TRAVELLER (Book 1 in the Brass Pendant Trilogy) (22 page)

BOOK: TRAVELLER (Book 1 in the Brass Pendant Trilogy)
10.34Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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“Keep one for luck, at least,” said Morgan, when he couldn’t convince me to stop giving them away.

“I’ve only got one left,” I said, and I grinned at the expression on his face. I kept the coin though, and I shook my head at the children again as we left the town and walked along the dusty road. The road wasn’t as busy as it had been before the race, but a steady stream of people left the township along with us and we all headed home into the early afternoon sun.

It wasn’t until we left the road and began to climb that we noticed the five young men who left the road also and followed us up the terraced, rocky terrain. Morgan glanced behind him before he looked at me and frowned.

“Keep climbing. We don’t want any trouble where we can be seen from the road,” he said quietly and I nodded and kept climbing quickly as the youths began to gain on us. When we reached a relatively flat area, well out of sight of the road, Morgan stopped, and we waited as the youths approached us with false expressions of friendliness. I looked around me carefully. The ground was reasonably flat in front of me but this ledge fell away sharply on my right to where the road curved around below us.

The youths reached us and they stood in a group directly in front of us.

“What business do you want with us?” Morgan demanded, and the young men glanced at each other and laughed a little.

“We just want to trade stranger. It’s not uncommon in these parts,” one of the men said, and there was more smiling and more laughter.

“We have nothing to trade. Take your business somewhere else,” said Morgan, and his voice held a warning which the youths found even more amusing. I could see these boys weren’t interested in going peacefully about their business today.

“We propose a trade stranger. We take your girl and you…...take a beating,” said one boy, and he stepped towards me as he and his friends laughed again. The boy who’d spoken took hold of my arm roughly and he smirked at Morgan. I frowned and glanced down at the hand around my arm while I shook my head. Bullies were the same in every time segment of every era.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” warned Morgan quietly, but the youth just laughed. I glared at the boy.

“I propose a new trade. How about, we give you this coin and you let us give you the beating instead,” I suggested, and it was Morgan who grinned now as I took my last silver coin out of my pocket and held it out towards the boy who held me by my arm.

The boy took the coin from my hand but he wasn’t interested in keeping it. He threw my coin onto the dusty ground before he deliberately spat on the ground beside it.

“No trade,” he said, before he laughed again. I frowned and looked down at my coin. I was glad he’d spat beside it and not on it. I was taking it home to remind me of this day.

“I tried to warn you. You’re going to be sorry you did that too,” said Morgan, and he shook his head at the boy who was still laughing, as were his friends. I glanced at Morgan and he nodded and it only took me a few minutes to render the boy unconscious on the ground. The other four boys stopped laughing abruptly and they stared at their friend in surprise for a moment before they attacked us as a group.

The youths were strong and healthy, but they couldn’t fight……not like Aldirites. To fight two of them at a time was an easy thing for both Morgan and I, and we were soon fighting only one of them each while two more boys lay semi-conscious and groaning on the dusty ground. We didn’t do them any permanent damage. We’d been taught since childhood to know exactly how much pressure to place on nerves and exactly how hard to hit an opponent. Questers weren’t Tournament Champions, so we were taught how to disable an opponent as well as how to kill them. It wasn’t considered good manners to kill locals unless it was absolutely necessary, especially when we were just passing through their time.

I hit the boy in front of me and he staggered and drew in his breath as I backed him steadily towards the edge of the rocks. I kept my footing and hit the boy again and I was just about to land a blow that would tip him over the ledge when I heard Morgan’s voice from behind me.

“Don’t throw him over there, Liv. He’ll land on the road and cause a scene,” called Morgan and when I glanced at him, Morgan held the last boy at arm’s length and he held him firmly around the throat. I changed my tactics, and my direction, so the boy in front of me was thrown onto the ground by my attack instead of down onto the road. He groaned and rolled over as he clutched his arms around his stomach. Not far from where I stood, Morgan hit the boy he held by the throat and I watched the boy fall backwards against a boulder before he slid very slowly towards the ground. Morgan hit him once more then, making sure there was no chance he’d get up again until we were well and truly gone from this place. I dusted myself off and, when I had to step over a couple of the unconscious youths to reach him, Morgan grinned. I shrugged and shook my head. Morgan dusted himself off too and he picked up my coin from the dusty ground.

“Here; this is yours,” he said, and I smiled and thanked him as he took my hand in his and closed my fingers around the silver coin. Morgan smiled too and he looked into my eyes as he held my hand in his.

“You don’t need this now,” he said suddenly, and he reached out and untied the cloth that had covered my hair. I didn’t move and he was standing very close to me. He let the cloth drop on the ground beside us and I looked into his eyes as he tucked a stray wisp of my hair behind my ear. “You’re beautiful,” he whispered in the old language, before he shook his head slightly and stepped quickly away from me. “Ah….I mean….your hair…..the colour…isn’t found among the locals here, so…..that’s why we had to cover it,” he said quickly, and he was the one who was flustered for a change, instead of me. I’d never seen him like this and I watched him as he hastily pulled his pendant from beneath his shirt and looked at the time on the outer dial. “We’d better go,” he said, and he still sounded flustered. He didn’t look at me at all as he began to climb up the rocks towards the marker again.

I followed him more slowly and I put my coin safely back into my jacket pocket as I watched him thoughtfully and smiled to myself.

When we reached our marker, we changed back into our school uniforms and when we had set our pendants to
Pegasus +2013 rise 183º
, the setting for the toy store marker, we tucked them away again beneath our clothes. Morgan no longer seemed flustered, but he didn’t look into my eyes again, and he didn’t hold my hand either as we travelled back to the twenty first century. We travelled through the pain and the darkness, and I completely forgot we were returning to an unguarded marker. I was too busy wondering if Morgan would ever want to hold my hand again……..

When the darkness became colours and the pain faded slowly away, two small boys watched us appear beside the jigsaw puzzles. They stood beside their grandmother who was complaining under her breath about the air conditioning in the store. She was searching for her glasses in her hand bag as we appeared beside her and, as she didn’t look at us at all, she remained completely oblivious to our time travel entry.

The two small boys, however, watched us with wide eyes as the air patterns slowed down and the temperature rose around us. One of the boys looked impressed by our sudden appearance out of thin air, but the other one looked decidedly unimpressed and it was this boy who spoke to us as we walked innocently past him.

“My dad can do that too,” he said to us smugly, and Morgan stopped and turned around.

“Your father can’t do that,” he said to the boy scornfully. I frowned at Morgan. “Well, he can’t,” Morgan said innocently. I rolled my eyes.

“Stop showing off,” I muttered, and Morgan grinned as we walked towards the checkouts at the front of the store.

We timed our return perfectly to join the crowd of students who walked out of the school gate and we both noticed that the guards who followed us home were more vigilant than usual. They watched us very closely and stayed right on our tail, and they didn’t speak to each other or let their concentration lapse at all.

“That school was so boring today,” said Morgan, and he spoke loudly enough for the guard right behind us to hear him.

“Yes it was,” I agreed, as we tried not to laugh………

Half a clock turn later, I ran down the stairs of my house to find Mirren waiting for me at the front door. I’d changed my clothes and washed my face, and I’d combed and braided my hair neatly before pinning it in a circle at the back of my head. I was particularly looking forward to my weapons class today.

“How was your day, your Highness?” Mirren asked me, with a straight face. I grinned.

“It was very enjoyable. How was your day, Mirren?” I asked her cheerfully.

“Very enjoyable too,” she said, and her face broke into a smile despite her attempts to remain serious. She rolled her eyes. “Come on,” she said, as she opened the front door, and I followed her cheerfully out to the waiting car.

Nothing could spoil my happy mood; not even Jonah’s fussing and bowing as I climbed into the back of the car. Morgan climbed in beside me, and Mirren followed him, leaving Jonah to sit in the front of the car with the guard.

I couldn’t look at Morgan on the way to our class. Every time I glanced at him, he glanced at me too, and he was still trying not to laugh. I had to look away because our driver was one of the guards who’d followed me to school this morning and he kept looking at me suspiciously in the rear view mirror.

Our weapons class was held in a rented industrial shed and we walked through a roller door into a wide open area shielded from the outside world by screens. Large, industrial fans turned in the ceiling and the shed walls smelt of unsealed cement and metal shavings. We were obviously working on our bow skills today as our instructor had set up two cylindrical, human sized targets at the far end of the shed, and they’d been marked with coloured circles at the target zones. There were also various targets suspended from the ceiling by ropes and there were two large, free standing industrial fans blasting air on us as well. Our bow training always involved learning to hit moving and standing targets in different environments, and in different wind conditions. Sometimes, if there was a convenient, and suitably isolated, location nearby, we were taken hunting in order to further hone our skills. In this time segment though, hunting in general wasn’t accepted by the locals, so we used cloth targets, ropes, and fans to practice instead.

I chose a bow from the ones on a rack and Morgan chose one too before we headed to the quivers that stood on stands beside the bow racks.

“Warm up,” barked our instructor, in a loud voice. She was short and unsmiling, and her steely grey hair was braided tightly down her back. She stood behind us with her arms folded and I took an arrow and fitted it to my bow. I glanced at Morgan who’d fitted an arrow to his bow too. He grinned.

“After you,” he said, and I was aware of him watching me as I raised my bow and lined up my target…..

I missed of course. My arrow fell short and our instructor let out her breath sharply and shook her head. I pressed my lips together. How was I supposed to concentrate with Morgan standing right beside me? He was still grinning as he raised his bow and I frowned as his arrow landed perfectly in one of the circular markings on the padded cylinders. I ground my teeth together. Somehow, I’d have to find a way to ignore his presence, and I breathed out slowly as I loaded another arrow determinedly into my bow. I rarely shot my arrows wide of their target and I certainly didn’t intend to miss again….

We practiced for the next clock turn and, when we were down to our last few arrows, our instructor asked us to aim for six small, cloth targets which were swinging from ropes at the far end of the shed.

I’d managed to focus solely on my bow after I missed my first shot and I loaded and released my last few arrows in quick succession. Each arrow lodged itself firmly into one of the tiny, cloth targets and I was finally able to relax as I turned to watch Morgan fit the last of his arrows into his bow. He frowned slightly and, when I smiled at the expression of concentration on his face, he hesitated and adjusted his stance.

This time, it was Morgan’s arrow which fell short of its target and he glanced at me and let out his breath as if it was somehow my fault that he’d missed. I continued to smile. We were even now……..

That night, I sat on my bed and turned my Nomadic Era coin over and over in my hand. Beneath the leather that bound it, my wrist felt too warm again and I held the coin in my palm as I fidgeted absently with the leather bands. The bands themselves felt warmer than usual too and it wasn’t the first time I’d noticed this. My wrist had felt strangely warm on and off over the last few days. I shrugged as I stashed the coin in the pocket of one of my jackets which hung neatly in my closet. My wrist wasn’t painful, just warm, and I doubted it was anything to worry about.

I undressed in the semi darkness and, when I lay in my bed, I smiled to myself because Morgan thought I was beautiful……and tonight, I slept almost straight away……… and I didn’t listen to my music at all………

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER 11
:

We only had two days of school left before it closed for the holidays, which meant we only had two days until we left this segment for good to begin our final challenges. And, on each of those two days, Morgan tried to convince me to miss school again so we could travel somewhere together. He tried everything. He told me he knew of a marker where we could ride the world’s biggest roller coaster, and of a marker where we could eat the best pizza he’d ever tasted. He said he knew of a marker where we could join a tent city peace protest and of a marker where we could go wild yak hunting with a local tribe. He also said he knew of a marker where we could swim in the most beautiful rock pools he’d ever seen and he told me the water was always warm at this marker, and that the sun was always shining. He said the water at this particular marker was perfectly clear and that thousands of tiny, colourful starfish lived in pure white sand on the bottom of those rock pools……I was tempted by that one and I think he could tell I almost gave in, but, at the last minute, I once again refused to travel. My guards were already suspicious and they were being much more vigilant since they’d lost sight of us on Wednesday. They followed us more closely than they’d ever followed me before and, while Morgan assured me he could still lose them without any trouble at all, I didn’t want either of us to lose our pendants. I didn’t want to put Mirren in any danger of being found out either, and I wanted us to spend time with Josh before we had to say goodbye to him for the very last time. Morgan rolled his eyes at this last reason, and he wouldn’t accept it as a valid excuse, but he did suggest it would be kinder not to tell Josh that we weren’t coming back to his school.

BOOK: TRAVELLER (Book 1 in the Brass Pendant Trilogy)
10.34Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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