Chapter Twenty-Eight

Three-and-one-half days later, Tarn and Torrocka stood onshore wringing their furs free of saltwater. High overhead the spring sun was a welcomed sight after nearly a week underground. This far south only bits and pieces of snow remained where the sun could not penetrate the deepest forest shadows. That snow showed at all was an indication of how cold and how long the winter had been. Only a few of the oldest people who lived in this climate had ever seen snow previously. Dark, heavy clouds moved across the sun, blocking its warm rays, reminding all that the rainy season had arrived. Measuring the cloudy threat, Tarn found his spear cache and turned to Torrocka.

"To what city do the slavers hasten?"

"I should think Galpernia or Kordava."

"Which be closer?"

"Galpernia. We must cross the marshlands and head southeast through the Wild Wood Forest. The rains will make crossing the marshlands slow and wet, but we'll save a ten-day's travel rather than skirt its perimeter. Staying to the boundary, to the high parts, would be the easiest. The southern forest is inhabited by warlike tribes that won't take kindly to our presence."

"Come. We leave," said Tarn.

Ignoring Torrocka's anxious expression, he melted into the forest's green embrace without a backward glance. The people of his village had to eat on the journey south to the slave markets, which meant their captors had to purchase provisions. A chain of hobbled mountain slaves was bound to leave impressions wherever it passed. It made sense they would travel the easiest roads, and Tarn planned to make up some lost days be taking the most direct route. Straight through, stopping only where his village's captors would re-supply.

Tarn set a gruelling pace through the lush forest with nary a complaint from Torrocka. They evaded detection by travelling mostly at night and steering wide of the small villages bordering the marshlands. Deep pools covered with lichen and water lilies were broken only by shallower flood plains that made the marshes impossible to navigate on foot. Vines and fuzzy green moss hung from trees with deformed, gnarled branches. Their ends dipped toward the stagnant green marsh waters, never touching the calm surface as though they feared to do so. Thick snakes twice as long as a man lounged on tree branches, often indecipherable from the vines, unless they moved to a new position, or struck at the long-legged birds that ran along the shallows with bottom beaks scooping up water. When the snake successfully grasped its prey between its jaws, it often fell from the tree and wrapped its coils around the bird, squeezing it tight within its muscular body. At other times both disappeared beneath waters that churned frothy green.

Black shelled bugs the size of Tarn's fist skated across the flat waters, skimming its glassy top on eight legs, leaving expanding ripples in their wake. Now and again something sleek and shiny green beneath the murky depths came to the surface, splashing gently as it snapped up the black skimmers. All Tarn ever saw was a quick flash of teeth and a ridged mouth. Now and again heavy splashes sounded from deeper inside the marsh, as though a battle took place in the water. Tarn never identified the combatants, but at night, while they slept, he had been awakened by loud splashing much closer to their camp.

Torrocka deemed it prudent not to raise the issue of the scroll, content to supply Tarn with directions to Galpernia. For more than three weeks the Sword Chamber priest endured a wet or damp existence. If it wasn't raining, it drizzled. The air had a constant heaviness to it, wet and cloying with humidity. And the constant itching and slapping as mosquitoes and other tiny bugs plagued exposed skin drove him insane. Not even the ground was dry. Sleeping upon the damp ground was exceedingly uncomfortable, and it wasn't long before he took to sleeping in the low branches of trees. Before the moon had waned and waxed full, they exited the marshlands.

Almost immediately they sighted twin tracks of mud separated by a grassy centre—a caravan trail. But for the rare sighting of hunters poling small watercraft through the shallow marshland waters, it was the first sign of habitation since they had entered the marshes. Their heavy mood, induced by constantly being damp or wet, lifted. Carnivorous insects grew fewer and fewer as they moved away from the marsh. On the second day of walking the worn ruts a caravan consisting of nine heavily laden wagons, each pulled by two teams of oxen, overtook them. Shortly after dusk when the sun had yet to be completely vanquished, they came upon the caravan's encampment.

The wagons were pulled into a semicircle with guards placed at frequent intervals. The sentries stood in plain view, leaning on their spears, confident their numbers would dissuade an attack. They wore bored expressions that said, "I have done this many times before and have never been attacked."

A guard in his middle years, whose fat belly protruded below his uniform's hem, stepped forward, taking in Tarn and Torrocka's mud-caked and travel-worn clothes, and said with one hand raised, "Halt! State thy business. The camp is no open to beggars and thieves."

"I would speak with the caravan master," Tarn answered.

The middle-aged man eyed Tarn's intimidating size and lowered his spear threateningly. For Tarn's part, he kept the butt of his spears grounded, non-threatening. Two other guards converged on their position, fifteen steps distant, looking warily into the forest, from side to side, and peered suspiciously back the way Tarn and Torrocka had come as though others remained hidden.

Lulled into a false sense of security by his brethren's closeness, the confronting guard asked sarcastically, "And what lends ye to believe my master wishes to speak to an overgrown barbarian and his withered father? Get ye gone. We've no scraps to throw."

Tarn casually eyed the approaching guards, eyeing their distance. Without a hint of his intent, he let go of his spears, grabbed the guard's spear with both hands, and yanked it forward. When the butt end cleared the guard's bulging belly, Tarn rammed it back into his stomach, hard. The air whooshed out of his lungs. Snatching the spear from the winded guard's weakened grasp, Tarn swept the feet out from underneath him in one swift movement.

The approaching caravan guards, having witnessed the scuffle, drew their hip swords on the run, shouting an alarm to the rest of the camp. By the time they arrived, Tarn held the spear point first against the fat guard's tender throat. He eyed the other two guards' swords warily as they adopted defensive stances around him, one of either side, though out of spear reach.

Tarn gave the supine guard a contemptuous scowl, saying, "Maybe this overgrown barbarian will apply for thy job. Whatever my business is, it's with thy master, not the hired help."

To punctuate his point, Tarn moved the tip of the spear over the guard's heart and pressed it firmly until the plump guard howled, "He's goin' to kill me. Stop him!"

When the guard on Tarn's left side took a step forward, he shook his head in warning, and said, "If I wanted ye dead, he wouldn't be bellyaching."