Chapter 22: The natives are restless

 

 

Near a small campfire, the two soldiers kept watch, a fire too small, providing too little heat.

These days in this place too large a fire would draw the wrong kind of attention.

Everything was unsettled here, and no matter how wary they were, it was never wary enough this side of Land Gate where trouble always started.

“We should not have left that ride through,” one solider said, pushing his gloved hand as close to the flames as he dared without singeing them.

“We had to,” the other guard said, standing further back from the fire, nervous about what the light might attract. “He had a message for the prince.”

“For the wrong prince,” the other soldier said, stooping even closer to the flames, “not our prince.”

“They are both our princes,” the other soldier said.

“One we see, one we don’t,” the stooping solider said. “We should have held the rider back until we sent word to our prince.”

“The rider said it was urgent.”

“A foreigner telling us what’s urgent,” the stooping solider scoffed. “When we are charged to stand guard, we should not have let him through. And what of those others, the ones who stopped when they saw us. They’re up to no good, I’m certain.”

“They’re not natives,” the standing soldier said.

“No, from further on,” the stooping soldier said. “Their steeds weren’t native either. But I suspect they’re in league with the natives and we can expect trouble for what we did.”

“There’s always trouble here,” the standing soldier said, looking around, feeling some odd current in the changing air. “The natives are always restless.”

“Not this restless,” the stooping soldier said. “I’ve heard tales of whole villages being attacked, people slaughtered, buildings burned.”

“It serves them right for living out here in the wild,” the standing soldier said. “The natives hate us and blame us for stealing their land.”

“It’s nobody’s land,” the stooping solider said. “And its better land for farming than what we’ve got on the inside.”

“They can’t expect us to protect them if they settle beyond our towers.”

“What they want is for us to get rid of the natives,” the stooping soldier said. “They want us to drive the native south, where they belong.”

“The natives only come north to let their horses graze,” the standing soldier said. “They get angry when they find farmers on the land they need.”

“They have land enough in the south to graze,” the stooping soldier said. “Our people need fertile soil they can’t find inside.”

“It’s a hard price to pay to water that soil with blood,” the standing solider said. “What do you think those riders were up to.”

“To top the rider we let in, I suspect,” the stooping soldier said.

“Then the message must have been urgent.”

“Urgent or not, we should have asked our prince first,” the stooping soldier said. “I have the feeling nothing good will come of what we did.”

“Are those riders working with the natives?”

“Maybe.”

“Surely none will think to attack us here,” the standing soldier said, glancing around nervously.

“No, we’re too strong,” the stooping soldier said. “I fear they will take their wrath out on the farmers, and a savage wrath at that, maybe seeking to draw us out from our towers.”

“Will we really do that? I mean, just for farmers?”

“If our prince tells us to, we will.”

 

*************

 

“They are out there, I can hear them breathing,” the scared farmer said, he and his family huddled up in a corner of their cabin, shudders shut, the fire burning down to coals in the hearth to keep down the smoke from the chimney. “I knew they were up to no good when I saw them coming from the east, from the direction of the Stoneman’s place. I thought I saw smoke, too.”

“What will they do?” the farmer’s scared wife said, each of her arms around the shoulders of each of their kids, too young to be helpful, old enough to feel the terror.

Others in the village had warned the farmer about setting up so far out from the settlement, the last of a string of farms along a muddy road that eventually, after a few days’ ride might bring them to the two towers the military there.

“You need to find a place closer in,” the owner of the general store, repeatedly told him each time the farmer brought in goods to be transported to markets in Amlor or to stock up supplies he needed.

“There isn’t much in the way of land nearer in that isn’t already spoken for,” the farmer said.

“Then, you need to hire a man to work with you out there, someone who knows how to fight,” the store owner said. “There are a few ex-military men around.”

“I barely make a living now,” the farmer said. “I can’t afford to hire someone – at least, not until the farm starts producing like I expect it will.”

In truth, the farmer had not expected trouble. Most of the natives around the settlement and farms were friendly, some even hired on during harvest, so had no reason to stir up trouble.

And yet, there had been talk about other villages, and acts so savage the farmer did not want to contemplate them, and certainly did not mention them to his wife.

Maybe deep down, even he didn’t believe in “friendly” natives, and assumed like the others that none could be trusted.

The farmer had an ax and an old crank-up cross bow left from some long-forgotten war – both leaning against the wall near the door, neither capable of holding off a sustained attack, even if the farm was proficient in their use, which he was not.

“What do we do?” his wife asked, as if reading the terror from his eyes.

“We wait and see if they go away,” the farmer said. “If they do, then we hitch up the wagon and we drive back to the settlement.”

“And if they don’t leave?”

“They won’t be here forever,” the farmer said. “If we can get through the night, we’ll leave anyway.”

“What if they attack?”

“What reason would they have to attack?” the farmer said. “We’ve not offended them.”

Again, he thought of those he saw when he fled back to the house, not the “friendly” natives at all, but natives wearing warpaint and riding tall steeds rare anywhere but in the deep south, angry-looking natives who did not look or sound like those he’d met before, a warrior breed with ties to their own great king elsewhere, a different breed from a different tribe.

“I’m scared,” the farmer’s son said.

“So, am I,” said the farmer’s daughter.

“It’ll be all right,” the farmer said. “We just have to hold out until daylight.”

Which he thought was many, many terrible hours away.

 

 

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