‘It was,’ Steven said, ‘but that wasn’t me.’
Mark held a hand out to Milla, who, uncertain what to do, simply stared at it.
‘It’s called a high-five, sweetie,’ Mark whispered. ‘Just give it a good whack.’
‘All right,’ Milla cried and wound herself up for a resonant slap.
‘So you see, Garec,’ Mrs Winter went on, ‘the magic of Eldarn is alive and well. Granted, the spell table is lost, but with my writings and the purity of Steven and Milla’s skills, I have great hopes for the next generation of Eldarn’s Larion Senate.’
‘All right, then,’ Mark said, clearing the table, ‘let’s go.’
‘Go where?’ Jennifer said.
‘To my parents’ house,’ he replied. ‘They’re about half an hour from here. We can stay there as long as we need to get our bearings and then, if that portal still works, we can go back, round up the key players and get busy. I don’t envy us the task ahead, but screw it, we were able to come this far.’
‘You think your parents will recognise you?’ Jennifer asked. ‘If they’re anything like me, they’ve never given up hope, but seeing you like this, do you think they’ll call the police and have you dragged off the lawn?’
‘I’m trusting Steven and Milla to convince them,’ Mark said.
‘Very well,’ Steven said, wrapping an arm around Hannah’s waist. ‘If we don’t help them, who will?’
EPILOGUE
Crossroads
LINDEN TREES
Barrold Dayne adjusted his eye-patch and guided his horse along the line of partisans, resting now beside the thawing Falkan roadway. Spring was not yet in the air, but he could feel the frozen ground softening beneath his mount: it would be muddy going before they reached Orindale.
He felt good for the first time since leaving Capehill.
He spotted a lieutenant, a woman from Gorsk, giving curt orders to her platoon as they prepared a hasty meal by the roadside. Two soldiers, each laden with multiple leather skins, scrambled through a fallow field towards an irrigation pond a few hundred paces away, while others sifted through packs, cut strips of dried meat and sniffed dubiously at ageing blocks of cheese.
Seeing Barrold, the lieutenant asked, ‘We going to be here long?’
‘Probably overnight,’ Barrold replied. ‘We’ll wait for the order from Gita, but I’m betting there’s no need to rush.’
‘What’s up there?’ She nodded toward the forward ranks. The Falkan Resistance had grown to nearly three thousand, not an army, but still one of the largest fighting forces mustered in the Eldarni Eastlands in generations.
‘Get your crew settled, then take a ride up to that crossroads. You’ll see.’ Barrold didn’t know if General Oaklen’s infantry still held Rona or Orindale or southern Falkan; there had been no credible intelligence since Brand Krug’s arrival. But the way the locals described it, the Malakasian exodus had been as swift as it had been unexpected. ‘Where is she?’ he asked.
‘Back a bit, still trying to convince that group of farmhands they’re needed here.’
‘We could use them.’
‘So could that farm; the bloody thing’s bigger than any ten patches of greenroot we’ve got growing up in Gorsk, I can tell you.’
Barrold gave the woman a rare, tight-lipped smile, then urged his horse towards the tail-end of the partisan ranks.
Gita Kamrec had dismounted and was looking up into the faces of eight or nine young farmhands, mostly school-age boys, from the look of them. A few had worn canvas packs hefted over their shoulders, ready to march, and at least two carried field tools, the closest they could come to weaponry, Barrold guessed.
Gita, looking every bit this group’s grandmother, was entreating them to return to their homes. ‘-And I really appreciate your sense of duty, boy, I do, and I am going to use you – just in a different way. Boys, someone’s got to feed us, and that someone is you – all of you. You’re too important, all of you, to be running off to war with the spring Twinmoons only days away. Too important, and I don’t want to hear another word about it. You get yourselves home. You listen to your planting bosses and your farm foremen. Feeding the people of Capehill is your job, and gods rut us all, I’ll be back through this way, and I’ll want to see that you’re breaking your backs at it. Understand?’
A few of them offered a muffled Yes, ma’am, clearly disappointed.
Barrold smothered a laugh, then cleared his throat loudly to signal his presence.
Gita climbed into the saddle and turned to the boys again. ‘I’m not joking, boys: we really do appreciate the offer, but you’re needed far more where you are. So thank you again.’ She watched the would-be soldiers shuffle dejectedly towards a large farmhouse at the far end of a field that looked big enough to feed a nation all by itself.
To Barrold, she said, ‘What is it? And why are we making camp? There’s still a half-aven of decent light left.’
‘You need to see this, ma’am,’ he said, and spurred his horse back through the ranks, Gita hard on his heels.
The naked linden trees at the crossroads were stark black against the setting sun, their skeletal branches an unanticipated break in the monotonous Falkan plain. They lined a dirt road leading away from the Merchants’ Highway. Gita followed Barrold to the intersection, then reined in and shielded her eyes against the sun.
‘Unholy mothers,’ she whispered.
Hanging from every tree, for as far as Gita could see, were Malakasian soldiers, officers, mostly. They dangled like macabre ornaments, sometimes two and three to a branch, all with makeshift signs around their necks spelling out their crimes against the Eldarni people. It was a massive tag hanging, that very same punishment the occupation army had used to keep Falkan’s populace subdued for five generations. The dead soldiers’ naturally pale skin, bereft now of blood as well, matched the dusty beige hue of their ragged uniforms.
Some of the tags were misspelled; others looked to have been written in blood. Some had been nailed into the dead men’s chests. Gita read a few of them:
Lieutenant, murderer.
Captain, rapist.
Corporal, thief.
Captain, killed my son.
Major, burned homes.
Lieutenant, rapist, murderer.
Gita sighed. ‘Well, this answers six or seven of my nine hundred and thirteen questions.’
‘What do you suppose happened?’
‘I guess their men deserted, most likely, realised that they were over here alone.’
‘And that’s a long way from home, especially if you’re all by your lonesome,’ Barrold laughed. ‘Good for them.’
‘What I don’t understand is how it happened – I mean, where are we? What’s here? Who did this? Do you see another Resistance army out here anywhere? We’re in the middle of nowhere; there’s nothing but fallow fields and these few trees for as far as I can see.’
‘Maybe they’re up from Rona, or maybe it’s Sallax’s forces, following Oaklen up the Merchants’ Highway.’
‘Too many maybes,’ Gita said. ‘Well, regardless, I think the road to Orindale is going to be an interesting one, my friend. I’m sorry Sallax isn’t here to see this.’
‘This is his kind of entertainment.’
Gita took a last look at the corpses and said, ‘Have them cut down. No rites. Just burn the bodies, over there in that field. I want us on our way again with the dawn aven.’
Barrold rode for the Falkan ranks, while Gita stared west into the fading twilight.
Rob Scott Jay Gordon
The Larion Senators
$6.3 MILLION
After his parents had finally stopped hugging him and gone to get some sleep, Mark joined Hannah and Steven on the porch. It had taken most of the afternoon to convince his mother and father that their son was actually living inside the body of a young sailor from another place and time. He had answered all their questions, esoteric facts that only Mark would know, but it was Milla, levitating and then rotating – gently – the family cat that finally convinced them something uncommon and wonderful was happening in their front room. The sight of their son, returned to them but not as he had been, ignited smouldering fires of protection deep inside Mr and Mrs Jenkins. They had wept openly, without embarrassment, desperately clinging to him, as if trying to keep him safe from whatever horrors might be lurking in the suburban streets outside. Like Jennifer Sorenson, they refused to entertain any discussion that involved his return to Eldarn and after a while, Mark let the conversation drop, content to address it with them in private, after they had had a few days to get used to his return.