Bakkian Chronicles, Book I - The Prophecy (41 page)

Kahvel leaned down low, meeting Steve as close to his eye level as he could. “Ye appear to be a bright ray of sunshine this morning.”

Several soldiers snickered. Steve grunted. Sleepily, he looked around, judging the activity level of the camp, which was being dismantled efficiently right before his eyes. Crap. No time to relax for a bit. Sarah came up to him and gave him a quick kiss.

“
Good morning, sweetie. I was trying to let you sleep. Sorry.”

“
That’s okay, it’s time to be moving on. What’s for breakfast?”

While Steve was digging through his parcel of food, Sarah gently nudged his elbow, gesturing at the hearth. He glanced over.

The fire had been banked for the night, but still had managed to reduce itself to just mere coals. Its primary use completed, no one had bothered to rekindle it. Darius was unsuccessfully trying to coax the fire back to life. He was desperate for a hot cup of tea. The art of fire-making had always eluded him, he thought with disgust. He hastily reassembled his tinder kit and shoved it angrily back into his pack. He gripped the small iron kettle, ready to upend the contents into the fire when he felt the heat generating from it. What was this? Curious, he flipped open the lid to look inside. The liquid was just now coming to a boil. His tea was steeping beautifully, assailing his nostrils with the aromatic scents of herbs and spices. It was then that his eyes found Steve’s. The Nohrin grinned at him and gave a small nod of his head before he walked off to help his wife disassemble their tent.

As everyone gathered once more in the clearing, about to resume their trek through the forest, the dragon’s deep voice sounded.

“
Proceed northwest. Yer destination lies roughly twenty leagues from here, as the dragon flies,” Kahvel instructed. “There ye will find a clearing a little smaller than this one. I will meet ye there just before sunset.”

“
How do you know it’s there?” Steve asked. “Do you really know this forest that well?”

“
In actuality, no,” the dragon confessed. “But that is where I settled last night. I departed just before sunrise.”

The downdraft from the dragon’s wings blasted them all to the ground yet again.

“
Confounded dragon,” Rhenyon muttered darkly, rising to his feet. “He did that on purpose. I swear it.”

True to his word, the dragon was waiting for them as they stumbled wearily into the small clearing. Travelling twenty leagues in a day was tiring enough, but complicating matters was the amount of debris strewn about the forest floor as well as the lack of a path to follow. And, of course, they were journeying uphill.

“
You people seriously need to invent cars,” Steve panted, struggling to catch his breath while doing his best to ignore the painful stitch in his side.

The closest soldier glanced over. He had hardly broken a sweat.

“
Kahrs, sir Steve?” Rhein asked, casting his jhorun about for a familiar. “What is that?”

“
Let’s just call them horseless carts.”

“
What is so special about a cart without a horse?”

“
The cart can still move around,” Steve clarified. “Without the horse.”

Rhein’s jaw dropped open. “No horses?” The soldier thought about that for a moment. “Then what pulls the cart around?”

Steve grinned. “Modern technology. As soon as you discover how to do it, you’ll love it. Trust me.”

Wearily, Sarah sank to the grass-covered ground and stretched her back. As she took in the lush forest meadow she was sitting in, she asked herself yet again why she insisted on carrying a portion of their supplies in a smaller pack. She looked over at her husband, who had shrugged off the large pack he had been carrying. Hadn’t he insisted on carrying everything himself? Hadn’t he put up a fight about letting her borrow the smaller pack from one of the soldiers? But she had been adamant about pulling her own weight on this expedition, and damn it, she was going to do just that. Sore back be damned. Glancing up to see what everyone else was doing, she saw that most had already erected their tents and were preparing to start a fire. No, she corrected, as she watched Pheron dump armfuls of firewood into the large stone ring he had assembled. They were getting the fire ready for their human firestarter.

After providing everyone with their evening meal, and Rhenyon had written up his nightly progress report, Sarah finally sat down next to her husband by the entrance to their tent.

“
Long day, huh?” he commented, eyeing his wife. “How’re you holding up?”

“
I’m sore,” Sarah admitted.

“
Me, too. I don’t think I’ve ever walked this much in my entire life.”

“
It must be a truly alien culture indeed,” the familiar voice of the dragon rumbled, “to live in a society where one does not use their own faculties as the main method of locomotion.”

Without saying a word, husband and wife looked at each other. As one, they stood up and walked around to the rear of their tent. The dragon had approached from behind and was now resting on the ground, front forelegs actually crossed, as it studied the two approaching humans.

“
Okay,” Sarah started, wondering how to best phrase her response. “I need you to visualize something, Kahvel. Imagine you live in a society where there are so many people living so close together that there isn’t enough room for them unless they build upwards.”

“
The domiciles that humans typically live in? Not enough room for every human to have their own?”

“
Right. You take one human’s house, and then on top of that, you build another, and then another, and so on. Now imagine a very big, very tall structure whose sole purpose was to provide shelter for hundreds of humans.”

The dragon was silent as it contemplated this.

“
Now, once you can imagine a structure such as that, it shouldn’t be too difficult to imagine hundreds of such structures, all providing a specialized service, whether its shelter, food, entertainment, and so forth. Are you with me so far?”

The dragon silently nodded.

“
My world has many such communities. These communities are so well structured and organized that hundreds of thousands of people can all live fairly close to one another.”

Content to listen to his wife discuss aspects of their society with the dragon, Steve sat down companionably next to Kahvel, who paid him no notice.

“
If every one of these humans,” Sarah continued, “each chose to have their own horse for transportation purposes, then there wouldn’t be room for all of them, would there? So there are community services in place that facilitate the transportation of large numbers of humans from one point to the other.”

“
And ye reside in an area such as ye describe?” the dragon asked.

“
Well, no,” Sarah confessed, “our city isn’t that large. But the same concept goes. We have our own vehicle to get us to where we have to go. And when we go on really long journeys, such as this, it is necessary for us to use these vehicles lest the journey take many times longer than necessary.”

“
You believe this journey is taking too long?”

“
Not necessarily,” Sarah said quickly. “The point I’m trying to make is that the people in my world are unused to walking long distances because there are alternatives in place so you don’t have to walk that far.”

“
Strange world indeed,” Kahvel commented, “where humans would choose not to use their own appendages to move them about.”

“
I wish I could show you some pictures,
Kahvel
,” Sarah said. “You could see for yourself what I mean. Then you could see these structures are even taller than these trees. By many, many times.”

Kahvel angled his head up to note the distance to the far-off treetops. “Impressive,” the dragon growled. “I do believe I would like to see that for my own eyes. The images you describe are difficult to visualize. I will consider what ye have told me, Sarah.”

The dragon moved off, choosing a location near the far edge of the meadow to curl up. Clamping the tip of his tail firmly in his teeth, his golden eyes closed.

Steve stared at the still form of the dragon. “Is he biting his own tail?”

“
Sure looks like it, doesn’t it?”

“
Why’s he doing that?”

“
How would I know that?” Sarah playfully pushed him towards the sleeping dragon. “You want to know, you go wake him up and ask him.”

“
Thanks, I’m good.”

They settled into a comfortable routine, with the soldiers leading the procession, and Steve and Sarah bringing up the rear. Sometimes the dragon accompanied them and other times he gave directions and met them at an agreed upon rendezvous point. Sarah kept everyone well fed and in continuous contact with the castle.

She is turning out to be more useful than I am, Steve glumly thought to himself. There had to be something else he could do to be helpful. However, every time he offered his assistance to Rhenyon or one of the soldiers, he was politely refused.

“
Best to not get in the way,” Sarah had told him. She was starting to detect traces of irritation from her husband, but there simply wasn’t anything to be done. The soldiers definitely had the routine down pat, she mused. Two always detached themselves from the group to scout around the area, looking for any signs of danger. Recon, Sarah reminded herself. That’s what Rhenyon called it. While the two soldiers scouted, er, recon’ed, uh, investigated the surroundings, two more soldiers unpacked the gear and setup tents. The fifth collected wood to make the fire. Well, collected wood so that her husband could start the fire.

****

They had just fallen asleep for the night when Sarah jolted awake. Was someone shouting? Steve’s snoring had all but eliminated the possibility of hearing background noises, but something had woken her up. Wait, there it was again. Multiple shouts this time. Someone was yelling about their arms. Sarah listened intently. There, more shouts about arms. Someone broke an arm? To arms? Yes, that was it. Wait. Wasn’t that an order to arm yourself?? Giving her snoring husband a not-so-gentle shove on the arm, she scrambled into her clothes.

“
What is it? What’s going on?” Steve unceremoniously tumbled off of the cot and onto the hard ground. He noted his wife hastily dressing. He decided he’d better do the same. “Who’s shouting?”

Sarah was just finishing pulling her clothes on. “I don’t know, but it can’t be good. Come on.” She patted the medallion under her shirt, verifying it was there. Comforted, she moved behind Steve, eager to know what was going on.

Dressed, Steve positioned himself to keep his wife behind him as he cautiously poked his head out of their tent. Not much to see, however. It was pitch black outside. Steve glanced at the low level of flames just peeking over the rim of the hearth. It had been properly banked, intending to keep a small fire burning all throughout the night. The level of light emanating from the small fire was far from adequate, Steve thought. A split second later it roared up to five times its previous size, casting its much needed light out in all directions.

Kern ran up to them. “Lady Sarah! Sir Steve! Return to your tent! Ye do not want to present a target of yerselves!”

Sarah clutched her husband’s arm tightly. “What is it? Are we under attack?”

“
Aye, under attack by a flock of griffins. They’ve been stirred up somethin’ fierce.”

Pheron appeared briefly, shouting orders. He glanced over at the blazing campfire and saw Kern gesturing wildly to the Nohrin. Good, he had stoked the fire. “Kern! Catch!” He tossed over several torches. “Light these and get over to the southern edge of this clearing on the double. Move it!”

Without a second thought, Steve turned to Sarah, kissed her tenderly, and looked her straight in the eyes. “Back in the tent. No arguing. You wearing your medallion? Good. If something happens, get yourself back to the castle. Don’t fight me on this, okay?”

“
What do you think you’re going to be able to do? These are griffins!”