13. Now Scouts
NOW: SCOUTS
We reported, as the army had instructed us, to the fields outside the keep on the day of departure.
When we arrived, we were taken aback. Other than Tessa having grown up in the citadel of Eccleston, I doubted any of us had seen that many people gathered in one place.
There were several hundred men from the Perpatane army, what seemed to be the whole of our neighboring settlement, Carver, and all of Sheridan.
We waited in a long line of wagons for a man from the army to tell us what formation to take.
There were dozens of men shouting and waving “come” or “halt” to different groups of people.
And though it seemed like mayhem due to the vast amount of people, the organization was strategic and strict.
We would be ordered to travel in one place along the caravan and expected to keep that place and the general pace of everyone else.
It would be slower going as the infantry was marching and most people planned to take turns walking so as to relieve their horses.
I refused to ride Zara. She was so old, and I worried about taxing her day after day. But I could not bear to think of leaving her behind.
As we idled, anxious and bored, all of us dismounted from the wagon to stretch our legs, none of us saying aloud that we had only been in the wagon for an hour or so, how that was nothing to the moons it would take to reach Perpatane.
Do you think my family will be amongst the penitents from Carver? Fox asked me. I know they never sent word or visited all this time.
I frowned. “We will keep an eye out.”
“Sirs!” Ilsit suddenly shouted from her lean against the wagon.
We all looked up to see four men mounted on big, sleek horses riding past at a walk towards the head of the line, where most of the army was gathered. They brought their mounts to a halt at Ilsit’s call.
The one-eyed man was one of them.
He was riding with a man near to his age with a head full of rich, black hair he wore in a braid down his back.
Next to the man with the braid was a bear of a man, thick in his chest and arms. His head was shaved and his body was covered in patterns of blue ink, even on his face.
Their fourth member was not a man, but a tall woman with a head of curls and an easy grin on her face.
They all wore the same brown leathers as the one-eyed man.
“Tell us. For how long do we have to stand here like idiots?” Ilsit asked.
“What makes you think we know?” said the man with the braid, but he winked and smiled at Ilsit, and I noticed then he was particularly good-looking.
“You’ve all got gobs of weapons on you,” my friend explained. “They’ve been prickly about folks having blades meant for anything but kitchen work. They took my companion’s dagger from her.” She bent her head towards Tessa.
I winced and let my eyelids fall shut. I had so many things deemed contraband on me, I had forgotten about my two tools nestled inside my trunk along with my banned book, stacked next to crates that contained mother’s moss. When I looked up, the one-eyed man was watching me from under his hood.
I raised a brow at him.
“Well, we aren’t penitents, that’s for sure,” the lady warrior said.
“Then what are you?” I asked before I could stop myself. The one-eyed man and I continued to watch each other.
“We are hired scouts,” said the man with the braid. “The lord’s son hired us. Not the older one who seems like a prick. The bastard one who owns half these wagons. We’re sort of like his private guard.”
“Thank you for explaining,” Jade said, her stable, serene voice a contrast to Ilsit’s bark. “Do you have an answer to our question? How long until we depart?”
The man with the braid sat staring at her from his horse. His smile was for her and her alone. “Until you spoke, lady, if I speak in truth, I was going to dismiss your friends. But when that pretty of a mouth asks a question, a man has got to answer it.”
“Oh for the love of the gods,” muttered the large, tattooed man, and the lady warrior began to laugh.
Jade’s cheeks grew pink, but she maintained eye contact with him.
I said, “Then tell us please.”
The man with the braid tore his gaze from Jade and said to me, “Not more than an hour, madam. It’s only a matter of sorting out the formation of all these wagons, horses, and people that holds us up.
I would ready yourself for a call down the line to start moving towards the dust road.
” He looked back at Jade and said, “Maybe you’ll grant me the gift of your name, lady?
If not today, I understand. I’m very patient. I’ll ask it next time I see you.”
Jade crossed her arms and simply blinked at him.
The lady warrior made a clicking noise with her tongue and tapped her heels to her mount’s sides, the big man and the man with the braid following suit. The one-eyed man gave me a tight smile from under his hood before he followed his fellow scouts.
“Odd folks,” Ilsit said as they rode away. “Scouts? Who in the hell are they? They’re not Perpatanian. That one even sounds Tintarian.”
“I think they’re Vyggian,” I offered, declining to also add that I had already had a run-in with the one-eyed man.
Tessa made a hmm sound. “I think you’re right. I’ve met some people from The Flavored Three. Ruskar mostly, not so much Sibbereen and Vyggia, but that is what they sound like. What in hell are islanders doing on a low country settlement’s pilgrimage across the continent to Perpatane?” she asked.
“Think those horses were Sibbereen, all of them,” added Ilsit.
We were perplexed, but we took the scout’s advice and climbed back up into the wagon.
He was correct. Before long, a dozen soldiers were riding up and down the line of wagons, guiding each into a row of two or three, and we were instructed to make for the dust road at a slower pace for the first day.
It took the entirety of the caravan, which stretched far out before us and behind us, several hours to leave the settlement’s territory and reach the broad, flattened dust road that cut across the lower half of the continent, according to the few maps I had seen.
It would take us out of all the land referred to as the low country, through villages and townships that were extensions of Eccleston, into the flatlands that were Eccleston mining districts and finally, to Perpatane, over their border into their nearest city, Skow, the City of the Tower.
We rode in silence, and then I reminded everyone we had already discussed that two of us would walk during the day to relieve the horses. Ilsit and I jumped down and walked alongside Zara.
“Was it just me or was that one with an eye patch and a hood looking at you?” she asked me. “I know you’ve bedded a fellow or two since your man passed. Was he one? Kiss and tell. I am already bored by this.”
I gave her a look of mock offense. “I’m a decent, churchgoing woman. How can you say such things to me?”