023 - We Are Not In Nevada Anymore

Breakfast was as noteworthy as dinner, healthy but nondescript.

Roxanne found that as the wagons moved through this hill country, the only comfortable position was to stand and hold onto the bars above her, as the cart pitched and rocked about. Looking at the trees and other plants, Rox guessed that wherever she was, the season was still in spring. The air was cool, but not uncomfortable, so long as she had the blanket to hold around her. It rained about a half hour every day.

The other slaves were all significantly shorter than she was. Two of them were children, a boy and girl, which reminded her of Alex and Diana, but were both more thickly built. One probably a teen, or at least a pubescent male. And the last an adult woman. All were fair skinned, but not of any specific stock that Rox could identify. For what ever reason, they stayed well clear of her. Almost as if they were scarred of her. “Schwaer,” they would whisper, the adult making some kind of warding gesture.

About mid afternoon, they rolled into a guard post that sat in the opening between two valleys. The guards, wearing green tunics over maile hauberks, inspected the wagons with the three slavers in tow and a manifest in hand. The inspection finished, and the man and chief guard got into a haggling match.

Evidently the guard wanted more than the slaver wanted to pay. Finally the slaver threw up his hands. He turned with the guard, and the woman also came over, and they opened the door to the wagon. The other slaves just sat and waited. The guard looked them briefly over, then pointed at Rox and spoke.

The guard stepped back, and the woman motioned for Rox to come over. Rox was not sure what was going on, but guessing from the body language did as she thought she was bidden, leaving the blanket behind. They cleared out of the way and Rox climbed out onto the ground. The woman put the leash on Rox’s slave collar, and handed the end to the man. The man took a board with a piece of parchment on it from the guard, and wrote on it, and handed the board and leash to the guard and walked away.

The small slave train left Rox there, wearing only her slave collar. Once it was gone, some of the guards started to carouse with each other, but were immediately deterred by a barked order from the leader, and one of them went and got Rox a blanket to wrap in. She was taken into the guard house and left there, not quite under watch, for the rest of the day. She was given a respectable dinner of meat and vegetables and bread, with a fermenting fruit juice to wash it down. She was then shown a bath house and allowed to clean herself up, and then shown to a cot to sleep on.

Mid morning the day after being paid as tax, Rox was finally given ill-fitting trousers and a tunic, and loaded onto a wagon with two guards who were evidently making the rounds. A manifest was signed, and a chest from the structure replaced with one from the wagon, as another wagon unloaded supplies. The two wagons were on their way in time to get to the next guard station for lunch.

Thus for the next few days Rox got to be a passenger, on a free tour of wherever she was.

*          *          *

Journal of Steven Caplan: Day 5

Caspian can march as well as any Marine I can remember.

Caspian finally stopped for the evening at a camp beside a small stand of trees. They had left the forest behind just after lunch and now traveled across grassland. The sun was going down while Steven gathered some sticks to make a fire with. Once the wood was gathered, Caspian scratched his usual circle around the camp. Steven had the fire going and the food ready to cook when Caspian sat down. A log set up by some other travelers was just right for sitting on. The spring nearby was a plus, providing their first non-stream water in several days. Steven laid his bedroll out after cleaning up the dishes, and Caspian lay down to sleep, wrapping up in his cloak.

This night was the first one they spent under the stars, having finally left the canopy of the forest. There was a boulder here on one side of the camp. Steven sat on the top of the boulder, as Caspian settled for the night. Steven watched the stars come out for the first time in a long time. Partly in wonder, and partly in curiosity.

Steven was glad to finally be out from under the canopy of trees, and that there were no clouds at the moment. As a boy, he had been taught navigation by the stars. As the fire burned down to coals he turned his back to it to watch the sky. It was going to be a cool night, but the camp was such that most of the heat from the fire was reflected around. The few large boulders radiating heat were a bonus. He barely noticed. His interest was held by the sky. Steven stretched out on his back on a boulder, and watched the stars.

As the sky darkened it was not washed out, as Steven had otherwise expected. The light from any nearby settlements was not enough to brighten the sky, or wash anything out. All the stars that were to be seen were quickly visible. But they weren’t the stars he expected. Only one constellation was close to right, and it was in the wrong place. Also the Milky Way was too thick, and running the wrong direction. Roxanne’s star was completely gone. As he contemplated this, a moonrise caught his attention.

 “Come on, jar-head. Get it together. There is an explanation here somewhere.”

“What is a ‘jar-head’,” Caspian asked.

“When you join the marines, as one story goes, the first thing you do is take your brain out of your head and put it in a jar. They then issue you a new brain, full of only what they tell you. Then you are taught how not to use it. Just to react to the situation and not think about it. Thus a ‘jar-head.’”

“A curious concept. But typical of the military mentality, I suppose.”

The rising moon was too small to be the one he took for granted. And it did not show the same surface features. Steven dozed a bit, before the sky got brighter. A second moon followed the first across the sky. It did not move as fast as the first, but was larger. Still not as big as the one he was accustomed to seeing. There was only one conclusion.

“Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas any more. So, is this over the rainbow, or down the rabbit hole?”

The glory of the heavens had Steven in slight awe as they moved above. But he was satisfied. This was real. Now what to do about it, and how to get back over the rainbow? Steven got up, put a small log on the coals, put his clothes aside, and crawled into bed. The world would keep until morning.

As he finally dozed off, a third moon began to climb across the sky.

When Steven dreamed, it took him a moment to realize that he was dreaming in a language other than English. As this realization happened, he slipped deeper into dream.

*          *          *

After several days of soggy, rainy travel on the wagons, stopping at two more guard stations, the wagon train Roxanne was part of was taken into a large city. She rode on the passenger seat of the lead cart, with her leash tied to the bench. She could pull the end, undoing the knot, and run off quickly enough if she wanted, but the guards had made clear enough that she would catch an arrow in her back if she tried. They rounded a tall hill and came into a large valley. Across the valley stretched farm lands to the south as far as she could see. To the north the valley ran into a lake of some size, on which there was much shipping. They were traveling west across the valley to a city that sat on the north foothills of a mountain range demarking the west side of the valley.

Rox had decided that the compass directions were only subjective relative to this planet’s sun, but adequate enough. It was morning, the sun not yet high in the sky. The sun was behind them, almost directly. A small moon was half way above the far horizon.

As they approached the city, it looked to Rox that it was built on the north slopes of the mountains here. About half of the city is not on the hills, this mostly within the fortress walls that ran from the base of the mountains north to the lake shore. The architecture looked to be mostly of arches and columns; pointed arches soared high, and rounded arches in stacks carried roads and smaller structures. At ground level there was little height change. As the city climbed the mountains, it did so in multiple levels of solid structures and arch demarked pillars supporting the ascending levels.

Four guards in blue tunics and renaissance-era armor had mounted the cart Rox rode on as it entered the gates of the city wall. The noise and bustle of the city was distracting and refreshing as they plied their way in. The driver guided the cart with familiar ease, while still watching for any trouble that might pop up. They were quickly into a warehouse district.

She still had not picked up much language. Mainly as the locals seemed to slur their nouns and verbs together, with the verbs being conjugated. The rest of the vocabulary and syntax went by so fast as to be all but incomprehensible. Never minding that the range of sounds the language used was more diverse than any she had heard at any length. She tried to listen and hear as much as she could as they traveled.

As the buildings passed, Rox had to reevaluate her appraisal of the city. Instead of building on the slopes of the mountain, they seemed to be carving into the rock, and building a multi-tiered city in place of the mountain. High roofs covered the sky above them, and carved canyons of mostly cut stone stood on either side. Windows and doors with columned arches over porches demarked the various levels. They climbed the hills, steps cut into the steeper climbs between smoother tracks for the carts. Large reflectors bounced light around to illuminate what the sun did not naturally get to.

Rox would later learn that the city expanded south along the slopes of the mountain range it sat on. The north end was finished buildings on terraces. As the expansion proceeded, the mountains were slowly being carved and mined. The mountains were very mineral rich providing an economic base, from the mines. Cut stone was quarried from other parts, and shipped in as needed, and the fortress city was expanded.

Buildings were built from the bedrock, columns and gothic arches and flying buttresses carrying the structures up from there with much reflected light; windows and balconies were arranged in terraces that echoed the rise of the mountain; fields and gardens were at irregular levels. Many reflectors and refractors dotted the area, from towers and individual houses. A water collection system scattered across the city, with catch basins on the roofs of most of the buildings. It rained regularly enough that most of the catch basins were at least half full all the time.