Go back the other way: River People
Follow this back to: Dull Crack
Illumina worried about Nina. The pursuit from the road didn't seem to worry her. Through the four days of running and hiding she stayed calm, made a point of getting them all to eat whenever possible. She even managed to increase their stock of food by keeping two of the horses from the party that originally attacked them and loading them with food scavenged from the rest. They started hunting once they were well into the forest but never had to go without.
Nina acted strangely; she distanced herself even further from the Prince. It seemed the distance between her and the Prince was inversely related to the distance between the Prince and the other members of the group. Through all the fear and emotion of the pursuit and the two fights the pursuit involved, the six fighting members of the group became very close. This was especially true of Cosimo and the Prince. The three older men were a group on their own. They all saw Illumina as the leader of the group and she was isolated in that role.
Cosimo and the Prince naturally gravitated towards each other. Cosimo started calling him 'Libby' again and the name spread among the others, all except Nina. They went hunting together, often taking Illumina and Daisy with them, often going alone. Illumina watched Nina and found the old concerns coming back again, wondering what could make her behave as she did. The story around her earlier relationship to the Prince just did not seem like enough to account for what she saw. Illumina had a surprising amount of time to think it over, riding paths in the forest following the others.
She tried once to get Nina to talk but immediately found herself staring at the same brick wall; she left it, they had enough troubles without her going out of her way looking for others. They traveled through the fringes of the forest for two days following paths made by the charcoal burners and others who made a living out of the forest. They never saw a soul. They came across occasional huts on their own or groups of two or three huts built in a clearing, there was no sign of the people who would normally be using them at that time of year.
The animals, by contrast, seemed more common than usual. There were deer and wild pigs in abundance, often running across the path or through the woods as though running away from something. A group of deer had just run across the path in front of them. Cosimo turned in the saddle to talk to Illumina who was riding behind him. "Have you noticed? They all seem to be coming from the east. All the animals we've seen have been moving west."
There was talk up and down the line as to what it could mean, also some talk about where the river was. None of them had ever been in that part of the country before so they had no real idea of where they were. The next day they found the answer to both questions.
That night Daisy was nervous looking steadily towards the east and Illumina was sure she could smell fires; not the smell of a forest fire but rather the smell of a campfire; a mixture of the smell of smoke and the smell of cooking. She talked to the others about it and they all agreed, there was something in the air, though none of them could agree as to what it might mean. They traveled carefully the next day and stopped immediately when Cosimo, who was in the lead, riding a hundred paces ahead of the main group, waved to them, indicating they should stop.
They were coming to the crest of a hill and the trees were thinning out rapidly. Illumina urged Cavalla forward and went up to stand beside Cosimo looking into the valley beyond. The valley ran roughly north south and there was obviously a trail on the other side. They could not see the trail but they knew it was there because of an endless line of people stretching back up the valley as far as they could see and stretching down to the south until it disappeared among the trees.
Illumina watched them for a moment trying to estimate how many people she was looking at. People for the most part were walking in single file and there were gaps here and there, even so Illumina, after counting a couple of sections and averaging out over what she could see, was sure there must be well over two thousand people visible on the other side of the valley. It was an astonishing number given that they had seen no one since they first entered the forest.
Looking again Illumina saw that they were all poor, even destitute, fragile and unsteady on their feet, many of them clothed in rags or hardly clothed at all. Some of them were carrying bundles, possibly containing food but many of them walked empty handed, apparently possessing nothing. Illumina watched them and it came to her that they could be a dangerous group of people, so much misery and so much poverty concentrated in one place could be an explosive combination. Illumina imagined that if she and the others approached the people they could easily be mobbed, the horses killed, themselves stripped of everything and quite probably killed as well. She watched them, her heart racing a little and wondered what in the world it could mean.
The Prince had dismounted and walked up to see what was going on. He stood looking as well. He looked up at her and said, "The death march; it must be the death march." Illumina nodded her head, amazed that they had come on this thing that seemed out of a legend, not something that belonged in the real world at all. The three of them were standing watching when Ivo ran up. He had been riding watch behind them riding several hundred paces back. Illumina turned, about to reprimand him for leaving his place when she saw that more than just idle curiosity had brought him.
He put a finger to his lips for silence and came close before speaking. "There are people, thousands of them, on a trail behind us heading south." Illumina beckoned him forward and pointed at the procession of people across the valley. He stood a moment looking and then looked up at her, about to ask who they were, when a look of realization came across his face and he echoed the Prince almost word for word, "It is the death march; it must be the death march."
They led the horses off into the trees, getting them away from the path in case anyone happened to use it to travel between the two processions. They set a watch on both processions and the rest of them gathered quietly and talked over what could be happening and what it might mean for them. They speculated about who the people were and where they came from, "and, more to the point," as Illumina added, "where are they going?" They could come to no conclusion, eventually Cosimo said, "It's no good, the only thing we can do is to capture and question a straggler."
Illumina was concerned about antagonizing anyone but agreed that in the end, they had no choice. They could not go stumbling about the forest with the possibility of running foul of a huge mob of an unknown temper. They passed word to the watchers to look for stragglers and especially for the end of the procession of people.
The first straggler came from the western procession, the one that was behind them on the path they had been taking. Cosimo was watching at the time and saw an elderly man leave the main procession and make off wearily into the bush on the eastern side of the path. Cosimo thought he might be going to relieve himself but the old man walked on a little way till he was out of sight of the procession behind some trees but still visible to Cosimo. He sat down with his back against a tree and promptly went to sleep.
Cosimo went back and fetched Ivo and the Prince. Illumina accompanied them and Daisy came with Illumina; the four of them cautiously approached the old man. Illumina motioned them to be still and stood looking at him for a while. She could see no threat in him. He was obviously undernourished and exhausted. It would be unnecessary and cruel to bind him and would accomplish nothing more than earn his distrust. She told Cosimo and Ivo to hide and only come if there seemed to be a problem.
She took out a piece of cooked meat wrapped in a cloth she had been carrying for her lunch and called gently, "Old man, wake up. I have some food for you." She had to call several times before he stirred. Eventually he opened his eyes and looked at her. Then he looked at Daisy standing beside her and at the Prince standing a little way behind. At first, it was clear he saw them as in a dream, his mind unable to make the distinction between what he experienced being sleep and what he experienced being awake. It slowly dawned on him that he was awake and a look of shock and recognition came over him and he scrambled to his knees and bent down before them touching his forehead to the ground.
Illumina was astonished and even more astonished when he started speaking in a language she had never heard before. She beckoned the other two men over. The old man looked up briefly but promptly dived for the ground again. Illumina looked at the others, "What are we to do? I don't understand a word he says and I'm sure he doesn't understand me either."
Ivo bent down and repeated the same sound several times with an interrogative tone to his voice. Illumina did not catch what he said but apparently, the old man did. He looked up and nodded his head. Illumina asked, "Do you speak his language? What language is it?"
Ivo told her the language was the common tongue of the people who lived north of the forest. Unfortunately he did not speak it, only knowing a few words, "I just said the word 'food" a few times guessing he would be hungry, do we have anything we can give him?" Illumina squatted down in front of him, bringing him more or less to eye level with her; she unwrapped the piece of meat and offered it to him. He bowed down, touching his head to the ground. He sat back, tears coming to his eyes and he spoke the same phrase over several times.
Illumina looked up at Ivo, seeking some kind of explanation. He laughed in an abrupt sort of way, "I don't know what's going on but as far as I can make out he is saying something like, 'sacred woman of death,' or maybe 'bride of death'. I'd say he is terrified of touching you. Try putting the food on the ground and see if he will take it."
Illumina did as he suggested and sure enough, the old man quickly picked it up and started eating it as fast as he could. They tried to question him but could get nothing else out of him. "What are we going to do with him?" Illumina asked of no one in particular. No one had any reasonable suggestion. They did not feel they could just let him go. Cosimo said, "I bet if you indicate he should come with us he will." Illumina tried it, walking away a little and then turning and beckoning to him. He got up uncertainly, looking round to see if she might be summoning someone else. She pointed to him and beckoned again. He came, following them back to where they left the horses. Illumina indicated he should sit down and not move. He sat watching her and sometimes the Prince but otherwise not moving at all.
The second straggler came from the eastern procession. It was an old woman this time, again falling asleep against a tree out of sight of the main procession. Illumina, the Prince, Cosimo and Daisy all went and woke her up. Cosimo actually laughed when they went through exactly the same sequence of events as they had with the old man and with precisely the same results. The old woman did not understand a word they said. They took her back to the camp and sat her next to the old man. The two of them sat talking quietly together occasionally looking at one or other member of Illumina's party. Illumina called the two watchers and said, "This is no good, we're clearly not going to get anything out of the ordinary members of the procession. We'll just end up with half a hundred people sitting under the tree there and us none the wiser. We must look for someone who at least looks different from the ones we've talked to so far."
To follow this thread in the story go to: Don't Touch
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JP Thompson (patrick@standingwaiting.com)