Chapter 48
I didn’t tell Arianell where I was going or how I used the magic of the land and the city’s transport system to bring me from downtown to the next active station near Southport, a city long abandoned near the town of Southie, a settlement founded nearly 50 years ago by the first Oldlanders to arrive. The city hadn’t faired so well, there were mostly ruins covered over with vines, trees and thousands of years of accumulated debris from neglect and the weather. I wondered why some cities had remained untouched and others fallen into ruin.
Maybe Southland had been found and used in the interim to build Southie. Never having been to that town or seen their buildings, I wasn’t sure but I had been to Albans and knew that most of the large government mansions had cannibalized material from somewhere.
I left the ruins and walked out of the forested remains of a large city back into a more primitive village that could boast of no more than sixty years. The road in was little more than the trampling of wagon wheels, human and equine feet on packed dirt. Blackfin’s technology had not made it here and as I trod on dirt muddied by recent rain and potholes, I encountered no other travelers headed into the town. Fields that ran fallow lined both sides of the two-lane road, heavy with wild mustard, goldenrod and poison parsnips. Once, these must have been hayfields or pastures. An old fence line separated the fields from the lane---mostly cedar serpentine rails crisscrossed and wired together.
Occasionally, I passed a stone mile marker but it wasn’t until I was nearly inside the town limits before I saw any sign of life. A hastily erected palisade fence of stout logs had been thrown up around a few buildings. Gone was the thriving marketplace and bustling farming village I had heard about.
Atop the palisade fence, men patrolled armed with rifles, bows and pikes. None had any of the more modern tube weapons I now knew were sonic rifles of the Ice City.
“Stop right there,” a harsh faced man with sun darkened skin and leather clothes barked at me. “We don’t take in strays or unknowns.”
I stood back so the sun wasn’t in my eyes blinding me. “Why not?”
“The last person we let in here robbed us blind so we shot him. There’s no food or safety left. Turn around and find another place.”
“No,” I said quietly and demonstrated how pathetic their defenses were. When they heard what I wanted, they were more than eager to welcome me into their town.
Most of the inhabitants left inside the town were the men and older teenagers, mostly boys. They told me that their women and children had left for the larger cities of Napolis and Desaye where the Governor had a force large enough to protect the garrison and was more than capable of housing and protecting them all.
Of the forty or so men left, all but three volunteered to join me. Those three wanted assurances that I was not with Blackfin or the Oldlander forces nor the Warlord. Or that I wasn’t a spy for either side.
Their leader was a man named Teager and he told me that he could round up maybe a hundred more. We settled on a meeting place.
They fed me, provided me with maps and a guide sending me out into the forests like the legendary old world outlaw Robin Hood. And like Robin Hood, I gathered a crew of seasoned savvy woodsmen. The only men that the wizard had that were equal to these would be the Rangers and from what Teager told me, most of the Rangers had deserted the Governor’s forces to join the Newlanders against Gleneden and the wizard.
We traveled every night, never staying in one town or village for more than one day. In a week, we had accumulated so many men; we no longer were able to keep our presence a secret.
Daily, more soldiers straggled in, some curious to see the so-called charismatic leader of the Freedom Fighters. Me. They called me the Boy General, the Night Wolf because of my demon eyes that glowed red in the dark.
Arianell and I rendezvoused at the end of the week and she had brought nearly the same amount of new enlistments as had joined me. Some of those claimed to be able to work magic but I had doubts that they would be the equal of Blackfin. We met at the old abandoned farm of Roanoke, a place well known to all Newlanders and said to be haunted.
Centuries ago, when the land had been newly discovered and settled, the first colonists had simply disappeared and no trace of them ever found. No bones, no burned campsite or buildings, just the remains of buildings long empty and abandoned. Sixty people had vanished between one ship’s voyage and the next. My suspicions were that the Elassai had found them and incorporated the settlement people into their own ranks. That would explain the half-bloods older than I would.
Arianell brought more Rangers, Borderwall guards and nearly a thousand half-bloods. I was happy to see her brother Siobhan was among them.
The logistics of feeding, housing and organizing such a large group was beyond my skills. So, I brought them all back to Southie and to the transport platform before explaining how we would all be entering the city of Panaculeum. They were astonished and in awe at everything but Laioli had everyone and everything sorted out in mere hours freeing me. I took Arianell to the stables to see the horses.