Wayward Soldiers (16 page)

CHAPTER 20

What the raiders of Uman hadn’t stolen, they destroyed. Crates of fruit had been trampled and sacks of flour cut open and left to spill onto the ground were just a couple of the head-scratching sights. The evidence was clear that someone completely lacking common sense led them.

The idiots even spoiled the town’s main well by tossing several dead bodies into it. Thankfully, Boaz came across a smaller well on the town’s outskirts that we used to replenish our supplies.

Despite the careless destruction of so much, we still managed to recover a few things worth taking with us. Nason came across a small cache of crossbows along with a barrel of quarrels. Sivan found a couple of sacks of rice. Ira some rope. Dekar a decent map. Damaris some feed for the animals. The two wagons from Uman still in good enough shape to use hauled the young and elderly that were now my responsibility.

We made it out of town with just enough time to manage another five miles before night fell. Those five miles seemed like a hundred due to the silence that haunted them.

Uman had a dour effect on everyone. It was a reminder that we could not completely run away from danger, no matter how far we traveled.

* * *

That night at camp, the priest from Uman gathered everyone not on watch into a large circle. He led fervent prayers and hopeful songs, shedding what looked like tears throughout. Just about everyone joined in during the refrains.

It reminded me of how that ragged priest of Molak had an immediate and positive impact on my group of veterans traveling home after the Geneshan War. Hard men had lifted their voices in song and their hearts in prayer, eager for spiritual peace when they could find no other.

Just as it was then, I recognized the impact of his efforts. Most people needed to believe their gods had not abandoned them.

I wasn’t most people.

I tried to stick around when things started, mostly as a gesture of goodwill to those more religious in our group. However, I could only take so much before I had to separate myself. This time Ava joined me. While I had enjoyed the company of Captain Nehab before, I much preferred my sister’s.

As we walked away, she whispered. “You had me worried.”

“About?”

“That you were going to sit through all of that and I’d have to do the same or risk being the only one to leave. Or worse, that you had found religion.”

I snorted. “Like that would ever happen.” I glanced over my shoulder. “Looks like my kids might have though.”

My son and daughter sat beside the priest as he spoke.

“Nah,” said Ava. “They’re just curious, I think.”

We found a log far out past the pickets stationed around our camp. We sat there for a long time in silence, enjoying each other’s company. For a little while it almost felt like we were kids again in the woods, hiding out in our secret place.

By Molak, we had come a long way since then.

CHAPTER 21

The next morning, I woke earlier than usual. If my worries were bad before, yesterday’s influx of people only made them worse. I knew it was the right thing to keep taking people in. However, we had more mouths to feed as a result, many of which would be able to contribute very little on a day-to-day basis due to health or age. The more I thought about our situation, the more stressed I became.

I drilled everyone extra hard. I figured if I had to suffer, I’d make others suffer with me. Misery loved company and I was feeling lonely.

I heard a few mutterings of me being cruel or lacking compassion by not taking it easy on everyone after the day before.

Maybe they had a point.

My extra drills did have one positive effect. By the time we got back on the road, their loathing of me supplanted part of the numbness from Uman. Sometimes it paid for the man in charge to be the bad guy.

I wondered if that had been General Balak’s strategy.

We stopped for lunch.

Dekar ran the squads through a short teamwork drill. I decided to remain absent after suffering their sore attitude all morning. It was good to have them dislike me in the short term, but I knew it was possible to take it too far.

Again, I thought of Balak.

I watched the activity from a distance, pretending disinterest. What I saw gave me pride. Squad leaders decided on their own to give the people from Uman recently assigned to their group an important task within their unit. Everyone made sure their new member was successful, thereby building confidence in their capabilities. Such behavior confirmed that appointments of those squad leaders had not been mistakes.

I grunted when I realized whose squad finished the drills first. Reuma, onetime employee of the Soiled Dove, had been my most controversial choice as squad leader.

I initially received a lot of push back from her appointment, especially from the men who now took orders from a woman they once paid to have a good time with. The men had gotten over their apprehension after finishing first in drills for three straight days.

Success eased many prejudices.

“What’re you looking at, Pa?”

I turned away from the squads. Zadok set down his skin of water to wipe his brow.

“Nothing. Just thinking how there are some hidden talents among us. Sort of a shame, really.”

“You mean you wish the war was still going on?”

“No. Nothing like that. It’s just sort of sad that those talents don’t always translate to something that doesn’t involve one person trying to kill another.” I paused. “Ready?”

He withdrew the dagger I had given him that first night I returned to Denu Creek. We had gotten in the habit of practicing every day. The irony of my previous comment to him wasn’t lost on me as Zadok got into the stance I had shown him when wielding the weapon.

He was a fast learner.

Zadok and Myra both participated in weapon drills with others, but I refused to assign either to squads. If for some reason we had to fight, they’d be next to me or someone I greatly trusted.

Zadok and I began, weaving about while searching for an opening in the other’s guard. I let him use his dagger while I used a blunted piece of wood about the same length.

Thoughts of holding my son soon after he was born and snuggling his small body against my chest came to mind. I had several, private one-way conversations with him then, telling him all the things I would teach him. How to be a farmer. How to be a husband. The nuances of what it meant to be a man. Not one of them had involved maiming or killing someone.

“You’re learning fast,” I said after Zadok avoided my first two moves, succumbing to the third.

“You beat me though.”

“But you aren’t falling for the obvious stuff anymore. That’s good.”

I had to stop myself before I added something like ‘Before long you’ll be knifing people with the best of them.’

Not exactly something I wanted to say to my son.

“I still lost. Doesn’t matter how someone beat me. Dead is dead.”

Zadok spoke with such a morose attitude, I frowned.

“Sorry. I’ve just been thinking a lot about Uman.”

“Oh?”

“I overheard Myra and Evran talking. Evran said there had been veterans from the Byzan Wars living in town.”

“That’s not surprising. Those are the wars Sivan served in.”

He bunched his face in confusion. “Why were we able to beat the raiders who came at us while they couldn’t beat the ones that attacked them?”

“That’s a good question. Why do you think Uman should have defeated the raiders?”

“They seemed to have had more going for them than we did in Denu Creek. More veterans. Twice as many people willing to fight. They seemed closer as a group too, not all the in-fighting Denu Creek had because of Jareb. Plus, hardly anyone had died from the eruptions. They just got sick.”

“All good reasons. So why didn’t the people of Uman win?”

He paused, thinking. Then after a moment shrugged. “I really don’t know.”

I spat, not so much angry at the people of Uman, but frustrated that they didn’t see what was so obvious to me. “They were comfortable. Rather than prepare for danger, they thought they’d build themselves a utopia. Reacting to a threat is never as efficient as planning for one ahead of time. All those efforts of the men dead in the streets were admirable, but it was too little too late. Sometimes when you’ve been around something so long, you can fool yourself into believing the world really is the way you see it. I guess a bit of cynicism goes a long way toward never getting caught up in that sort of thing. I’ve always had my fair share of that. And the cynic in me has only grown over the years, especially the last few months, to ever think things will end up all right.”

“If you had been in Uman, they would have won.”

“Perhaps. Perhaps not. It does seem like war is following me wherever I go though.”

I wondered if I’d have to cross the distant sea to escape it. But chances are it’d follow me there too, have me engaged in some massive naval conflict.

Zadok met my eyes as if he was reading the bitterness and resignation I felt. “I know a lot of bad has happened to you, to both of us, but a lot of good has happened too, Pa. You saved me and Myra from Jareb. Aunt Ava is with us even though you thought you wouldn’t see her again. Ira and Dekar are like the uncles I always hoped Uncle Uriah would be. We’ve got lots of friends now too like Damaris, Sivan, Nason, Boaz, Dinah, and Abigail. And even though I might not be close enough to call everyone else a friend, we get along now. No one treats us like they used to.”

“Saving their lives probably has something to do with that,” I muttered.

“Who cares what it took to change people’s minds, so long as it changed?”

I chuckled. “Are you saying I should be an optimist?”

He shrugged. “It wouldn’t hurt.”

“Don’t hold your breath.”

“I guess I’ll be the optimist then. I can see all the good you’ve done and all the blessings we have, even if you can’t.”

“I see them, son. It’s just not easy to look past the bad. But keep doing what you’re doing. Maybe one day your optimism will wear off on me.”

I put an arm around Zadok.

We gazed out at a land that barely seemed real. The few specks of green sprinkling the bleak countryside of low hills with patches of rock and dead pines would soon be nothing more than an autumn come early.

However, the false autumn was absent of the vibrant colors most look forward to enjoying before the harsh winter months begin. I searched for the season’s purples, maroons, reds, and yellows in the landscape, but found none. If they were there, they resided under the dozens of shades of brown tinged with the ugly orange sunlight from above.

“What are you thinking about now?” he asked.

I waved my hand over to the barren landscape. “Wondering if the artifact affected the soil. We need to figure that out wherever we settle down. Otherwise, things are going to be pretty grim if we can’t grow anything to eat.”

Then there was the fact that water could become an issue soon.

I left that unsaid.

“You’ll figure it out.”

“You sure about that?”

“Optimism, Pa.”

Easier said than done. “Right.”

* * *

No one could say my inability to be a good father resulted from a lack of effort on my part, especially when it came to doing things I had no desire to do.

I spent the rest of the day and the entirety of the next working on my optimism. Someone spilled water from their canteen and rather than jump in and curse their clumsiness, laying a guilt trip on how every little bit was crucial to our survival, I just said, “Maybe it will help some of those roots hold on a bit longer.”

That was just one of many examples where father tried to emulate son. The looks I got in response to my efforts were almost worth the trouble on my part. Ira went so far as to ask if I needed to ride in the back of the wagon for a spell as I must be coming down with something. He made the observation from a distance as if he worried he might catch my new attitude.

* * *

Ava and I walked beside Dekar as he drove the lead wagon. We had just gotten underway for the day, walking down a narrow road with hills on our right and a sharp drop into a ravine on our left. Every mile or so, we’d get a break from the mostly bare hills and come across a patch of thick trees.

Sivan galloping in from the south quickly took our attention away from the landscape.

He pulled up hard on the reins wearing a worried look. “Small band of raiders are up ahead. About thirty men. All mounted. They were wearing blue sashes at their waists like the raiders from Uman.”

I swore.

I was just about to ask my first follow-up question when a holler came from behind. Ira’s mount pounded the earth heading toward me from our back trail.

I swore again. “This can’t be good.”

“Atta way to state the obvious, Big Brother.”

I gave Ava a sour look which she returned with a smile.

Ira came to a stop. “Forty men on horseback, all wearing blue sashes, are coming up our back trail. They’ll be here in less than ten minutes.”

Though the pessimist in me had taken a backseat to the bright-eyed optimist the last couple of days, it hadn’t been napping. It kicked the optimist to the side of the road and took full control over my mind, recalling contingencies, plans, and strategies.

“What’s the plan, Ty?” asked Ira.

“I’m thinking they’ve done something like this before, probably in this same spot since the road is too narrow to get our wagons in circles.”

“There’s a place about a mile ahead where we could get them into position to better defend ourselves,” said Sivan.

I cursed once more. That’d be cutting things close, but we’d be much more vulnerable where we were. “Ira, take as many men as you can on horseback. The best with bows. Get up the road as fast as you can to where Sivan said that clearing is. Do whatever you can to stop them from reaching that point. Fall back only when Dekar has the wagons in position and you can take cover behind them.”

He wheeled and started yelling orders. Panic ensued, but quickly settled as everyone remembered their drills. Ira and twelve others galloped up the road moments later, most riding double due to our lack of mounts.

I yelled out to the others. “Everyone, climb onto the wagons. Pile on however you can. Comfort isn’t important. Adults, make sure the kids stay on.” I moved up beside Dekar. “Drive the wagons hard as you can and get everyone into position at the first clearing you see. Should be a mile up the road. Understand?”

“Got it.”

Good old Dekar. He knew when to ask questions and when to just do what he was told. Ava however, wasn’t so easy.

I was at the back of our wagon, looking for a quiver and bow. I found them quickly and then slung two crossbows over my right shoulder when she spun me around.

“I’m coming with you.”

“What?” I said, doing my best to play dumb.

“I’m not going to let you go off and get killed.”

“Getting killed isn’t part of my plan,” I said in a low voice before nodding and smiling at Myra and Zadok who looked on just out of earshot. I hoped.

She looked at the weapons in my arms, shook her head, and grabbed two crossbows of her own before the wagons started rolling again. “That’s never your plan, but I’ve lost track of how many times you’ve come close to doing so. Now let’s get to whatever you had in mind.”

“Ava, I need you with the kids,” I hissed before heeling and toeing it down the line of wagons.

I didn’t want her to follow, but I didn’t exactly have time to stand around arguing either.

“The kids will have plenty of people looking out for them. Besides, I’ll do more good for them by making sure you stay alive.”

I ran past the last wagon in line with a brief nod to the driver. I did my best to wear a confident smile. He returned it with a shaky wave.

“Losing an aunt too won’t make things any easier,” I told her.

“True. But Hamath was usually the one to go with you when you’d go off and try to play hero on your own. He’s not here, and you already gave orders to Dekar and Ira. That leaves me.”

She had me there. Hamath was the one who kept me from getting too overly ambitious. It was hard to find a better friend than him.

“What’s your plan?” she asked.

“We’re stalling those coming up from behind.”

“Ira rode off with almost a dozen people on horseback. And you were planning to run off by yourself on foot with a bow and a couple of crossbows? Are you an idiot?”

“Hey, I’ve got you now. What can possibly go wrong?” I joked.

I halted at the base of a hill we had passed moments before. It was about eighty feet high, and mostly bare except for a couple of dead bushes and a few outcroppings of rock near the top. I chose it since I thought it would provide a good view of the road once we got into the position I had in mind.

“Famous last words,” she huffed. A curse followed as we began the short climb. “Those weapon drills aren’t doing much for my conditioning.”

I grunted while skirting around some loose rock. “Maybe I should increase the pace.”