Chapter Ten – Sabatton
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Later, when Jared returned, both of the humans nearly attacked him with their questions. He was made to sit down at once, and recount every detail of what he remembered from his first rescue of Sarai, from the smell of the smoke, to the color of the horses, to the paint on the wagons.
“Most of the humans had been killed,” he recalled. “There were Vidos systematically hunting down and killing all those which had escaped.”
“Killing? Systematically? This doesn’t sound like raiders,” Thomas mused, sitting on his favorite chair, and smoking a pipe thoughtfully as the stew boiled on the hearth.
“No,” Jared said thoughtfully, remembering. “No, not like Raiders… ah,” his dark face lit up as he recalled a detail of crucial importance. “Their weapons were Rrumak!”
“Mercenaries,” Thomas said at once, and repeated it to the girl.
“Mercenaries?” She questioned, confused.
“Yes, the Rrumak tribe are notorious. Most of the tribe are miners, or they scratch out a hard living in the Northern Radij Mountains, but their greatest fame comes from their mercenary tribes. They have been known to hire out to anyone, from Gypsies, to Vermoor. There is no reason at all for a war-band of Rrumak to be so far South, on the edges of Mohmast, and haunting a road, unless they were waiting for your caravan. They would be attacked by the local Vidos if they’d remained there, for the Rrumak are unpopular almost everywhere, so they hadn’t set up as highwaymen. Mark my words, it was a specific job.”
“Yes,” Jared agreed when the human had voiced his thoughts in Vidos-tongue. “Yes, they were deliberate. All of the kills were precise, very carefully planned.” Squeezing his eyes shut, he thought about he lay of the wagons, the places the horses had fallen. “They struck kitten’s wagon first I think. Or among the first.”
She laced her fingers together on her chest, eyes huge, as she pieced together the memories of her foggy forgotten childhood. “My parents… they were wealthy I think… I remember big houses, sunny big rooms. Flowers everywhere, and women who can only be maids. Yes! I must have been from a wealthy house,” she said longingly, delighted, as if she’d just been made a queen.
“So another tribe of humans was jealous,” Jared pieced together with a scowl, poking the fire with a stick.
“Another tribe? How about this, Jared; why were her parents running for Argen across Vidos-land, and not across the Radij Pass far to the South?”
“If they were Gypsy… many Gypsy families have safe passage on the Galef-road.”
“Does she look Gypsy to you?” Thomas asked sarcastically.
Jared stared at her, and shrugged. “Humans all look the same to me.”
Smoking his pipe, Thomas sat back and gazed at her for a long moment before he finally spoke. “I have a theory, that I have been piecing together for days. I don’t think you’re from Vermoor, child. I think you’re from Sabatton.”
“Sabatton!” She repeated in surprise. “But Sabatton was lost hundreds of years ago, destroyed in the War of the Flying Ships!”
“Lost, yes. Destroyed, no. It… just vanished,” he grinned. “It closed its gates, and it hid itself.”
“How is that possible for a nation to hide itself?”
“Sabatton is not a normal nation, like other nations,” he said dreamily, with a slight smile. “It is quite different. And it can, when it chooses, hide itself, unless one knows where to find it. Unless… one is from Sabatton.” He tapped his head.
“You?”
Nodding, he smoked. “Where do you think I learned to read and write? Only the nobility in Argen are taught anything, but in Sabatton, even the peasants can write. I left when I was eighteen, but I have always remembered.”
“Why don’t you go back?” Then she forgot her own question in her excitement, “Are you sure that I am from Sabatton?”
“Almost positive. Do you recall your history lessons? Did those Argenian nobles teach you anything? Sabatton, once long ago, used to be the only human nation with trade-relations to the Vidos-land. To this day, or at least to the day forty-nine years ago,” he said ruefully, “Sabatton still opened the Western Gate now and then to trade with the Vidos, and had good relations with the Tribe of K’nokma. K’nockma is just North of Mohmast, which also has relatively good relations with K’nokma.
“Now here is my theory: if you were from Sabatton, the Mohmast and K’nokma would have left the caravan alone if they knew it was Sabbatoni. May have even protected it as it went through their territory. Therefore, they only ran into trouble once they left Mohmast and entered Pa’eeyam Khan territory, which is a veritable no-man’s land of law and order, the great gamble. That is where the Rrumak mercenaries made their strike, and no one thought twice about it.”
“Why were my parents, wealthy Sabbatoni, traveling to Argen at all?” She asked.
“They were supplied for a long, fast journey,” Jared noted. “Nothing heavy, but much food. No personal possessions, but provision for the horses, which meant they were not going to stop to graze them.”
“Only food to steal, no valuables?” Thomas mused.
“Yes, there were fine clothes,” Jared recalled the bodies, the wreckage. “Pillows… blankets… they had great wealth.”
“Clothes…” Sarai grew excited again. “Thomas, beside me there was a satchel, the caravaners put my things with me when they brought me out to Jared…”
He held up the small purse, stuffed with all that she owned.
“Give it to me.”
When he complied, Sarai pulled out a small pile of sundry necessities, until she came to a small tightly wrapped bundle in the bottom. “I have always treasured this.” As she unwrapped it, they saw that it was a child’s garment of blue silk, tattered and discolored almost beyond recognition.
Jared smiled when he saw it, and sniffed at it, then made a sour expression for the smell. “It used to smell better,” he noted.
“Do you think there is anything on this that might give us a clue?” She was breathless in excitement.
Thomas took it eagerly, and with his surgeon’s eye looked the dress over front and back, inside and out.
“I had to steal it back from Norna in Kulna,” she confided to Jared, though he could not understand her. “They took it from me, and only the Gypsy boys told me where it was, because they’d tried to sell it to the gypsies, so I stole it the night I ran away.”
“Very well made,” Thomas reported. “Exactly what you’d expect from a wealthy family. No markings, unfortunately. I cannot tell much from this, other than what we already know.” He handed it back regretfully. Then, as he was doing so, paused and brought it back to squint at it very closely, then smooth it out quickly on the table, to stare at it under the lamp. What he found made only the slightest change in his face, but he quickly hid it. “No. Nothing. Keep it safe, girl, it’s the only clue we have.”
“What did you see just now?” She asked.
“Rather, what I thought I saw,” he sighed, lit his pipe again, and kept smoking.
•
Sarai narrowed her eyes at Thomas’s back as the old man slept, stroking her pet Vidos’s smooth flat skull as he dozed beside her near the fire. He seemed a very happy Vidos, warm every night with plenty to eat, a shelter to live in more comfortable than a cave, and a lovely kitten to pet him. If he could have purred, he would have.
Leaning over to whisper very quietly, so that only the Vidos could hear, she said, “I know he saw something else in the dress, and isn’t telling us. But I’ll get it out of him.” She pat Jared’s head, firm in her conviction. “I’ll get it out somehow.”