Bian -14- Willful and Wanderlick

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Somewhere, rain falls on the Little Ooze in a land called...

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Bian
(Bee-Onn)
by Erin Halfelven

 

Chapter 14 - Willful and Wanderlick
 

I considered what Lillakatye had said. It almost sounded like a joke that only someone from my time could have made. Before I could think of a probing response, Rotgar called a halt from the head of our little column.

“Folk,” he said, “we’re going to go off the road here. There’s a wide path that leads down to a cowford, and if we take it, it will get us to the South High Road without going through Munsby. Sooth, we’ll have to ford two rivers, first the Wet River and then the Little Ooze in another mile or two.”

Lillakatye and I both stifled giggles. “Clever names for waterways. Imagine calling a river ‘Wet,'” I said. Well, wet in Bloddish was–“blodde”. The whole country and people were all wet. I laughed harder, trying to be quiet and failing.

Rotgar looked at me with tolerance and amusement. “It’s worse than that,” he said. “Ooze is Cymru for wet. So we have the Wet River and the Little Wet.”

He chuckled and waited for the rest of us to stop making teakettle noises. “All done?” he asked.

After nods and grunts of agreement, he turned back to the trail and led us off the road onto a cattle track down to the river.

“Why do we want to avoid Munchburg?” I asked.

“Munsby,” Lillakatye corrected me. “Many of the Great House servants live there. The news of which way we went would make it back to your father within an hour. If we can get to the South High Road before any hunt begins, we have a hope of staying ahead of them long enough to reach Tremursby.” She meant Lundenna, London in my world.

We rode in silence for a bit. It being England, no matter what they called it here and now, it began to rain. The icy piles of leftover snow sheltered under trees and bushes made hissing and popping noises when droplets managed to find them. The cold bit at my face but in fact, wrapped in my lynx fur coat with hood up, and good gloves and boots on, I felt warm and comfortable, despite the wet.

Everyone else was also dressed appropriately, except Zenner had no gloves I noticed when I glanced back. He had tied the lead of the pack horse to his saddle and sat with his hands either buried in his horse’s mane or tucked into his armpits. He looked Gallically stoic, and I glanced away to keep from laughing at his expression.

Kilda, riding beside him, with her own packhorse lead similarly tied, ignored the Remish spy and called to me, “Art thou warm and dry enough then, chick?” she asked.

I felt my face go hot at being addressed as a child might be. “Aye,” I answered her shortly and turned back to catch a grin and a wink from Rotgar tossed over his shoulder.

The rain stopped for a bit just as we reached the first river. The ford was an easy one, the water hardly deeper than a foot or two and the current slow. Mist rose from the water, though, and trees came right down to the river bank. We picked our way across, single-file, and regrouped into our marching order on the other side where the cattle path we had been following wound in and out through a woodland.

It wasn’t silent like the desert I was familiar with back in Southern California, but the deep quiet of the forest had a chilly resonance that empty sand and scrubland could never achieve. Bird noises and the random dripping of water off branches emphasized the lack of other sounds in some way. The horses clopped along, blowing steam out of their noses like hairy locomotives. Oddly, it was a bit warmer under the trees.

We crossed the Little Ooze with hardly more trouble than the first river, except that Rotgar and his mount stood in the middle of the stream, directing us around a treacherous section. On the other side, we passed through another hundred yards of forest and came out onto the South High Road.

I had not imagined that it was called the High Road because it was built up above the surface of the land. It was also straight as a line drawn with a ruler, going out of sight both northwest and southeast, bridged over dells and cut through hillocks. Made of mortared stones, with gutters and drains and culverts over low spots, it looked so improbably out of time and place that I stared at it long enough for the others to notice.

Zenner spoke. “We built this road when Il Bian was a Remish province.” He sounded as proud as if he had laid the stones himself.

The center course was all of twelve to fifteen feet wide, or more, and the curbs on each side were a yard or more extra with ditches alongside so that the whole structure was twenty-five to thirty feet across.

Kilda snorted. “And it and other ways like it would have fallen to ruin if Henrik Blodde had not ordered them made new and kept up and set up fees to pay for it. The Remish left this land six hundred years ago.”

Rotgar nodded. “The Roadwards still gather the fees on this and other Ways across the land. We probably won’t be stopping at one of their Weghussen before Lundenna but here is one of them now.”

And so there was, a great busy mound of wood and stone beside the highway. We rode past the medieval version of a Howard Johnson’s, two stories tall in the center with a set of stables next to it and pens for other animals behind it. A low wall surrounded the compound, and a sleepy-looking man-at-arms sat on a tall chair beside the gate, an equally sleepy-looking horse tethered to his chair.

“Proits!” the guardsman called on seeing Rotgar. “Where be ye bound, lad? And with a draggle a-hind ye?”” He grinned at all of us.

I remembered vaguely that Proits was the name of Rotgar’s father’s lands someplace on the continent. It occurred to me that the man was being very familiar in the way he addressed our young nobleman. Myself, I pulled my hood lower on my face in case someone might also recognize Alenna.

“We’re off to Cannamurr!” Rotgar announced cheerfully. “There’s a haligman there who can cure a sore head.”

The guard laughed. “Cat been playing with your liver? What you need is cabbage soup made with lots of swine fat and rosemary. That’ll make your parsnip rise up and bay at the moon.”

The few people going in and out of the gate laughed at some gesture or expression Rotgar made that I couldn’t see. “You’d best have my share, Nye-Kanodle, my root is willful and wanderlick enough.” That got more laughs.

I’d understood most of that intercourse; it reminded me of the kind of banter jocks and cops made with each other in my time. A haligman was a healer, sort of a witch doctor. Cannamurr, I vaguely recognized as the name of a town, not Lundenna, so a bit of misdirection. Nye was maybe the guardsman’s name? Kanodle was his rank, roughly a corporal. Literally, it meant “small knot,” for the loop of cord worn as insignia. The rest was just jokes about drinking, hangovers and randiness.

Amazing how much easier understanding the world had gotten in just a few hours. It worried me a bit. I still had no trouble remembering who I really was but being Alenna and knowing what she should know without asking kept feeling more and more natural. Would my sense of myself as Deputy Gus Gallant begin to fade at some time?

I preferred to think that maybe I would remember how to work the magic that Alenna had used to reach my world so I could go home, find her and take my body back.

Zenner spoke before I could follow that thought any further. “Best pick up the pace, Alter-Nobbe. Bad luck that he knew you, but he’ll tell anyone hunting us that we passed here and when.” He nodded at me when I looked back at him. “And only an adelkvinne would be wearing a cloak such as yours, lady.” Alter-Nobbe meant “Old Boy” but also was slang, approximately, for “boss.” Adelkvinne meant “noblewoman.”

But I liked my lynx coat. It was both warm and stylish. I sighed.

Rotgar grunted, and our speed did increase by half. His tall steed could walk very quickly, but my smaller horse kept having to break into a jog trot every fifty yards or so to keep up, and behind me, I heard Kelda’s mount doing the same. Beside me, Lillakatye’s horse revealed itself to be a pacer, shifting to that gait and easily keeping up with the leader. Zenner dropped back, staying at a walk for longer then cantering to catch back up. It was a wearisome way to ride because trotting was not comfortable on my stiff-legged pony.

“You’re going to clabber our lady innards with this poxey bouncing along,” Lillakatye called ahead to Rotgar. “Let’s walk for a mile and canter for half. It will go easier on our bones and the horses, too.”

I looked at her gratefully as Rotgar went along with the suggestion, slowing down to only a medium fast walk. Honig, my horse, had to stretch a bit to make that speed, but she could do it for longer without switching to a trot. “Tanka-du,” I said to Lillakatye. She winked back.

There seemed to be one of the Weghussen every six or eight miles along the road and about every other one also had a village or town around it. The road went right through the middle of the settlements, like Route 66 through a New Mexico whistlestop. A half-hour or so after sunset, we turned in through the gate of the fourth Weghus we had reached. The horses needed a rest, and we might as well be warm and eat something before we started a night march.

“How much further to Lundenna?” I asked as Rotgar fetched me off Honig’s back. I hadn’t expected him to do that, but I felt stiff and sore and ended up appreciating his help.

“Two more Weghussen and the marches between, so about twenty miles to the walls of the city,” he said.

Zenner looked back along the way we had come. “Your father is probably at least an hour or two behind us, unless he’s willing to kill his horses.”

Rotgar, Lillakatye, Kelda and I all shook our heads. Adelwalt would never injure his animals to chase me down since Borgifu would have told him that I went willingly. “Maybe he got fooled and went the wrong way,” suggested Rotgar. “That was the plan.”

Zenner shrugged, like a man who knew that things never went as planned. Actually, like a Frenchman who knew that jelly bread always lands jelly-side-down.

Rotgar grinned. “Let’s all go inside and see if we can get some of that renowned cabbage soup.”

We snickered at the weak joke and followed him through the gate, leading our horses. He paid the toll to get inside, a farthing for each person or horse, so three pennies, total, no matter how long we stayed.

But none of us had thought about what if my father had given the chase to Valto instead of leading it himself....

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Comments

Historical or alternate universe?

My knowledge of Britain between 400 and 1066 is limited to Hollywood Movies and a board game called Brittania. Is the story located in a historical setting or in an alternate universe?

Coming from a continent-wide nation where everyone speaks the same language, I'm finding the ease of communication to be somewhat unbelievable.

I am enjoying the story and gave it another Kudo.

Alternate world or historical?

erin's picture

The main character is not completely sure. Then again, Gus had never had experience with magic before this experience. :)

As for communication, so far, all of the story has taken place within about a 15 mile radius in a land where everyone speaks Bloddish (which is based on, but not identical to, Old Norse). And Gus, as Alenna, has been magically granted the ability to speak and understand Bloddish.

Zenner is a native speaker of Remish which is based on Old French/Old Catalonian but as a spy, he also speaks Bloddish, with or without a heavy accent. Rotgar can speak Bloddish, Remish and probably two or three other languages since he is pretty widely traveled for the time period.

But in answer to your main question, yeah, it's an alternate world. The point of departure with ours (besides the fact that magic works and gods sometimes take a personal hand in things) is probably a thousand years or so before the current time in the story; two thousand years before our time, more or less. I'm not trying to conceal that but the wrinkles in this idea will become more obvious as the story develops.

Hugs,
Erin

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.

cliffhanger ?

akk ... cant ... wait ... to ... see ... what ... happens ...

DogSig.png

Sorry about that :)

erin's picture

LOL.

Hugs,
Erin

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.

Oh no! The cliffhanger bug

Oh no! The cliffhanger bug has infected you too! I guess we will have to tune in next time to see if they rescued by a good Samaritan with a rope of if they plunge into the misty chasm! :D

It's just more incentive to continue reading this series, it's just so odd yet addicting. Hard to tell where you are going with it and what is going to happen, so you have to tune in again to see what's going on.

I'm told STFU more times in a day than most people get told in a lifetime

Cliff Hangeur, Orangutang-at-Large

erin's picture

The cliffhangery endings are partly for me, they give me incentive to keep writing as much as they, hopefully, give the reader incentive to keep reading. :)

Hugs,
Erin

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.

Thanks for less foreign language !

Erin, you've got me trying to figure where they are. I'll stop and relax, you are giving me headaches.
Are we going to see a part II where the princess has to function as Deputy Gallant? I would think it would be worse for her. She's used to being spoiled.

Karen

Part II (The Princess)

There was an episode of Star Trek...

Kirk was transported to a parellel universe where the Federation was the "bad guys".

The "Good Guys" Federation Kirk was able to successfully impersonate the "bad guy" Kirk, but the "bad guy" Kirk wasn't able to impersonate "good guy" Kirk. The best part of the episode was the cool beard on "bad guy" Spock!

Common Misperception

erin's picture

I have ideas for the tale of Alenna in the modern world but I honestly don't know if I will ever get around to writing that story. Still, there may be an intersection with Gus's story somewhere down the line. I ain't saying.... :)

Hugs,
Erin

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.

I wanted to establish

erin's picture

I wanted to establish the strangeness of the setting with the language play in the early chapters but now I'm just using it to maintain the flavor. Glad you are enjoying it. :)

Hugs,
Erin

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.

HEY, I happen to really like Saturday Matinee Cliffhangers!

(especially when they actually happen on Saturday!)

Before your grandfather was a twinkle in your great-grandfather's eye, kids couldn't wait for the Saturday Matinee Cliffhangers!

If you don't believe me, watch from fifty (50) seconds to one (1) minute twenty (20) seconds of the you tube video below:

http://youtu.be/9B2IgS5KmEg

Notice any resemblance to Starwars???

If it weren't for Saturday Matinee Cliffhangers, there wouldn't have been Starwars!

Gene Autry

erin's picture

When I was a kid in the fifties, you could get into the theater on Saturday morning for ten Pepsi bottle caps. There would be cartoons and a movie serial, one that was finishing up and one that was starting. The show lasted three or four hours with breaks to go to the snack bar. Soda was fifteen cents and popcorn was a dime.

The Gene Autry serials were actually my favorites because they seemed more exciting since Gene was NOT effectively a superhero and frequently got the snot kicked out of him by the bad guy until the final scene. Roy Rogers and Hopalong Cassidy did similar stories but they were unbelievably good with their guns and fists where Gene seemed to be just barely staying alive. :)

The cliffhangers with Roy would be him grabbing a package of dynamite and leaping over a cliff to get it away from the schoolmarm. Gene would have the dynamite strapped to him by the bad guy and then he would luckily escape by falling off the cliff... onto a rickety raft... that was going over a waterfall. :)

Part of this might have been that Roy Rogers and Bill Holden were actually athletic while Gene was a singer and businessman who needed more help from the scripting.

Hugs,
Erin

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.

'50's cowboy stars

Of course, both Gene Autry and Roy Rogers were singing cowboys. Sometimes the scripts tried to work that into the plot, and other times they just sang without much reason. Hopalong Cassidy was played by William Boyd. Recently one of the old movie stations in the S.F area has been showing the old Hopalong Cassidy episodes, along with the old Wyatt Earp featuring Hugh O'Brien. My old favorite, though, was The Cisco Kid with Duncan Renaldo and Leo Carrillo.

Bill Boyd

erin's picture

Yeah, brain jumped a gear there. :)

One of the funny things I heard was that Boyd didn't like horses. He thought of them as large smelly, dangerous beasts, even though he was a decent rider. Roy on the other hand loved horses.

And yes, The Cisco Kid was a favorite of mine too, both the movie serials and the later television show. :)

Hugs,
Erin

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.

Gene Autry

There is an old story that was going around that Gene was discovered by John Wayne. JW made one western where he was supposed to be a singing cowboy ( Laugh Track ) He said that there was a western singer in Chicago that would fit the bill, Gene Autry. And a star was born!

Singin' Sandy

erin's picture

Could be true, Autry's debut in film was the year after the studios had the idea to cash in on Wayne's popularity with the latest fad. Roy was a singer in an LA based Western music band when he heard there was a search on for another singing cowboy while he was shopping for a new hat. That was a few years later, after Roy had already appeared in minor roles. A lot of the other singing cowboys disappeared without much of a trace but Roy, Gene and a couple of others hung on till the fifties.

Hugs,
Erin

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.

Night travel? During those times?

Jamie Lee's picture

So far so good, at least they got away without being challenged. Wonder how mad daddy was when he found out Alenna had skipped town again?

Traveling at night during that time would have been interesting, unless the moon was full and no cloud cover. Without modern lights, even if they have lanterns, it's going to be darker than black. Maybe if they stay on that road they'll be okay.

Others have feelings too.