one else to talk to. There was only the fire, the soil, theopen road, and Rook. The first three couldn’t speak, and the fourth refused to.
Days of traveling had taken their toll on me, and I wondered if this was an endeavor that could have been accomplished by carriage rides. How did normal people travel, I wondered to myself, and with what comforts and expenses?
Yet if I considered it all fieldwork—if I reminded myself that
Excursions with a Hero: A Travel Diary
might become a fascinating treatise on a sort of modern-day walkabout—it was almost bearable.
Luckily for my sanity, we had found ourselves a campsite.
There were such places along the best-traveled routes to and from the major cities in Volstov, and those outside of Volstov’s domain that nonetheless were both friendly and major sites of trade. It was the possibility of visiting such metropolises that truly thrilled me, and our next stop would be just outside the famed caravan oasis of Karakhum—where my ’Versity friend Geoffrey Bless was, I could only hope, expecting our arrival.
Poor Geoffrey. He had no idea the storm that was, at this very moment, gathering.
“Get something to eat,” Rook grunted at me—the most perfunctory of statements that implied I was slow and soft in the head and needed to be told to eat when I was hungry.
“Are you going somewhere?” I asked, softly, in the hopes that he wouldn’t hear me. The less he heard, the less chance there was of his becoming angry.
His anger frightened me.
“To check out the location,” Rook replied.
I would have offered to go with him, but he had already left me behind.
The landscape was rocky and uneven here, and, as previously noted, the dirt was becoming sandier, the air drier—all these conditions pointing toward our close proximity with the desert. Here and there my fellow travelers were talking with each other, little fires glinting alongside the tents. It was a fascinating scene and I was determined to make the most of it, to receive news from like-minded, intrepid explorers…or something akin to that.
I was beginning to discover that fieldwork was
not
my specialty. But the man I had come here with—presumably under the conditions thatwe were to better understand one another—was somewhere among all these strangers, just as much of a stranger to me as all the rest.
“You look troubled,” someone said at my side. “Bad news from home?”
It was startling to be addressed. At first, I assumed that the voice in question could not be referring to me, but a hand on my shoulder brought me up short.
“Oh, and it looks bad,” the man—suddenly at my side—said, upon seeing my face.
In the dim light I could barely make out his descent, but his accent and the sharpness of his features were foreign to me. If I had to wager a guess on what small evidence I did have, I would have said he was three-quarters Volstovic and one-quarter Ke-Han—but just as fieldwork was not my specialty, neither were matters of lineage.
“What a fascinating accent you have,” I said.
“Is that so?” he asked. “I could say the same for you. I must’ve picked mine up somewhere; I’ve been traveling most of my life. What’s your excuse?”
“I’m from Thremedon,” I said.
“My sincerest apologies,” he replied. “I hope you don’t take any offense, but I can’t stand big cities.”
“I do find it to be a polarizing topic among nonnatives,” I admitted, trying to hide how shaken I was by his appearance. Something told me that Rook would never have been taken by surprise in this way, but then his upbringing had provided him with all sorts of instincts that I’d missed out on.
Funny, as always, that we were from the same place.
“Ah, but see, here I have to beg your pardon once again,” my new companion said, “as I’ve gone and started up a conversation without introducing myself. The name’s Afanasiy. Can’t blame that one on traveling; I got it from my
Days of traveling had taken their toll on me, and I wondered if this was an endeavor that could have been accomplished by carriage rides. How did normal people travel, I wondered to myself, and with what comforts and expenses?
Yet if I considered it all fieldwork—if I reminded myself that
Excursions with a Hero: A Travel Diary
might become a fascinating treatise on a sort of modern-day walkabout—it was almost bearable.
Luckily for my sanity, we had found ourselves a campsite.
There were such places along the best-traveled routes to and from the major cities in Volstov, and those outside of Volstov’s domain that nonetheless were both friendly and major sites of trade. It was the possibility of visiting such metropolises that truly thrilled me, and our next stop would be just outside the famed caravan oasis of Karakhum—where my ’Versity friend Geoffrey Bless was, I could only hope, expecting our arrival.
Poor Geoffrey. He had no idea the storm that was, at this very moment, gathering.
“Get something to eat,” Rook grunted at me—the most perfunctory of statements that implied I was slow and soft in the head and needed to be told to eat when I was hungry.
“Are you going somewhere?” I asked, softly, in the hopes that he wouldn’t hear me. The less he heard, the less chance there was of his becoming angry.
His anger frightened me.
“To check out the location,” Rook replied.
I would have offered to go with him, but he had already left me behind.
The landscape was rocky and uneven here, and, as previously noted, the dirt was becoming sandier, the air drier—all these conditions pointing toward our close proximity with the desert. Here and there my fellow travelers were talking with each other, little fires glinting alongside the tents. It was a fascinating scene and I was determined to make the most of it, to receive news from like-minded, intrepid explorers…or something akin to that.
I was beginning to discover that fieldwork was
not
my specialty. But the man I had come here with—presumably under the conditions thatwe were to better understand one another—was somewhere among all these strangers, just as much of a stranger to me as all the rest.
“You look troubled,” someone said at my side. “Bad news from home?”
It was startling to be addressed. At first, I assumed that the voice in question could not be referring to me, but a hand on my shoulder brought me up short.
“Oh, and it looks bad,” the man—suddenly at my side—said, upon seeing my face.
In the dim light I could barely make out his descent, but his accent and the sharpness of his features were foreign to me. If I had to wager a guess on what small evidence I did have, I would have said he was three-quarters Volstovic and one-quarter Ke-Han—but just as fieldwork was not my specialty, neither were matters of lineage.
“What a fascinating accent you have,” I said.
“Is that so?” he asked. “I could say the same for you. I must’ve picked mine up somewhere; I’ve been traveling most of my life. What’s your excuse?”
“I’m from Thremedon,” I said.
“My sincerest apologies,” he replied. “I hope you don’t take any offense, but I can’t stand big cities.”
“I do find it to be a polarizing topic among nonnatives,” I admitted, trying to hide how shaken I was by his appearance. Something told me that Rook would never have been taken by surprise in this way, but then his upbringing had provided him with all sorts of instincts that I’d missed out on.
Funny, as always, that we were from the same place.
“Ah, but see, here I have to beg your pardon once again,” my new companion said, “as I’ve gone and started up a conversation without introducing myself. The name’s Afanasiy. Can’t blame that one on traveling; I got it from my
Similar Books
