The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street - 2. Chapter 2

When he came to, Crown Prince Simka found himself in an unfamiliar part of the capitol city. Here there was no grandeur, magnificent buildings on wide treelined streets and gardens. Rather the opposite was the reality he awoke to face. The pain from his groin was nearly unbearable. He knew from his discussions and lessons what was going with himself, the need for the lessons, the time spent in the health and learning pods. He was the Crown Prince, his duty precluded nothing less than total dedication in the service of Circadia and its inhabitants.

He knew of course that others had brought him here, how he wasn’t so sure. His memories were jumbled, the sequence of events confused. He had been spending much needed time with Sprog, his neglected dog. There was a commotion at the entrance to his quarters setting Sprog on alert and growling at the door, his teeth bared and hackles up assuming the attack posture.

One moment the door was there, the next a pile of jumbled pieces scattered about the floor. As the dust cleared and the noise of the explosion finished reverberating, he watched his cousin Todar race across the room screaming words he could not hear.

As Todar drew close, Sprog waited until Todar could not duck or move out of his way, leaping as he was trained to do, Sprog sank his jaws in Todar’s unprotected groin. Squealing from the unexpected attack Todar lost every element of surprise. With great effort and considerable damage to his genitals Todar was able to refocus on his cousin the Crown Prince. As Todar advanced a short, deadly blade appeared in his hand…raised as if were seeking Simka’s neck. Before he could close to within striking distance Sprog once again leapt into action sinking his teeth into the back of Todar’s neck.

The last image Crown Prince Simka could remember was Councilor Harmon withdrawing his kulinar from Todar’s mid-section.

Bordon was disbelieving and furious, “Tell me once more how this plan failed and my son is no longer and there is no idea where the Celestial Globes and Library are?”

Having retreated to what was thought as a secure bolt hole to await the news the Crown prince was dead, Bordon knew he had lost the element of surprise and just as importantly, any support from the Noble Houses. Once the events of the attack on the House of Godson became known, as the Order quietly disseminated further proofs, he’d be marginalized. Circadia was in an uproar forcing the Noble Houses uncomfortably to acquiesce to the restive demands for justice. The demand for Bordon’s head and the end to this turmoil or suffer as traitors. Across the continents the cry went out, one of their own, their beloved Crown Prince had been ruthlessly attacked and was now missing.

Slowly his hearing and equilibrium had returned, it had been several days of travel from one small town to towns that progressively got smaller until all appeared lost in the farmlands and forests. Signs of Circadian activity were non-existent unless one counted the occasional dwelling or the obvious signs of the well-tended fields. Simka, for he was Simka now…all the trappings of his royal life were long removed. No one, not one person in the traveling party thought of him but as anything but a traveler, a supplicant to the monastery of the Order.

Travel was in non-descript jitneys, refurbished castoffs from the closer cities, modes of transportation that had outlasted their usefulness decades ago. For all that Circadia was and is, technology and its advances were mostly confined to the cities and the suburban outliers. While the larger industrial farms closer to the population centers had access to more modern methods of agribusiness, here in the hinterlands it was as generations past tilled the fields.

The air was crisper…cleaner, nights colder as they drew closer each successive day to the Orgin Mountains. The growing season had reached its zenith some time ago and the harvest was soon approaching. Simka could not remember eating or sleeping so well. The pain from the changes affecting him abated and were more manageable. There had been no spotting of blood in his small clothes for a couple of days. It had been nearly a week since persons unknown had sequestered and absconded with him at the start of this journey. He was briefly told just enough to understand the nature of this journey, the need to avoid at all costs discovery of who he was or where he was going.

Dressed as a common farmer, he knew Councilor Harmon was responsible for his safety and had taken great risks to ensure his safe passage to the monastery. Nameless Circadians, while gruff and unassuming, zealously minimized his exposure to the populace at large. He wore dirty tattered clothes, tending to his hygiene was but a minute or two at a dirty water basin and a strip of cloth to wash as best he could. More often than not, the remainder of his personal ablutions were either on the side of the dirt path or in the pit a foul-smelling outhouse.

As the journey lengthened the preferred mode of traveling as they drew closer to their destination was on foot as the roads became dirt and rutted. Shortly after they left what passed for roads and traveled on dusty narrow footpaths. Slowly gaining altitude as they trekked through the fields, the first of scattered copse of trees appeared. Here were the various fruit and nut trees neatly tendered in their orchards.

Pausing for a much-needed interruption in their travels Simka marveled at the rudimentary irrigation system the orchard keepers devised. A small pond had been created from a swiftly flowing stream further up in the mountains. A small portion of the water had been diverted, creating the pond which then was distributed through a series of small canals to the various sections of the orchards.

A certain equanimity suffused Simka as they rested at this last stop before reaching the monastery. He had spent the first day wandering the orchards, often accompanied by a few of the village children. They were eager to show a stranger the wonders of this unspoiled land. Days of travel had left layers of grime and clothing sorely in need of cleaning.

Rumenk, a precocious boy of about twelve summers took Simka by the hand and brought him to a lower pool of water. It was obvious by the design that this was a bathing pool. Overflow from this pool traveled further down the ingenious canals down the mountainside to the lower orchards.

Here the bathing pools for the sexes were separated by a naturally occurring earthen fold in the terrain. The bathing pool was terraced, each subsequently lower terrace was deeper than the one above thus serving the entire community as to their needs.

A wash cloth and soap were produced, and no sooner as Rumenk passed them off to Simka, he shed his clothes and was happily working his way to the middle of the terraces. Not to be outdone Simka shortly found himself enjoying what passed for water games in this peaceful hamlet.

Having a chance to scrub what seemed years of grime away Simka felt rejuvenated, at peace with himself and what was to come, the path his future was to take. For what passed as a brief eternity…all was right, calm, and peaceful. Gone were the rigors of living the life of a crown prince in the royal court, gone were the need for lessons in diplomacy, court etiquettes, which silly fork or spoon to use and the endless, unimportant lessons of who did what to whom and when.

The realization that Circadia was so much more than the sum of the courtly life of the Noble Houses was an epiphany of such sudden and overwhelming realization that for the briefest of moments he lost sense of time and place. What also went unnoticed was the mother nagiluar down from the mountain forests seeking water and game for her kits at the lower terrace.

Having soaped and washed to his heart’s content, Rumenk called out for Simka to join him in the deepest pool in the hope of playing some boy games. Reverie interrupted, Simka turning towards Rumenk, noticed the startled nagiluar react to the sudden noise and respond as only a threatened wild animal would.

With a low throated snarl, the nagiluar leapt towards Rumenk. Grabbing a hand-sized stone, years of training kicked in as Simka let it fly, catching the nagiluar in mid-leap directly mid-chest stunning and knocking the wind out of the big cat, who quickly retreated to nurse its pride as it slunk back into the forest.

Unknown to either boy, the episode would be noted by those entrusted with the protection of the crown prince. No slouch when it came to hunting, Rumenk could appreciate that skill when he saw it, and he knew at that moment his bathing companion was no ordinary boy.

Word of Simka’s heroics would travel back to the village quicker than the wind rushing up from the valley floor. Try as he might downplay that moment in time, too many eyes had seen the rock sail from Simka’s hand. Having left the deeper terrace pool Rumenk made his way up to where Simka was standing with a look of total adoration and awe clearly written across his face. Clutched in his hand as if it were the finest gold or gemstone was the stone that Simka had thrown

While the village was as remote as could be given the geography of the terrain, they were not isolated or unaware of events in the wider world. They knew of the assassination attempt on the Crown Prince’s life, that the Regent, his uncle was in hiding. What they did not know until that moment, was that the Crown Prince was in fact alive, and in their sleepy village.

Rumenk clearly was tongue tied and as he dropped to kneel before his sovereign, he ended up totally immersed and as he came back up sputtering the precious stone still in his hand. Red faced and totally embarrassed to the delight and mirth of Simka, whose cover had evaporated, Rumenk lost his balance and went under again.

As Simka reached down to help Rumenk back up he was caught off guard, as suddenly, he found himself falling backwards as Rumenk launched the stone at full force directly at his head. As the stone barely cleared the falling Simka’s head, a knife appeared in Rumenk’s upper thigh. Up on the lower terrace wall the assassin crumpled from the force of the stone hitting his temple. As he fell face first into the wading pool three more knives found his back. One of the villagers leapt into the pool and ensured the assailant would be dispatched with a slice across the throat.

As the assassin was being dealt with Simka carried a dazed and hurting Rumenk up and out of the pool where he was quickly surrounded. Rumenk clung to the Crown Prince as they were guided to the closest dwelling, a space had been cleared on the dining table and as he lay the wounded boy on the table the village healer arrived and began to treat the boy all the while at his side, his hand firmly clasped in Rumenk’s.

The assassin proved to be a member of the traveling party, one of three new guides that joined their group at the last rest stop. Investigation proved he was acting solo, nevertheless the other two guides simply agreed to stay in the village until the Crown Prince returned.

It was decided that the traveling party would leave in three days in a final push to the monastery walls. While Rumenk would stay behind he would continue his studies and would on the Crown Prince’s return accompany his ‘brother’ on the return to the capital. There was a ‘lifebond’ now between the two boys, for each owed the other their life. For Rumenk the parting was difficult and only tempered by the knowledge of the future path he would take on the return of the Crown Prince.

***

Bordon was at a loss, slowly his network of informants was going silent, it wasn’t anything he could place a finger on, normally the informants closest to the Crown Prince would be the first to go, at least delineating a path that could be followed. He had lost the trail; informants were disappearing with no apparent rhyme or reason. It was if his entire network was slowly being rolled up. He was nearly unreasoning with rage as it was, information was becoming harder to obtain. He knew somehow the monastery was a key to the riddle he was facing. The old hags running the place weren’t stupid or ignorant. He surmised they had their tentacles spread in a far-reaching web keeping tabs through a planet wide network. It made his decision simple, difficult beyond belief, he’d have to find a way to the monastery and then in if it could be arraigned.

Along the way he would have to deal with Councilor Harmon, payback was going to be a bitch. Nothing short of a long, slow agonizing death would suffice in payback for the death of his son…Nothing!

If the path to the village was but a narrow, difficult to follow, dusty winding path, this trail to the monastery made it look like a garden path. There were boulder fields to traverse, gullies with swiftly flowing streams and on two occasions narrow, ancient rope bridges that had seen better days. It was a solid day and a half of ascent with no letup as they gained elevation until they reached Fanars Col.

It was here the col, a hollow between two peaks known as The Sisters. Those who journeyed this trail would find shelter from but the worst of the storms, that were known to pass this way. The evening meal along with the morning’s would be cold. While there was a firepit, only the foolhardy carried excess weight on this journey.

As well as they had prepared, and outfitted themselves for this part of the expedition to the monastery, what they did not expect were the falling temperatures. The bitter cold driven by the relentless wind as the sun set early in the bleak western sky. Daylight would be several hours off and as the darkness fell upon the trekkers, they bundled themselves as best they could and as close to the windbreak and each other as they lay down for the night.

Dawn found the early morning sun providing a grim foreboding expanse of white as they awoke. Upwards of a foot-and-a-half of snow had fallen as they slept. Shaking off the blanket of snow that covered the group they quickly ate and began to break camp. As they finished their preparations Simka could hear a commotion at the trailhead they would take far end of the col.

Plowing through the snowdrifts was the unmistakable sight of Sprog with the single purpose of reuniting with his master. Before he fully realized what was happening Simka found himself flat on his back having his face washed and none to gently. By the time Simka was able to collect himself and restore a modicum of decorum and equanimity he noticed others had joined the group, the beginnings of a fire started and a more substantial meal was being prepared. Dusting off the remaining snow, Simka walked over to the group now gathered by the fire.

Amid a heated discussion concerning the Crown Prince stood Councilor Harmon. He arguing that they would continue along the present trail. Bordon’s network of informants was still partially active and the only secure route was continuing as they were. ‘’ Who knew?’’, argued Councilor Harmon “We have no idea who saw or was aware that we left this morning. We’ll continue as anyone who is aware of our departure, will surely send someone this way to see just what we are up to. We will leave a couple of men here, hidden to deal with any informants who may come this way”.

The ruse was successful. An hour after the camp was cleared two men came carefully into the col. While the path the Crown Prince’s group took as they left was obscured, the trail they came up was not. The ‘informants’ were quickly disarmed before they could kill themselves, interrogated and left naked to the elements.

These two informants were no ordinary mountain guides, they were highly trained soldiers, fully capable to decimating a squad five times their number and do so effortlessly. They were trained to be ruthless and to act without mercy and the Crown Prince was their intended target. After severing their achilles tendons, the two were left to their fate. With any luck the snow nagiluars would quickly find the fresh meat left for them and the extra protein would certainly benefit the unborn kits.