Chapter 3: Robbie’s Story—Lost Kid, and Found

Mirages shimmered at the edge of visibility on a Torrid afternoon. Robbie squinted against the glare and searched in vain for the kid. His morning count of the flock had come up one short. Leaving his little brother and the dogs to watch the goats and sheep, Robbie had searched for hours. He’d been smart—at first sticking to the low spots where moisture still kept the grass green. Those places became fewer and fewer. His calves began to burn as he climbed steeper and steeper hills. Foolishly, he’d left his water jug behind. His lips, and then his mouth, became parched. One more hill, he thought. One more hill and then I’ll go back.

Robbie crested the hill in time to see a knife flash in the sun, and blood spurt red from the throat of the kid. Unthinking, the boy ran down the hill shouting, “What have you done? Why—”

Too late, suspicion and an instinct for self-preservation kicked in, and he skidded to a halt. A man—no, a tween whose pinched face bore more years than his age seemed to justify—wearing a robe the color of rusty iron, looked up. His mind was faster than Robbie’s. The tween gestured. Robbie’s legs became numb; he fell.

A kick in his ribs wakened Robbie. He opened his eyes and lifted his hands to his face. A strange weight, an unexpected inertia, warned him. He paused before smashing the iron manacles into his head.

“What? What?” he cried, but the soldier who kicked him had moved on. Robbie looked around. On both sides, boys, manacled like himself, began to stir.

“Come on,” the boy to Robbie’s left said. “Help me up, and I’ll help you.” The boy sat up, and held his hands out toward Robbie.

Robbie saw boys bracing the manacled hands of others as they struggled to stand. Robbie understood. He felt the heavy shackle bar that held his own feet rigidly apart, and realized that he’d not easily be able to stand without help. Quickly he lent his strength to the boy beside him. When that boy stood, he held his hands to Robbie. Robbie pulled against the boy’s strength, and stood.

“Come on,” the boy urged. “If you don’t hurry, they’ll beat you. And you’ll still go hungry.”

Robbie followed him to a line of boys who shambled toward a wagon. From the back of the wagon, a man handed each boy a bowl of pottage. Robbie followed the example of the other boys, dipping his fingers into the bowl and stuffing the pottage into his mouth.

Hunger polished the bowls. Even if it had not, it was unlikely that the boys’ captors would have bothered to wash the bowls. Each boy then had a chance to drink from a dipper of water. If a boy spilled his water, the man who oversaw the water barrel was indifferent.

My dagger! The one Arthur gave me! It’s gone! Robbie thought. Otherwise, he was wearing what he wore the day before—homespun trousers and shirt, belted with leather, and sturdy boots. They took my dagger!

The boys stood in a group, watching as horses were hitched to carts or were saddled. “Who are you? Who are these men?” he whispered to the boy who had helped him up.

“I am Walter of Pine Farm,” the boy said. “And these men are slavers. We’re to be taken to Eblis, and then sold.”

“I am Robbie, son of Markham the Shepherd,” he said. “Sold? In Eblis?”

Whatever Walter might have said was stifled as soldiers approached the gaggle of boys.

Shackles were removed, and a chain threaded through the manacles, linking one boy to the next. A staple on the back of the food wagon secured one end of the chain. The boys shuffled and plodded behind the wagon. Robbie quickly learned the rule—the only rule—of survival. Help your fellow and he will help you. Robbie stumbled and would have fallen except that a boy, not Walter but another, caught him. Robbie flashed a smile and a “Thank you.” A few miles farther, the boy in front of Robbie stumbled. Robbie reached out, caught the back of the boy’s shirt, and kept him upright. Cooperate, Robbie thought. We’ll live if we help one another. We’ll live to become slaves—or we will live to escape. That thought gave Robbie strength to continue.

Before dark, the boys were herded together, and the shackles replaced. Supper was more pottage. Robbie smelled roasted meat, and realized that the guards and the three hollow-eyed tweens in the Red Robes were eating goat meat. I hope it’s not another of ours, he thought before realizing just how utterly foolish was that thought.

As the boys prepared for sleep, Robbie whispered to Walter who had lain down beside him, “Does no one share boy magic?”

“After a few days in the manacles, we have none to share,” Walter whispered. “Even if we did, it would be for naught. The iron, the iron sucks it away.”

Three days had passed. All were the same for Robbie and the other boys. Pottage, water, shit, walk, pottage, piss, sleep. Robbie learned that Walter’s home was across a range of hills from his own, and that most of the boys were from that same area. He also learned the names of three other boys, Peter, Casey, and Edward.

At sext on the fourth day, Robbie saw the mood of the guards and the Red Robes change. They seemed more relaxed. We’ve crossed the border into Eblis, he realized. They feel safer. Perhaps they will be careless.

“How did you get captured?” Robbie asked Walter one night. “You must have seen how foolishly I walked into their captivity.”

Walter reached out and squeezed Robbie’s hand. “Not foolish. You were protecting that which was in your charge. I was doing the same. The men surprised my little brother and me. They seized him, first, and I went to his defense. The Red Robe looked at us both and said, ‘Kill the child, but do not harm the boy.’

“Two of the soldiers grabbed me. I struggled. One of them clubbed me. I . . . I was spared the sight of my brother’s death, for I know that they did kill him.”

“Why did they want you, and not your brother?” Robbie asked.

“Peter says it’s because I’m a mage, or that I will become one. He says that all of us—even you, I guess, or they would have killed you, too—are magic users. Not all of us know that we are, but a couple do. Peter says that he’s one, but he won’t talk about it. And, he says it doesn’t matter, since the iron manacles draw away the magic.”

After several days’ travel in Eblis, the guards no longer shackled the boys’ legs at night. Rather, they left them linked together by the long chain through their manacles. Neither Robbie nor the guards seemed to notice that Robbie, Peter, Casey, Edward, and Walter were always at the end of the line, and that the massive lock that closed the chain was always on Peter’s manacles.

It was not a booted foot in his ribs that wakened Robbie. It was a hand over his mouth and a Hisst in his ear. “Don’t move,” a voice Robbie recognized as Peter’s said. “I’m going to unlock your manacles.”

Robbie saw a faint glow limn fingers that must have been Peter’s. A muffled click, and the manacles opened. Peter caught them as they fell.

“Wait,” came another whisper. Robbie watched as Peter wakened Casey and removed his shackles. “That’s five,” he said. “Come on.”

“Walter?” Robbie whispered.

“Here,” came a nearly silent reply. Robbie felt a hand groping for his, and grasped it. He knew it was Walter.

Peter, followed by Walter, Robbie, Casey, and Edward, crawled away in utter darkness. After the boys had spent an hour cautiously moving farther and farther away, the small moon, Lux rose. It was shortly followed by one of the Bright Travelers. The light was enough that Peter stood and began walking. The others followed.

A sharp cry brought them all to a halt. Casey had fallen. The boys gathered around. “My ankle,” Casey said. “I stepped in a hole.”

“I will carry him,” Robbie said. I’m the biggest, and he’s pretty small. I think he’s still a child. I’m also stronger than anyone save Walter.

“It will slow us down,” Edward said. “We’ll be caught.”

“I will die rather than be chained again,” Robbie said. “And I will die before I let Casey be chained.”

“Then we will die together, if that is what will be,” Walter said.

There was a pause during which the fate of a world hung in the balance. Then Peter spoke. “We will live together or die together.”

Walter helped Casey onto Robbie’s back. “Thank you,” Casey said. “I’m too little to do much, but I will die with you, if that is what is to be.”

“Edward, are you with us?” Peter asked.

“We’re only boys,” Edward said. “Casey is just a child. We can’t swear such an oath.”

“Yet we have,” Robbie said, as he began to walk. “We have sworn as if we were in the public square or in a temple. The sky still stands above us. The wind still blows. And, there still are Evil men behind us. Are you with us?”

“Yes, I am,” Edward declared. “By all that is Light, I am.”

*****

The five boys greeted the dawn at the bank of a stream at which they drank deeply. “Where are we?” Casey asked.

“We walked perhaps 20 miles a day, and were in Eblis a tenday,” Peter said.

“We walked southwest through the night,” Robbie added.

“Will we be followed?” Edward asked.

“Perhaps,” Peter said. “But it is not likely.”

“Why do you think that?” Edward asked.

“We crossed rough and rocky ground,” Peter said. “We left little by which to track us. We also walked not toward our home, as they might expect, but farther into Eblis. We should continue in this direction for a few more days before turning back toward Arcadia.”

Casey had plucked reeds from the stream bank and woven a net. Walter took it into the stream and dipped it into the water. After a moment, he flipped a trout onto the bank. A few minutes later, another followed, and then another.

“I guess we’ll have to eat them raw,” Walter said. “We’ve no steel to strike sparks, even though there is flint.” He gestured to the rocks on the stream bank. The rocks had been scoured clean, likely during the spring floods. Now, in late summer, the stream was shallow and the rocks were exposed.

“Perhaps not,” Peter said. “Gather wood and twigs.” He took a cobble from the banks of the stream and hacked at the flint until a sharp shard broke off. Holding the shard in the hem of his shirt, he began to scrape fine, dry power from a stick. He built a cone of twigs above the tiny pile of powder, and stacked larger twigs and branches nearby. Then, he began to wave his arms through the air. His lips moved, but the other boys could hear no words.

A tendril of smoke arose from the center of the cone of twigs, and then a flame flickered upward. Carefully and slowly, Peter added twigs to the fire. “Now,” he said, “if you will spit the fish on some twigs from that willow, there, we can have breakfast.”

*****

“How did you start the fire?” Robbie asked Peter. “It was real magic, wasn’t it?”

“It’s a spell my great-grandmother taught me. She was a mage,” Peter said.

“And you’re a mage?” Robbie asked. The other boys seemed too dumbfounded to talk.

“I studied with her. She taught me some things. Then, she died,” Peter said. “I had to become a shepherd like the rest of my family.” He did not seem inclined to talk more.