Perilous Travels (The Southern Continent Series Book 2) (32 page)

“We’re making good progress,” Trensen said during their stop at the fifth sunset away from Yellow Spring.  Grange could detect no difference in the landscape from anything they had passed or seen anywhere along the hurried journey – there were low bushes, grasses and mosses and lichens.  There were low hills, frozen puddles and streams, and numerous rocks protruding from the ground.  And there was the sun that traveled overhead from east to west, dodging frequent clouds.  But there were no landmarks.

He stood, breathing heavily, hands on hips, and observed a small, dark creature flit from the shadow of one bush to another, circling around the small human encampment.  The creature was larger than a typical rodent, with longer forelegs than a rat or mouse, and a face that was vaguely human, Grange thought, though the details were hard to observe, for the creature moved quickly, and seemed insubstantial in some inexplicable way.

“What kinds of rats live out here?” he asked idly, curious about the animal.  It stopped at the sound of his voice, then it disappeared into the bushy foliage.

“There are a couple of kinds of mice, the scrambler and the hopper,” Burr answered.  “But no rats.”

“I just saw something in the bushes, about this big,” Grange replied, holding his hands several inches apart.

Burr and Trensen looked at one another.  “There’s nothing that big out here,” Trensen answered.

Grange started to protest, then stopped when he saw the expressions on the faces of the others.  He shrugged, knowing that he had seen what he’d seen and they wouldn’t believe him; he dropped his pack to the ground, then he walked apart from the others, around a rise and out of sight to relieve himself.  A minute later he heard an unidentifiable shout from one of the men, and then the unmistakable clang of swords clashing.

Astonished by the sounds, he pulled his own sword free and started to run back to the camp.

Seconds later there was a scream, and as he came into sight of the camp, where a battle had erupted among his companions, illuminated by the bright light of a full moon overhead.

“What are you doing?” he shouted in astonishment.  Jenniline and Trensen stood back to back, as Burr and the other guard attacked them from either side.  The sight of the battle was disconcerting, but worst of all was the fact that atop the shoulders of the two attackers there were clusters of the small, filmy rodents Grange had seen minutes earlier, seeming to urge the battle on.

“Grange!” Trensen shouted.  He turned to look at the new arrival, and in his moment of distraction Burr was able to stab deeply into the man’s stomach, causing him to double over and fall to the ground.

“Stop!” Grange shouted.  He rushed forward, and as he did a new pair of the dark rodents leapt up at his face from bushes along his path.  He swept his sword through the air before him and struck them, making each explode in a bright flash that startled him and everyone else in the battle scene.

“So you and your weapon are still lethal, despite your condition?” Burr said in an ominous voice that sounded nothing at all like his usual tone.  He kicked his leg out and tripped Jenniline’s feet from her unprotected back side, then both of the attackers turned and rushed towards Grange.

They commenced to attack, separating to find their own angles of opportunity, crashing through bushes to find the best locations, as Grange spun and retreated and tried to grasp the inconceivable fact of the internecine fight that had erupted.  The two men were battling ferociously, and Grange had to swing his sword with ceaseless effort to protect himself.

He felt something on his back, and momentarily swept his sword over his head and across his shoulders, causing more explosions that startled the other combatants for a moment, giving Grange the chance to strike quickly at the man on his left, stabbing him in the chest.  The man fell, and the creatures upon him leapt at Grange in a suicidal wave that crossed the small gulf of air between them.

Grange stabbed one, missed two others, and then fell to his knees as a result of Burr successfully landing a slice on his thigh; Grange dropped in pain, and fell beneath the flight path of the incoming creatures.  He slapped his free hand on the injury, then swept his sword across the ground, where the creatures that had missed landing on him were trying to sneak upon him again.

He awkwardly spun on the tundra and deflected another attack from Burr, then he rose back to his feet and commenced to spar with the man.

There was a sound off to the side, and they both turned to see Jenniline back on her feet, her arm swinging forward as she threw a knife at Burr.

The man rasped a curse at her, just before the blade landed in his chest.  Grange stabbed his sword at the things that were jumping from Burr’s shoulders, causing more flashes, but then one flew at him, emerging straight out of the center of Burr’s forehead as the man collapsed.

The demon landed on Grange’s chest.

“You’ll fall to us soon, doomed one,” it said, its beady eyes glowing green.

Grange stabbed it with his sword as well, and fell backwards from the impact of the bright flash on his chest.

He landed on his back and lay there in pain and confusion, stunned for a handful of seconds until Jenniline’s face appeared above him.  She spoke excitedly to him in her own musical language at first, then stopped.

“Are you okay?” she asked in his language.

He nodded wordlessly, and she disappeared.  He propped himself up and saw that she was tending to Trensen, who had received the dreadful wound during the battle.

Grange painfully rose and examined Burr.  The man was dead, and the other guard was dead as well.  There were no other obvious demons in sight as Grange gingerly stepped over to join Jenniline, who was cooing soothing words to her guard as she bent low over him.  She looked up when Grange arrived, and he saw that there were tears in her eyes.  She shook her head silently.

Grange looked down at Trensen.  His eyes were open.

“Grange,” he whispered, and Grange bent down.

“Protect the princess.  Take her back to the palace and the temple.  She was my responsibility, and now I place her in your hands,” the man grunted in pain as he passed his duty on.  “She is your charge now, do you understand?”

Grange’s eyes stared back directly.  “I will do it, or I’ll die trying,” he pledged.

“Don’t die – succeed.  I’ll handle the dying part,” Trensen gave a partial smile, then closed his eyes and passed.

Grange raised his eyes and looked at Jenniline.  Her eyes were closed and her head bowed.  He saw her lips moving quietly, and heard snatches of a whispered prayer.  When she was finished she raised her head and looked at him.

“Are you in any shape to travel?” she asked.  She reached over and touched the bloody slice along the front of his leg.

“I can travel; I don’t have a choice, do I?” he asked.

“We have an option.  There’s another thermal spring not far from here.  We can be there in a few hours, and use it to recuperate.  Can you go that far?” she asked, and he nodded, hoping that he could.

“Good.  First, we’ll need to build a cairn over Trensen,” she said.  “Let’s gather stones.”

Grange hesitated, then decided to speak his mind.  “We should cover the others as well,” he told her.

She looked at him in astonishment.  “Let their bones feed the scavengers,” she said.

“It wasn’t their fault,” Grange replied.  She started to protest, but he held his hand up.  “They weren’t in control of themselves.  Did you see those shadowy things that were in them – the ones that exploded?  I think they controlled the men.  I saw one come through Burr’s head.”

“I didn’t see anything, but I saw the flashes of light, and I know Burr and Anthel were good men.  They’d never been disloyal before.  They weren’t supporters of the old regime,” she acknowledged.

“We should cover them all,” Grange reiterated.

“So be it,” Jenniline agreed.

They spent several hours bringing together enough stones to protect all three bodies, as Grange continued to be hobbled by old and new wounds.  They finally finished, then combined the remaining supplies from all the packs and collected all the water bottles, then set out, moving south instead of northeast.

They made slow progress, but finally reached the pocket in the side of a shallow valley, where a boiling hot spring created a tiny oasis, and they both collapsed in relief on the south slope of the warm spot, just minutes before the sun rose to start a new day.

Grange continues his unpredictable journey towards a fate he doesn’t understand in the next book in the Southern Continent series,
The Greater Challenge Beyond
.  Read the following except for a peek at his future
:

“If we had more supplies we could try to go around them, but we’re limited, and it’s been a long trip already,” she said.  “It would help if you were healthy and we could move faster.”

“Should we split up?” Grange asked.  He didn’t see any advantage to Jenniline in having him as her companion, and he didn’t have any fondness for her continued, abrasive company.

“If I travel alone, I can reach home in four days, maybe even three,” she said so quickly that Grange knew she had already considered the proposition.  “You don’t know the way to return on your own, or how to avoid the rebels, though.”

“I go north, and it doesn’t matter if they catch me anyway, does it?  They’ll have no use for me,” he told her, speaking practically.

“That’s true, you wouldn’t mean anything to them.  You’d only be a burden, as long as you didn’t join them as a fighter,” she spoke, and her words picked up speed.  Grange could tell he had opened the door to an idea that the girl wanted to pursue.

“Go ahead,” he told her.  “You can leave today and be back at your home in a few days.  I’ll leave here tomorrow and follow.  When I get to Southgar, I’ll,” he paused, not sure what he would do.  The girl had talked about the temple of Acton, but what that would do wasn’t clear.  There was nothing clear in his future, just as there was nothing evident in his past.

“When you get to the temple, you’ll ask to present yourself to the God, and tell the priests about all that’s happened in the wilderness,” she said.  “Then the God Acton will know if his hero has arrived or not,” she spoke with a touch of bitterness.  She stood up.  “I’ll go pack my things,” she said, then turned and was gone.

An hour later, Grange hobbled to the campsite, as Jenniline was strapping her pack of supplies onto her back.  She picked up her bow and put it on her shoulder, the last step she needed to take to be ready to leave.

“When I get back, I’ll tell the temple to expect your arrival,” she told Grange.  “I’ve left you enough supplies that you can probably even rest here another day extra if you need, to help strengthen that leg,” she told him.

“You’ll want to go due north for three days, then angle to the north east after that.  You should get back to civilization within five days.  If the rebels do intercept you, just tell them you drank from the Yellow Spring, and your memories are disturbed,” she added.  She hitched her pack up slightly, ready to reall go.

“Yr wyf yn gobeithio y Pwerau uchod yn rhoi cymorth i chi deithio yn ddiogel ac yn gyflym,” Grange told her.  He was of a mixed mind about her departure.  He would have preferred to travel with someone who knew the countryside, and who could provide assistance if needed, but the girl was prickly and clearly had no desire to travel with him.  They were better off go their separate ways.

Jenniline’s eyes widened.  “What did you say?” her face turned red.

“I said, ‘I hope the Powers above give you support to  travel safe and swiftly,’” Grange replied with a feeling that something was wrong.

“No!” Jenniline shouted.  “You spoke in our language.   You’ve known how to speak the Tongue all along!  You’re some kind of an impostor!  You probably didn’t even drink any water at Yellow Spring, did you?” she spoke with passion.  As she did she released the straps on her pack, pulled her bow off her shoulder, and let the pack slide to the ground.

She pulled her sword free from its scabbard.

“There’s only one way to deal with spies,” she said menacingly.

Grange watched in alarm, then scrambled to reach for his own sword, as he saw Jenniline pull her sword free and start to advance towards him.  He felt a twinge in his thigh, and momentarily thought about the stitches there, then ignored the pain as he pushed himself up to his feet and held his sword defensively.

“Jenniline, I don’t know your language,” he said quickly.  “If I said something, I didn’t know what I said.

“Maybe I am from Southgar.  Maybe my memory is starting to return, a little,” he tried to placate her.  She was approaching him determinedly, holding her sword firmly, circling around him, and making him slowly turn to match her, wincing from the pain in his leg as he tried to maneuver.

“I fought for you when your men went crazy,” he reminded her.

“It must have been some kind of trick,” she snarled.  “Maybe you did something to make them attack in the first place.”

Jenniline launched her attack, springing in close and pulling her knife off her hip, so that when Grange swung his sword to stop the attack from the sword in her right hand, the knife in her left hand sliced across the skin of his arm, leaving a bloody red line.

“Jenniline!  Stop!” Grange screamed.  “Think this through; what have I done to threaten you?” he asked.

The girl stabbed her sword viciously.  Grange blocked the attack, and for a second he saw an opportunity to harm her, but he held his strike, and dodged out of the way of her knife.

“I’m the one who said you should leave to go home on your own,” he reminded her.

“You are a trick, or you are a trap,” she hissed at him as she continued to circle him.  Her tactic of continual motion was an effective one, Grange realized, as he continued to try to twist himself fast enough to present his defenses.

She launched another attack, but followed his defensive success by engaging in a new attack immediately.  She attacked low, and when he blocked the slice, she swung her knife, then raised her sword.  Her sword hit him, but it had twisted as she tried to recover from his defense, so that it only scraped across his chest without cutting his flesh deeply.

“I am not your enemy!” Grange shouted.  He flung his sword forward so that his hand and hilt struck Jenniline in the center of her chest and pushed her away, breaking the engagement momentarily.

“There’s something about you – something broken,” she said.  “The God wouldn’t use you to win the battle that is coming.

“After this is over, I’ll go back home and resupply, then I’ll go to the Yellow Spring again,” she jumped at him both blades ready to strike as she seemed to rise up into the air and then come descending down towards him like a hawk falling upon a rabbit, with steel talons poised to skewer its prey.

Except for the fact that Grange did the unexpected.  He dove downward, aiming his body to drop down into the air beneath where she had departed from, so that he started to pass beneath her, headed towards freedom from her attack.  As he passed below her he suddenly raised up and clipped her feet hard.  He grabbed one and pushed it upward, rotating her body unexpectedly, so that she lost control of her body before she landed, and then Jenniline struck the ground hard, her shoulder striking the soft earth first, causing her to bounce and flip.

She came to rest lying on her back, and Grange bounded over towards her, ignoring the pain in his leg, and across his chest, and upon his arm.  His adrenaline was flowing from the heat of the combat, prodding him into more action that seemed possible.

Jenniline lay still for just a moment, stunned by the force of the landing, and then shocked again when Grange sat heavily upon her chest, falling forcefully, and extending his legs to trap her arms, as a way to prevent her from lifting her blades against him again.  His eyes looked into hers – he saw no fear, only pain.  He lifted his sword, then stabbed it down hard, thrusting it with all his might so that it penetrated to a depth of several inches.

Jenniline blinked, and her mouth fell open.  She was shocked, unable to comprehend what had suddenly happened to her.