Ravenwild: Book 01 - Ravenwild (21 page)

“That about sums it up,” said Rolan.

“Jess, anything else?” asked Blake.

“Other than Gnomes and Trolls, are there any other dangerous creatures we might run into along the way?”

“There could be bears, and wolves of course,” said Rolan. “But I don’t expect we will see any of those.”

Blake had continued to search the supply box. He found two individual sets of a flint-and-steel, one of which he gave to Rolan and one of which he pocketed.

Each was then left to their own thoughts as they drifted along. Jessica had never taken her eyes off the shoreline. The light of the two moons, while quite bright compared to a full moon on Earth, cast an eerie glow. As they floated by, the open spots between the great trees they passed seemed to hold countless sets of watching eyes, just out of sight, but there. All the more ominous were the shifting shadows, where she imagined all sorts of creatures lying in wait. For the longest time nobody spoke.

After about a half hour, Blake did. “Two things,” he said softly. “One, we need to sleep Jess. We’re going to need our strength come morning. We can’t pretend that we can anticipate all of the dangers we might face tomorrow, but being well rested will clearly serve us better than not. Two, we can’t despair. We need to focus on the solution, not on the problem. We know what the problem is, and it is complex at best, but hasn’t Dad always said, ‘There are no simple solutions to complex problems’? So, we won’t eat the whole elephant at once. We’ll eat him in small bites. For tonight, we sleep. We will wake up in the morning and head for a mountain. That’s it. No more. Good night, Your Majesty. Good night, Jessica.” He kissed his hand and placed it on her forehead. She did the same and each sought a position in which they could drift off in the tiny boat. Within seconds they were asleep.

When they woke up, their small craft had beached itself bow-in-first, the small waves of the river’s currents lapping gently at the stern. Rolan was gone, along with all of their supplies. Oddly, the push-poles were still there, and they had their swords, which each had removed to get some sleep in the crowded conditions. They sheathed them and took a long drink of the ice-cold water, after which they passed some time waiting for the King to return.

After each had done their business in the privacy of some bushes near the boat, they waited some more. While they waited, they searched the area for any signs of a struggle. It was a hard read, what with all of the dried blood from last night’s fight with the Trolls, but they agreed there was nothing to tell them that Rolan had been killed while they slept. At least there was no fresh blood. They then took turns searching for footprints, or any other telltale signs of travel to, or away from, the boat. There were none. They sat and thought for a while.

“What do you make of it?” Jessica finally asked. She kept her voice low. Danger was out there beyond the edge of the river’s scrub, in the midst of the trees. She could feel it. She noticed slight movements, like the passing of shadows in the brush, causing her hairs to all stand on end.

“Hard to say,” said Blake. “It’s the darndest thing. My read of him is that he is a good man and wants to help us get Stephanie back. Who knows? Did he fall asleep and fall off the boat and drown? Probably not, but I don’t think we should hang around here much longer waiting for him. Do you?”

“No I don’t,” said Jessica. “We’re sitting ducks. At least on the river, we’re away from the Trolls. Did he say if the Gnomes use boats?”

“Not that I recall. How much longer should we give it?”

The answer was decided for them as a Gnome scouting party burst forth from the tree line.

“In the boat!” yelled Blake, “I’ll push us off.”

Jessica hopped in and grabbed a push-pole. Blake seized the bow and gave it a mighty shove out into the current. The first Gnome was about to cut him down with his short sword. He raised it to deliver the fatal blow. Jessica had taken it all in, however, and was quicker. Just as he was making his final lunge, she brought up the push-pole and braced it against the transom. It caught him square in the chest, which served not only to keep him out of striking distance, but the force of the impact helped propel them even faster out into the river. There was a loud grunt as he struck the fending stick and the second attacker tripped over him. Blake seized his and polled furiously, the force of his efforts causing it to bend so hard it looked like it would surely snap, but it held, and they were quickly out of reach of the swords. The Gnomes did heave a few crude looking spears in their direction, but they fell far short, sinking harmlessly into the water. They noticed that two of them dove into the river with daggers in their bared teeth, but the leader of the squad called them back. Instead, they raced through the trees, making excellent time, and for a short while kept up with them. Soon, however, the current picked up and they pulled away. Before they rounded the next bend they turned back and watched them stop.

They could hear the roar of the rough water now. It seemed louder than the night before. Much louder.

Once again they fought for their lives as they bounced and lurched along. They took turns poling and bailing out their little craft with their hands. “Try and aim for the far side!” Blake yelled. “That’s the side we need to be on.” Jessica nodded, and together they slowly moved the boat towards the northern shore. It was all they could do to keep from going under. Each knew if that happened they were doomed. They wouldn’t last five minutes before hypothermia made the river their final home. Eventually, however, they began to tire and still the waters would not calm. Up and down they went, shooting into dark holes and popping back out, their eyes wide with terror.

They somehow made it most of the way across when the bow snagged on a large boulder and threw them both like sticks of wood into the water’s fury. “Swim, Jessica! Swim!” screamed Blake. He saw her go under. “Her sword,” he thought, “It’s dragging her down.” He tried as hard as he could to swim in her direction, but the river would not have it. It took him where it would, and the last thing he saw was her disappearing around the next bend. Miraculously, he was deposited roughly on the shore as the river spat him out. Frenzied, he scrambled onto the riverbank and fought his way through the scrub and into the trees. As luck would have it, there was a well-worn trail running beside the river, and he raced along it. His lungs felt like they would burst any second as he pulled for all the air he could get. He rounded the bend and caught a glimpse of her, face down in the water by the riverbank. With a final burst of speed, he again tore his way through the bushes and to her side, ripping her from the water. Turning her over, he noticed she wasn’t breathing. He checked for a pulse. She had one. It was faint, but it was there. He delivered the rescue breaths he had so many times delivered in his years of service in the ER. It worked. She vomited up a massive quantity of water and began to breathe on her own, but did not wake up. He rolled her on her side and hurriedly stripped off her wet clothes. Then he tore his off and lay down, holding her close to him, spooning to transfer to her his body heat. It was all that he could think to do. He had treated dozens of people with hypothermia and knew far too well that it could be lethal. She was so cold. “Come on now,” he said, “Wake up now. I won’t let you die here. You can’t die here.”

Tears streamed down his cheeks as he faced the fear that she might not make it.

Jacqueline sat quietly in Tanta Kendra’s living room on the couch. She was once again watching a morning episode of the Discovery Channel. Usually, she would be drawing furiously, maybe even writing facts down, and staring wide-eyed in amazement at the TV. But tonight she seemed to be staring ahead blankly. As always, she had a cat in her lap. Cinnamon was with her, having somehow made it over there, which Jacqueline interpreted as nothing short of miraculous. Libby, Tanta’s dog, and mother to her dog, Rosie, was close by, curled contentedly at her feet. Kendra noticed her odd look. “Jacqueline, dear, are you okay?” she asked. Jacq’ didn’t answer so Kendra repeated the question.

Jacqueline turned her way, and merely from the look on her face Kendra knew that something was drastically wrong. She put down the cooking spoon that she had been using to stir some cake batter and approached her. Kneeling in front of her, she asked, “What’s wrong, Jacq’?”

Jacqueline stopped patting Cinnamon and looked at her. She began to cry, but still said nothing, so Kendra picked her up, cat and all, and sat down on the couch with her, hugging her tight. Jacqueline buried her head in Kendra’s shoulder and silently cried for a few minutes.

“My goodness,” Kendra said, “It must be very bad for you to cry so. What is it Jacqueline? You can tell Tanta Kendra.”

She picked her head up, setting down the cat who was just as glad to be away from all of the squeezing. “That’s the thing, Tanta. I can’t tell you. It might cause trouble.”

“I see,” said Kendra. “Well, is there anything you
can
tell me?”

Jacqueline snuffed, clearing her nose, and said, “No.” Again she buried her head in her Tanta’s shoulder and cried some more.

“Oh no,” thought Kendra. She hoped there were no problems at home. She thought of the usual ones that a family goes through. Nothing came to mind. “Oh my goodness,” she thought, “Somebody in the family has gotten bad news from the doctor.” It was the only thing she could think of that Jacqueline might not want to talk about. She knew she would call Jessica as soon as she could, but for now her sole mission was to comfort her precious niece. “Poor child,” she thought. She rocked her gently and she drifted off to sleep.

“So you’re telling us that Hemlock is
not
a wizard, and you are,” said Orie. He was seated in the living room, eating a handful of Oreo cookies along with a tall glass of milk. Ryan and Minos Arterios were sitting with him. Mark was in the bathroom being sick.

“That is correct,” said Minos. “Hemlock, as you call him, is an imposter. His real name is Pinus Porphyrius. But he goes by lots of names as he goes about his … activities. He is one of the survivors of a great war on his home planet, all of whom were forced to live underground for literally hundreds of years. Hemlock is of that era. He, and a handful of others, learned to slow the aging process by using a form of, well, the closest thing to it here on your planet would be meditation, where the individual goes into a trance state and undoes the metabolic changes of aging that have occurred since the last time they were in the trance. It is what actually happens to you now when you sleep, but the process has been refined, and there are powerful drugs involved. Drugs discovered while they were living in caves. In theory, the stalling of the aging process could last forever but, like with all of us, there are things that
need
to be done that interfere with the thing that
should
be done, so long time intervals between the trances does result in some damage that cannot be undone. It also affects the mind. Eventually, those that practice this dark art become mad.

“But I digress. The next thing that they did was compile as much information as they could about the technology of their time for the sake of preserving it, most of which had been destroyed above ground in the war, and with the plan of resurrecting it the day they were able to resurface. So they studied. Pinus was one of the principal leaders in their academic pursuits, however, the bottom line is he was not the brightest of them, not by a long shot, and he has serious character issues. These deficiencies surfaced during his youth. Both of his parents died in the war while they were still above ground. His father was a high ranking politician, and a very good and fair man, and his mother was a politician’s wife. What she brought to the table was beauty, not brains, and I’m afraid Pinus inherited her lack of intellectual tools. Be that as it may, when they were forced underground, he was basically raised by some very unsavory characters, and he took on a lot of their ‘bad manners’, shall we say. All this being what it is, he is involved in some unconscionable activities on many different worlds by basically being in command of some of the gadgets that they had discovered long before the survivors went underground. He knows how to run them to a degree. So he flits about galaxies and pursues his illegal activities, always on the run. He is a criminal. He is a wanted man.”