Chapter Forty-One
A quick recee proved that the raider group had thrown the last they had at us. There were none left alive in their camp. What was worrisome was realizing how large the camp had been to start with. At any time they could have overwhelmed us with numbers or shortened the siege by surrounding us tighter and starving us faster. It must have been the Creator’s will alone that kept their headman so foolishly fearful as they wouldn’t do it. Or perhaps they were already weak from lack of resupply. Or their up leaders were giving them orders by runners from outside the area. The signs they left behind were not clear and there was little enough time to put to guessing since there were signs that while none in camp left alive, some few moved on.
There was sign that some escaped the death illness; not many, but some, and no way of knowing if they were well or ill themselves. There were gaps in a few tent placements but that could have been from them being burned to prevent the illness from spreading in camp. Where there should have been horses there were none, unless they were used to feed the men. And men being men such as they were, there were some corpses of women, and the description reminded me of such businesses I’d seen on the barter roads. But no one reported seeing a wagon such businesses need to transport the working females. Gid said the signs were contradictory and difficult to say with assurance what exactly happened. For all we knew there was a split in the camp with some choosing to attack us and other choosing to simply move on or return to the main contingent in the valley.
All they had remining of any real value in their camp was a wagon of powdered lime which was used to cover the few bodies not already on a pyre in the middle of their camp, as well as what was in the pyre itself. The lime must have come from an attack on a trader caravan as Jace said it didn’t match anything mined in the area.
The camp itself was in a rocky bowl of land and with the Creator’s Grace the lime will do whatever work the pyre did not and the rock beneath their camp will keep any remaining sickness from leeching through to good ground below. Either way Gid determined that the land be mark off as sick for at least 10 seasons. Two and a half years nothing would be gathered or grown on that land. Yes, a loss. But better to be safe than sorry. The Creator gives us sense for a purpose, and this is one of those purposes.
While the men recee’d, the women and children closed down the cabin and packed away all else we wouldn’t be taking. All of it, books to brick-a-brack went below stairs, packed in the empty stoneware crocks and the few barrels that would be remaining. No garden had yet been planted so at least there would be no waste there. No foraging to be left behind either as it has all been used to feed the family and the trader group. What food was left would be needed to feed us all as we carefully make our way back to the town.
The day we pulled out the ground had just dried up enough that we wouldn’t be leaving behind huge ruts to be trouble for us when we come back, or to lead anyone to the cabin. And we will be coming back even if we must hold out another year. Gid was so mad when we pulled out that even Lurna had the sense to keep her words behind her teeth. By noon Gid’s anger had dissipated but more because he was a man of sense than because he still did not feel the same way. He was gratified to find I could drive our wagon so he could ride. All the others were needed to drive the family’s wagon and the trader group had their own problems after losing so many men.
We traveled together for safety but it didn’t make the traveling easier. Too many wagons and too many riders slowing us down though it wasn’t just our numbers that kept our pace down. There was sign all along the main road of the troubles that had befallen the area. No few times there were corpses hung in the trees and some were from before the winter and difficult to determine whether they were raiders caught by travelers and hung as a warning or travelers caught by raiders and hung for a different kind of warning.
And then we came to a slide in the earth that wasn’t there last time Gid and I had come this way.
“By all that is Holy,” was heard to be said by more than one man. A few went so far as to repeat the type of curses that fell from the lips of those who lived before the Great War.
Gid asked, “And this was not here when last you came through?”
Jace answered, “No or I would have mentioned it.”
He didn’t speak in anger more in tired surprise that Gid would think he wouldn’t mention such a thing. Gid wiped his face and then nodded.
“Best we camp here for the night then. Nothing will be coming at us from the road side and all we’ll need to do is watch our rear. Our sides will be guarded by where the land has shifted up on the one side, and falls down the other. What say you?”
The other men, including Tad’s Uncle Gerry and his second in command everyone called Watch-‘em, all agreed it was the likeliest place. And truth be told they were going to need some time to determine whether the slide could be moved or if the land was too unstable and a trail would have to be broken between here and the road that goes around the long way to the road we came down after Gid had bought me.
The one caveat that was hardest on the others was that there dare not be any fires. The cold and the bugs were a problem already. The wood was too green or too wet and it would smoke and give our location away. The Creator was giving us good cover, it wouldn’t do to throw it back in His face giving ourselves away. The evening meal would be nothing but forage and grains that had been soaking with some sweetener mixed in to make everyone enough rations to take the edge off their hunger.
I handed Gid the spyglass he’d taken from one of the raider corpses and brought me back as a present. Some of the men questioned his sanity giving such a valuable item to a woman, but Gid knows that I’ll use it while hunting and he already had one of his own taken from a similar source during the first raid on the cabin. He, Tad, and Watch’em went to make the best of a recee to see what could be seen of the slide and what lay beyond.