The Warden Threat
The distant sound of a woman’s scream floated on the air like a bottled note at sea. It traveled rapidly across the intervening distance and landed as priority mail addressed to Donald’s unflagging sense of heroism.
“Did you hear that?” he asked ostensibly of his two companions.
“It sounds like some lady is pretty excited about something,” Muce said.
“Or in distress!” the prince exclaimed.
“It didn’t sound very distressed to me. It was more like someone yelling at her kids or her husband or whatever,” the blond notso suggested. “You should have heard my mother calling after my dad sometimes. You’d think all the demons from all the hells were screaming for their dinner. It could rattle the plates right off the wall.”
“The bumpkin’s right,” Kwestor commented. “It’s probably nothing to be concerned about. Even if it were, it sounds like it’s a ways away and there’s nothing we could do about it anyway.”
Donald considered the comments from his more experienced associates and found his version more interesting. “Well I think we should investigate just in case.”
Kwestor shrugged. The sound came from in front of them. Their road led that way anyway. “As you wish, Your Highness.” He placed a barely perceptible hint of sarcasm on the honorific.
The tall, young prince nodded a regal acceptance of the ranger’s acquiescence and quickened his pace on the packed dirt track.
Their route back to Greatbridge took them south around the mountains rather than the northerly route they had used to reach the Warden. It would take one day less this way, according to Kwestor. The scenery looked much the same, though, not that Donald could claim to be much of an expert. To him, pretty much every tree looked like every other tree, and every field looked like every other field. Grass was grass, rolling hills were rolling hills, and dirt roads were, well, boring. They also all looked alike. After a while, all the little towns and villages they passed through did, too. At best, they might all be considered variations on a common recipe that went something like ‘four parts dirty people, three parts smelly livestock, two parts mud and/or dust, one part unidentifiable stink, sprinkle with a collection of rickety buildings and dirty laundry, add a pinch of alcohol, mix well, and leave in the morning.’
They had left the site of the Warden eleven days before. Donald could not remember how many small villages they had passed through since. They represented a world far different from the one in which he grew up. At one time, he found those differences fascinating. He still did, but he understood those differences better now, and he felt far more comfortable speaking with commoners than when he started out on this adventure just a couple of months before. He found that, in general, he rather liked them as people. Yes, they were ignorant and unsophisticated. Yes, they were dirty and ragged, and they exhibited unappealing habits ranging from public toenail picking to crotch scratching to booger mining and back down. Their best manners came mainly hit or miss and certainly were not schooled into them as his forcibly had been. They also tended to have fewer teeth and far more offensive odors than the people back at the castle, but he liked them nonetheless. He found them simple, basic, and somehow more real.
They rounded a bend, cleared a wooded hillock, and caught sight of the top of a large red and white striped marquee tent standing on the next hill about a quarter of a mile ahead of them. Donald did not know what to make of it and slowed to ask the scout what he thought it might be.
“There’s not enough of them to be a circus,” commented Kwestor. “Not enough noise either.”
Donald stopped to listen. He thought he detected a low murmuring sound from the direction of the tent, like a number people mumbling, but he could not make out any words.
“There’s no large town near here either,” the ranger continued as if thinking aloud. “Just a few villages. Nothing to attract any kind of show, really. My guess is it’s some kind of family gathering, although it could be an auction or half a dozen other things. We won’t know for sure until we go up there. I’m sure you’ll want to investigate.” He made it sound as though doing so would be both meaningless and an incredible burden.
The prince took no offense. He recognized the ranger’s negativism as a part of his personality. He still wondered about the cause of it, but he normally now managed to ignore or at least overlook his inflections and tone of voice. “Of course. Let’s go.”
Donald loosened the sword in the sheath at his side, and he marched up the road with a sense of purpose and resolve. For what in particular he remained unsure, but he liked the feeling and fostered it whenever he could.
The tent stood a few yards off the road in a recently harvested grain field. The land just beyond it dipped into a small valley with an unremarkable farmhouse and barn. A small stream gurgled nearby. No one seemed to be around.
The murmuring now sounded louder, but Donald still could not make out any words. As best he could tell, several people were all speaking gibberish but not all the same gibberish, like a song with a lot of ‘tra-la-la’s’ or ‘hi-ho’s’ or ‘looy-looway’s.’ The gibberish varied greatly from voice to voice, but everyone seemed to be speaking at the same time in similarly low tones, like a bunch of people all talking to themselves in a language they made up as they went along.
The three companions tiptoed toward the tent. Kwestor motioned the other two to wait while he stealthily approached the closed tent flap. He brushed it as would a wayward breeze just enough to peek inside. Donald saw him shake his head slowly and drop the flap.
“It’s religion,” Kwestor whispered with disapproval after he rejoined them. “I strongly suggest we leave right now.”
The ranger’s statement met a royal blank stare of incomprehension. Suddenly, a scream erupted from the tent. Before Kwestor could move, Donald rushed past him on his way to the tent opening with Muce close behind him. The breeze they made in passing carried away the aging scout’s heavy sigh.
Donald burst through the tent flap and immediately beheld a large pink face. Beyond this, he briefly caught sight of about twenty people, most sitting on mismatched chairs, boxes, benches, or the ground. A few stood. They were the mumblers he heard earlier. At the far right side of the tent, a middle aged man with prematurely white hair, which looked like he might have washed it in bacon fat, stood and smiled at the mumbling masses the way a used gond salesman smiles at a customer or the way a cat might smile at a mouse’s picnic. Standing to the side, he glimpsed a man who seemed out-of-place, with dark brown hair and eyes. His black clothing bore little resemblance to the peasant garb the mumblers wore.
The pink face belonged to the presumed screamer and dominated a round head covered with curly auburn hair perched on top of a just past pleasantly plump body wearing a yellow flowered dress and pale blue checkered apron. The look might well be enough to make a fashion designer weep in sympathy for the fabric.
There was an unprotected tent pole.
Donald took two or three steps into the tent and then stopped short. He had no choice. Two pudgy hands attached to two pudgier arms grabbed his shoulders, and he found himself staring into wild, round eyes in a matching pink face. A very short gasp of surprise ended prematurely when he found himself suddenly lacking the breath to complete it.
Muce’s momentum, enhanced by the weight of his pack and equipment, prevented him from stopping as quickly as the prince, whose braking efforts had been aided by the wide-eyed woman with the low center of gravity. Stumbling in his attempt to stop, Muce banged into the prince’s back, which began a chain reaction. In accordance with the laws of motion and at least one discredited political theory, the collision pushed the prince into the well-padded farmwife, knocking their not so well padded foreheads together. Stunned and overbalanced, they stumbled. Their fall was only briefly interrupted by the aforementioned unprotected tent pole, which snapped under the strain.
A hush followed the sound of the cracking pole, and all eyes turned upwards at the now unsupported center of the tent, whic
h seemed to be temporarily violating the established laws of gravity, perhaps due to divine intervention by one or more of the gods. But then again, perhaps not.
Donald, Muce and the owner of the pink face hit the ground as a three-headed, six-legged tangle of humanity and rolled toward the far canvas wall opposite the entrance. They continued to roll as physics reasserted its dominance over reality, and the tent began to fall.