Village
KASPAR, JOJANNA, AND JORGEN TRUDGED ALONG THE OLD HIGHWAY.
They walked at a steady pace, as they had for the previous two days. Kaspar had never realized how tedious it was to walk everywhere. He had lived his entire life using the horses, carriages and fast ships at his disposal; in fact, the only time he had ever travelled by foot was during a hunt or when taking a stroll through a palace garden. Going more than a few miles by shanks’s mare was not only fatiguing, it was boring.
He glanced back to see how Jorgen was doing. The boy walked behind the two plodding steers. He held a long stick and flicked the animals with it when they attempted to veer off to the side of the road to crop the plants – not that there was an abundance of fodder, but the contrary animals seemed intent on investigating every possible source unless they were constantly prodded.
Kaspar felt anxious to move along, yet resigned to the reality of his situation. He was on foot and alone, save for the company of Jojanna and her son, and without protection, sustenance or experience of this hostile land. What little Jojanna had told him revealed that the area was still reeling from the ravages of the Emerald Queen’s army, even though it had been almost a generation since those terrible events.
The farms and villages had returned quickly, despite the absence of most of the men. Old men and women had eked out their livings until the young had matured enough to work, wed and have more children.
The lack of civil order had lingered; an entire generation of sons had grown up without fathers, and many were orphans. Where once a string of city states had controlled the outlying lands, now chaos ruled. Traditional conventions had been supplanted by the law of warlords and robber barons. Whoever ran the biggest gang became the local sheriff.
Jojanna’s family had survived because of their relative isolation. The local villagers knew the whereabouts of their farm, but few travellers had ever chanced upon it. It had only been through the lucky happenstance of Jorgen’s search for the lost birds that Kaspar’s life had been saved. He could easily have starved to death within a few hours’ walk of a bounty of food otherwise.
As they walked, Kaspar could see a mountain range rising to the west, while the land to the east fell away and turned brown in the distance, where it bordered a desert. Had he stayed a captive with the Bentu he would have become a slave; or if he had planned his escape badly, he’d most likely have died in the arid lands between those distant mountains and the range of hills along whose spine this old road ran.
He caught sight of a shimmering in the distance. ‘Is that a river?’
‘Yes, it’s the Serpent River,’ Jojanna said. ‘Beyond it lies the Hotlands.’
Kaspar asked, ‘Do you know where the City of the Serpent River lies?’
‘Far to the south, on the Blue Sea.’
‘So I need to go downriver,’ Kaspar concluded.
‘If that is where you wish to be, yes.’
‘Where I wish to be is home,’ said Kaspar with an edge of bitterness in his voice.
‘Tell me about your home,’ asked Jorgen.
Kaspar glanced over his shoulder and saw the boy grinning, but his irritation died quickly. To his surprise, he found himself fond of the boy. As ruler of Olasko, Kaspar knew he would eventually have to marry to produce a legitimate heir, but it had never occurred to him that he might actually like his children. For an idle moment he wondered if his father had liked him.
‘Olasko is a sea-faring nation,’ said Kaspar. ‘Our capital city, Opardum, rests against great cliffs, with a defensible yet busy harbour.’ As he plodded along, he continued, ‘It’s on the eastern coast of a large –’ he realized he didn’t know the word for continent in the local language, ‘– a large place called Triagia. So, from the citadel –’ he glanced at them and saw that neither Jojanna or Jorgen looked puzzled by the Keshian word ‘– from the citadel, you can see spectacular sunrises over the sea.
‘To the east are table lands and along the river are many farms, quite a few like your own …’
He passed the time telling them of his homeland, and at one point Jorgen asked, ‘What did you do? I mean, you’re not a farmer.’
Kaspar said, ‘I was a hunter,’ a fact he had already shared with the boy, when he dressed out a slaughtered steer to hang in the summer house – as he thought of the underground cave with a door they used to store perishables. ‘And I was a soldier. I travelled.’
Jorgen asked, ‘What’s it like?’
‘What’s what like?’
‘Travelling.’
‘Like this,’ he said, ‘A lot of walking, or sailing on a ship, or riding a horse.’
‘No,’ said Jorgen, laughing. ‘I mean what were the places like?’
‘Some like these Hotlands,’ answered Kaspar, ‘but other places are cool and rainy all the time …’ He told them of the nations around the Sea of Kingdoms, and talked of the more entertaining and colourful things he had seen. He kept them amused and distracted until they crested a rise and saw the village of Heslagnam.
Kaspar realized that he had expected something a bit more prosperous, and felt disappointed. The largest building in sight was obviously the inn, a two-storey, somewhat ramshackle wooden building with an improbable lime-coloured roof. A single chimney belched smoke and the establishment boasted a stable in the rear and a large stabling yard. There were two other buildings that appeared to be shops, but without signs to herald their merchandise. Kaspar was at a loss to know what one could or could not buy in the village of Heslagnam.
Jojanna instructed Jorgen to herd the two steers into the stable yard while she and Kaspar went inside.
Once through the door, Kaspar was even less impressed. The chimney and hearth had been fashioned from badly mortared stones and the ventilation was poor; as a result, the establishment was reeking with the odours of cooking, sweaty men, spilled ale and other liquids, mouldy straw, and other less identifiable smells.
The inn was presently unoccupied, save for a large man carrying in a keg from somewhere at the rear of the building. He put it down and said, ‘Jojanna! I didn’t expect to see you for another week.’
‘I’m selling two steers.’
‘Two?’ said the man, wiping his hands on a greasy apron. He was a thick-necked, broad-shouldered man with an enormous belly, and he walked with a rolling gait. He bore a handful of scars on his forearms, exposed by rolled-up sleeves, and Kaspar recognized him as a former soldier or mercenary. He could see that under the fat lay enough muscle to cause trouble.
He looked at Kaspar as he spoke to the woman. ‘I don’t even need one. I’ve got a quarter still hanging in the cold room and it’s aged pretty nice. I could maybe take one off your hands, stake it out in the back, then slaughter it next week, but not two.’
Jojanna said, ‘Sagrin, this is Kaspar. He’s been working at the farm for his keep, filling in for Bandamin.’
With an evil grin, the man said, ‘I expect he has.’
Kaspar
