Where the Wind Takes Us
“This caravan must be loaded. Is that because the rich merchant’s son is coming along?” Balsa whispered to Jiguro. The sweet sauce of the tahal dribbled over her chin.
“Seems so,” Jiguro said. “At least we’ll be well-fed.”
This was the first morning after the caravan’s departure. It was being led by a wealthy merchant in a hurry, like so many of them were. Balsa was old enough to know that the real holdups on journeys like this were the wealthy merchants themselves. The caravan guards and workers were up at the crack of dawn to eat breakfast, pack up the tents and get ready to move again, but the caravan leader and the pampered people with him tended to sleep in.
Balsa still couldn’t believe they’d gotten tahal for breakfast, including the sauce. It seemed so extravagant and wasteful to her. Most of the time, a Rotan caravan breakfast consisted of a load of hardened, unleavened bam bread dipped in hot tea to make it soft enough to chew. Compared to that, tahal was a feast for the senses: the spices were exotic and flavorful, the meat was soft and tender, and it was nothing like what she usually ate. It was delicious.
One of the other caravan guards who was sitting across from Balsa and Jiguro at the table smiled at Balsa as she devoured her tahal. “First time eating pork tahal?” he asked.
Balsa nodded and kept eating.
The caravan snorted. “You two are lucky that Arza fell off his horse. Otherwise you wouldn’t have gotten his spot.”
Arza was another caravan guard who was familiar with the route they were traveling. He would have been the caravan’s guide, but he’d suffered an accident, so Jiguro had taken his place. Jiguro knew most of the trade routes in Rota. Arza was out of commission until his broken leg healed.
Balsa did feel fortunate to be eating this breakfast, but the caravan guard’s tone annoyed her. Jiguro was no one’s replacement. He was a first-class caravan guard and bodyguard. He deserved respect. The caravan should feel lucky to have him along, not the other way around.
Even as she ate, Balsa felt a strange sense of unease, like she and Jiguro didn’t belong here. She knew that they did, but other people were treating them like they didn’t.
After breakfast, Balsa went on patrol with the caravan’s eight other guards. When she and Jiguro had first arrived at the caravan, she’d thought that they would only be traveling with one rich merchant, but they were traveling with three, so they’d all bought their own guards. A caravan this size with eight guards--nine, including her--was as rare as a breakfast of pork tahal. They could probably have gotten away with hiring half that many. She wondered how the merchants could afford to feed so many guards such rich meals.
It was Balsa’s turn to help wash dishes. She lined up behind another guard who would also be assisting with dish duty.
After the caravan departed, Balsa rode up to Jiguro. They were both riding near the front of the caravan. “Dad,” she said. “This caravan is… weird.”
“How do you mean?” Jiguro asked. His eyes were on the road, scanning for threats.
“I don’t think that all the caravan guards that the merchants hired are actually guards.”
Jiguro glanced at Balsa. “Where’s your evidence for that?”
Balsa tried to explain the unsettling feeling she’d gotten at breakfast to Jiguro. “That man who talked to us should know you by reputation, but if he did, he didn’t respect that knowledge. A real guard would have.” First-class caravan guards were rare. Any other caravan guard who knew that Jiguro was first-class might express jealousy quietly, but they’d never dare to mock him openly or suggest that he didn’t deserve his place in this caravan.
“Their equipment is all shiny and new,” Balsa said. “It looks like it hasn’t been used before. To me it all looks more like costumes than gear. It would be one thing if just one of the other guards had new gear, but all of the other caravan guards are outfitted like that. The more I think about it all, the stranger it gets.”
Balsa remembered now that the other caravan guards hadn’t used their knives to cut the meat at breakfast. They’d used wooden utensils or their hands. That was unusual; every other caravan guard she’d ever met used their knives to eat as a matter of routine, since they were so used to handling the knife as a weapon.
“If they’re not guards, who are they?” Jiguro asked Balsa.
“Soldiers,” she said. “I think. I thought I saw a symbol on one of the sheaths, but it was put on backwards so that the symbol is hidden. I didn’t see it clearly enough to identify it.”
Jiguro smiled at her. “I see. It’s good to know you’ve got eyes. Your observations are all correct.” He adjusted his grip on the reins and urged his horse to go a little faster, putting more distance between himself and the caravan. Balsa followed him.
“Keep your eyes open,” Jiguro whispered to Balsa. “I don’t know what threat they represent yet, but being cautious is the right move.”
“All right.” Balsa fixed her gaze straight ahead as she rode. “I’ll be careful.”
***
The caravan stopped moving when the sun went down. Workers fed and watered the horses and set up tents for the night. The leader of the caravan approached Jiguro while the tents were being erected.
“You did well guarding the front today,” the leader of the caravan said. He was short and slight, but he conveyed an air of quiet dignity. He was past fifty years old and his hair was completely white. It shone like metal when the sunlight caught it.
Jiguro bowed his head slightly, accepting the caravan leader’s words. “I’d heard that the road north was getting difficult this year, but we didn’t run into any trouble at all today.”
“Hm,” the caravan leader said. “I suppose there are a lot of merchant caravans on the road to Toluan during the day in this season. Maybe we don’t have to worry too much until we reach Toluan.”
“You may be right. I think we may be able to reach Yakkal tomorrow if we make good time. I suspect we’ll make it even if we do run into a spot of trouble on the road,” Jiguro said.
The caravan leader appeared openly relieved. “Thank goodness. I’d love to sleep with a roof over my head.” He rubbed his chin. “Say, do you have any familiarity with a place called Mahal Marsh?”
Jiguro nodded. “Yes, I know it.”
“How long should it take us to get there from here?”
“A day and a half, but it’s in the opposite direction of Yakkal. If you want to rest there tomorrow, we’d have to double back on the road and take a different path to reach it. If Toluan is our goal, then Mahal Marsh is a significant detour.”
The caravan leader smiled. “Yes, I know we’re in a hurry, but there’s a reason I’d like to head for the marsh anyway. My family employs gacchina--fortune-tellers--to advise us in our business. Not everyone believes their words, but I do.”
“And what did they say?” Jiguro asked.
“I consulted with a fortune teller about this journey,” the caravan leader said. “The fortune-teller wrote down three place names that could potentially triple or even quintuple our investment if we visit them.”
“And one of them is Mashal Marsh, I suppose,” Jiguro said. “What are the other two?”
The caravan leader hesitated. He looked Jiguro in the eyes for a long, drawn-out moment before he said, “Kemiru’s Hill and the Valley of the Mountain King.”
Jiguro looked down. “Are you connected to the Tahsa people, sir?”
The caravan leader shook his head. “Nope, I’m about as Rotan as they come. However, my ancestors had a grudge against them, and that’s a big part of the reason why my life is the way it is. The fortune-teller told me to go north to the places where the Tahsa people and my ancestors fought to make my fortune. She also advised me to do what I could to lay their restless spirits to rest.”
The sun set behind the mountains, leaving the caravan leader’s face half in shadow.
“Do you know much about the tragedy of Mahal Marsh?” the caravan leader asked. “It was made into a play. It’s an old story about the Tahsa people entering into Rotan lands, pretending to be duck hunters. They killed every Rotan soldier they saw to a man. The fortune teller told me that if we make it to Mahal Marsh by the fifteenth day of this month, on the night of a new moon, and pray for my deceased ancestors, the caravan and I will be blessed with good fortune.
“I am prepared to slow down our progress and get to Toluan later than expected so that we can make stops in Mahal Marsh, Kemiru’s Hill, and the Valley of the Forest King,” the caravan leader added. “All that matters is that we arrive safely. I don’t want my future caravans to be cursed if I ever stop at those places in the future, and the potential gains that my ancestors’ blessings could give me are too good to ignore.”
A cold wind blew at the sleeves of the caravan leader’s coat. He rubbed his chilly hands together. “Can we make it in time? By the night of the fifteenth?”
Jiguro nodded. “Yes, we can. We should arrive at sunset on the fifteenth.”
The caravan leader offered Jiguro a sincere smile. “I guess I won’t be getting that roof over my head for a few more days. Oh, well. Any suffering now will be worth it later.”
The caravan leader excused himself to talk to some other merchants. Balsa tethered her horse to a tree near Jiguro’s. “Does he have to ask the other merchants if they’ll agree to go where he wants?” she asked.
Jiguro didn’t say anything for a long while. He watched the merchants and the soldiers dressed as caravan guards talking outside a large tent. “Balsa,” he said, “I want you to guard the rear of the caravan tomorrow.”
Balsa nodded. Her horse snorted.
Jiguro had to guard the front of the caravan, but that meant he didn’t know what was going on elsewhere. And while the soldiers might be fighters, they weren’t guards, so their training was entirely different.
Suddenly, Balsa and Jiguro heard the chiming of a bell. This signaled that dinner was ready and that the guard and worker shifts were about to change.
Balsa followed Jiguro to get food. “I wonder what they’ll feed us for supper,” she said.
Jiguro smiled and shook his head.
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