Loss
Prequel to The Bornlord Saga
Lin Martin
Copyright 2015 Lin Martin
Cover by SelfPubBookCovers.com/Shandel
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Table of Contents
Dedication
Time and Place of Events
Chapter 1 - The Stranger
Chapter 2 - Message to the King
About the Author
The Bornlord Saga
To Steve, who paid the bills and gave me
the chance to let my imagination roam.
Much love.
On the Open Plains
Year 226 of Aldar’s Settlement
CHAPTER 1
The Stranger
The mare stumbled as her hooves hit the slippery algae. Cursing as the animal clumsily righted itself, her dismounted rider hauled at her reins, trying to force the horse deeper into the tepid lake. "Son of a freep! Get moving!”
Pushed past all endurance, the mare jammed her legs in the muck of the shallow water and neighed in frightened protest, yanking her head from the man's control enough to finally reach the stagnant water. She drank with thirsty desperation.
Muttering, Rawl gave in, but only for the moment. He'd have killed her there, but it would take longer for the voracious cronkin to finish her in the shallows. That would give his pursuers too much chance to find the body. "Come on," he jerked the reins roughly. Squealing and pulling back, the exhausted mare followed.
He didn't get her out as far as he liked. The damned fish found them, attacking his boots and her legs. It had been all he could do to hold onto her and slash her throat and let her drop where they were, and now the rounded mound of her side quivered above the water line from the needle-teethed cronkin that attacked in fury from below.
To Rawl's luck, night was falling. As he stumbled from the water, blood leaking from the slashes the fish had torn in his lower thighs, he scanned the darkened willows of the surrounding lakeside. He couldn't see anything, but that didn't mean much. In desperate haste, he used a branch to scramble their tracks and then dove for cover in the bushes. He had two issues confronting him: stay away from the Nomers and latch up with the Aldarans. The first would be hardest, but he'd been a lucky man in this lifetime.
The sun poured its wrath on the desiccated grasslands. This was always the worst of the journey, this return stretch from north of Tibernia to the foothills of Aldar. This was the time when their skills and preparation faded into a mind-numbing task of endurance: rising before dawn and halting after dark as they abandoned each mid-day to the devouring sun. Even the spare deer dragged their heads when they took their plodding turns, their shaved sides dark from the sweat that frothed under their harnesses. And always the tension; would their compass lead them to the water holes in the sameness of the burnt expanse?
Banjee stirred on the seat in the first wagon, disturbed from his lethargy by a faint movement on the horizon. Next to him, his second-in-charge grunted.
"That's the eighth one," she muttered. She squinted from under her broad straw brim at the distant speck that disappeared as suddenly as it had appeared in the wavering air.
"An' that's only the ones we've seen," Banjee replied shortly, shoving back the faded cloth band that shielded his high forehead and flattened his tufts of gray hair. The stifling heat made it hard to say much more.
Malila did not reply, but Banjee needed no words to know what she was thinking. Something was up with the Traders. Banjee had been on a lot of these treks, had shared at least a half a dozen with his co-leader, but he could scarce ever remember seeing grassers once the horsemen had traded their coralin for the Aldarans' wool. Now lone scouts were out, and just days ago a mounted party of three, fully-armed, robed men had even ridden close, watching stone-faced and refusing communication as the caravan slogged past. A frisson of unease passed through the caravan leader, and for the hundredth time Banjee turned on his seat and took in the line of fifteen wagons that followed.
"Settle down, Banjee," Malila told him. Hiding under her straw hat, the tough middle-aged woman handled the reins of the packdeer with the unconscious grace of long practice. "Whatever it is, it's not about us. Go ahead and try the compass again. I'm about to lose my marker."
"Angel told me last night we're real close now," Banjee replied before he let out an, "umph,” as he bent over and pulled the plated instrument from the box under the seat. This was the worst part, having to find the lakes in these Ohmall-forsaken plains. For the thousandth time he wished there was a road.
"An' I wish I knew how that bird talks with you," Malila said. "That was never one of my gifts," she told him with regret for the hundredth time.
"It's pictures I see in my head, and feelings. You could train to do it too," he told her yet again as Malila simply shook her head. He'd never had to train at all. He and the proud bird had been inseparable for the twenty years since the explorer had found the young rook crippled with a broken wing after one of its maiden flights.
Cradling the copper compass as its needle drifted and settled, Banjee scanned the sky overhead, idly wondering where the giant rook had flown off to this time. Angel's dark wings and hoarse cry were hard to miss. Suddenly Banjee's second let out an exclamation. "Hey... What do you see there?" Malila's tired voice had lifted with excitement.
Banjee's eyes dropped to the horizon where her dark-tanned finger pointed. Ahead, slightly to the right, the thinnest, faintest of green smears edged the yellow where it faded into the blasted dust of the cloudless sky.
"Thank the Ohmall. Lake Hope." Some of Banjee's worry fell away.
Lake Hope, stinking and muddy, filled with savagely dangerous cronkin. Still, it was water, even if they had to boil it before refilling the barrels. They'd be able to get fires going tonight and maybe move on by fifth-day. The smell of the water caused the deer to quicken their pace as they neared.
The playa lake, draining a vast area of the grasslands, received enough runoff from Winter melt to remain fresh even while it shrank to a pittance in the summer. It was swampy in some parts, rocky in others, and Banjee directed the caravan toward a grove on the southern shore where he knew from years' experience that a pebbled shoreline led to the water.
The deer were unhitched at the outskirt of stunted alders while Malila took the armsors on ahead to the edge of the water and directed the six fighters in setting up coarse netting to wall off the cronkin. Swords hefted to fend off any fish that might somehow slip through the fence, the armsors watched while the frantic packdeer vied to get to the water. The warm liquid smelled of decay as it seeped into their leather footwear, but like the deer, the guards didn't seem to mind.
With the rest of the travelers, Banjee followed the deer to the lake. Angel had swooped down just as they'd reached the woods, greeting Banjee with his usual chuckles and twitters, and now the iridescent mountain rook rode happily on the leather pad on Banjee's shoulder.
"Really low this year again," the leader commented to Malila, who stood next to the water observing the handlers' care of the pack deer. Dried algae scum crumbled on gravel and fist-sized rocks for three hundred feet back to where scraggly dead weeds rooted at the early summer water line.
"Lower every year," she agreed. Something else to worry about. These expeditions for coralin were hard eno
ugh already.
Suddenly one of the guards swung a sword. His hit came down on the outside of the fence. "Void!" he yelled. "Look at the teeth on that freezing monster!” His hit must have connected because the water outside the fence started to roil as the silvery carnivores swarmed the injured fish.
"Keep 'em busy!” another armsor, a husky female, joined in, swinging her own sword at the water.
"Steady!" Malita called out tersely in warning. "You'll get the deer upset. Just keep watching and don't worry about what's going on out there." It wasn't hard to believe that by this time of the year virtually nothing else lived in the lake. Winter and starvation killed the cronkin off each year, down to eggs that survived the bitter cold. When the caravan had come south this way months earlier, other seasonal fish still lived and the cronkin had only been nibbling minnows. Despite the water, not even the Traders lived here, where the Winters and the cronkin ruled.
Another voice piped up, that of one of the handlers. "We've got a visitor!" Ben informed Banjee sharply.
The leader's head swung quickly to where Ben's bearded chin thrust. Approaching their group, striding across the desiccated rubble with a confident, loose-limbed stride that negated his torn tunic and leggings, was a single man with a sword belted to his waist. Only the hilt of the sword glinted in