Teleporter (a Hyllis family story #2) (13 page)

A burly man Daussie had not seen before entered the wagon circle from the farmhouse side. He looked around, saw Norton, and headed that way. Daussie watched him because he looked like he had such an intent purpose. Norton was talking to Arco and Lizeth, Daussie presumed about the defense of the camp and caravan.

When the burly man arrived, Norton turned and greeted him. They shook hands and fell to talking. Both looked like they were upset and Arco looked quite concerned.
More bad news?
Daussie wondered.
Or just further discussion of the existing bad news?

Henry Roper, from the next wagon, approached and looked into the stew, taking an appreciative whiff. “That smells good! Is it true that you folks are planning to try to cook for the entire caravan if people want it?”

Daussie nodded, “We’ve been in the restaurant business and working as healers. We probably aren’t very good traders so it seems like we should try to keep cooking.” She pointed her chin at the man with Norton, “Is that Mr. Prichard?”

Henry turned to look, then nodded. “Yes, usually he’s jovial and friendly. It looks like he’s as worried as we are about the gangsters that are taking over these parts.”

“Do you still think our guards will be able to protect us?”

“If anyone can. I guess it depends on how many of the raiders there are and how well trained and armed they are.” He glanced around, suddenly morose. “Even high quality guards can’t protect you if the attackers have enough men.”

The tension in Daussie stomach increased again, “Do you think their… band is big enough to overwhelm us?”

A distant look in his eyes as he studied Norton and Prichard, Henry only said, “I don’t know…” He turned and slowly wandered toward the two leaders.

As Daussie looked on, it appeared that Norton and Prichard were having a serious disagreement. From the expressions on their faces and the way they appeared to be throwing their words at one another, neither party was happy with the other’s stance. Daussie desperately wanted to know what they were talking about.

A moment or so later, their conversation broke up when Prichard suddenly turned and left, his spine stiff. Norton looked after him for a moment or two, then his shoulders sagged unhappily. Arco shrugged, said a few words to Norton and turned to make a circuit around the circled wagons. Lizeth started walking towards the guard wagon next to Daussie.

When Lizeth arrived at the guard wagon, Daussie said, “What was going on over there?”

Lizeth eyed her, as if unsure what to say. Then she shrugged, “A disagreement over what should be done about the raiders.”

Heart in her throat, Daussie asked, “What did they decide to do?”

Lizeth grimaced, “Nothing,” she said darkly.

“Nothing!” Daussie’s mind whirled, “What does
that
mean? Surely we’re not just going to let them…?”

“No. We’ll protect ourselves. The Prichards will protect
themselves
. Hopefully we’ll all live through it.”

“Oh,” Daussie said. “But… what was the argument about?”

“Prichard wanted us all to get together and take the fight to the raiders.”

“Oh,” Daussie said, her head spinning with questions she didn’t really know how to ask.
Who normally protected the farmers from people like this? Is there somebody whose job it is to take on raiders? Or is it really supposed to be someone like the Prichards and the Nortons getting together to do it? Why haven’t I ever wondered about things like this before?

Daum and Tarc arrived back at the same time. Tarc had a big strap of deadfall limbs he’d collected in the nearby woods. Daum had a couple of bags of food suspended over the withers of their older black horse. He started putting potatoes, cabbages, onions, carrots, and some kind of meat into the trailer for the next night’s meal. Daussie said, “Dad, who’s supposed to stop men like the ones who’ve been attacking the farms?”

Daum looked up at her and frowned. A thoughtful expression on his face, he resumed putting away food. Just when Daussie thought he was going to ignore her question, he said, “It’s not like it’s anybody’s job in particular. I heard that Sheriff Walter had an agreement with the nearby farmers. They paid a tax when they brought their goods to market and in exchange he said he would give them protection.” He shrugged, “Even if Walter was still alive, it seems like this band is likely bigger than he could have driven away with his deputies.”

“So
no one’s
going to do anything about them?”

Daum sighed, “I don’t know. From what I hear, these men are charging for ‘protection.’ If so, then they are acting like they think
they’re
people who are supposed to protect the farmers from other raiders. With Walterston powerless at present… that might not be such a bad deal.”

“But,” Daussie said, horrified, “when they didn’t get paid by those farms, they
killed
the men and, and…” She couldn’t bring herself to say what she thought had happened to the women.

“I know,” Daum said, “I know. It’s bad. But over time it may settle down and stabilize. Sheriff Walter was a bully initially, but finally became a bully we could live with. Sheriff Farley is starting off ugly too.” Daum glanced off into the distance, “In the olden days there were higher levels of government than local sheriffs. If the Sheriff didn’t treat his people right, the upper level of the government came in and straightened him out. But that doesn’t happen nowadays,” he said wistfully

“Mr. Prichard came and talked to Mr. Norton while you were gone,” Daussie said. “Lizeth told me that Mr. Prichard wants us to team up with him to go out and attack the raiders.”

Daum looked worried, “What did Norton say?”

“I guess he didn’t want to do it. They both looked pretty angry before Prichard left.”

Daum looked somewhat relieved, “A
lot
of people could get hurt trying to attack a group of trained soldiers like that.”

“So we’re just going to leave these people to…” Daussie didn’t know how to finish her sentence. She felt the farmers were being left to deal with something horrific, but she didn’t know how to express it.

Daum had finished putting away the food. He stood looking at Daussie as if he weren’t quite sure what to say. He walked closer and finally said in a low voice, “I know it seems awful, but we can’t help
everyone
in this world. We can’t feed everyone who doesn’t have enough to eat and we can’t protect everyone who’s being threatened by someone like these raiders.”

“But…” Daussie’s throat worked as she struggled to come up with something to say.

Daum put a hand on her shoulder. “If we feed everyone who’s hungry, we’ll starve ourselves. If we try to protect everyone in danger, eventually we’ll be hurt trying to protect them.” He shrugged, “Probably sooner rather than later. We’re not trained fighters.”

Daussie turned and buried her head in his shoulder. As he put his arms around her, she said, “I think we should have stayed in Walterston.”

Daum patted her on the back. “I’d like to tell you that I’m sure you’re wrong… but I’m not.”

As the sun set, the caravaners brought their teams over and herded them into the center of the circle. Many of the caravaners came by to avail themselves of Eva’s vegetable stew and grilled sausage. They seemed pleased, commenting that it was well worth the cost of the meal to get something that good and not have to make it themselves.

Once the caravaners had been fed, Daussie found herself sitting next to Tarc eating her own stew and sausage. They were both leaning up against one of their wagon’s wheels. She started their conversation. “Dad was saying earlier today that you have really good hearing? I’ve never noticed that you can hear any better than anyone else.”

Tarc snorted, “No, I can’t
hear
any better than anyone else. What did you want him to say? ‘Hey Lieutenant Arco, Tarc there has a special talent that lets him tell where people are. You should use him as a night watchman.’ This is going to be a huge pain in the ass! You know how I hate waking up in the middle of the night.”

Daussie’s eyes widened as understanding rushed over her. “Oh! You mean like… how we can tell where the lamps are?”

“Yeah, lamps. And the sun, and fires, essentially anything warm including horses and rats… and people. It’s how I could tell where the people were so we could sneak through town that night we dropped off the dead guards.”

“Oh,” Daussie said, thinking back to that night and how Tarc had turned this way and that to avoid running into people. He’d been pretty successful up until they’d gotten trapped when Krait’s men came in both ends of the alley.

Tarc said, “How far away can
you
feel people?”

“I don’t know,” Daussie said, wondering herself.

“Close your eyes. Then start noticing where the sun, the fires, the horses, and the people are. At a distance, they’ll get fuzzy and hard to detect.” He paused, then said, “The hotter something is, the farther away you should be able to sense it. The sun is really, really hot, so even though it’s incredibly far away, we can tell where it is right through the earth. Everything has a little bit of heat in it, so you can even feel things at room temperature or below if they’re pretty near to you. Remember how you could feel that copper inside Dad’s hand that first day?”

Daussie had closed her eyes. She settled her head back against the wagon wheel and reached out with her ghost. The sun was just below the western horizon. Eva’s cook fire, just coals now, was very easily detected, but so were small fires by several of the other wagons. There was a big hot spot and several smaller hotspots over in the Prichard’s house. The mules, horses, and oxen that made up the caravan’s animals were easy to detect as they were large, warm and nearby. As Daussie thought about it, she could detect the people of the caravan, beside their wagons, a few inside their tents, and two up in the shooting platform over the guard’s wagon. Daussie continued examining the world with her ghost. There were various sized animals in the Prichard’s barn and she could detect people inside the big house.

Daussie said wonderingly, “I can feel the people in the Prichard’s house!” She counted, “There are fifteen of them.” She scanned around the very periphery of the farthest distance she could reach. “And three of the cattle in that field to the south… And the man in the woods to the southeast.”

Daussie had brought her senses in closer to wonderingly explore their own wagon, which was easy, and the next several wagons which were fuzzier. She could readily feel around inside each of the compartments of their own wagon, which she suddenly realized would be a great help when they couldn’t remember which compartment they had put some important object in. In the next two wagons it was harder, but she could still easily tell where the arrows, versus the spears, versus the swords were in the guard’s wagon.

Daussie thought she heard admiration in Tarc’s voice when he said, “
That’s
even further than I can sense things!” Suddenly intense, he asked, “Are you sure about there being a man in the woods?”

Daussie blinked. She had simply assumed that Tarc must be much better than she was at anything to do with the family’s talents. She felt a small flutter of hope to realize that there might be something she could do better than he could. She wondered if this could mean that she might be better at feeling things inside of people than he was. Maybe she wasn’t destined to be a second rate healer, if her finer ability to detect things made her a better diagnostician?

Then, reality crashed back in as she realized why he was interested in the man in the woods. She felt a sudden twist in her gut and hoped she wasn’t going to throw up again. Pushing her ghost senses outward again she felt towards the woods. At least she was fairly sure that there were trees there. Trees, not being particularly warm, were hard to detect at such a distance, but there were vague fuzzy objects out there that weren’t present in the open field closer to the caravan.

There it was. A warm body, the size of a man or a small pig, but upright. So, a man. “Yes. It’s the right temperature for a man and the right height. It couldn’t be an animal unless there’s an animal in these woods that stands upright like a man.” Hoping against hope, she asked, “Why would a man be out there anyway?”
Perhaps there’s some innocent reason to be out there?

Distractedly but unhappily, Tarc said, “Scouting us.”

Daussie opened her eyes and looked at her brother, “For them?” she said, meaning the raiders.

Tarc had turned his eyes thoughtfully in the direction of the woods. He nodded, confirming Daussie’s worst fears. He climbed to his feet, “I’m gonna walk out that way a little bit so I can sense him myself.”

“But!” It had sounded like a terrible idea when he said it, but Daussie wasn’t sure why. “What if… what if he… shoots an arrow at you?!”

Tarc glanced back at her, “If he’s beyond where I can sense him, he’s got to be more than two hundred meters away. That’s a
really
long bowshot so his chance of hitting me would be vanishingly small. Besides, it’s dark. I’ll be able to detect him long before he can see me and I’ll be able to sense any arrows coming and dodge out of the way.”

Daussie got up and watched Tarc work his way between the wagons and walk out into the field a ways. She kept her senses on the man in the woods, ready to call out to Tarc if the man started to move. The man didn’t do anything but one of the guards up on the shooting platform over the guard wagon called out, “
Boy
, where are you goin’?”

Tarc kept slowly walking. “Just out for a little fresh air,” he called back.

The guard called after him in an irritated tone, “Well turn around and get your fresh air on the way back to the wagons you dumb little shit. I guess you haven’t been paying any attention to the fact that there’s some bandits out there who’d just as soon kill you as talk to you?”

From the way Tarc stiffened, Daussie could tell he was pissed about being talked to like he was a child, but he did turn and walk back. Working his way back between the wagons, he said, “You’re right Dauss, there
is
a guy out there watching us.”

“What should we do?” she asked, hoping he had
some
idea.

“I don’t know. I’d like to tell the guards because they’d probably have some good ideas. But if we told them there was a man out in the woods, they’d want to know how we knew it. That’s
if
they even believed us!” After a moment he turned and looked around. “I’ll tell Dad. Maybe he’ll know what to do.”

Daussie’s eyes followed Tarc as he walked away. Deciding that she couldn’t bear not knowing what was going on, she followed him.

Daum was talking to a couple of the other caravaners while eating his dinner. Daussie suspected that eating that savory smelling stew and sausage in front of them was a subtle form of advertising for Eva’s business. The three men were talking about the raiders. One said, “I told Norton that we needed to get up early tomorrow so we can get the hell out of here before those bastards come after us.”

The other said, “If they stop us for a ‘tax,’ I just hope it’s a reasonable one. Just starting out in the extortion business they may not realize that setting their taxes too high will keep caravans from coming through again. Ruin their future business.”

Daum raised his eyebrows, “We pay taxes to sons of bitches like these guys?!”

The second man nodded morosely, “It ain’t good but paying taxes sure as hell beats being dead. I’m just worried they’ll charge so much we’ll lose money on this trip. Killing the golden goose and all that.”

Daum noticed Tarc and raised his eyebrows in question.

Tarc jerked his head off to the side indicating he wanted to talk in private.

A minute or so later Daum broke off his conversation with the two men which had mostly consisted of bitter complaining and morose dismay about the situation. Daussie felt appalled that they hadn’t even mentioned the circumstances of the local farmers. Even if the caravaners couldn’t do anything for the locals, she thought they should have acknowledged the straits the farmers were in.

Daum headed back towards their own wagon and Tarc joined him. Daussie trailed a few steps behind. Tarc said as if a little awed, “Daussie can sense people even farther away than I can.”

Daum turned and glanced back at Daussie, lifting an eyebrow.

She nodded to confirm what Tarc had said.

Daum said, “That’s great! If her sensitivity is really high, it should help a lot examining patients.”

Tarc obviously hadn’t thought of that because he said, “Huh, I guess that’s so. But the thing right now is that she noticed a guy standing in the woods just southwest of us.”

“Crap,” Daum said in a dismayed tone. “So, you’re thinking that the raiders already know we’re here?”

Tarc nodded, “I don’t think leaving early in the morning is going to work.”

Daum sighed, “You’re probably right. If only there was some way to let the guards know, maybe they’d know what to do about it.”

Tarc said, “What if we said… something like that mom sometimes ‘sees things,’ like the fortune tellers that sometimes work the market. And that she thinks there is a guy out in the woods watching us…”

Daum shook his head, “Even before we joined the caravan, Norton told me he thought that all the fortune tellers were fakes. He said he’d never let one join his caravan ‘cause he didn’t like them ripping people off.”

“Maybe the guards don’t feel the same way?”

“Maybe, but I wouldn’t want word getting back to Norton.”

“But Dad, our lives might depend on this! Maybe we shouldn’t worry so much about what Norton might think.”

“You might be right, but I really don’t think it will help. Supposing the guards did believe in fortune tellers, what could they do about it? If they started heading out that way, the guy would probably just fade away into the forest. It’s dark and, even if he didn’t leave, he’d be really hard to find.”

“Not if I went with them!” Tarc said.

“And why do you think they would decide to take you with them?!”

They had arrived back at their own wagon. Tarc appeared to be chewing on the question Daum had just posed, while Daum looked around. He said, “Where’s Eva?”

Daussie said, “She told me she was going to try to go around and get to know some of the women in the caravan once dinner was finished.”

Daum grunted, “Good idea. Too bad there aren’t very many young people for you guys to get to know.” He looked at Tarc, “If I were you I’d try to get some sleep. The guards are going to use you for the watch between midnight and early morning. That’s when they say an attack would be most likely.”

Tarc said, “You should tell them that Daussie can ‘hear’ even better than I can.”

Daum glanced at her, “I’m not sure they’d want a young girl standing a watch.”

Daussie said, “Why not?! They’ve got that girl guard, Lizeth. I’ll bet they trust her to stand a watch.”

Daum frowned, “But, whoever’s standing a watch is at risk of the raiders sneaking up and attacking them. Tarc says that Lizeth is deadly with that sword.”

“Nobody’s going to sneak up on me!”

“
I
know that Daussie, but they don’t. Maybe after Tarc
proves
that he can hear better than they can, then they’ll want to have you out there listening too.”

Tarc had been frowning off into the distance during this conversation. Now he said, “What if I snuck out of camp and went to check on that guy in the woods? I could creep up on him and…”

Daum interrupted, “No! What if he hears you coming? Remember, he’s a trained soldier!”

Tarc frowned, “What makes you think he’s a trained soldier?”

“These guys have got to be Krait’s men. The ones we drove out of town. They hadn’t gotten set up yet by the time the Nortons came through on their way to Walterston, but they’re set up now.”

Tarc shrugged, “Even if that’s true, there’s still hardly any risk. First, I’ll go out when the moon’s down and it’s really dark. I’ll be able to see with my ghost, but he won’t know I’m coming. Second, even in the dark I’ll be able to tell whether there are any twigs or branches that I might step on.
He’ll
be in a lot more danger than I will.”