day finding it. If it tried to find us, well, we’d run a fair piece our own selves.”

The guide sighed. “Now, iffen we was out trapping or hunting, beast like that would be worth the shot. Meat’d feed a village for a week. That hide would cover Reverend Bumble. Worth a pound or three down to Temperance.”

Owen dug into his coat pocket. “Perhaps it’s on the Prince’s list.”

The other two men chuckled. “You’ll be finding a lot on his list. Half of it don’t exist.”

“But the Prince…”

“He’s a smart man, belike, but some of that learning has come from books that ain’t worth the time to open.”

Kamiskwa cleared his throat. “My people related stories to early explorers, who paid them with a variety of baubles. The more fantastic the story, the better the pay.”

Owen nodded. “How will I know what is real and what is not?”

“Only know what I see, only believe what I touch.” Nathaniel smiled.

“I get the feeling, Mr. Woods, that this will be a very long trip.”

The other men chuckled and bent to their paddles. Owen continued to watch the elk until it vanished around a river bend. That the creature dwarfed any similar Auropean beast impressed Owen. Its magnificence made him smile. But there was something else there, too. The tanner, and maybe even the way the Twilight People accounted for distance, seemed so primitive.

Others would take primitive to mean backward, but Owen intended a wholly different sense. Mystria seemed a land that slumbered, still young and vital. Norisle and Tharyngia had been worked long and hard. He couldn’t have gone a fraction of the distance he’d traveled in either without coming across someone or at least a signpost that indicated people lived nearby.

The earliest Mystrian settlers and explorers had called the natives the Twilight People because they tended to keep to the shadows. They’d been seldom seen except at twilight, and even then only in silhouette. They were part of the land and their reticence to be seen had been explained away as their fear of the white men and their magick.

Owen suspected it was something else entirely. The Shedashee
were
part of the land. They lived with it, reaping its bounty, not tearing its flesh and breaking it to their will. They’d watched that behavior in the settlers and wanted nothing to do with them, thinking them evil or insane.

And greedy, to them,
is
insane.

That first afternoon, with nothing but the sounds of wind, water, birds, bugs, and fish leaping, made Owen realize how far he was from Norisle. Not just in miles or walks, but in the very nature of the land. Mystria wasn’t a place to be broken easily, though war could do that.

And it was his mission to lay the groundwork for that war. He would do his duty for the Crown. He had no choice. War was inevitable, especially with du Malphias somewhere out there. But, if there was a way to mitigate things, a way to save Mystria, he would seek that out, too.

If he did anything less, his failure would haunt him for the rest of his life.

Chapter Seventeen

May 6, 1763

Grand Falls

Bounty, Mystria

T
hey continued up the river another four days through country that slowly rose toward the mountains in the west. They encountered rapids around which they had to portage. They brought the canoe to shore, unloaded it, carried it up around the rapids, then reloaded their gear and proceeded on upriver.

Travel was not arduous. They started out at dawn, would rest for a couple of hours during the heat of the day, then push on until dusk. Kamiskwa proved adept at hand-catching fish—what Nathaniel called “tickling”—and Nathaniel shot a tom turkey on the second day out. They roasted some of it, smoked the rest in a makeshift smokehouse, and didn’t even think about hunting until they’d finished the bird.

Kamiskwa cleaned and plucked the turkey, and found a use for the various parts. The feathers went into the bag with the wurm scales. The innards got tossed into the river for fish, and after leaving bones out overnight for insects to clean, he collected them up too. Owen presumed they’d be ground for bonemeal and used for fertilizer.

He’d watched Kamiskwa work. The Altashee used the smaller of two knives. Each had an antler handle and a black, glassy stone blade. Though only three inches long, the butchering knife’s blade had a triangular shape and two very sharp edges. The point where blade and antler met had leather wrapped around it so he couldn’t see how it was joined.

He suspected magick.

Owen squatted next to the Altashee. “What is your knife made of?”

Kamiskwa smiled, never looking up from his work. “Your Prince calls it obsidian. In my tongue it is
chadanak
. It is ‘shadow that cuts.’ It is traded from far away and very valuable.”

“Same stone as the blade on your warclub?”

The Altashee nodded. “I am afforded it by my rank.”

“Yes, you are a Prince.” It struck Owen as very odd in that moment that he, a common officer, and Nathaniel, a commoner, were being served by nobility.

Is this place so strange that the natural order of things is overturned?

Nathaniel laughed from where he was building a tiny smokehouse with river stones. “Now Captain Strake, don’t be getting your knickers in a knot. Being a prince among the Shedashee ain’t exactly like being a prince in Norisle.”

“No?”

“See, the Twilight People set a store by magick. They’re much better at it than we are. The stronger you are, the better they like it. Tend to want strong men to breed with their strong women. Among them, the child belongs to the mother’s family, but there’s a bit of sharing. If a warrior got a child on one of Kamiskwa’s sisters, it would be expected that he’d return the favor.”

Kamiskwa nodded. “It keeps peace between the tribes.”

“Kamiskwa is a prince not just because his father is a great chieftain, but because he’s proven himself to be strong in magick. They have contests every two-three years for to pick princes. Then the matriarchs start horse-trading with other families and tribes for their services.”

Owen shook his head, not quite sure of what he was hearing. “So he will then have a wife chosen for him by tribal elders?”

“Not a wife.” Woods took out his tomahawk and chopped some branches off a maple tree to roof over his smokehouse. “It’s whoring according to Reverend Bumble.”

Owen looked at Kamiskwa. “Is he having me on again?”

“He exaggerates.” The Altashee, almost invisible in the growing gloom, looked up. “We have marriage guaranteeing that two people have children together exclusively, or with others by permission of the spouse. If I were to marry, my wife would join my household. Sharing seed keeps all tribes equal in power. It ties us together. No one wishes to go to war against his father’s people.”

“I see.”

Nathaniel laughed. “You will, inside the week, I’m thinking.”

Owen left to gather firewood and later, after they’d eaten, he pulled out his journal and began writing. He recorded the information about the Altashee marriage custom and the knife, covering a page. He included a rough sketch of the knife and tucked one of the small turkey feathers into the pages. Though not a great artist, his various drawings looked closer to reality than not.

He realized that he was including a lot more detail than he had expected, especially some concerning his reactions. He mentioned his surprise concerning the Altashee marriage custom, and his great joy at Woods’ turkey-killing shot. None of that had any value to his mission, but it pleased him to write it down.

He knew it would please Bethany, too
.
She was a lovely woman and smart. She was clearly a product of the land of her birth. He found it very easy to imagine her faring well were she with them. She’d tirelessly pitch in, doing a fair share of the work.

Catherine, on the other hand, would be lost completely.
She would hate being out here.
She would have little interest in the flora or fauna, and would be completely useless doing any work around camp. Even trying to collect firewood would likely inspire the vapors, necessitating a long rest.
And we’d need another three canoes for her wardrobe.

The realization that he was writing for Bethany did not displease him. He would be clinical in the details he transferred into his official transcript, but in his private notes he wanted to record all his thoughts and feelings. Owen felt certain Bethany would appreciate them and, unlike his wife, would not become anxious just reading them.

Having a confidante, even
in absentia
, made the trip much easier. Nathaniel and Kamiskwa clearly had quite a history together, as well as a certain disdain for things Norillian. He’d never fit perfectly with them. This didn’t bother him too much. He was well used to being an outsider. Having someone to explain things to eased his isolation.

After cleaning up all sign of their campsite the next morning, they got back on the river. Owen got to see another moose and, later, watched a black bear clawing a bee-tree open to harvest honey. None of the creatures paid them any mind. Owen marveled at their lack of concern and, consequently, felt no fear.

Most often they traveled in silence, mostly out of a reverence for the land and its beauty. The sun dawned and painted the clouds red and blue. The setting sun could flood the sky with gold and deep scarlet. Once an eagle swooped down and plucked a salmon from the river, screaming victoriously and flew off to a nest high atop a tree.

Owen remained silent for fear of breaking whatever spell enabled him witness such wonders. Woods and Kamiskwa would share a silent glance, smiles splitting their faces, as they marveled at things like the eagle. They had so much wilderness experience, and yet the land still surprised them.

This pleased Owen, and scared him. If he were to be successful, he’d have to communicate a sense of Mystria to his superiors. Yet their attitude—based on birth, wealth, and rank—insulated them from understanding. They were already at the pinnacle of society, therefore at the pinnacle of the world. There could be nothing bigger or grander than what they already knew. To suggest otherwise would incite them to doubt their reality. It would be easier to convince them that wurms could fly than get them to see the true nature of Mystria.

On the fourth day they came to Grand Falls. The land rose abruptly for three hundred feet and the water traveled through a narrow gorge above a fantastic waterfall. They unloaded their gear just before noon and rested before beginning the trek through the woods to the upper river.

“We done walked the river ’bout as far as possible. Rest up here, start on foot tomorrow.”

“Very good, sir.” Owen sat on a rock beside the blue pool into which the water splashed. A bright rainbow glowed through light mist coming off the water. He pulled his journal from his pack and quickly sketched the falls.

“You’re getting a mite better, Captain.”

He looked up. “Thank you, Mr. Woods.”

“I’m not making nothing of your chicken scratches, mind, but you got the falls right.” He carried his sheathed rifle across his shoulders and pointed the butt toward the top. “Two years back me and Kamiskwa was up here come spring. Ice jammed up above there, so you could see everything dry. There’s a cave back behind the water. Looked as though a jeopard or two laired there down through the years.”

Owen glanced at his musket leaning against a tree. “I’d never make it alone, would I?”

“Nope, but this is more bear country. Don’t have much of a taste for men. Now an ax-bird would be on you in a heartbeat.”

Owen flipped to the back of the journal and unfolded the Prince’s list. “A-ha. Ax-bird. Is that just a legend?”

Woods shook his head. “They exist. More to the south and across the mountains. Mild winter, snow early out of the passes, some of them come over. Hain’t seen sign for a while.”

The soldier traced his finger down the list. “Giant Ground Sloth? Mammoth? Wooly Rhinoceros?”

“Down south, Fairlee and Ivory Hills. Newland and Felling maybe. Ivory Hills got its name from the Mammoths. We might see one of those Wooly Rhinoceroses he wants. Short of having a cannon, there will be no bringing one back.”

Kamiskwa made a comment in his own tongue.