Jacob's Ladder

Jacob's Ladder - Part 7

[pressing on with this for a while - still not sure if it's going to be my next project - so feedback valued!]

Chapter 7

Jac led the way back toward Renstown. He aimed to cut across country and retrace their path through the Wendelve Hills. It would take longer than the track to the Stonewash but the word would be out and any travellers on those routes would know there was coin to be made from reports of a child with a marked face.

"We'll shelter in the woods where we stopped before," Jac said. "It won't be too bad now we have coats."

"There's not much food left." Gaia lifted the sack and gave it a shake.

"In Renstown they sell whole roast chickens in the street." Rula licked her lips at the memory.

"We'll buy three." Jac grinned for the girl, though inside he felt hollow.

They walked on in silence save for the occasional question from Rula. Farm life is busy with chores from dawn to dusk and travel was still something new for her, the world unfolding its secrets before her endless curiosity.

Jac had felt that he knew what the world had to offer. Not in the hot lands over the southern ocean, or in the golden courts of Jalastan, but in the everyday world about him he'd felt grounded. He had travelled, visited villages and towns, even sailed on a fishing boat once. He had run the paths of his childhood and found out who he was, how he fitted into the wider life about him. At least as much as he imagined anyone could. Who a person is had always seemed a complicated question, the very act of trying to pin the answer down made it slide away, divide, change shape.

And now the hermit was telling him he was two people, one powerful and god-born, the other a child swept up in that story. Jac could feel Errobor, pacing behind his thoughts, raging for control. But Errobor had always been a patchwork of stolen lives, a collage of skills and memories looted on a bloody journey across years and miles unknown. That made him deadly, but in the face of Jac's singular purpose, against his need to find Catalin and Baya, Errobor's scattered strength could find no way to prevail.

The trio crossed heath and hill beneath a wide and empty sky. The land on the kingdom's edge was wild, hard to tame, and scoured by cold winds. The border lay many miles north but no one lived there, only the Forgotten hunting deer and elk, living in their yurts or between shelters set among the ruins of their forefathers' cities. Jac supposed that the northlands had been fertile once, but the years had stolen something from the soil, or perhaps it was just that the wind had changed and it had grown too cold for farmers. Civilisation stands on the farmer's shoulders. Elder Ethan had said that. Though in the end he had been killed by uncivilised men and no one came to save him.

The sun had hidden itself among the rounded hilltops of the Wendelve and the sky had taken on a deep blue, shading toward a black from which the stars could peep.

"It'll be a cold night." Gaia hugged herself and turned to urge Rula to keep up.

"Here is as good as anywhere." Jac nodded to the trees below them. They had stuck to the higher ground to make progress but Renstown lay too far to reach before dark.

A short while later all of them were occupied in the business of gathering branches and bracken for a shelter. Jac gave one of Rennor's knives to Gaia to cut the bracken stems.

"No tinderbox, I suppose?" Jac wasn't sure they could risk a fire but he would have liked the choice.

"No." Gaia dumped another load of bracken fronds, ready to heap onto the branches once Jac had made a wall of them.