Chapter 12

The first day on the road had it’s ups and downs as the drivers and teams got used to one another. Some of the teams of animals insisted on trying to pull harder and faster, while others resisted and had to be goaded to keep up the pace. The guard force also had to work at getting their spacing set for best coverage as the caravan moved ahead. By midday, things had begun to shakedown and the slow pace they started out at began to pick up. The midday meal was dried and jerked meat, eaten in the saddle, or the driver’s seat. The few passengers on this trip didn’t eat any better.

Brena had refrained from complaining, as she had seen nobody else had anything better. She did manage to sneak a green bapple after the dried meat though. She had taken it from the magic jar that morning, figuring it would make a good snack during the long day. This earned her a few dirty looks from the drivers. The head of the guard force had tried to keep his distance from her at first. He had learned enough to have a respectful fear of her because who she worked for and didn’t want to upset her in any manner. Several times during the day, Andrew would fall back to check on her to make sure she was doing well. He also kept an eye on Ledger. The new driver didn’t seem to be having any issues with his animals. If he said move, they moved. Andrew wondered how he had the animals so obedient, then after thinking about it, decided not to ask.

It was two hours before sundown when the caravan arrived at the first stopping point on this run. It was a large open field that had seen hard use by uncountable wagons and carts over many years. Andrew could see from the rutted condition of the mud and dirt, this was a regular stopping place for caravans and travelers on the main East/West road along the inland sea. The far edge had a few small buildings and one large one standing on it. The large one proved to be an inn for travelers, with a large kitchen for the crews to use. It was open only when the caravans happened to be passing through. The owner and his staff were still getting the oven and stove fires lit when the caravan pulled in late in the day. The lead guard and driver began directing the wagons to specific spots, lining them up in the order they would roll out in the morning. The teams of horses and mules were unhitched taken in groups to the corrals to be fed and checked for damage. The local farrier would be busy for several hours after the sun went down. He and his assistants needed to check all the shoes to make sure they had held up the first day. He knew it would be better than two weeks before they would be properly checked by his guild again.

It was here that the leaders of the caravan received the real road news and conditions further along. What they heard did not make them happy. “So the Tres bridge is partway down? What happened to it?” asked Waylon.

“Part of it was a series of heavy melt and rains flooding the river, the rest was a case of no care and repairs,” replied the old man. “The real danger is the brigands that have moved into the area. The backing up of folk as they try to cross the half that remains has them robbing and stealing freely. You will be a bonanza to them, in-spite of the guards.”

“I guess we will deal with that situation when we come to it.” Waylon seemed to drift off for a minute then he blinked, “Tell me, do you have any cut timber or lumber you don’t need or can sell?”

“We have a few long strips of cut lumber. It was dumped last season because the drovers had lost too many beasts to carry the full load. Why? Having a thought?” he asked.

“Well, I know that bridge all too well. If we can reinforce it and widen it with enough wood, it might fix the problem long enough for the backup in both directions to clear. The issue we will have is the additional weight. All my wagons are near as heavy as they can be handled already,” said Waylon.

Andrew remembered something Ledger had told him about his journey to Terin’s Crossing. “Excuse me sir’s,” he said, interupting the discussion. “I need to see someone that may have a possible solution to this problem.”

Waylon glanced at Andrew and nodded. Andrew took off at a dead run towards the third line of wagons where Ledger should have been parked. He saw the wagons in the group Ledger was part of, but nobody was around them. He spotted a large fire in a nearby clearing and headed towards it. He could see people standing around it in the gathering gloom. He walked around the fire until he spotted both Ledger and Brena.

He slowed to a walk to catch his breath as he approached the men and women around the fire. “Ledger, I need to ask you a few questions,” Andrew said as he walked up to them.

“What do you need to know,” Ledger answered in a less than enthused voice. The first day on the road had been a killer for him. He just wanted to lay down and sleep. The bumpy road and lack of springs on the wagon had shaken his kidneys until they felt like they wanted to fall out.

“You told me how you made a plate or something to lift your pack a little to take some of the weight off your back. How much weight could that actually lift?” he asked in a hopeful voice.

Ledger looked at Andrew, confused for a second, then realized what he was asking. “If I can place it by hand, I think as much as I want it to.”

Andrew grabbed Ledger’s right arm and spun him towards the meeting of the caravan leaders, dragging him before he could start objecting. When Andrew re-entered the building with Ledger in tow, they wanted to know why he had brought the boy in.

“Gentlemen, this is Ledger Fireham. He has a talent not seen in a generation. Ledger, if you would explain, please?” said Andrew.

Ledger gulped. He had tried to not attract too much attention to himself. Now he was center stage again, not liking it, and more than a little afraid. “Sirs, I can enchant items to do things.” He pulled a stone from his pocket and made it glow brightly. “Light-stones are just one of the things I can create. Heat and cold are two more. The effect that Andrew here is looking for is the ability to make a stone that can lift another object to take the weight from the person or cart.” He focused on the glowing stone and added the lift to it. He let it go and it stayed right where he left it in the air. As he looked at it, blinked in surprise when he realized what he had just done. He had just managed to put two effects on one stone. He grabbed Andrew’s arm and pointed, “Andrew, I just did something new.”

Andrew looked at it, but he didn’t understand what Ledger was excited about. “Andrew, I put two effects on one item. I could never do that before.” Ledger touched the stone, then gave it a slow spin. It stayed in place and slowly spun in the air. After a minute, at stopped from the friction of the air. The rest of the men in the room stared at what Ledger was doing in wonder. This was a new level of enchantment to them. The occasional glow stone or heater was the most they had seen. This was new and it offered possibilities they had never dreamed of before.

Waylon spoke first, “Son, can you make a set of plates or stones that could hold a wagon in the air, and maybe be pulled along with no ground drag?”

Ledger was still trying to figure out what he had done to create this new dual effect. After a moment, he glanced up and asked, “What was that sir?”

Waylon seemed to realize that Ledger was confused by what had happened. “I asked if you could make it so a wagon or cart wouldn’t need wheels, in other words, can you make a floating cart?”

Now Ledger had to think. “When I was hiking to the Crossing, I made a wood board float just enough to lift the weight of the pack off my back. It worked, to a point. The mass of the full pack did not change, so I still had to work to make it start moving, then even more work and care to stop safely. The first time I tried that, I ended up getting hurt by being dragged across the ground by the packs mass. I couldn’t stop it and it caused me to get pretty torn up on the gravel.”

“But you can make a wagon lighter,” asked Waylon with a hopeful tone in his question.

“Not so much the wagon, more of a lifting from below...” Ledger drifted off in thought. He looked around a spotted something outside the window. He stepped over to the window for a closer look. It was an old wagon bed. The wheels and axles were gone, but the bed was intact. “I have an idea, give a few minutes to try something.” Ledger left the office and went outside.

He walked over to the broken cart and looked at it and around it. After a brief search, he found what he was looking for. He pulled up the first of several flat stones lying around the edge of the cart field. He gathered five more, setting each around the cart where he wanted them. “Ok Andrew, here is the hard part,” he said. He pushed each stone under the cart as evenly around it as he could. “Now, just enough lift to get it off the ground at first.” He knew the hard part was going to be new to him and his experience. He thought about the stones as a group, not individuals. He slowly, carefully applied energy to them at the same time. He carefully crafted a lift on them, focused on raising the cart bed to an even height about knee high above ground. He knew without looking that the rest of the folks in the office had come out and had been watching him.

One man seemed to dislike what Ledger was doing. “Demon work, how can we just stand here and allow him to cause such evil?” The man snarled quietly.

Waylon snacked the man in the back of the head, “Hush Flander. This may solve a lot of problems for us and others in the future, if he can work it out.”

They continued to watch as Ledger slowly adjusted the height and worked on getting it level. He tried to climb into the wagon bed, but the platform sank to the ground once his weight had been added to it. Now he knew he had discovered a limitation to this effect. He needed a way to tune the lifters to handle the added weight without him doing it every time more items were added or taken out. Ledger turned and looked at the men that had been observing his activities.

“Gentlemen, I am sorry to say that what I was thinking of trying won’t work. I am lacking in the skills needed to try this. But all is not lost. I think I can just enchant the timbers themselves and they can be towed by the wagons,” said Ledger.

Waylon smiled at that, then pointed to a large pile of timbers and planks sitting along one edge of the field. “Better get busy kid, we roll at sunrise, so everything needs to be ready to go.”

Ledger looked and his eyes went wide at the volume of material. He looked at Andrew and sagged. “Andrew, I’m not sure I can get all that done by morning.”

Andrew looked at him and frowned before answering, “I just saw you create six plates at the same time. Why can’t you do the same thing to the entire load? Embrace them in your thoughts and enchant all of them at once.”

Ledger looked at him blankly, “I did do that, didn’t I?” he asked, more than said. His exhausted state was making thinking harder, so he was doing things without thinking about it and ended up with unexpected results.

“Yes, you did Ledger,” said Andrew quietly. “Now try to focus.”

Ledger concentrated a moment then smiled. He looked at the men and said, “You need to get some ropes or the breeze may carry some of the load away.”

Waylon’s eyes went wide and he ran towards the equipment wagons, yelling to get the ropes out and head for the woodpile. In a few minutes, a dozen men and women were standing by the piles, ready to lasso the timbers as they lifted. When Waylon said they were ready, Ledger reached out to the weave and gently pulled a small thread down to the wood. Rather than touch each piece, he made it spread out and cover the entire mass of wood all at once. He had to be careful as some of the workers were inside the zone of effect; he didn’t want to send them flying up and away.

He heard a gasp of surprise and opened his eyes. All of the wood and most of the smaller stones and rubble had lifted into the air a few inches. He looked on as the crew lashed groups of timbers together, his head began to ache from the strain. Andrew saw Ledger begin to sag and caught him before he could fall and hit his head. “Overdid it a bit Andy, oh gods, that hurt,” he whispered. The whisper brought the banshee’s back and they proceeded to beat his brains in. He closed his eyes and passed out.

Waylon saw this and panicked. He pointed to Ledger and Andrew and two of the men dropped the ropes they were holding and rushed over to help move the unconscious boy back to his wagon.

When Andrew and the men returned to assist in securing the wood, Waylon asked, “Will he be ok?”

“He should be alright after a night’s sleep and some food in the morning. He has never tried anything on this scale before,” said Andrew.

“Good. You get some rest too. It is going to be a rough day and the rest of the guards need to be ready,” said Waylon. “The second day is always harder than the first. In a few days things get easier as everybody is settled into the routines.”

With a wave, Andrew returned to the area the guards had been assigned to make camp. He had his tent set up and was preparing to climb in when Brena came over from her wagon. Her small tent had been set up at her wagon so nobody would get the not so bright idea to visit her in the night. “Is Ledger alright? I saw him collapse earlier.”

Andrew looked up at her, “He should be fine by morning. He overdid it and is just worn out from the strain.”

She smiled, “Good, I worry about him sometimes, and you more.”

“Why do you worry about me, Brena? I’m quite able to take care of myself as you have seen.”

“I know, but I still worry.” She backed away a few steps as Andrew stood up. “I had better be going. It’s going to be an even longer day tomorrow, for all of us.” She turned to leave but Andrew took her by an arm and spun her back around and pulled her to him.

“I owe you this,” he said. He pulled her into his arms and kissed her long and hard. When the kiss broke, Brena was breathing hard, her eyes lidded but shining with her desire. He released her and said, “Back to your tent woman. I need to sleep. Though when the time comes, I hope we can take this further.” Brena just nodded and backed away from him, her emotions a whirlwind of confusion, fear, and a burning desire for this powerful man before her.

When Ledger had attempted to kiss her, she had rejected him outright. Andrew, though, he overwhelmed her emotions and she was afraid of that feeling. Was she falling in love with him? She walked back to her tent, feeling Andrew’s eyes on her all the way. She wasn’t aware she was doing it, but she had added a major swaying to her hips and rear as she walked away. Other eyes followed her as well until she bent down the get in her own tent. When the flap was closed, one of the other watchers walked over to Andrew and asked, “Are you actually making a play for her?”

Andrew started from the sudden interruption of his own confused thoughts. “Yeah, I am. Whether anything will come of it remains to be seen.” He looked at the smaller man next to him. “I mean, she is the Queen of Thieves after all.” The man nodded and returned to his tent and climbed in. The walk Brena had used had many hands busy for a short time before sleep overtook most of the camp. Andrew dreamed of those green cat eyes again. She was haunting him and he couldn’t figure out why.

The dream changed and he was back in the white place with the lone man in the strange clothing facing him. “It’s about time you came back to talk to me here Master.

Andrew looked at the man and felt the familiar touch of his sword. “Bloodrend?”

“That’s me. It is about time you figured this out. That woman is going to be a problem unless I show you and her what really happened to me and her ancestors, and a few of yours it would seem ended up here.” Without warning, Andrew was elsewhere.

He looked around. All around him, the land was made of rough red stone. Fires burned all around him and pools of what looked like molten stone bubbled and fumed. The air reeked of sulfur, from overhead, a scream was heard approaching and a huge winged beast soon settled to the ground in front of them. It had a rider on it’s back. The huge figure was in black iron armor, a huge black sword at its side that had flames running up and down the length. A long red and black cloak flowed out from behind it. It seemed to flow around him even with no wind to move it around. His face was hidden by a helmet, but from the eye slits, a bright red glow could be seen. It did not dismount, but it spoke to them in a voice that sounded like iron claws on a slate board. Painful barely described it as all the nerves in his body rebelled at the sound.

“A creature from another realm has stolen part of my staff.” It held up a long rod that was made of a single gemstone. They could see a small bit had broken from one end of the rod. “I want it recovered and returned to me. The deal is simple, gold for the return. No other obligations will be held by either side of the deal. You will not be able to bring the creature back, just obtain and return the gemstone of my staff.” It held up a staff and commanded, “Go now.” A portal opened and the entire team of one hundred and fifty found themselves standing on a barren plane. A cold wind whistled over them, like the sound of thousands of sobbing women mourning the loss of a child. The team leader spoke now. “Shit, that was worse than I expected. The burning hell’s are not a nice place to visit, ever.” He looked around, hoping to spot a landmark to begin the search.”

Andrew felt a pulling and he was back in the white place. “That is how the original Merc’s ended up on the mission. The demon lord hired them to recover the gem shard. You have several bits of it in your bag even now. Brena has a large chunk of it in her bag of holding. That was the property of one of the thieves on the team at the time. Master, I need to show you the rest tonight.” Bloodrend seemed pensive about something. “I am also sending this to Tara, that way she will leave you alone, at least I hope she will.”