The Thorian Sagas. 2. Insurrection.

Once the warriors from the other cities left the shore to move inland, later that next morning, after sleeping well for the first time in two weeks, they struck out in the direction of Fenn.

They were led by the two sailors that had come ashore with them.

The landscape was foreign to them, and they were apprehensive, holding their weapons nervously, not sure what to expect.

They were loaded down with water and food, but they would also have to learn to supplement what they carried, with what they could scavenge over the next few days from the desert.

They made frustratingly slow progress over the next few hours. It was tiring, walking through sand; baked by the hot sun. The day became much hotter than they were used to.

For people who had been hemmed in by city buildings, trees, and forests all of their lives, or had been constrained within the secure bounds of buildings and with the comfort of a surrounding city wall, keeping out the unknown, this, was terrifying.

The imagination ran riot. Mile after mile of open space, walking through shrubbery that reached just above waist height, and with some of it plucking at their bare flesh, scratching them, as though hands were reaching out to them to pull them down into the sand, and away from the others.

There seemed to be no shortage of life, though little of it could be seen; just heard.

The birds were different too. Many of them were bigger and seemed unable to fly, but they could run. Others were gaudily decorated and made a lot of noise about it.

The women had this uncomfortable sensation of being watched all of the time, yet were able to see nothing that would give substance to that feeling.

Nothing seemed edible to them, being unfamiliar with this environment, yet the two women who led them, pointed out which succulents would slake their thirst; which flowers they could eat, and which tubers, once dug out of the ground and cooked, would assuage their hunger, no matter how bad it tasted, and how carefully it had to be cleaned of sand. Water was for drinking, and it was not to be wasted on washing anything.

It was a foreign world.

They made early camp for that first complete night, learning which shrubs could be burned and which could not. The wrong ones released fumes which would render them senseless and make them vulnerable to the marauding wildlife.

They were in small groups around their several fires, seeing to their own needs, learning to drag some of the more vicious thorn bushes to surround them in a continuous impenetrable wall to keep out, ‘death’.

They were far enough from Fenn, that they could keep these fires going without risk of being noticed.

The sand was warm at first, but as the night progressed, they learned to dig themselves into it, or to huddle closer to each other, and to the fire, for warmth. They had never known such cold or such vicious discomforts that seemed to live in the sand, unseen, and which too readily took advantage of being able to feast on these warm bodies.

And then the other noises began.

Once it became dark, the desert came alive around them with different noises, keeping them awake for hours.

They could not survive like this, without sleep. It was almost worse than being on board those ships.

They began to question their mission, and even their own fitness for it as they lay there sleepless, listening to death creeping in upon them; all around them.

They reminded themselves of why they were here.

The treaty needed to be rewritten.

All of them knew of, or had lost friends and relatives as tributes. It was a barbaric practice that had to end. They kept reminding themselves of that, but they now began to wonder what the real consequences of that might be.

They knew the difficulties of going against the Thorians; they had heard about it often enough with their demands becoming more and more harsh with each failed uprising. Nonetheless, the elders of their cities had been determined... except ‘they’, weren’t here, and they, were.

They had their orders what they would do when they got to Fenn and made a show of breaking into the city to hold everyone hostage. They reasoned that any discomfort or hardship for them would be worth it. Except... always those nagging little doubts... Thorians were never predictable, other than in their violent response to anything that displeased them or threatened their order.

Their two companions would leave them later tomorrow, once they crossed the road that led from Golden to Fenn. Both of them seemed to live in another town; Saltash, where they spoke of being able to join with those ships again, but what they would do after that, was never spoken of.

Those two had listened to the conversations that went on around them, often smiling to each other at the utter innocence of these poor women.

These paper ‘warriors’ had no idea what awaited them at Fenn, or they would not be so eager to get there. They would see their last minutes come and go there, and wonder how they could have been so stupid, but it would work out alright. It usually did. They would survive, while not knowing how it was possible.

There would be fifty tributes demanded from each city once this was settled, so they would have achieved exactly nothing, but at a very high price, except Liam seemed to have other things in mind for them.