Chapter 13

The morning of their departure for the Court de la Mer, and the celebration of Beltane, dawned in typical Seattle fashion. They say that native Aleut are known to have over one-hundred words to describe snow ... Seattleites have about a bazillion words to quantify rain! Late April in the Pacific Northwest can be summed up with any one of them. In fact, the terms “partly cloudy” and “partly sunny” do, in fact, mean entirely different things to the hardy folks that inhabit the upper left-hand corner of the map of the United States!

But, the weather that met the traveling band as they started the final load-out for the day was right on the edge of epic! Dark, stormy looking clouds blotted out what little sunlight might have been trying valiantly to peek through. The wind was whipping and gusting so that it was actually felt within the warmth and comfort of the house as it rattled against the windows. Erin saw many of her little band glance out, sigh, and then retighten a bit of strapping on some armor, or on the flap of a saddlebag or kit bag. The King’s troops in the courtyard were all bundled up in their travel cloaks over their armor, while the Pen Dragon battle standard and pennants snapped and popped overhead. The level of industry seemed to pick up a bit, as knights were assisted by their squires, and the men-at-arms seemed to be going about a similar set of tasks to get ready for the addition of having to battle the elements on the way. The clouds also colored the mood at the breakfast table, as she and her ladies finished the last of a hearty travel breakfast as well. Though they would all be happy with the warmth of the meal in their bellies, not many took on more than the bare minimum of calories from the banquet.

The uniform of the day for all the travelers were full armor, excluding the upper body plate cuirass, helmet, and gloves for the principles. All armor was to be placed for easy access for the all members of the party in armor bags, and Erin had been drilled by Jenny on how to don all of it within a matter of moments! All the members of her personal security detail would be in full armor, save helmet and gloves, as would all the King’s men who had been added to the travel party to provide additional escort. All in all, the traveling party consisted of Erin, her two ladies in waiting, Jenny and Anna, the members of her personal security detail and another 100 men-at-arms split between several Humvee’s and Stryker vehicles and a lot of dirt style bikes, plus about a dozen knights of the King’s Guard with their big street bikes. How they were going to quietly move in the mortal world was best left to others ... and a whole lot of glimmer!

When they had discussed the travel party size and needed equipment and transportation, Erin hadn’t really appreciated what that meant in the ‘real world’. Numerous acronyms and abbreviations got tossed out at the planning table during one of the later briefings, and Erin simply hadn’t paid close attention. Now that she was seated in Echo 2, and the entire circus was starting to unwind to hit the road, her eyes were wide open as a lot of ‘rolling steel’ started to grunt in a throaty roar that only large-scale diesel engines can make. When Jenny had said they were not going to take any chances, she had assumed they would move in a small and inconspicuous manner! Not like the second coming of Patton!

The order of travel seemed to sort itself out a lot faster than Erin would have bet on ... Leading them out were several of the dirt bikes, who could (and did) zip in and out of traffic quickly, and could scout ahead just a quickly, as well as get a small, but determined force, to any location in the main van on the road as needed. Following them were half of the mounted knights, followed closely by two Humvees and a Stryker, then Echo 1, another Stryker and Humvee, Echo 2, two more Humvees and a pair of Strykers, followed by the other half of the mounted knights, and a surrounding cloud of dirt bikes to screen the movement of the van. The rearguard consisted of the final two Humvees and the remaining two Strykers. All-in-all, the entire thing from 1st scout, to tail-gun Charlie covered nearly two city blocks. Yet with all of that on the road, the convoy moved with surprising agility and in good order onto Interstate-5 headed south toward Oregon...