The Rock Pile

 

Pausing to survey the curve of beach, Drindl said to Alpen, “Where are they taking us? I’ve never been this far south.” The whisper of the Sprint’s barbs near his legs caused him to stumble forward into Alpen’s back.

Alpen flexed his knees, taking Drindl’s weight and steadying him. He looked left toward the road up to the queen’s palace and the cliffs above them. “I’m worried about Bebe. How could she be so rash? It’s not like her.”

As they continued south along the beach, the height of the cliffs decreased. The sand became smoother and they rounded an outer curve of shoreline. Looking ahead, Drindl tapped Alpen’s arm, “Look at that!” he whispered. Ahead of them was a long pier jutting out into the ocean and forming a breakwater against the waves.

Alpen was distracted, looking up the slope of beach to the trees. He pointed to the Sprints along the tree line, their gray bodies disappearing in the shade cast by the tree line. “Why so many Sprint? Drindl, have you been this far south on a work gang?”

“No, I’ve heard there is another prisoner compound down here.”

Alpen turned to him. “You think that’s where they are taking us?”

Drindl shrugged, glancing behind him. The Sprint bringing up the rear guard veered away to the left and the tree line up the slope. “There’s no one behind us,” he whispered. “We could escape.”

Alpen urged, “Go!” then reached out to grab Drindl’s arm when he saw another Sprint and Fae rider following further behind the prisoner column. Looking up the slope, he saw another Sprint coming down the hill. Alpen pushed Drindl to the ground.

“What?” Drindl protested.

“You fell. You weren’t trying to escape,” Alpen explained. “Limp when I pick you up.” Drindl did so. The sudden movement had caught the attention of several Fae riders guarding the prisoner column. Alpen pretended to help Drindl along. “Get better now.” Drindl faked a slight hobble, then seemed to regain his footing and resumed walking in a normal manner. Coming alongside the column atop a Sprint, a Fae warrior peered down at the two of them for a moment, then slowed and took a position behind them.

“If you falter, the barbs will cut you down,” Alpen warned Drindl as they kept pace with the column.

They came to an inlet where a river met the ocean and their task lay before them, a mountain of dirty rock, gray and black, some streaked with yellow or red. Several prisoner gangs were already loading boulders on wooden platforms that they floated to the end of the pier. Alpen pointed to a limp body snagged on a rock along the length of breakwater. “Our job is to survive today. I must find my brother.”

//////////////

Drindl's younger musculature endured the backbreaking work of lifting stones better than Alpen, but the older warrior was better adapted to working in teams with the other prisoners. After loading the wooden rafts, they pulled them out into the ocean, where Fae warriors sitting atop sea lions pulled the rafts out to the point of the pier.

“Is there any animal that those devil Fae cannot control?” complained Alpen, but he studied their interaction with the sleek animals. He told Drindl about killing the pup on the beach further north. “We were hungry. Our babes were hungry. But our lives have been miserable since then, as though these sea creatures had wished a curse on us.”

“Do you think they have that power?” Drindl asked his mentor.

“Who knows what gods dwell at the bottom of this vast ocean? They breathe air like we do and water like the fish do.” Stepping through the lapping water back to the rock pile, he turned back to watch the sea lions. “They were like big lumps of clay on shore. So graceful in the water. If only…”

A prod stick jabbed him in the side. A Cawthingi guard barked, “Work. No talk.”

The hardest part of the day was not the strain of carrying rocks or wading through water but walking back to the prisoner compound after the long day of work. The edge of the sun’s disk had just touched the watery surface of the ocean when they began the long journey back to the compound.

They stayed in the middle of the column of prisoners, afraid that a slow step would earn them the scalding sting of a Sprint’s leg barb. “I’m too tired for patrol tonight,” Drindl complained but Alpen shooshed him.

“Behind us. Our language.” Tired as he was, Alpen never forgot that he was at war. Drindl listened as they walked on the sand. “Melangi?” he whispered.

“Patois,” Alpen said. He fell back one row, deftly inserting himself between two prisoners. Now he was in front of two prisoners who looked as haggard as he felt. He turned his head to the side so that they could hear him. “You speak Jade?”

A voice from behind said, “A little.”

“My brother Mellen. His wife Sisseku. Do you know them?”

“Sisseku, yes. Cousin.” the voice said in a loud whisper. “She south where bees are. Mellen dead.”

Alpen turned to see the voice. He was about Fallon’s age. The tip of the whip lashed the back of Alpen's head and he turned forward again.

/////////////////

“Alpen!” Drindl whispered insistently. Alpen rubbed the whip sting away and fell in next to Drindl. “Someone up there on the ridge.” Alpen’s gaze went right, following the nod of Drindl’s head.

Seeing the shadow on the ridge, Alpen glanced ahead at the prisoner in front of him. “Not Fae. People?”

Drindl murmured, “Hard to tell in this light.” Drifting in the twilight air came the cooing of a burble bird that mixed with the gentle sound of waves. In the distance came the barks of sea lions. “For a moment, I thought I heard a burble bird. I can’t remember seeing a bird since we came south.”

“That’s not a bird,” Alpen said. “Warrior call.”

Drindl glanced behind him. Should he question his mentor? “It doesn’t sound –“

“Eyes wide,” Alpen cautioned. As they rounded a curve, he looked through an opening in the trees toward the slope of hill. He saw a fleeting shadow moving along the tree line, perhaps a younger person? The voice and the movement of the figure in the dim light stirred whispers in his mind. “Bebe!” he whispered.

“What?” Drindl asked. “She’s probably at the compound already.”

“No, it’s a female making a warrior call. We’re not used to that. Off to our right I saw...” He was interrupted by the soft cooing again. Alpen answered with the sound of wings flapping, then fell forward onto the prisoner in front of him and they both sprawled in the fine dirt. At the crack of the whip overhead, Alpen helped the other prisoner to his feet and the column moved forward again. Next to Alpen was another haggard prisoner, head hung forward, shoulders slumped, his torn rags and fine fur cloaked with sand.

//////////////