211
Back and Onward
Oran woke in a cold sweat. The eyes had been so real, boring into his, pleading that the move hadn’t been meant, that it was a mistake, even as Oran’s blade skewered the Nevarez heir through the heart.
I want to live, those eyes said, and Oran knew he’d needlessly killed a young man his own age who only wanted to uphold his honor and live free, a young man betrayed by reflexes trained by a barbarian father.
You would have died if you hadn’t, the cold-drenched Scout told himself for the hundredth time.
Whether he meant it or not, it would have killed you. But his inner accuser insisted he should have seen another way, though there had been no other way; that particular sword move in that particular circumstance meant one or the other would die. That both were innocent of malice made no difference. However he’d justified it to Cristobal as saving his own life, the fact was that he’d had no choice; the moves were made, and the outcome was one death or another.
>little deaths<
Oran grinned weakly at Runner’s comment. The great cats knew no guilt; when they felt it in their humans, they called it a “little death”. That made sense; Oran felt like he was dying every time real guilt struck.
>run from death<
Now Oran laughed – that was a solution he shared with Runner: run until peace came. It worked for him, but there was too much to do this morning, if it was morning yet.
>Ronams sleep. Hunter’s folk rise<
So it was morning, and Antonio’s d’Aragon travelers were getting up to get ready. Twelve days of good weather, they’d been told by the Haudenosaunee, and the Druids hadn’t argued. It would be a long sail, first to the land of longhouses, then tacking north to Fort Winchester, but it would put them on their way as the new year began. The Peaceful People had celebrated that the night before, based on the stars and not on the calendar Oran was used to; they’d get to celebrate it again at Fort Winchester.
Holding Runner’s implied admonition that he should be rising, too, Oran swung off his cot and knelt for his morning prayers, beginning with the Psalm: “Oh Lord, in the morning I direct my prayer and look up to You”, and ending with the Lord’s Prayer. He hummed the Nicene Creed as Anaph sang it while pulling on the clothes cleaned for him overnight.
>wrestle<
Oran laughed.
One roll, he offered Runner.
>three paws< The big cats could count to five, so three paws was fifteen.
Oh, we’re bargaining? I don’t think so – I’ll get sweaty. Two.
Runner pounced, rolling him. The great cat settled for three, leaving Oran on the ground beneath him for a great rough tongue to lick the Scout’s face. Oran laughed and gave the cat a hug; Runner reared up to help set his human on two feet.
“Not the departure I expected”, Antonio half-muttered to Oran, restraining himself from glaring at not just the Elders gathered to wish them farewell, but the two bands besides his own – those two still making ready.
“Hey, just be glad they’re not all coming with us!” Oran countered. He thought it was great: their meeting where Guillermo had accepted the ancient family blade had given impetus in turn to other meetings; more than just the d’Aragon had had restless members in their number. To almost everyone’s surprise, the Elders had welcomed what they called “a sifting”, those unable to be entirely comfortable with the ways of the People of Peace choosing to go their own way, off into new lands to make new lives. “And Eldon is excited about it – he’s picked spots for new villages for them.”
“At least they’re bright enough not just to go out on their own.” Antonio wasn’t convinced that anyone raised among the Peaceful would be able to make it on their own. The Roman engineers – the ones departing had taken back the old pronunciation of their name – were the probable exception; they’d kept up everything Rome had known about building and invented some more.
One of those inventions was coming with them for Ryan and the rest to examine. It was the reason none of the Snatched had any worries about the walls the People of Peace were building being enough to keep them safe if Others ever got this far. The product of the sap of a bush farther east into more arid lands, the engineers brushed it into the surface of the stone continuously for several hours, then let it set for three days. Finally they wiped it down with wood alcohol and set it on fire. The bright blue flames raced across the surface, burning briefly but brilliantly, and when the surface had cooled it was as smooth as obsidian, and even harder to grip. No Others were going to climb that surface, especially with the top meter and a half of wall leaning outward at eleven and a quarter degrees! So even without anyone manning the walls, those inside would be safe –well, so long as they didn’t just heap up their own bodies to serve as ramps.
Oran grinned at that thought. It was the reason the Elders had decided to petition the Lost British Queen for a garrison for the town, to defend in ways the Peaceful couldn’t do for themselves. He wished he could be there when she heard thousands of people were volunteering to be her subjects! Thousands
more, he corrected himself; there were three hundred Romans ready to go right at that moment, to prepare the way for six times that many more, and eight hundred d’Aragon with the same task. If the message had gotten through, Eldon knew they were coming soon, to add to those settling the islands Anaph had caused. Technically they would be Rigel’s subjects, but Oran understood politics well enough to guess they’d be like the lands Osvaldo had given in the Escobar refuge: subject to the local ruler.
Soon enough, ceremony behind them, the three columns of migrants headed westward, bound for Lord Ratcliff’s scarp-side settlement.
“The sea!” exclaimed Guillermo d’Aragon. “And the sea....” His voice trailed off in awe at the expanse below with hazy hints of islands in the distance. Grown to adulthood where the largest body of water was a pond, the sight wrenched at his view of the world.
“Ships.” Cristobal pointed outward to where two dozen vessels, some of two and the rest of three masts, rested in neat rows, bobbing apparently at anchor. He whooped and grinned. “So many! Like an adventure story! And we get to ride them.”
“One”, Oran noted, picking up the pace. “You get to ride one – unless you want to cut yourself in half”. He nearly stumbled as he laughed at a feline-made mental image of Cristobal with feet hooked to one rail and hands clinging to another. Silly cat, he sent back.
On reaching the top of the great ramp on the face of the scarp, they saw that yet more ships bobbed close in. The real surprise, though, was a virtual fleet of small craft, long and narrow. “Are those Haudenosaunee?” Oran asked Tepocah.
“Good eyes”, the Haudenosaunee scout replied. “They are for freight, for traveling.”
Oran frowned. “So we won’t have to sail south?”
Tepocah grinned. “That, I know not – these are not the canoes of those traveling light, to come with us. They have another purpose here.”
“So let’s go see!” Cristobal urged.
Oran glanced back at Antonio, looking the question with a raised right eyebrow.
Antonio shook his head. “Just to see – no. But you three go ahead and check to be sure everything’s ready for us. Guillermo, we have to play the part of respectable lords, and wait for this whole expedition to get in – then I get to explain the process for getting down.”
Guillermo didn’t even turn his head, continuing to stare at the sea. “This view is magnificent! I would not cut it short for curiosity about canoes.” He did, however, nudge his horse forward. “And I would see it from the edge of this great height!” With a shake of his head he added, “And I think many others will agree.”
“True, that”, Oran replied with a slow nod; he hadn’t considered the vista from the perspective of someone who’d never even seen a serious lake. But a grin crept onto his face. “So those of us who’ve actually swam in it will zip ahead and check on things!” With that, the three Scouts headed for the top of the great ramp on the face of the scarp.
They didn’t use the ramp. A leftenant in Lord Radcliff’s colors intercepted them. “You are descending to the sea? This way, please, my lord, sirs”, he said at Oran’s nod, indicating a path bearing left from the route to the ramp.
Cristobal swallowed hard as Tepocah laughed. “It’s silverbark rope”, the Haudenosaunee said, running a hand along the wrist-thick cable that ran from a steel wheel above, down through the huge basket and below. With a touch of wonder, he explained, “This thick, it could hold a hundred of us!”
Oran nodded slowly, more to himself than to the other Scout. The system had been built since they’d come through on the way east, but the idea was simple enough he didn’t need Devon to explain it: supplies had to come up, and an elevator was faster. “They’re using our weight, going down, to haul things up”, he ventured. “So the basket is probably strong enough to lift a load of stone – the cable, too”, he finished, looking straight at Cristobal.
“Indeed, my lord”, the leftenant affirmed. “We have more to lift than we have to lower, this season, even with sending water barrels down. Lord Antonio’s arrival is a blessing – if all but the horses ride the baskets, most of what waits below will come up today”. Oran didn’t think it would be that simple, but he didn’t say so; Antonio would want to be down as quickly as possible, which meant a lot would still go down the ramp. “If you would board...?” the leftenant urged.
The view was stupendous, but Oran was busy taking note of the items they rose with, so he enjoyed it only for the first half minute. There were barrels marked as salted venison, others as water, next to rolls of hides. There was cut stone – dark grey with streaks of deep, near-black green and flecked with tiny bits of crystal – in wooden frames, and even brick! It would all interest Devon, but the brick would fascinate him: it meant they’d not just found the clay (or whatever, he added mentally, recognizing he didn’t know how these were made) to make them but had already set up a factory, or at least a shop, to make them!
“They have all this – why do they need us also?” Cristobal’s voice was as tight as his grip on the main cable at the basket’s center.
“This is just one load”, Oran thought out loud. “Lord Radcliff won’t have gardens up here until spring, and no orchards. There has to be a lot more to bring up than to send down. Maybe this basket needed just three Scouts of weight more when we came along.”
“I could hit a ship from here”, Tepocah said, fingering his unstrung bow. “We are carried at a steady pace.” A steady pace meant easy to adjust for, Oran knew – and he could tell his friend itched to try it.
“Then you’d have to get your arrow back from a captain who would be mad at you.”
“You’re a lord – you could order him.” Tepocah delivered the statement with a straight face.
Oran knew better, and laughed. “I’m a lord – I would order you to get your own arrow! And if a gust of wind made it puncture a sail, you’d have to learn to be a seaman and repair it.”
“I repair my cloak, I can repair a sail”, Tepocah asserted. He mimed sewing with exaggerated motions.
“You’d sew the sail to your clothes”, Oran teased. “Your leggings would fly from a mst, and you’d be naked.” Without turning he saw that Cristobal was relaxing at the humor.
“Naked I was born”, Tepocah replied airily.
“And naked you’d freeze your ass when the next snow comes”, Oran responded.
“And other bits”, Cristobal contributed. He shuddered, more the release of tension at the ride than part of the joking.
“Austin would warm his ‘bits’ if he was here”, Oran said in solemn tones but a twinkle in his eye. He liked teasing Cristobal with such statements.
Tepocah wiggled his hips. “I could find a maiden happy to warm my ‘bits’ – or two”. At that, Cristobal laughed, only a little nervously; the basket had begun to slow, approaching the bottom. A cold wind blew steadily off the lake, maybe a dozen kilometers an hour, Oran guessed. As the wind above came from the east, it made the air next to the scarp roll in place, bringing moisture-laden air off the sea,
“Almost there”, the Scout observed. “I hope there’s hot tea; this wind bites.”
“And our cloaks are in our packs”, Cristobal responded, looking back up the cliff face, suddenly relaxing as he realized they’d come all that way safely.
There was tea, waiting for them with someone unexpected. “The stowaways come first”, said a familiar voice as they walked into the room a freight attendant directed them to.
“Eldon? What–?” Oran’s brain didn’t provide more words.
Rigel’s quartermaster for the “Great Trek South”, now in command of the people Rigel had left behind, didn’t smile. He did stand, and waved them to the side table where he sat with tea set carefully distant from the map and lists covering most of the available surface. “Sit – warm up”, he ordered. “Rigel isn’t mad at you, but you didn’t even think about just asking, did you? In this world, communication isn’t just important, it’s critical. When you just venture off on your own, it says something about Rigel. That isn’t your choice to make – maybe it was when it was just you ‘Vortex Snatched’, but Rigel is going to end up being a king, and that makes everything you do significant.”
Oran wanted to protest that he knew that, but he bit his upper lip and just sat. He knew he wasn’t in real trouble when Eldon poured tea for him instead of making him do it himself. Tension he hadn’t noticed let go of his shoulders, which seemed to serve as a signal to the others it was okay to join him.
Eldon’s gaze relented slightly, and he returned to his seat. “I know you know that we all know you understand Rigel enough that you didn’t really cause a problem. But others don’t know that yet, and until they do Rigel needs you to be careful about how things look. The good thing is that hardly anyone knows you chose without asking, so we don’t have a real issue – in fact in the future we may be able to use it as an example of how closely you understand Rigel, when we need people to trust you.
“Cristobal, you essentially just followed your superior, but you have to remember the same things I told Oran. This isn’t just cities and counts and a duke who hardly pays attention any more. You’ve walked into being right next to someone Rigel trusts, and Rigel needs people he can trust. So you will go with Oran when he gets the opportunity to apologize. No, Oran”, the quartermaster and lord admonished the Scout, “Rigel won’t ask for an apology. He doesn’t expect one, even. But you will make one – I’ll help you with the wording – and you’ll make it where and when it will help people here understand how things are with Rigel.”
Eldon took a hefty slurp of tea. A small smile escaped. “They got the lemon mint right, I see – nice. Now”, he went on, “you’re wondering why this is such a big deal. You’re probably thinking Rigel would tell me I’m making a big deal out of nothing. But he’d be wrong, though if he saw it that way he wouldn’t be the Rigel we all... ah, love might be a bit strong, but it’s close enough. He’d be wrong because whether he sees it or not, Rigel is the key to this whole situation: He’s going to be the one who pulls the Quistadors, the Celts, the Lost British, and more into a force big enough to finally do whatever the Snatcher has been grabbing people for.
“And no, I can’t say what that is – I have guesses, but what doesn’t require guesses is this: the Snatcher represents an investment in resources that’s too big to be unimportant. It’s been trying to find the right people to accomplish something truly significant, and it’s been failing. We know it’s been failing, because it’s kept on grabbing people for hundreds of years, and if it had succeeded it wouldn’t be doing that. Landon knows the Snatcher is itself failing, and that means the situation may be rightly called desperate. So it’s running out of chances, and Rigel is the one in a position to get the job done.” He looked briefly, firmly into each set of Scout eyes. “So you’re going to learn to behave so as to support him and never detract from him.”
Something in Oran was boiling, protesting he didn’t deserve this. He stifled it, because he knew that Eldon was right – mostly, but only mostly, and he knew that there was a vast difference between being mostly right and all right.
Just like there/s a difference between being all dead and ‘only mostly dead’, he thought.
But he did shake his head. “It’s not just Rigel. And it isn’t just Rigel’s group – the ones Snatched from his car. If it was, the Snatcher wouldn’t have grabbed us from the van or Austin and the others from the curb. It needed Anaph for a Druid, Rita for a Wise Woman, Ocean for understanding herbs, Antonio for a hunter, Lumina for a Healer. And when it thought we were going on its mission, it had Mervynn tell us we were all supposed to go – why would it do that if it didn’t need every one of us?” Eldon looked thoughtful.
“Beside all that is what Ryan told us and Anaph and Lumina agreed. Ryan said it ‘mixed the waveforms’ – meaning us – as it brought us here. Some of each of us got mixed into everyone else. Like, we all let Rigel lead just the way Devon and Rita and Ryan did, even though we never knew him before. And we all see nature as close to sacred, something that was really only Ocean and Anaph before. All us guys got a dose of Austin, so we’re all okay with guy-on-guy sex. Plus all the gals got a dose of Rita and Ocean, so they’re more into thinking things through, more patient.
“So we’re more than just a group of friends now, we’re actually part of each other. The rest of us aren’t like chess pieces for Rigel to use and maybe lose, we’re more like... in that sport Landon did, the rowing – crew, he calls it. He says rowing in an eight is more of a team sport than anything else, because you’re not just individuals on a team doing different things to reach a goal, you’re all doing exactly the same thing, at the same time, almost like one person with eight bodies. Well, we’re sort of one person with seventeen bodies – we all have to move together and reach the finish line together.”
Eldon nibbled at his lower lip for a long moment. “All right – and we can use that. Describe it to Landon when you can. Though you missed something about rowing: there are eight rowers, but there’s also one coxswain. Eight move like one, but the ninth guides and directs.”
“And that’s Rigel? Okay – but the coxswain” – Oran pronounced it “cock-sun”, not quite the more abbreviated “cox’n” the Yankee Snatched did – “doesn’t even row! He can’t reach the finish at all without the rowers – I mean ‘oarsmen’”, he corrected himself, “all working together. So if Rigel is our coxswain, then we’re rowing a double-eight, sixteen of us and him guiding.”
“Perhaps you have a point there”, Eldon conceded, “but don’t stretch the comparison too far: Rigel doesn’t just sit and give orders. If–“
“He did, he wouldn’t be Rigel”, they concluded together. The two locked eyes for a long second, then laughed.
“Okay – I’m going to write that all down, and send it to Landon, but you tell him, too. He’ll know how to turn it into bits people can understand.”
Oran frowned. “What is this, the propaganda department?”
“Don’t be upset; it’s necessary”, Eldon argued. “Consider: people are going to form opinions about Rigel anyway, right? There will be stories, no matter what we do, and in a world with no interwebs or even newspapers, stories get twisted. Propaganda got a bad name from totalitarian truth-twisters furnishing falsehoods, but it remains propaganda if it tells the truth. You’ve given me truth about Rigel and you Vortex Snatched, and it should be spread. Landon knows how to tell it in ways that make it come alive and get remembered, and we want that out there spreading instead of stories by people who don’t like Rigel, or for that matter Druids or Healers or Engineers. We need to true stories to go out and get remembered so false material won’t be listened to.”
“It is like a trial”, Cristobal ventured hesitantly. “Lord Rigel is the accused, and if only those against him speak, he will lose. Witnesses have to speak for him also, friend Oran.”
Oran nodded, then grinned. “Okay, I get it – both of them. We’ll be good and let you propagandists get the word out. So”, he changed the subject, “what’s with the maps and lists?”
“The Haudenosaunee brought word ahead. Antonio’s bringing his d’Aragon, some to go with him and some to settle here, and he’s bringing Romans to settle here. Also, a group of Haudenosaunee came to me with a petition from their elders, asking for space in the new lands. I’ve picked a place for a d’Aragon town and another for a Roman village; for the Haudenosaunee I chose a big stretch of land. They don’t do towns, so I just selected a big area for them. The lists set out what they’ll need to get started well enough to be ready for more come spring, when they can get crops in – the first groups can hunt for food, but if they keep hunting they’ll kill off what got stranded on their new islands.
“When I get a list of what they’ve brought, I’ll know what to purchase at Port Arthur – most of the basic material is in the ships, and perishables are in storage at Edwardburgh.
“I’ve got a list for Lord Rigel, too, with a small map. It sets out what lands I’ve assigned and to whom – along with the grants to the d’Aragon, Romans, and Haudenosaunee, I’ve given the Royal Navy another island for a base. Their Queen Elizabeth selected an honorable family burdened by debt, bought most of their estates in the islands to pay those debts, and sent them to me. They’ll be building the second port for the Navy, with a castle, and I gave them a chunk of land on the big island, what has gotten called ‘Barrier Island’ and will be naked that if Rigel approves. All the settlers understand that while they may still be Lost British, they’ll be Rigel’s subjects in their new homes.
“Last I’m working on a list for Devon. First item refers to a report from the Navy about the basins south and west of the ‘New Sea’ Anaph caused. The water is leaking in there, but since our ‘New Sea’ is almost level with the British Sea now, we’ve been trying to keep it from breaking through off our sea. We don’t care about the current from the southern sea, but now that we can sail in to Fort Narrows and back out we don’t want a strong current there again.
“So up by Fort Winchester the engineers have dug ‘Ian’s Canal’ to connect a lake to the Sea, and ‘Dal’s Cut’ to connect the first lake to another. Then they’ve got a giant pipe letting water from the second lake into the basin beyond. It isn’t enough to fill it up, but it is enough to make the ground so wet that when a good storm comes through the rain can’t soak in. It’s probably covered with ice and snow now, though.”
“That would be a mess!” Oran exclaimed. “Freezing surface and rising water, with rain and snow freezing to the top – yuck.” He shuddered. “No way would I want to try skating on that!”
Tepocah shook his head slowly. “Freezing the lakes? The weather doing that is rare.”
Eldon nodded agreement. “I think this is rare. We got a really cold blast from the northeast two weeks ago, and all that cold air filled the basins. At the scarp, it’s colder on top, but right now over in the basins things are colder than on the islands.” He got a wicked grin. “The Dragoons report that several of the nest-forts of the Others got surrounded by ice, and the Others can’t move around on it well. They’ve rolled a couple of cannon out and shelled one, to see how effectively they could do it.
“Oh – and the Navy bombarded one of the surviving Alien forts in the ‘New Sea’, and broke through so the sea poured in. They’re still doing target practice with survivors that found something to float on, and some that showed up when a great batch of bubbles burst from below – probably a chamber with air that finally collapsed. That’s why I gave them another base: in the basins that will fill when the sea breaks through, there are seven more Alien places, and the Navy wants two ports to supply ships for blowing them out..
“Practice in land attacks on the Others will come soon – we count three of their fortress-nest places on what will be islands. Those won’t be getting any reinforcements, so Rigel and Tanner can work out how to take one out without worrying about watching their backs.
“Back to that report: That pipe is flowing near Fort Winchester, and three more where the sea is trying to break through past the new Haudenosaunee lands. There’s also a place due west of the new Navy base the Navy and engineers are watching and working so it won’t collapse – it’s letting water through like a moderate river, and they don’t want it any faster. Far south of there, a little farther south than” – he pointed on his big map – “Osbro, the southernmost Lost British settlement, we put a village called ‘Salt Springs’. Salt water gushes up out of cracks in the ground caused by Anaph’s big earthquake, and that’s running down west to the basins, too, about what would flow through a five-meter pipe.
“Finally, south of there, some Royal University people who I think are bonkers established a village called ‘Siphon’ – it’s name describes their project; they have huge hoses, about three meters in diameter, that somehow they got a siphon going with. It pulls water out of a lake they widened a fault-line channel to, and empties it into another fault-line channel where it flows west to the basin there. The water they’re sending through met up with the water from Salt Springs last week. I sailed early to join their party, so I was on the last ship to get here.
“The water from the Haudenosaunee is mixing with the water from the place the Navy is watching, too. The water up by Fort Winchester is doing a separate bit. They’ll all join up eventually, once Anaph and Rigel decide to let water in, and where. Since the siphon is working, we’ll have one on the southern side of the Haudenosaunee lands in another month, which will add about ten percent to the total. If it flows at that rate, it will be decades before the basins become new seas and bays.”
Eldon glanced at the list for Devon again. “Devon and Ryan will love this: one of the Alien places has a mine we’re sure is iron – when they get killed out, that’s ours. But for now we followed the formations and found another outcrop, in the block of land just west of the Haudenosaunee grant. It isn’t exactly safe to mine there, since that land isn’t an island quite yet, but we’ve hauled ore back during the snows and will keep hauling till the weather warms up. It should be enough to supply Rigel’s lands here for a few years, but we’ll need the one the Aliens have soon enough.
“The rest is requests for design assessments for bridges and other projects, and other things only engineers love. I’ll have copies of it all for you to take north when you go.”
Oran sat for a moment absorbing what Eldon had related, then asked, “You enjoy keeping track and organizing all that, don’t you?”
Eldon shrugged, then grinned weakly. “Yeah. What can I say? You love to run, I love to organize.”
“Good”, Oran responded, his grin huge. “You can tell it all to Antonio again when he gets down. Tepocah and I are going to go find his people and talk to them. Oh – we’re running...” Eldon’s laughter chased them out the door.
<image of Scouts coming down the cliff in a freight basket>
](/images/smilies/bang.gif "Brick wall ](*,)")
Here I thought I was providing a much-anticipated answer to the question of their identity!
