Chapter 7: The Trail Kingdoms

The kingdom of Berkedt, one of what are called the Trail Kingdoms, was our first assignment for Burr, as I was now instructed to call him. We were sent to gather information, and at the same time, provide some unobtrusive protection for the agent he was sending, a man named Collar Triosa. My first impression? The man was sloppy and obnoxious and he was late.

We should have set out at first light, but of course Collar was late and disorganized. His carriage at least showed some signs of organization, and had been loaded by competent hands.

Grinder and Sheer were both pleased with the prospect of taking to the road. They bristled with energy and practically danced across the cobblestones as we headed out. We had six escorts with us, two riding the carriage and four on horseback with us. They looked competent enough in the rough-edged way that most men-for-hire did. It wold be a couple of days before we were anyplace where their particular skills would be needed, and it was unlikely that a carriage with an armed escort would be in danger at all. Those who preyed upon travelers were generally smart enough to let the armed and ready travelers pass. Still they had checked the carriage itself and our equipment with a practiced and disciplined eye. I rode with their leader at the front of our column as we began our journey.

"There will likely be some weather later this evening, are we going to ride through the night as long as we have the king's road to travel, or will we be holding up every night?" Sergeant Palanqo asked as we passed through Demira's northern gate.

The good Sergeant was in charge of our escort, and had struck me as a careful and cautious commander, a good trait to have when charged with guarding something or someone.

"We will stop tonight for sure, and tomorrow will depend on how many miles we manage to cover. What do you know that might change that plan?" I asked.

"There are a couple of tricky stretches a few days further along that it would be wise to take during full daylight, especially with the carriage so fully loaded. It means we should ride through the night either tonight or tomorrow so we can stop at the Great Slide Inn and use it for our starting point through the Chapra Hills. We may have to overnight on the trail if we get stuck there after dark, and I'd rather not have to."

"Works for me." I answered. "Check with Trunk, but I expect he'll feel the same way."

"What about the agent fellow." Palanqo asked.

"You can ask him, but I wouldn't give his opinion much weight. It'll be based on maximum comfort and minimum inconvenience, I suspect."

The ride up the King's Road took us halfway through Demira the first day, and we spent the night at the Calf Tail, in Treebough, a crossroads community at the edge of the Demiran farming district. The good sergeant and his crew would start earning their pay tomorrow when we finally left Demira proper and went onto the Post Road that traveled through the seven southern kingdoms. This was were the threat of bandits and outlaws became real, if still unlikely.

In looking at a map during morning meal at the Calf Tail that morning I actually laughed out loud when I realized that somewhere in the middle of our trip we would pass through the Redecine Hills. Those hills had been featured prominently in one of my first year classes at the Academy, and I had actually gone on to read the entire book the class was based on, a weighty but readable tome called 'The Redecine Wars: A Study in Diplomatic Failure and Military Response'. I had gone out of my way several times to read that author's writing, and considered it sad that he was some three hundred years gone, because I think I would have enjoyed meeting the fellow.

Those Redecine Hills were still at the heart of some major grape growing regions, and there was still a lot of competition for their output. We weren't going looking for grapes, but perhaps our trade was related. I was pretty sure it had something to do with harvesting oak for the barrel making trade. Of course we weren't really even involved at that level. Collar's job was to look at the financial angle so that the senior Gurmot could decide if it was worth an investment or not.

Traffic was heavy this close to Demira. Here at least, the Post Road was wide and well maintained. With a couple men always riding well to the fore to warn slow traveling traffic to make room, we charged through the day with good speed, the flat farmland making for good roads and good riding.

We had to slow when it got dark, but we ate evening meal without stopping, and even Collar was smart enough not to grumble about having to ride through the night. Two of our guard rode with lacewing lanterns ahead of us, this time more for our own protection than for speed. The rode became deserted once night fell, except for us. The ride proceeded without problem well into daylight the next day.

"We've made good time." The Sergeant told me late in the morning. "We could stop for a real lunch at the inn in the town we're coming to, as long as we don't linger we can make the Great Slide before dark."

Grinder needed the rest, as did all the horses, and the fresh feed and water they received at the Gray Neck Inn was probably better received than the ham and potatoes we had. Even the wine at the this inn seemed desultory, so pervasive was that attitude. At least half the patrons spent more time looking us over than they did their food.

"Try to look large and menacing." I told the Sergeant. "I suspect half these men here would consider riding out after us as a good day's work."

The Sergeant made a point of having his men clean and ready their weapons for the ride. He gave them all a brief inspection as we left, saying more with the calm competence of the check than any bluster would have accomplished.

We rode hard the rest of the day, the flat riding having come to an end, and the gentle rolling hills slowly being replaced with an endless series of sharp ravines and steep hills. We were deep into them when we finally came to a small flat cut in the hills where the Great Slide Inn sat, incongruously in the middle of nowhere.

The Great Slide was, to use my mother's words, a tourist trap. The building itself was magnificent, built of huge timbers and raw stone, and it did face an incredible view of the sheer, flat face of the cliff on the opposite side of the large ravine. The entire side of the mountain had sheered off and slid into the ravine below some twenty three years before. There was a viewing platform, mule trips into the rubble field, excursions to the face of the slide itself. All for a small fee of course.

We contented ourselves, as did most busy travelers who came through here, with admiring the vastness of the sheered rock face for a moment, and then let our concern fall on our room, our food and the wine. There was certainly nothing bad to say about the food or the service here. Everything was top notch, and I suspected we were paying for it as well. The entertainment was a Zitara player with a decent voice, though he billed himself as having studied with Thistle, the Bard of the North, and I knew this was untrue. Thistle had never had a student except for Starlight. He had been teaching classes on Guitar making for the last five years, but this fellow didn't seem the type. The fellow did a decent job, and I did recognize several of Starlight's songs in his repertoire. They suited his voice, and he was obviously a good musician, if deceptive in his boasting. I was not Thistle's champion, last time I checked, so I said nothing. The soft down mattress and pillow I settled into a few hours later had me forgetting the entire thing very quickly.

The Chapra Hills were just plain nasty, and to make it worse, we began to get a light rain a couple hours into our ride. The road was narrow here, and ran like a ribbon along the side of some impressive cliffs, and while it was hugging those sphincter-tightening cliffs, it was dipping and climbing within a maze of wrinkled earth sprinkled with raw rock and dust. Except that now the dust was becoming mud. The horses on the carriage had to wear blinders, just to get them to keep pulling on some of the more precipitous stretches, and our own horses were barely better. Grinder seemed okay, and Sheer as well, though both horses were on edge. Hell so were Trunk and I!

The rain got more intense as the day wore on, and it definitely looked like we were going to have to spend the night out in the hills, as Sergeant Palanqo feared. We found a wide spot in the trail, one of the larger turnouts designed to let wagons pass each other when they met. The only advantage this one had was a large overhang on one side that gave us someplace to anchor an oilskin for shelter, and a dry place to start a fire. There was a special barrel of wood, four inch rounds that had been soaked in an oily mixture that made them burn longer and slower while keeping the flame and smoke clean enough to cook on. Really we were just searing and reheating some roast Ash Beak that had been prepared in advance. The potatoes that we had with it were also precooked and ready for heating in the fire.

Collar Triosa grumbled a little over the dampness of the air, but even he was glad to be able to stretch his legs a little and stand up under our cover without being rained on. The heat of the fire was reflected off the rock wall behind it, and the overhang above, increasing the pleasant effect of the fire, and soon we were all sitting around it, drinking the rest of the delicious Arcasta that had been opened with our meal.

"This seems like it would be easy territory for waylaying travelers Sergeant." I said. "Should we be concerned when we set out in the morning?"

"If the rain keeps up like this, probably not. The bandits will avoid fighting in this stuff more than we will. Unless you are a specific target for someone, we shouldn't have to worry until the rain eases."

"We should hardly have to worry about being a target." Collar replied. "Our trip involves no money, no cargo, we aren't going to negotiate a deal, just do some preliminary fact checking and an initial examination of their books."

He made sense, and I was slowly adjusting my initial opinion of the man. He was still a slob, but I sensed that it was mostly a matter of having his mind elsewhere. The obnoxious attitude I discovered also seemed to be a matter of not reacting well to being up at an early hour.

The hard rain turned into heavy rain sometime during the middle of the night. The rain fell in hard heavy drops that rattled against the oil skin hard enough to wake me up. I was adjusting the blanket I had rolled up as a pillow when the first flash of lightning brought the entire area into a split second of harsh relief. Four seconds later there was a long echoing peal of thunder that seemed to work its way up the cliff walls and back again. The horses began making noise and I knew they were going to be a problem if the storm got closer. I was wrapping an oilskin over myself when I felt Trunk beside me.

"Looks like this could get nasty." He muttered.

"I'm afraid the horses will break free and run if the lightning and thunder get any closer. They're likely to go over the cliff in the dark. The two of us used Grinder and Sheer to keep the rest of the horses close to the inner edges of the cliff. I was resorting to a little Light work and some of the gifts to keep them calm, but it was only going to last as long as the storm remained at a distance. There are some fears that are just too primal to make mental trickery effective.

"Lets get them under the overhang and behind the oilskin and the carriage." Came the Sergeant's voice out of the darkness and the waves of falling rain. "They'll do better if we can mask the direction of the thunder."

I'm not sure we would have been able to keep the horses under the overhang when things were at their worst. The storm passed directly over us, and the thunder and lightning became as intense as I can ever remember seeing it. The hard rain turned into hail several times, and the hollow booming of the hard pellets off of every surface around us just added to the fear the horses were feeling. I sent wave after calming wave of Light through them, and spoke directly to the bright, spinning horse minds, calming comforting and reassuring. The temperature dropped, until our breathes were condensing around us like geysers, and the horse's even more so.

We were able to settle down only after several hours of this onslaught, but at least the horses were quick to recover once the lightning and thunder were past and fading in the distance.

We collapsed into a collective heap as soon as we had the horses back on their line, and slept the sleep of the dead until first light. Trunk was the first of us to rouse himself, and he was soon kicking the mumbling mounds he found laying under the overhang.

"Come on you laggards! You lay-a-beds! You handmaidens! We're wasting daylight that could be better spent getting us the hell out of these hills and back in civilized lands!"

I made a token grumble, but he was right, and I was as anxious to get past this place as he was. Sergeant Palanqo had his men up shortly thereafter and we worked to get the oilskin taken down and the remnants of last nights fire cleaned up. The horses got to eat while we did that. We'd settle for eating travel rations as we rode, and stop for a real meal at the first promise of an inn that we encountered.

Even Collar only grumbled his normal amount and climbed into the carriage as soon as we were ready to go, a chunk of buttered biscuit in one hand. His idea of trail rations, apparently.

The road through the hills had taken some hard licks from last night's storm. There was a lot of debris on the road, including some larger rocks that we had to clear in order for the carriage to make it through. The roadbed itself was muddy and full of potholes, from small little puddles up to axle-threatening craters. It took us the entire day to wend our way out and onto level ground, and it was already threatening to turn into dusk when we pulled into the Falcon & Grapevine Inn.

This inn seemed to strike a perfect middle ground between the forced glory of the Great Slide Inn and the tepid ennui of the Gray Neck Inn. It seemed to be a hard-working inn for hard-working people, and the extras seemed dedicated more towards comfort than appearance.

We became minor celebrities when we told our hostess that we had had to spend the night in the middle of the road through the hills.

"Did you see the tornadoes then?" The bartender asked us as we were getting our mulled wine to go with the meal we were all eager to sit down to.

"Tornadoes?" We asked.

"There were reports of at least a half dozen tornadoes coming out of the storm as it passed over the hills." One of the patrons sitting at the bar said.

"We were fortunate then. We had all the signs, even hail, but the wind never got so bad as to indicate a tornado."

We ate our meal and then double checked the carriage and our equipment in the full light of day. The storm of the previous night had given way to a blue sky with only scattered, puffy white clouds and a light, warm breeze. We rode on with high spirits, feeling like we had good fortune on our side. I caught myself looking around a bit too much as we rode through the Redecine hills. I'm not sure what I expected to see; ghosts of ancient battles perhaps, or Unity Carbos' spirit waving at me from the top of a hill. I shook my head and laughed at this moment of self discovery.

Two uneventful days later, we entered the kingdom of Berkedt. The capital was Harecht, which sat poised between the lush farmlands and great hardwood forest that was the reason for our journey.

Arrangements had been made in advance to stay at the Inn of the Green Circle. We pulled in, and a flurry of grooms and attendants rushed out to help with the horses and carriage. Only Collar had custom of any consequence, and his bags were quickly being routed through the doors. Trunk and I had our kits quickly secured, and Grinder and Sheer were off to the inn's stable as we headed into the inn.

The main room of the inn was large, well lit and busy! We were a little early for evening meal, so we didn't linger.

"Your rooms are on the third floor sirs. The clerk told us. Evening meal will be served in a few hours. We do not have any entertainment scheduled for this evening, but we will have a troupe of acrobats and a singer doing an evening performance starting tomorrow and running till the new moon."

We were each handed a small leather and tin token.

"Show these to your server in the dining room, your room includes all meals. There is a laundry bag hanging on the back of the door to your room, please place any laundry needing to be done in the bag and it will be picked up this evening and returned during morning meal."