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Chapter 11
The horses continued to walk at a constant pace that sunk the kilometers behind them (or possibly the Roman miles) with only one small break for the riders to stretch themselves and have a swallow of water mixed with vinegar. Well, that was what it tasted like, though Darius insisted it was wine. Then Ryou was back in the saddle, once more with Darius's help. It was a relief to be off his feet, though after a few hours he'd figured out that riding a horse wasn't that much more comfortable than walking, it just ached in different places.
They reached the way station around two in the afternoon according to Ryou's watch. He had assumed that the sun rose at six AM in these parts and had set his Seiko accordingly days ago. He knew the small illusion of control this gave him was just that, an illusion, but he'd spent every moment of his adult life knowing what time it was to the second, and the idea of 'look up, see if it's past noon' just didn't fit into his world view.
Th
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The road through the moorlands went on and on. Ryou was nodding on his horse and at real risk of falling both asleep and off the animal altogether. They hadn't seen a tree since the way station three hours ago. The sun was sinking towards the horizon, sending shadows to wash around the far side of the highland's hillocks like an ever-frozen sea full of billows.The stone marker on the side of a road was sheer relief, not least because its upright angles were a welcome break in all these soft, flowing lines."Finally," Darius muttered, touching his heels to the flanks of his horse to spur it on.Whatever he read on the milestone made him smile when Ryou and his dispirited horse had caught up. "Hang in there, my friend. We're nearly at the crossing. Another five minutes and we'll be at the Paths of Everywhere."With such a grandiose name, the primitive stone-and-wattle building was a letdown. Crushed by the vastness of the moors, it skulked at the center of
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A series of bumps and thuds woke Ryou up. He sat up in bed, heart beating."Ah, he's awake," said the passer, the door swinging shut on its leather strips behind her. She was carrying a small copper pail. On the other side of the room, Darius dusted off his hands as he stood up from a pile of logs he'd dropped into a wooden bin near the fire.The passer grinned toothlessly at Ryou. "Get up, young man, get up if you want to break your fast. Then we'll be going. How about you, my handsome? Want some milk?""Yes, thanks, and if you can sell us some of your cured ham too, I'd take it as a favor," Darius answered, putting a couple of logs and a few branches in the fire and building it up from the embers. From what Ryou could see out of the single glassless window opening, it was still night outside. The light from the two bowls of tallow was too dim and flickering, he couldn't read the time on his watch face.It took an hour to pack, get the horses ready and e
OurCasts Chapter 14
The first leg of the journey past Kegsum was made in silence. The shock of what they'd witnessed - and likely caused, Ryou reminded himself grimly - had cast a pall. But he didn't have the leisure to think back on the episode extensively; a somber Darius pushed them on hard, pressing both Ryou and the horses down small rutted roads, occasionally cutting across fields, fording streams and skirting hills amidst a countryside vibrant with heat and sunshine. There was something a little exaggerated about the hurry. Later that evening, when an exhausted Ryou had finished currying an equally exhausted horse that only half-heartedly tried to nip him, it occurred to him that maybe Darius had been trying to distract him and get his mind off of what had happened to the Passer this morning. Their rapid trek had taken them into the middle of an olive grove, with only a deserted stone shack nearby, empty until laborers would come later that year to collect their crop. The two of them stayed there
OurCasts Chapter 15
Darius rode up to the stelae but did not go past the circle delimiting the Kazanstar crossing. Instead, he shouted until the passer stepped out onto the flat rooftop of the two-story building fifty meters away, and then he shouted some more until he got his question across. Ryou was hanging even further back, trying not to look furtive or guilty. He didn't make out what the passer hollered back. It was when Darius rode back that Ryou learned that all their hurry had been for naught; the Path to Essin was closed, something about the war. The Path to Anwat, the neighboring province, would lead them close enough to make their way to Essin, but could not be traveled for another three days. "At least it isn’t three dozen," said Darius, trying to take it philosophically with only mitigated success. Ryou understood his companion's urgency get back, though he himself wasn't in any hurry use another crossing again. The days of waiting were spent quietly. A forested hill half a kilometer fro
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Ryou galloped past three armored men trying to haul a wagon out of a rut. Weapons had been propped up against a nearby stumpy olive tree. The symbol adorning their shields was a crudely painted moon, the same as the one Darius had on his bracers. Assyrian soldiers. But Ryou did not stop. These men didn't have horses, they couldn't help. One of them shouted after him. He couldn't make out if it was a question, an order or a threat over the sound of hooves. As he pushed his horse onward, Ryou methodically analyzed everything he could see. He'd paralleled the river at first, but then the waterway and the path had split, and he'd followed the latter. It led him through a muddy valley surrounded by gentle green hills. The path was getting wider and wider, trampled to three times its previous size by a lot of feet. He spotted more soldiers, two dozen camped near a pond; still no riders. Then a larger gaggle of tents, women among them- no, not what he needed, but he
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"Tell me where," said Rand, and then he and Ryou were hurtling through the camp, past tents, men, and horses and heading towards the river. "Th-th-th-" Ryou couldn't even talk for the mad pounding rush, but he pointed in the direction in which he'd arrived. Rand twitched the reins and the horse veered that way, still at a dead run. To either side of them, stern-faced armed men followed their course. After several minutes of full-on gallop, Rand made a gesture. Ryou craned his neck and saw two soldiers from the column of twelve peel away and turn their back to the river as they rode off. A few minutes later, the same happened again. They were spreading out in a search pattern, he realized with sudden relief, they were not only relying on his directions. A good thing; his memory of where he'd left Darius was precise, but in the time elapsed, his friend could have gone anywhere. Or be -... No, Darius was not suicidal. He knew what he was doing. If he made Ryou go on ahe
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Ryou woke in an actual bed, or what passed for one here. No larger than a couch, the carved wooden frame had ropes strung across it supporting a cloth pallet, but it was comfortable enough. Rand had informed him in passing that he could make free use of the bed, the tent and everything in it; they'd belonged to some officer of the Assyrian army who died during the first part of the siege. Despite that somewhat morbid provenance, it was much better than sleeping on a bed of bracken wrapped in a blanket. Rand had not taken him right back to the camp on the hill the preceding afternoon. He’d detoured to a small encampment in a copse of olive trees where wagons and tents had been set up in a clearing by a stream. Injured or sick soldiers occupied the pallets under the trees and in every tent . Ryou counted approximately two hundred. Young men and women, sometimes barely children, cared for them. All the attendants wore the same knee-length undyed linen tunics and a serious air a
OurCasts Chapter 19
In the mind's eye, the last hour of the Siege of Essin looked like a Kurosawa's historical movie blended with a Westerner's peplum. Imagination was all Ryou had to rely on. He could hear a deep sustained booming sound that could be felt through the ground; the tromp of feet, the clash of weapons, war cries and screams and possibly cannon fire, all so blended by numbers and distance they formed a homogeneous background noise like an earthquake. But a kilometer away in a dell near the river, Ryou couldn't even see the city's tallest buildings. The rear guard was composed of a few hundred men watching the dam, presumably to stop the defenders from making a sortie to destroy it and drown the troops invading them over the marshy ground where the forked river had flowed. Riders regularly came and went, stopping near a group of three men with plumed helmets. They didn't spread the information on how the day was going, though, so Ryou and the rest of the infantry were left in ignorance to li
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