Chapter 6 - Part II

Travels on the road wore on the city-dweller Cedric much more so than the durable Onion, though their pace was slow. Even among hunting parties, the Soa rarely made trips from their mountain villages without their families. The few Soa who engaged in trade with the city were no different, and the children made slow traveling companions.

They still had a few more days to pass through the increasingly dominant buttes to the mountain pass of Eora Swou. Among the other travelers neither Onion nor her companion had been willing to venture anything in Nüish and Onion was confident her accent in pidgin Eirdren would quickly give her away.

Gregor had not been lying about her new role as Gael the leper. To play a more convincing infirm, he had forced her to don heavy wrappings which had the even more important role of covering her distinct bronze Nü skin. Her attire was vexing in the summer heat and to make matters worse, the shabby cart she and Cedric sat in jostled with every pothole and then some.

Before parting ways, Gregor had treated Onion to a meal together and in the dullness of travel, that is what mostly occupied her thoughts. He had not been shy about expressing his extreme dissatisfaction at the idea of leaving the Nü and Cedric without the bei'thal, without a conduit of communication between himself and Onion, but the decision was not his to make. He told her he could only make it up to her by treating her to some decent food before her journey.

"You see this?" he had commented, pointing to the bulgar dish topped with flower stems and thin slices of rein and boar meat, "Cedric can cook up the best tasting parla anywhere in Eirdred. This parla is not terrible, but it is more worthy for the gulls when compared to the parla of that man. While you two are in such close company, make sure that you get him to cook for you as much as possible. Don't let that man's talent go to waste while it is still yours to take advantage."

Not waiting for a response from Onion, he happily delved into chatty banter headless of her interest in it. "That is how I first came to meet Cedric in Eirdred." He paused. Unseen by Onion, he savored the strange flavor of the words "first met", as if he had buried the memory of their true first encounter under the burdens and joys that had accumulated over the years that passed without his friend. It was as if he truly forgot when the world was flat. But he kept those thoughts in the deepest recesses of his mind, and that was neither here nor there anyway.

"I caught him out at the market in the Durendul District. Rel's host overwhelm me if I don't admit they have the best seafood available, imported from the Outer Crest." Gregor resumed his exited small talk, using the Eirdren term for the archipelago Onion called home, as the Nü had no such term for all of the hundreds of islands. Only to mainlanders was she an Outer Crestan. To herself and her kin, she was a Nü first, and a Deezh'ullan second. Never did her loyalties extend beyond that. Nonetheless, she had come to understand the term over the few years she had resided on the continent.

Chapter 6 - Part I

Two days had come and gone before the cusps of the Eirdred city walls had finally sunk into the dawn horizon. Until then, the city had stood vigilant and strong in the hazy surroundings of fields and woods, like a lone, worn molar in the gums of an old man. Long after the clay quarries had dissipated from the river shores, the scent of wet clay still hung on the caravan's clothing as a smooth aftertaste to the metallic smell of the road.

Onion had not initially understood the need for costly mercenary protection in this fairly gentle but increasingly desolate landscape. As the caravan moved further west, trees were rare among the wide open plains. There were few areas of shelter or ambush. Yet as they passed smaller, less armed caravans, light of cargo and bleeding, Onion felt renewed appreciation for the passive deterrence provided by the mercenaries peppered throughout the caravan. For her part, before the end of the six day week of the Chosen's calendar, Onion would begin to appreciate how danger could infest the lands that laid beyond the tendrils of the City of Eirdred.

On Dagleth'ir, the fourth day of knowing, the day of the keeper of Vem, the monotony of the low gradient plains ended violently. Mighty plateaus of earth hammered themselves towards the sky with cake layered lithology of shale and sandstone. The Eirdred of the Chosen Empire, scholars, explorers and cartographers, referred to this land as "The Explosive Might of Rel's Host"; Rel tau'chuik'ahr Mael elt (Rel, outward-forceful/explosion-adjective, Host (in religious terms only), particle for indicating possession by sentence subject) No mapmaker cared that long before the first Eirdren viewed this desolate land and long after the Eirdren were no more the great buttes would be known to the Soa as the "Tables of the Gods", Soasor Rhux.

The increasingly oppressive new summer sun bore upon the flat buttes and the caravan alike, but the space under eroded shale overhangs and between the cracks of stone slabs lived an entirely different world of greenery and shade. Here, the soils were poor and the indigenous peoples of rural Eirdred province had never attempted to master the land with cultivation. Native beasts, such as the horned butter yak served more use for sustenance than the parched grasses that tickled at Onion's feet could ever provide.

Occasionally the caravan would encounter sparse herds of the butter yak, and even more rarely, see evidence of the Soa hunters' successful kill. As a child, Cedric had read in detail about the minor peoples of Eirdred and their cultures. These quasi-nomadic tribes did well to keep their hunting parties away from the roads, or more specifically, away from the foreigners, including denizens of the city. Hundreds of years after the concession of their conquered lands to the administration of Eirdred City, few Soa claimed kinship with their lord. It was difficult for Cedric to imagine how the arm of the Eirdred nobility could ever reach these remote peoples. They lived in the freedom of anonymity and the chaotic stability of a hunter-gatherer lifestyle; a concept that had always scared the poor man to the core.

But the encounters with a herd or the bones of a yak carcass were very limited. For the majority of daylight hours, the land seemed as looming and empty as the sky; perfect conditions for the bandits of infamy. Still, the outlaws made no appearance to the healthy and robust caravan. Instead, Onion felt her bones turn to jelly when a group of Imperial Guards passed the caravan on Rüern'lir. They stopped the travelers and spoke at length with the Soa man Gregor had spoken to days before.

Even at the distance from which the lepers traveled from the main caravan, Onion could hear the Soa man become increasingly ill-tempered and shout angrily at the Guard in thickly accented Eirdren before the armored group laughed and moved on. As they passed her group of sick and pretending to be sick, the some of the Imperial Guards glared disdainfully but most gave them the courtesy of being ignored.