Chapter Twenty-Two

In the early grey predawn, when the dew-misted foliage lends an eerie brilliance to the forest in the absence of a sun that has yet to break over the horizon and dispel the luminous shadows, Tarn roused Torrocka from his sleep. After a meal of meat strips, hard travel-bread and cheese, Tarn set out with stubborn resolve telling in his far-stepping stride. Torrocka struggled to keep pace. When his breath grew ragged and his steps laboured, Tarn halted their march. They ate, rested, and moved onward, west toward the ocean.

By the first week, they left the valley Tarn crossed in the company of his father leagues behind. Mid-afternoon the following day found Tarn in an unfamiliar country. He relied upon Torrocka's directions to avoid box canyons and to find accessible fords across rivers swollen with spring run-off. Rustling sounds, from up ahead, brought Tarn to a stop. He motioned Torrocka to be still, whispering that game was ahead and melted into the trees.

Torrocka sat down with his back against a tree and drank deeply from his waterskin, grateful for the respite. Every muscle in his weary body ached. A winter spent nestled lazily in front of a warm fire, combined with his age, rendered him ill-equipped for strenuous travel. By Kalen's sword! even his hair follicles hurt. His eyes were closed, resting when Tarn threw a tusker at his feet. It landed with a dull thud, startling him into a fatigued flurry of flailing limbs to gain his feet. A useless gesture, he realized, for he possessed neither the energy to flee nor to fight. Tarn smiled for the first time since departing his village.

"If ye build a fire ancient one, I will ready our supper."

Grumbling loudly about disrespectful, wretched children, Torrocka complied, uttering a non-stop tirade about the inequities of old age. By the time his efforts had produced a hot and smokeless fire, Tarn mounted the freshly skinned boar on a spit. He offered Torrocka half of the fresh boar's heart, but the priest grimaced his displeasure, proclaiming the higher wisdom of civilised cultures that elected to cook their food before they consumed it.

"It will give ye strength," Tarn countered, sawing off another mouthful of cooling flesh.

"What need of strength have I when a great warrior is here to aid me?"

Tarn grinned. If the priest felt well enough to sling gibes, he was fit to travel all night. He gave his attention to the roasting boar, turning it slowly while drops of flavourful fat hissed and spattered as they exploded on the embryonic coals, releasing mouth-watering puffs of smoke into the air. When the inner meat grew light-pink, he removed the fire-browned boar from the flames and drove one end of the spit into the ground. They took turns cutting off juicy wedges of boar meat until they had satiated their hunger. A loud, satisfying belch rumbled out of Torrocka. After licking his fingers clean, he folded them over his stomach and leaned back contentedly against the tree trunk.

"Rest. We leave at dark," informed Tarn, discerning the lazy, slumbering expression in the priest's eyes.

Torrocka nodded absentmindedly, feeling unexpectedly comfortable, despite the root tangles that prodded tender muscles. He stretched languidly, wincing when his shoulder popped, and tucked his cloak beneath him, feeling absurdly grateful to Tarn for the additional repose. As Torrocka slept, too exhausted to snore, Tarn finished roasting the boar. When it showed well done, he cut the remaining meat into strips, salted them, and stored them in his pouch, then leaned against a tree and closed his eyes.

* * * * * * *

Some eight days later, as the waning moon crested its apex, Tarn motioned Torrocka to walk silently. Twenty-odd steps later mingled with the acerbic odours of a midden pile and relief pits, Torrocka smelled smoke. Tarn led them wide of the sleeping village. Before the slumbering sun rose from its eastern cradle, five or six miles from the village, Tarn called a halt. They ate a sparse meal and slept.

Torrocka woke at midday to find Tarn missing. Stretching stiff limbs made the joints crack and pop. When he felt able to move without too much discomfort, he wandered off in search of spring berries and tubers—a welcomed variety to their diet of bland-tasting trail rations. Only the bag of salt they carried added flavour. Pockets of snow thrived within the shadows of the forest, protected from the sun's rays. Torrocka limited his search to open glades and to the sections of forest where the tree growth thinned. He had gathered an assortment of newly sprouted edibles when a branch rustled softly. Believing Tarn snuck up on him, he did not bother to look until a sharp spear prodded his back.

Three Bushmen, short and dark-skinned, covered in crude tattoos, stood in a semicircle behind him. Each held an undersized, but formidable spear with a broad tip that accounted for half of the weapon's length. They jabbered in a language that he failed to recognise. Torrocka shrugged his shoulders and received a painful poke in the ribs. When he retreated from the spear, they pounced on him and bound his wrists together. Two of the tattooed men began to argue. From their body language and voice inflections, he decided they were uncertain what to do with him. One of the dark-skinned devils gestured with his spear, while another talked loudly and blocked Torrocka from the weapon. The third stood watching, apparently unable to make up his mind. Torrocka hoped the taller heathen who blocked the spear won the argument.

On several occasions, he spoke, but they failed to understand his words. When he attempted another dialect, the undecided heathen prodded him in the ribs, directing him to remain silent. After a heated argument, they pulled him to his feet and motioned that he should walk. To where he was not sure, but it did not bode well. The filed teeth of these dark-skinned little fellows gave him cause to worry.

"I assure ye, I am old and very stringy. However, I have a robust, tender friend, who would stew most excellently in the cooking pot," Torrocka said thoughtfully.

The tallest man jabbed him with his spear, then again to start him moving in the opposite direction, away from the camp Tarn would eventually return to and find empty. They had travelled for less than an hour when a wide, slow-moving stream bisected the trail. Two of his escorts lay down on their bellies to drink while the third stood behind him with his spear pressed firmly into his back.

A large piece of spring flotsam, composed of reeds and grass, travelled the current, hugging and bumping along the stream bank, spinning slowly downstream. The green and brown raft collided with an exposed tree root and snagged, not more than a spear length from the drinking men, fouling the water with grass blades and mud. The closest man reached out to help it along its way and found it immovable. The bushman planted both hands on a protruding log and pushed. Tarn rose out of the debris, covered head to toe in dripping mud.

Bunches of reeds and clumps of grass were stuck in his boots, were tied around his waist, and woven into his vest. Only his green irises, surrounded by white, showed through the muck façade. Two muddy paws blurred forward, catching the gaping heathens, who believed they beheld the Forest's Father's mud beast, firmly by their throats. Tarn stepped forward, lifting the little men so their feet dangled off the ground, kicking in futile. They wore astonished expressions, hands instinctively clawing at Tarn's wrists, until their heads crashed together. Throwing them to either side like rag dolls, Tarn left the stream and approached the remaining escort menacingly.

The last bushman dropped his spear with a shriek, turned, and fled, yelling like a crazed banshee. Before he managed three steps, a bone-handled dagger sprouted hilt first from the centre of his back. The momentum knocked him forward a step. He fell to the ground, one hand going over his shoulder, spasmodically opening and closing, unable to reach the bone handle. The desperate efforts faded rapidly, for the blade sat deep in his heart.

Calmly retrieving his dagger, Tarn cut Torrocka loose. While the aged priest rubbed feeling back into his numbed wrists, Tarn disposed of the bodies, tossing them off the trail into the bushes. After pulling reeds and grass from his vest and belt, Tarn washed in the stream, removing the remainder of the muck, then turned so he faced Torrocka.

"My thanks. Had ye not rescued me, I believe I would have been dinner. A most distasteful prospect," Torrocka noted, yet rubbing colour into his bloodless hands.

"Ye need not thank me, ancient one. Ye fathom where the entrance to the cavern is located. I need ye—for now," he finished, a hidden glint in his eye. "Come. They will be missed."

Torrocka stood speechless, his quixotic expression giving way to another as he watched Tarn leave the trail and walk back in the direction of their temporary camp. He did not feel entirely sure whether the youth joked or not.

* * * * * * *

The pair travelled until well after sunset without further incident. As the miles slipped behind them, Tarn's pace eased, granting a welcomed respite to Torrocka's tired muscles. When they stopped to eat and sleep, Torrocka felt bone-tired, but his muscles no longer ached like they had days past. A thick bed of fresh cedar boughs awaited Torrocka when he returned from nature's call. They were absurdly luxurious and resplendent. After weeks of sleeping in less comfortable conditions, the Sword Chamber priest found sleep elusive. Lying beside him on the forest's pine needle floor, Tarn wrapped himself in his cloak, his sword close at hand, and fell asleep, leaving Torrocka awake, cursing his ability to sit down anywhere and sleep soundly.

* * * * * * *

As the weeks passed, the nights became noticeably warmer, the days longer. Tarn had long ago tied his cloak in a roll and wore strapped to the pack. When they neared the western ocean, the breeze carried a salty scent. Noisy fishing gulls flew overhead, squawking, swooping down upon midden piles to scavenge scraps. Days later, under a waxing old moon, just hours before it surrendered its brightness to a new sun, Tarn and Torrocka reached the cliff where he and his father had stood so many years past. Several hundred yards distant, the white sandy shoreline separated land from ocean. According to Torrocka, the caverns lay underwater but a short distance from this point.

"We sleep here. Tomorrow we enter the caverns," Tarn said.

"Tarn, we require torches. We have preparations to make first. Food must be gathered, oil for torches, additional water skins. For all we know it may take weeks to find the chamber."

A monosyllable grunt interrupted Torrocka's objections. Turning his pack upside down, Tarn emptied it at his feet. Having secured it once more to his back, he slipped over the edge of the cliff without a backward glance. The ancient Sword Chamber Guardian walked gingerly to the precipice and craned his head forward and down. He witnessed Tarn gracefully descending the rock face as though he walked on the ground. Moments later the diminishing darkness swallowed him whole. A wave of dizzy vertigo spun the cliff face. Torrocka's legs shook and trembled, knocking his knobby knees together like chattering teeth. He retreated from the edge and sat down under a tree to await Tarn's return, grateful to be rooted to firm ground.

Having gained the base of the cliff, Tarn loped toward the sound of heavy waves breaking onshore. Without the moon's reflection to brighten the thick shadows, the forest was pitch black. Only where the arrant light from the stars infiltrated clearings did the inky blackness turn to shades of grey. Until the partial moon rose overhead, Tarn was forced to feel his way forward, unable to see more than a few feet in any direction. When the forest turned into sand, he loped northward, both following the coastline and searching for beached canoes. Sand, carried by the foamy water, rustled up on land, whooshing softly as it retreated. According to Torrocka, fishing was the main subsistence strategy of Ashwa's children, for they seldom ventured deep into the forest. Canoes meant a village sat nearby.

Tarn travelled within the border shadows cast by tall trees fighting the advancing sand. Crickets, hiding in the scrub growth, chirped at his passing, burping out shrill bleeps. A great horned owl scolded him, "Who-whooo. Who-whooo," for sending her rodent prey scurrying for cover at the sound of his footfall. Not long afterward, he sighted two rows of beached, hollowed-out log canoes turned upside down. He turned inland, stealthily padding parallel to a well-worn trail. A looming, impenetrable shadow lay up ahead. As he came within shouting distance of the village, he slowed to a walk, employing the available foliage to work his way to the thatched huts.

The conical-topped huts were made of bamboo and thatched with narrow, thick leaves that wind- and rain-proofed the structures. Holes in the centre of the structure's cone-shaped roof allowed a fire to be started in rainy weather and permitted smoke to escape. A secondary cone, raised above the smoke hole, prevented moisture from entering the hut. Reed woven curtains covered doorways and windows like blinds to be rolled up and tied or released to hang down. Other dwellings circled the village's common area. Supply huts, drying racks, and an open-sided A-frame structure, cluttered with an assortment of clay bottles, formed an inner ring. The placement of huts provided a defensive barrier against hostile neighbours. The villagers could fight from the outer village perimeter to its centre where their forces would become. Clay oil lamps, mounted atop long poles placed at regular intervals around the village's common area, would have illuminated the centre ring and the last ring of buildings had they been lit. Placement of huts and structures was not haphazard, Tarn noted.

Gliding like a shadow among the collection of thatched huts and lean-tos near the village's central core, slipping from one dappled pocket of grey darkness to the next, Tarn chanced upon a bowl of day-old fruit, and a rack of sun-dried, salted-fish. Having first filled his belt pouch, he stuffed the pack he carried with a ten-day worth of supplies for him and Torrocka. Sitting within an open-sided structure, beside a stack of kindling wood, he discovered a knee-high pot-bellied clay jar, half-filled with fish oil. Filling a bushel basket beside the pot-bellied jar, lay a store of unused, unused torches. He placed as many as would fit inside the jar and departed the village as quietly as he had entered it.