III

They made it to the edge of the town, beaten, bruised, weary and tired, but otherwise still standing. Rylan made a bee-line for the wounded man who was still slumped at the edge of town where he had left him. The man was unconscious but still breathing, albeit shakily.

‘Rylan, please,’ Aroha pleaded, trying to pull him away from the man. ‘He’s not going to make it. We need to get back to the farm and be gone from here!’

‘I can’t just leave him…’ Rylan muttered. He struggled to heave the man’s body up and onto his shoulder and, once again taking a hold of the man’s belt, dragged him as best he could in the direction of home.

Growing impatient and fearful of the raiders at their heels, Aroha grabbed the man’s other side and helped him. Rylan managed to hastily grab the man’s abandoned longsword by the signpost outside town as they passed it. Bereft of any real weaponry, he felt more comfortable with the sword tucked into his belt. The pair managed to make it to the farm’s gate in good time, although it took a considerable effort on both their parts. They dragged the man’s body all the way back to the farmhouse, where, finally, a wonderful sight welcomed them.

Rylan’s sister, Penelope, stood on the front porch of the farmhouse, cutting a fierce figure with her light-blue dress blowing lightly in the wind, her hair up in a high ponytail and a crossbow at the ready. ‘Rylan! Aroha!’ she cried out as soon as she saw them. ‘What’s happening? I heard the screaming and… you can even see the fire from here!’

Aroha had never been so relieved to see someone safe and unharmed in her entire life. She dropped her portion of the burden she shared with Rylan and ran straight into her friend’s welcoming embrace.

‘It’s so terrible,’ she whispered to Penelope. ‘Slavers. The Port is...’

‘Penelope!’ Rylan called out. ‘I promise we’ll tell you everything later, but right now we don’t have the time. We need to leave this place, as quick as we can.’

‘What do you mean leave?’ Penelope responded incredulously.

Rylan didn’t respond right away. He hauled the unconscious man over to the very same cart he had been loading his crops into earlier and dumped the man’s body onto the bed of hay, barley and wheat as gently as he could manage by himself.

He turned back to face the women. ‘Grab some food and other supplies from the house, Penelope. Pack light, and only the essentials. Aroha, you can help her, if you please. And be as quick as you can! We leave as soon as I get the hessians hooked to the cart.’

‘Rylan—’ Penelope began in protest.

‘Now!’ he cried out. ‘Please, Penelope. We really don’t have time for this.’ With this, he turned to leave, heading behind the farmhouse itself to the barn and coop where the Evenwood siblings kept their meagre livestock.

They did not have much, as feeding themselves and animals could become quite costly in the months that seeds need to grow. Rylan had never been good with livestock anyway. He was a crop farmer. He knew the fields. Penelope was the one who tended to the animals, as best she could, with what they had.

They owned two work hessians, Betty and Verona, as the sturdy beasts were useful in fields and for hauling the crop cart. They also owned three old cows, a single pig, a handful of chicken and a single peligrant. These animals Rylan let free from their enclosures and coops and shooed into the fields. It was the best he could do for them. He hoped they were smart enough to get out on the other, unfenced side of the field and into the wilderness beyond. He led the two hessians on a rope lead back to the cart and set to work tying them to the yoke.

At the same time, Aroha and Penelope had gone back into the house. Aroha occupied herself with stuffing a rucksack with as many items from Penelope’s kitchen and larder as she could fit, while Penelope herself went further into the house to gather personal effects and other supplies she thought might be necessary. She returned to find Aroha sat at the kitchen counter, head in hands and sobbing quietly.

‘Honey, are you okay?’ she asked, hugging her friend from behind.

‘I didn’t even have time to do this at my house,’ Aroha responded through her hands, her voice muffled and tiny. ‘They took my mother and Riario… Burnt the entire shop to the ground…’

‘Oh, honey.’ Penelope hugged her friend tighter. ‘I’m so sorry… What happened in the Port?’

‘I’ll tell you later, Rylan is probably waiting for us,’ Aroha muttered, wiping her tears and standing from the table. ‘Thank you for this though.’

The pair gathered their two hefty rucksacks of supplies and left the farmhouse, perhaps for the last time. Rylan had just finished attaching the hessians to the yoke. They were magnificent beasts, as big as a bull, but much leaner and more muscular, with long limbs like deer. They had flattened, triangular-shaped head, with incredible horns protruding from the top, in both the male and female of the species. In the wild, these horns would grow, unkempt and uncut, into intricate, crown-like structures, not unlike the branches of a tree. Domesticated, the horns would have to be regularly trimmed to a more manageable size.

Rylan ran his hands over the snouts of the beasts. He nodded to his sister and friend as they joined him and jumped up into the box to take up the reins. He sat the unconscious man’s longsword beside him, just in case. Aroha and Penelope placed the rucksacks in the back of the wagon, then Aroha joined Rylan in front and Penelope climbed into the back with the unconscious man, crossbow at the ready.

‘Who is this?’ she asked, as Rylan stirred the hessians to start pulling. ‘He’s badly wounded.’

‘We found him just outside the town. I think he must have been a visitor that was wounded by the slavers when they arrived. Somehow he managed to escape,’ he turned back to his sister. ‘We couldn’t just leave him there…’

Penelope nodded. She examined the man carefully, trying not to move him too much. He had lost a lot of blood already. It had even seeped through Rylan’s shoddy bandage. She carefully undid the bandage to try and ascertain the nature and extent of the wound itself. Whatever the man had been stabbed with had gone straight through his leather chest armour, but she could not get a good look at the wound with it obstructing her either.

The cart ride was bumpy and unstable as it went over the dirt path that led to the front gate of the farm holding, but she did her best to gingerly untie and remove his armour piece. Underneath it, he wore a simple rough cotton shirt, which had become steeped in blood as well. At least the blood had already begun browning, meaning the man had not been bleeding for a while. After some rummaging, she managed to procure a small knife from her rucksack and she used this to carefully cut the man’s shirt open and then apart completely so she could examine everything. The blood around the wound had matted the cotton threads of the shirt to the wound itself, and she did her best to rip it away quickly and painlessly. The man did not even stir.

The wound itself was a nasty sword strike, possibly from a longsword, thrust with the blade at an angle so that the cut was horizontal, not vertical. It was a little lower down than the shoulder she had initially thought and had actually slipped in just under his clavicle bone. It was unlikely to have pierced his ribcage, but the sword had left a deep, nasty cut through his flesh. The thrust must have also been made from behind as the exit wound in front was slightly smaller than the one in the back. Even though it was no longer heavily bleeding, but the man was still having trouble breathing and she feared the worst.

‘Guys, this is bad…’ she said. ‘It was a clean cut, straight through. He’s lost so much blood. He’s barely hanging on. I don’t have what I need back here to do much except bandage it for now.’

Aroha turned back in her seat. She looked at Rylan who was stone silent, a look of grim determination on his face, then back to Penelope. ‘He’ll make it. We can reach Bergia and get help there. Right, Rylan?’

Rylan only nodded in reply and silence descended on the group. Penelope set to work bandaging the wound as best she could, using a clean shirt she cut into strips.

They had reached the main dirt road outside of the farm by this point. Rylan and Aroha couldn’t help but look back to the direction of the port. They could barely see the blaze they had left behind them from here. Some of the outlying buildings nearest to them hadn’t been put to the torch yet, but they knew that things in the centre and around the waterfront must be much worse by now, or gone entirely. The entire town must be almost dust, Aroha thought to herself. Rylan shared a similar sentiment, but neither of them voiced it aloud. He steered the hessians off in the opposite direction.

Before long, the cart had reached the Durandal farmstead. The eldest son, Dorian, stood watch at the gate, equipped with a bow himself.

‘Evenwood?! Marivaldi? What’s going on?’ he called to them as they drove closer. He noticed Penelope in the back as well and added, a tad abashedly. ‘Penelope…’

Rylan reigned the hessians to a hasty stop. ‘Dorian, you need to get your family and leave!’ he called down. ‘Slavers have raided the Port. Camarians. They took the women and children, killed those that didn’t come quiet. They set the Port ablaze! It’s chaos and madness! Aroha and I barely made it out. Please, get your family and get out. We’re heading to Bergia ourselves but we can’t carry anymore. We’ll meet you there, alright?’

Dorian took a moment to process the information he had just heard. He grew stock-still and his face went white as death, but he eventually nodded his agreement and took off in a sprint back towards the farmhouse. Rylan wasted no further time and stirred the hessians once again so that they could be off.

‘Rylan,’ Aroha said eventually. ‘Bergia is still a good while away, at least a day’s ride if we follow the river. We need somewhere to rest before then. I’m tired… I bet you are too, and Penelope needs peace and stability if she’s to help this man you’ve brought with us.’

‘Let’s make it out across the river where the road fords it,’ Penelope piped up from the back. ‘That’s a good few miles away from all this. The raiders aren’t likely to follow so far inland. We can set a small camp to recollect ourselves, and I can gather some of the herbs I need to make a salve for our friend here.’

Rylan nodded his agreement.

They reached the next two farmsteads on the path in quick succession after the Durandal’s. Rylan slowed down at each one, but nobody was at the gate at either. They most probably hadn’t heard all the commotion this far out. He called out but nobody came to answer, so he screamed out the same warning he had given to Dorian and rode on both times. He didn’t have the time to ride to each farmhouse to warn the families, but he hoped he had done enough to give them a fighting chance.

Penelope spied two riders coming along the road from the direction of the Port just as the cart reached the property line of the last farmstead. Luckily for the group, the riders were a ways off and by the time they reached the same spot, the wagon was but a black smudge on the horizon. Rylan was afraid that there was no way the hessian wagon could outrun two good horses and steeled himself for another assault. He was ever thankful that the riders decided not to pursue them any further.

They had technically reached the edge of the Port at this point. There would be no more big homesteads or villages until they reached Bergia. Aroha wondered if the other farmers had managed to escape in time and evade the raiders. They could have easily escaped into the wilds that flanked the edges of the farms instead of braving the main road out of the Port. Hopefully, they managed to make it out alright and she could see Dorian’s stupid broken nose in Bergia again and laugh as he awkwardly courted Penelope. She would like that very much.

*

After what seemed an age, but was in actuality an hour or three of tense driving, they reached the ford. It was man-made, built in lieu of a proper bridge to cross the river. It was not big by any means, just barely large enough for the wagon to cross comfortably over. They crossed over into what must now be officially Bergia, though none of them were entirely too sure as they had never been this far out from home before. Aroha herself had never left the confines of the Port or the farmsteads in all her scant eighteen years, while Rylan and Penelope had ventured a little further, in search of naturally growing herbs and such-like that they required for animals on the farm, though never to this extent. They had always planned to come all the way down to this side of the river in their youth, but they had never gotten the chance to follow through with it. Aroha wished the circumstances of their visit today had been entirely different.

Rylan steered the hessians off the main pathway a little ways before the going got too rough to steer them properly. He and Aroha dismounted the wagon and led the hessians by hand further into the thicket on the edge of the road, taking care to find a big enough path down to the riverside for the wagon to fit through. The group eventually did reach a nice clearing by the side of the river and were eternally grateful for it.

‘The water looks amazing,’ Aroha said. The grime, ash and blood were thick on her skin and clothes after the long hours fighting, running and travelling and she wanted nothing more than to just jump straight into the crystal clear water. Rylan was not in a much better state and agreed with her wholeheartedly.

Penelope hopped down from the wagon and slapped her brother on his still-bare back. ‘You two go clean off and see if you can catch something to eat. I’ll set up a little campfire in the meantime and let the hessians loose to graze. Then I’ll see about getting those herbs for the salve.’

Rylan nodded gratefully. ‘Thank you. Don’t wander too far though, and tell us before you leave the camp. I don’t feel too comfortable out in the wilderness like this.’

Penelope nodded and set about the task of setting up a small camp for the group while Aroha and Rylan ran down the river bank and began the arduous task of scrubbing themselves and their clothes clean as best they could. It was certainly hard work to wash the blood off your skin while someone was declaring splash war on you at the same time. Penelope knew both of them were appreciative for the break in all the events of the day, and a chance to just forget their plight for a few minutes.

She, however, was actually productive. She unhitched the hessians from the yoke and tied them to a sturdy tree in the brush where there was plenty of grass for them to graze on all around them, set up the two bedrolls she had managed to grab from the farmhouse, gathered together five empty jugs and canteens for water, assembled enough dry branches, twigs and pebbles to build a modest-sized fire-pit, and covered the still unconscious man with the thin spare blanket she had managed to scrounge with the bedrolls.

By this time, the other two had finished washing off the day’s turmoil and made their way back to camp, drenched and dripping.

‘Ah-ah, no changing yet,’ she scolded them lightly. ‘Aroha, you fill these containers with fresh water so we don’t die of dehydration, and Rylan, you still have yet to produce a single fish. Get back in that water and don’t come back until you have a meal!’

With this, she rolled up the sleeves of her dress and made her way back into the undergrowth to forage for the healing herbs she needed. The other two cursed under their breath but obliged. Aroha carried the canteens back down to the river and filled them dutifully before making two laborious trips to deliver them to camp. Rylan fashioned a make-shift fishing spear out of a long branch he found near the camp. He had never been fishing before but he had seen the rods, spears and nets that the fishermen in town used and thought he had the general idea behind the occupation.

He did not. Not a single fish was caught that day.

Penelope returned from her expedition after a short time to find Aroha stoking the flames in the fire-pit to help dry off her clothing and Rylan still in the water. She dumped her herbs onto the back of the wagon: a neat little collection of beeswax (which no-one was sure how she managed to procure unscathed), lavender and marigold. To this, she added dandelion oil from a glass jar she had in her rucksack. She took up a seat by the fire next to Aroha, who watched her work in silent wonderment. Penelope heated the dandelion oil first in a small copper saucepan – the only one they had brought from the farmhouse. While this was heating, she crushed and cut the flowers as best she could with her knife in the palm of her hand. She added the beeswax to the oil and allowed it to melt before taking the entire pan off the fire and adding in the herbs. This herb, wax and oil mixture she stirred continuously for a while until it had turned into a sort of loose paste in the saucepan, which she then poured into the same glass jar the dandelion oil had come in.

‘Would you mind cooling this off in the river for me? And tell Rylan he can come back, he’s clearly losing his mind out there,’ she asked Aroha, handing her the glass jar.

Aroha chuckled and took the salve down to the river. She made sure the jar’s lid was securely fastened so no water could seep into the salve, before holding it in the river water, with the lid never touching the water itself.

‘Hey, Rylan! Penelope says you can come back,’ Aroha called out to Rylan, who was standing out in the middle of the river with a look of determination on his face. He had been staring into the lazily flowing river so long he wasn’t even sure what were fishes and what were reflections of the suns’ light anymore.

‘She’s not the boss of me,’ he muttered, more to himself than in response. ‘I will catch us a fish.’

He returned to the camp a little while after Aroha had already returned with the salve, nothing in hand but his wounded pride. Penelope had already applied some of the healing salve to Aroha’s cuts and burns and had managed to bandage up the hand that had been cut by glass earlier. She was currently in the back of the wagon, hunched over the unconscious man and applying the majority of the salve to his more serious wound.

Aroha was huddled near the fire, thankful for the warmth and comfort it provided. Rylan plopped down next to her miserably. She offered him a clean shirt she had been saving next to her on a bedroll and he accepted it graciously. After he was done changing, she wordlessly reached out and gripped his hand in hers. They didn’t share any words, but she laid her head against his shoulder and they sat like this, in silence, for a while, huddled around the fire. Penelope joined them once she had finished reapplying the unconscious man’s bandages. She used the little salve she had left to treat Rylan’s few cuts and bruises, despite his mumbled protests about being fine.

Gathered here around the campfire, the events of the day seemed like a distant nightmare. Unfortunately, they couldn’t leave Penelope in the dark forever, and, after some coaxing on her part, Aroha and Rylan recounted to her the heavy deeds they had witnessed and been part of. Each told their story in turn, trying their best to not crack all over again, and being soothed when they eventually did. There were no real words of comfort to ease the pain and anguish that had been wrought upon them all, but they were at least gratified to be in each other’s company. The healing power of a friendly hug in times of distress cannot be understated. The burden they now shared seemed to lighten a bit individually.

‘You both did what needed to be done,’ Penelope said eventually after both stories had been retold to her. ‘I’m thankful to the Mother that you survived. We will get through this, together. We just need some kind of plan.’

‘We can stay in Bergia a few days until the Durandals catch up with us. Then we can decide on what to do next,’ Rylan replied.

The women could hear in his voice that he was trying to convince himself more than anything. Nobody dared to voice what was really on their minds.

Their home had been taken from them.

Aroha’s family had been taken.

So many of the townspeople they knew and had grown up with all their lives had been enslaved or killed.

None of them had any idea what the next course of action was to be. Was it to be revenge? Rescue? Perhaps a new start? Only one thing was for sure, they had nowhere to go and no coin to go with.

Eventually, Rylan and Aroha agreed to get some much-needed sleep. After much fruitless arguing, the pair took the bedrolls by the fire while Penelope stood watch over the camp, crossbow casually slung across her lap. She promised to wake Rylan when it was his turn to keep watch, but she didn’t keep this promise and let the pair rest as long as they needed. They were so tired that they drifted off uneventfully into a deep, dreamless slumber as soon as their eyes had closed. It was only when the twin suns eventually lined up once again high in the sky that they finally awoke, groggy and hungry and upset at Penelope for staying up all this time alone.

Aroha cooked them a meagre breakfast of watered-down oats in the saucepan, having to make two batches to accommodate for everyone. Penelope checked and redressed the unconscious man’s wound in the back of the cart, which was already starting to look a little better. Colour was returning to his face and he was no longer breathing as heavily and strained as he had been. She tried to feed him some of her oats, but he did not stir at all. Rylan gathered all of their things back into the cart and re-hitched the hessians to the cart’s yoke.

‘Here,’ Penelope called out to him from atop the wagon. He looked up just in time to catch the longsword scabbard she had thrown at him. ‘He doesn’t need it right now and we might. I don’t know what to expect on the road.’

He turned to look for the longsword he had discarded the previous day, but Penelope continued, much quieter this time. ‘Rylan…?’

‘Yes…?’ he whispered back, slightly confused.

Penelope pressed a finger to her lips and motioned for Rylan to follow her. She jumped out of the wagon and led Rylan back to the campfire where Aroha was still packing away the food and cooking supplies.

‘What’s going on guys?’ she piped up as the siblings came closer.

Penelope draped her arms around Aroha and Rylan’s shoulders and drew both of them up into a conspiratorial circle around the campfire. She kept her voice low as she said, ‘The man in the wagon is Camarian. I thought he might have been, but now that the colour is properly returning to his skin, it’s as clear as day.’

‘We knew he was from the Kingdoms when we saw him,’ Rylan replied. ‘We figured he was just another visiting sailor.’

‘Didn’t you talk to him at all?’

‘No, not really. When we got to him, he was already badly injured. He could barely form a sentence…’

‘You don’t think it’s a coincidence that you rescue a Camarian the very same day one of their slave ships came into Port?’ Aroha responded, raising her voice a little too much. Penelope shushed her and she continued in a hiss, ‘I didn’t want to bring him with from the beginning, Rylan. What if he was with the slavers?’

‘I don’t think he is,’ Rylan said, as calmly and quietly as possible. ‘Why would they try and kill their own man? It makes no sense.’

‘Who knows?! Who cares? Who raids a Port, enslaves its people and then sets it alight?! These people are clearly insane! They’re… they’re animals!’

‘Look,’ Penelope chimed in. ‘we don’t even know the man, right? Let’s give him a chance to explain himself once he comes to before we start making any accusations and judgements. Once we know his side of the story, we can make decisions on what to do with him. That seems fair.’ Aroha begrudgingly agreed to this and the trio disbanded to finish up the rest of the packing up of the campsite.

Rylan went back to the wagon to retrieve the longsword from the box of the cart where he had left it the previous day and set about attaching the scabbard to his belt. He had never actually owned a sword before and so practised drawing and sheathing it from its scabbard for a little while, taking a few swings at imaginary foes to get used to the weight. Every little boy in the Port had run around with their wooden swords when they were younger, but the first time he had used a proper weapon had been the blacksmith’s rusted cutlass. The longsword was a completely different weapon to that. It was heftier and sturdier and better crafted for one. It took a lot to get used to the weight and balance of it and even longer to swing it somewhat efficiently without tiring himself out or tripping himself up.

Camp finally disassembled and their bellies and water canteens full, the group led the hessians back out onto the main pathway where they finally remounted the cart and set off on their long journey. Travel on Thiara was always a challenge at the best of times. The nature of the twin suns moving at apparently random speeds meant that time-keeping was a problem without a dedicated hourglass, which none of the group possessed. Nobody could be sure what time of day it was and while it was the social norm to count twenty-six hours as a day, the suns did not necessarily conform to this arrangement. To further complicate travel, Galantina was the only sun that moved in a consistent pattern at all. The red giant would always rise in the east and set in the west. Her blue sister, on the other hand, was more unpredictable and would travel across the sky seemingly unsystematically. There was an obvious pattern to her travels, but unless someone was an astronomer who understood the movements of not just the suns but the planet itself, they might not pick up on it at all.

Luckily for the group, the main pathway and the flow of the river – a little ways away at all times – would take them straight to their destination, save for a few times when they had to cross the river on its long and winding path upwards past Bergia and eventually into the Sephia Woods far to the north. They knew not how long they travelled for, although it felt like a decidedly long time.

They made camp one more time before they reached Bergia.

Aroha had a dream of her burning home, her faceless mother and brother being dragged away in chains by a ghostly army, the size of which she couldn’t even fathom. The soldiers pressed in all around her, suffocating and cloying. They tried to take her as well and she fought them, but they evaporated into smoke and ash when struck. Then her father appeared, as tall as a tree, looming over her through the flames and ash, laughing mirthlessly. Mocking her ineptitude and stupidity. He reached down with his impossibly big arms and wrapped her up in his choking, crushing embrace…

She awoke with a start in a cold sweat. She huddled closer to Penelope sleeping next to her and hugged her friend for comfort. When it was her turn to take watch, Rylan found her still wide awake, clutching Penelope tightly.

Nothing else of too much import occurred along the way.