The Traveler in Red: Warlords of the Withered Land

Part Eleven

Lumynn fought back another wave of throbbing agony perpetuated by the nearly constant headache he'd developed since he'd joined the ranks of the caravan.  Nothing had gone the way he'd imagined it would, not the way he'd expected it would, and nothing made any sense.  It was supposed to have been a simple job as a co-navigator for the caravan, helping guide a group of forty odd merchants, servants, cooks, and unemployed, masterless warriors across the Cold Wastes of the Forever Plain.  Five, maybe six, sun-cycles in duration tops and he would have rendezvoused with D'Spayr outside the Baroncy of Khanderveel with a fat purse full of coin.  An experienced expeditionary guide blessed with almost perfect recall for geographic terrain, this should have been easy money.  Normally, Lumynn's talent could guide a couple of dozen followers across miles of stark rock face in total darkness and they'd have still reached their destination without incident, but that wasn't how things had worked out.

There'd been complications.

Lumynn knew he should have listened to the Knight.  He'd known.  D'Spayr had warned that there was more beneath the surface of the offer for employment than was likely to be revealed via a polite job interview over a glass of wine.  The man had an irritating habit of being right more times than not.  And he, Lumynn, should have been much more discriminating in his choice of employers.

Damn it.

Instead of guiding a caravan supporting a flow of commerce, food and news along the furthest edges of the established network of trade routes encircling the shifting dunes of the Forever Plain, he had been pressed into forced service in the militia of Lord Cr'Aughtin aboard a massive Burrow-Schooner, a working relic from the heyday of the Emperium.  The thrice-damned contraption was full of soldiers and sell-swords and rogue Machine Tekk workers, scientists, who themselves were no doubt Machusians.  The actions of the population within the Dryfftnaught were driven by scandal, greed, political rumor and innuendo, and everyone's loyalties were in-question.  It was a stomach-churningly hateful, toxic environment in which to work.

However, that was hardly the worst of it.

They were smuggling goods stolen from Warlord Kolag Y'phree.  Rumor was they were taking those goods to the Warlord Arvenall Dampiko.  If they, the passengers and crew of the Dryfftnaught, were caught by Kolag Y’phree’s forces, they'd all be killed --- no trial, no sentencing nor negotiation, no exceptions, and no mercy.

And more likely than not, the act would be considered an Act of War.

Complications.

Lumynn was standing just to the right of the edge of one of the eight huge, man-sized viewing portals on the lee side of the vessel as it sat docked alongside the downward slope of an expansive sand dune that looked down on the seashore.

Lumynn was an ascete, his head shaven, a tattoo of the sun around one hazel-hued eye, dressed in a loose belted tunic of deep green, sand-colored pants made from a rough canvas-like material, and wearing closed blue-black boots that reached just under his knees. Across his back, suspended over his shoulders by braided leather straps, was a metal box, a pack in which he kept a few survival tools and the ceremonial instruments of his former clerical office.  The billowy sleeves of his tunic revealed his wrists and forearms were covered by a winding leather gauntlet studded with small flat coins on which numerical markings were carved: the signs of his spiritual brotherhood, about which he very seldom spoke, even with D’Spayr.  If questioned about his past, one quickly ascertained it was an uncomfortable subject with him.  His hands were clean, the fingers thin and long, but there were scars across his knuckles that indicated he had not always led the pampered existence of a clerical academician.  That was further alluded to by the short sword he wore, sheathed in a unique scabbard of blue metal, hanging from a belt around his narrow waist.