"´Idhra´ chapter 4" by J. lawrence

Chapter IV

“Come now, Idhra, we have to hurry. He might be leaving town any instant!”

“Get on with it, girl, go faster!”

“Come, come. Get it in the wagon!”

Idhra shuffled her feet and tried to walk even slower. Ylva’s father kicked at her heels and she pretended to stumble, so he picked her up around the waist and dropped her through the trapdoor in the wagon.

She didn’t want to leave this place. She’d always been here. With her parents, her aunt, uncle, cousin. Now she was being hustled off to locate this man from the Nýarr, supposedly the only person that could find her protection.

The wagon started moving. Bounce, bounce. Then the drums started. The drums from Valdarr started beating: traitor child loose.

Her stomach clenched. She breathed fast. They would find her before the month was over, and she’d be turned to stew. That was, if King Kamin didn’t eat her alive.

“What’ll we do?” Ylva’s father asked Mister Macauley. “First we hear Sighild is leaving town on ‘business’, and now the King is after her!”

“I don’t know,” Mister Macauley said. “We just need to catch him before he goes.”

They thumped along on the nor-going road for a time, just bumping along, Idhra constantly thinking, and worrying, and remembering the sight of her cousin being consumed in flame.

Then, all at once, after a bend in the road, sounds of a village could be heard: cows, horses, mules, chickens, people, and even ducks from the moors come to peck at peddlers’ carts.

Mister Macauley slowed the mules harnessed to their wagon, probably so they wouldn’t look too suspicious, Idhra thought. Then there was a man’s voice, a friendly one.

“I wanted to speak with you before I left for Varðr Borg, Mister.” The voice stood out, and Idhra was sure she’d heard it before.

“Coming, Mister Næss,” Ylva’s father growled. The cart turned and slowed more, eventually stopping behind a small house on the town square.

“Out you go, Alfvidhra,” came the voice again. Two hands grasped her under the arms and heaved. The nice man was a man Idhra’s father used to sell to. He lived in the village north of hers; the one she’d visited once or twice.

“We thought you’d leave without her, Sighild!” Mister Macauley said.

“What business do you have, if you don’t mind?” asked Ylva’s father.

Sighild looked at the two men in a strange way, and laughed.

“She’s my business! Goodness, Þórr, I thought you’d know that. I sent the rumor I was leaving as a hint that you should hurry.”

He turned to Alfvidhra and smiled. “Sighild Næss,” he said in greeting. “Your father used to come here for news from the Nýarr.”

Idhra nodded politely, and tried to smile. It wound up more of a grimace though, and she turned away.

“You go with your teacher and load your things into my wagon, Miss Alfvidhra. I’ll be talking things over with Þórr.”

Idhra followed Mister Macauley back to the wagon, and they started to unload. There were boxes upon boxes of things from Idhra’s basement: mostly dresses, jewelry, and money. All things Mister Macauley and Ylva’s mother decided might be useful, plus some things Idhra especially liked. Really, she hated the idea of leaving anything behind, but it was impractical to take everything.

Everything was sitting orderly in Næss’ big trader’s wagon, and Mister Macauley sighed and slapped his hands together.

“All done.” He surveyed it silently, and turned to Idhra. “It’s been a pleasure having you in my class,” he said. He paused, looking awkward and embarrassed. “I’ve enjoyed it very much.” Then he bent down, and kissed her lightly on the forehead and abruptly turned to join Þórr and Mister Næss where they were standing by the door, just out of view.

Idhra’s cheeks turned red and she reached her hand up to her face to touch the spot where he’d kissed her, and smiled.

“Are you alright, Idhra?” Næss asked, “Your face looks a bit red and sweaty.”

“I’m fine,” Idhra managed to gasp.

“Sure?”

“Yes.”

“Well, let’s go then.”

Idhra hopped in the front seat of the wagon, ready to be gone; a very different feeling than she’d had mere minutes ago. Mister Næss laughed.

“You came into the town under a pile of hay and you’re expecting to leave in the front seat?” he asked. Well yes, she had. And Idhra blushed a bit thinking how stupid it’d been. She looked at all the boxes in the back of the wagon and wondered where she’d be shoved this time.

“Come inside a minute, Miss Alfvidhra,” Næss said.

He handed her a long woolen dress that dropped straight down to her toes and only came in at the middle when he tied a sash around it. The sleeves were quite large and heavy, and he added a long wool cape, too, which made the ensemble even heavier. Lastly, he had her let down her hair and tie another sash around her head.

“How will this make leaving easier,” she asked. “I’d attract even the King’s eyes if he were here, and he’d likely kill me on the spot for being ugly if he didn’t recognize who I am.”

Næss laughed again. His laugh was deep and round. “The poor people from the West wear these clothes. For a while a Western girl stayed with me and helped with the work: lifting boxes and sorting goods.

“People ignore traders. They think we are all strange cheating liars. They’ll think I’ve hired another Westerner.”

“To be a cheating liar isn’t so bad as compared to farmers,” Idhra pointed out, “It at least gives you credit for wits.”

“Mmm,” Næss answered. “You’re a quick thinker, Miss Idhra. A real smart girl, it seems to me. But you must consider that even the worst thoughts we’re tricked to think about people can come of use, if we don’t let ourselves to be tricked into thinking these thoughts, and know only to judge people individually. It’s a good thing that people expect me to keep to myself a bit more than normal folks, and expect me to do some queer things.”

Idhra climbed into the wagon again, more awkwardly this time, and they drove off, with the people around them with their eyes downcast like Næss had said. She looked back, wanting to wave to Þórr and Mister Macauley, but Næss warned against it.

“They might get suspicious of that,” he said, grabbing her arm and forcing it back down.

The horses went on for hours; they only stopped at sunset. Mister Næss pulled the wagon over and built a small fire beside the road. They hadn’t seen a soul all day long, which depressed Idhra. She sat by the fire and sighed, staring into the flames and thinking of Sara, then poked it with a stick and watched the sparks and sighed again.

“Would you like some bread, Idhra?”

“No sir.” She wasn’t hungry.

“Call me Sighild and stop looking so lost.  Whatever has happened to you won’t be the worst yet.”

That’s what worried Idhra most. According to Mister Macauley, it would be hard to become part of the Nýarr, and if she were to try to prove herself by trying to commit a serious offence against the King, she’d surely be recognized and killed. And if she weren’t going to be in the Nýarr, what would she do? But most importantly, if she didn’t want to be in the Nýarr, would they let her go? She was, after all, going to be in their custody.

She eventually fell asleep on the hard ground, and awoke the next morning when the wagon hit a particularly large bump.

“Oh, I thought that might wake you,” Sighild said angrily. “Sorry, but I couldn’t afford to wait through the night. There’s somewhere I need to be after this.”

Idhra was still enough asleep that she didn’t worry about being a burden. She dozed off and on throughout the morning until Sighild shook her awake around noon.

“Do you see it, Idhra?” he asked, pointing out into the distance. “Look at that island!”

There was a foggy green lump in the sea ahead of them, and nothing special about it. Mist was covering everything; it was hot and sticky, and Idhra decided the ocean wasn’t as spectacular as many people had told her.

“That’s varðr borg,” he continued, “The largest Nýarr city in Norge.”

It didn’t look like a city.

“There’s forest all around the edges so the city can’t be seen by ships or travelers.”

That explained it. He pointed nor-east.

“There’s a fairly large city there, called Babordby, and a pretty big farm community there called Felleskapet.” He pointed west. “We came from that way.” He pointed north “From Kier, your town, and Arnby, my town.” They trotted even farther down the road, not stopping where Idhra would’ve thought they should. The island was growing smaller as they went.

Eventually, the road widened considerably, spanning from the ocean on the left, to the small forest on the right. Sighild pulled his reins to the left, and they clip-clopped down the dry dirt bank, and almost ran right into another wagon parked there, hidden from view from the road.

“Stans!” Sighild shouted at the horses, which would’ve stopped anyway. They neighed and backed up nervously, shaking their heads and stomping their hooves.

“In the name of the King, who be you people?” came a voice from a ways further off. There were more wagons, and two tents, and Idhra wondered how she could’ve not seen them all sitting there.

“Befriland!” Sighild whispered urgently to her, before answering the call. “I am Næss, sir,”

“What about the girl?” asked the man, who was drawing nearer, with the uniform of the King’s army, and an accent from Tysk.

“Sara, sir. Sara… Macauley,” she said, pronouncing Sërá carefully, and trying not to choke tearfully on her words.

“Why do you come down on this bank?” the soldier asked. Sighild smiled.

“Many travelers know about this place,” he said. “We were about to stop for lunch, sir.”

“Very well. Keep the wagon there.” He turned to leave, and cupped his hand around his mouth. “Sie wünschen nur das Mittagessen, mein Herrn, und wir können nicht diesen Antrag ablehnen, ohne sie mißtrauisch zubilden,” he shouted at the farther tent, walking slowly toward it.

“Something’s going on,” Sighild said carefully and quietly. “They do not want us here.”

“They said we could stay,” Idhra protested.

“Yes, but in Tysk he was reluctant.”

“You speak Tysk?” Idhra asked in awe, searching Sighilds face, looking for a hint of the scholar that she thought she might find, without success.

“A bit, Sara, just a bit. Something I’ve picked up in all my years.” He looked at her searchingly, like she’d looked at him before. “If I said you were a quick thinker before, now I must double the compliment. Ha! Sara, my dear, that was brilliant.”

Sighild clambered down from the wagon and grabbed a bag of food from the back. Really, there was just hard bread to boil with some chicken bones so they could eat mush, but Sighild didn’t want to take the time to build a fire, especially not in the middle of the day when time was treasured, so they sat quietly and gnawed on hard bread bits until the soldier came back and asked if they were finished.

“Ah, the bread is hard sir, I’d lost track of time in the midst of eating. It’s late Sara, girl. Pack up the food and let us get back on the road.”

Idhra obediently rolled everything back up in its package, though Sighild had never asked her to clean up after him before, and hurried to put it in the back of the wagon when she noticed the impatience on his face.

She clambered up into the front seat, and with a flick of the reins, they were up the bank and heading down the road.