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Chapter 15  by Joe Bandel |
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Several hours later the sun was coming up. There was a fire blazing in the fireplace of one of the log buildings at the gathering spot and two Masters were standing guard outside the door as Ellen finished questioning Tobal. She absent mindedly pushed his parent’s things toward him and indicated that he should pick them up. "I don’t know what to do," she murmured softly. "There is no doubt in my mind that these things truly belong to you and that you should have them. If they had belonged to my parents I know I would want to have them. I am now also inclined to believe the rogues were somehow able to follow you. Perhaps they do have monitors. That would explain why we rarely see any of them. They would know when we are in the area and would hide." She turned a puzzled expression toward Tobal, "But that would also mean they are not from the village to the west of here. That village is totally primitive and has no technology. These rogues must be coming from somewhere else and they are interested in what you found at the lake. This might be very dangerous and your life might be in danger, all our lives might be in danger and we don’t know from whom. I suggest we keep this quiet for now and don’t talk to anyone else about it." "I need to talk with Rafe about it," Tobal protested. "He already knows something is out there and so does Melanie. She was with me when we first found the gathering spot at the waterfall. I don’t want them to be in danger too!" Ellen sighed, "Well, I will have to trust your judgement in this. Don’t talk to anyone unless you really trust them ok?" Tobal nodded, "I wasn’t going to anyway" He chuckled. "I wasn’t even going to tell you until you cornered me about it." He didn’t mention the slender silvery wand that was hidden safely in his pack. Both Ellen and Tobal decided it would be a good idea for him to stay close to the gathering spot and around other people in case the rogues had specifically targeted him. So he spent most of the month helping Dirk and Rafe working up wood for circle. They were trying to get wood ahead so there would be an ample supply during a snowstorm or blizzard. There was already over one foot of snow and travel was getting difficult. With Tobal’s help Rafe and Dirk got a lot of wood brought into camp. Rafe was becoming more confident and sure of himself. He was also growing taller and filling out. The constant back breaking work of chopping wood with stone axes seemed to be putting muscle on him too. The Chevrons on his sleeve proclaimed he had won three fights and he was learning how to take care of himself. Tobal wore the jet and amber necklace around his neck and kept the ceremonial dagger in the sheath strapped to his ankle. Each day he took them out and looked at them. They were the only things he had that came from his parents. He wanted to go back to the cave but knew it was more dangerous than ever. He put the two plastic hospital bracelets in his medicine bag and carried it on a leather thong around his neck. It was the wand that he didn’t know what to do with. It was about a foot long and one inch in diameter. He had examined it more completely and still didn’t know much about it. There were five buttons on the thing. He had tried the first and second buttons in the cave. Out doors they worked much the same. The first button made the wand act as a light. When he activated the second button it melted a circle of snow about fifteen feet in front of where he was pointing. It seemed to have a range of about fifteen feet and the heat kept increasing as long as he held the button down. The third button caused a blade of light to extend out of the wand about two inches. This was some type of laser used for cutting. He tried it on a few rocks and cut deeply into them without melting the rock. The fourth button acted as a sighting device shining a point of red light on anything it was pointed at without apparent harm to the object. The fifth button however, would flash a pulse of light burning a hole through whatever it hit. The fifth button could only be pushed at the same time the fourth one was pushed and needed to be re-pushed for each new pulse of light. It apparently acted as some type of safety device limiting the damage that could be done with the wand. He tried it once killing a deer at twice normal bow range. The deer dropped without a sound. Close examination showed a hole that went completely through the deer. As he butchered the deer and brought it back into camp he reflected on the nature of the wand itself. It was obviously a tool or a weapon using pulsed energy of some type he had never heard about. That meant it was probably part of some secret military technology his parents had been involved in. In any case it was extremely dangerous and even more dangerous to be caught with. On the other hand he didn’t want to loose it or have it stolen. He guessed he might have to talk with Ellen about it sometime. In the meantime he made a sheath for it on his other ankle and kept it on his person. Rafe asked him about his trip and was very interested but Dirk was always around and Tobal felt he needed to talk with Ellen first so he told Rafe to wait till circle. Rafe’s eyes narrowed a bit eyeing the amber and jade necklace. He didn’t say anything more about the trip. Samhain was a major festival and Tobal was surprised at how many showed up for it. It started as the other celebrations did with proclaiming newbies ready to solo. Nikki and Char both proclaimed their newbies ready to solo. There were several initiations scheduled. Wayne’s newbie wasn’t ready yet but was going to be initiated. The Same thing happened with Zee’s newbie and Kevin’s newbie. They were going to be initiated into the clan but they needed another month of training. With the advent of cold weather the training was taken seriously by all clan members. Most clansmen had already partnered up for the winter and would not be doing anymore training till next spring or they would partner up at this circle. He thought about Tara and Zee. They had both asked him about partnering up for the winter. Now they both had partners selected even if Zee and Kevin still had one more month of training till their newbies soloed. Soon there would be no one to ask or partner up with unless it was a newbie. Was he really being so different in not partnering up with anyone? Rafe had trained newbies all winter long. He caught Char a bit later and talked with her about it. "I notice your newbie is soloing this month," he congratulated her. "What are you going to do now?" "Well, I was going to see if Wayne wanted to partner back up for the winter," she said bitterly. "But he is not speaking to me and in the middle of training his newbie. If he is training her like he trained me, she will probably be spending the winter with him. I hate that man!" She started crying and Tobal put an arm around her shoulder to comfort her. He felt her shoulders shaking against him. "He’s just training newbies like you are Char, what are you mad at him for?" "He’s not talking to me or looking at me, that’s why," she snapped at him. "All he does is spend time with her." Tobal sighed and wished he were anywhere else. "You sound just like he did last month when I was talking to him. Don’t you remember how jealous he was? You were afraid he was going to pick a fight with Rory. Look, this will make one chevron for you and two for him. What are you going to do now? Try training another newbie or wait out the winter? You can’t control what he does. You can only control what you do. What is it that you really want to do?" "Become a citizen and get a real life." "Ok, so what do you need to do?" "I guess I’m going to train one more newbie this winter. Thanks Tobal," she told him. "I know that I need to move ahead but it’s hard sometimes. These old habits are so hard to break. It’s easy to get depressed about things." "Let me know if you need any help," he told her. "I’m planning on training newbies all winter myself. It’s kind of strange but I’m a little afraid of partnering up with anyone for the entire winter." "Why would you feel that way Tobal?" She asked curiously. "Well partnering up with a girl for the winter kind of implies a sexual relationship," he flustered. "What’s wrong with a sexual relationship?" She asked. "You do want sex with girls don’t you?" Now he was red and embarrassed, " Wanting sex and having sex are two different things Char. At least for me they are. I don’t want to hurt anyone and what if it doesn’t work out between us. What if she gets pregnant or something." Char laughed. "You are taking this much too seriously Tobal. For one thing, no one is going to get pregnant out here. Once a year we get birth control shots that last the entire year. In fact, we get them during Samhain, which is this month. The medics will make sure we get our shots if we want to continue in the Apprentice program. I thought you knew that." Tobal looked confused. She continued, "It might not be a good idea for two Apprentices to get together like Wayne and I did. It is really hard having a permanent love relationship with someone when you need to train and live with other people like Wayne and I need to do. But it is normal to be sexual with others. Having sex is a form of sharing and a way of deepening a relationship. It is no big deal really. None of us are experts at love. We all need to have experiences and learn from those experiences. Our love partners help us and we teach each other about what pleases us." "Tobal," she looked at him intently and unfastened her robe. "Do you want to have sex with me?" He found himself staring at her body. Her soft breasts and the mound of blonde pubic hair stirred something inside him. Tobal found himself uncomfortable with the subject and with his own feelings. She had a good looking body. "I think I will wait until I get to Journeyman before I worry about it too much," he said awkwardly. She laughed. "Well at least give me a hug and a kiss then." She moved closer so her bare body was against him as they hugged. It was a long hug and a long kiss. It took a while to recover and Tobal wandered around the gathering spot trying to collect his wits together. He thought about what Char had said and wondered if she was right. Maybe he was making too big of a thing about it. Maybe sex could be as casual as shaking hands for some people but he knew it was not that way for him. For one thing there were a lot of attractive girls around the camp and only one or two had ever really drawn his eye. He thought of Melanie, yes, he was sexually attracted to Melanie. Then Becca came unbidden into his mind and he hastily pushed her back out. He didn’t know what was going on between him and Becca but it was more like electric shock therapy than sexual attraction. Sarah, Mike and Butch had all completed their solos and were talking together when he came up to them. They were going to take this month off and work on their own base camps getting prepared for winter. It seemed most clansmen were either doing that or had already done that. None of them were talking about partnering up for the winter but they were thinking about working together setting up winter camps. Once their winter camps were set up they would decide if they were going to do any training or not. Melanie, Becca, Nikki and he were the only ones interested in newbies this month. They each received a new chevron except Nikki. Her first newbie was going to solo that month. That made three for him, and one each for Becca and Melanie. "You’re going to travel with us to sanctuary aren’t you?" Nikki asked. "It will be a blast." "I might," he said evasively. "I need to talk with Ellen first though and I might be running later than usual. If I’m not around just take off without me and I’ll catch up with you." "What do you need to talk with Ellen about?" Nikki asked. "She wants to know more about when my base camp got burned by rogues." He evaded by giving a simple answer. "I remember that," Melanie exclaimed. "That’s when we found the waterfall by the lake and that weird abandoned gathering spot. Tell her she can talk to me too if she wants. Say, have you ever gone back there like you said you were going to?" "That’s one of the things I’m going to talk with Ellen about," Tobal said. It’s pretty bad weather to go there now though. To easy to get snowed in." "Maybe we can all go there this spring some time," Becca said. "I love swimming and there isn’t a really good swimming spot around here." "That’s a great idea!" Nikki said enthusiastically. "Well just let me know so I can go with you," Tobal said. "It might be dangerous and there should be enough of us going so no one will attack us." "Why would anyone want to attack us?" Nikki laughed. "You have something in mind handsome?" The other two laughed and Tobal turned away with a dark shadow on his face. He couldn’t tell them the entire story or it would be all over camp and Ellen would have his head. It was better just to leave things the way they were for now. Misty was again High Priestess and did a nice job. Ellen was there and said she needed to talk with him later after circle. Angel was also helping out in the circle. There was a new High Priest too but Tobal didn’t remember his name. Dirk was there along with Rafe on wood patrol keeping the fires going. There were several Journeymen Tobal recognized and many more he didn’t. This was the largest circle he had ever been too. Ox had even shown up for the party strutting three chevrons on his black tunic. It was the end of the harvest cycle and the last time many of them would see each other until next spring so they were determined to have a good time. After the initiations the party really began. At drum circle the drumming and dancing went long into the night as people laughed leaping among the flames individually and together. The festivities lasted three days with the last two days reminding Tobal of a flea market and county fair. People brought items to sell or trade especially beautiful hand crafted garments and tools. The most interesting were winter garments that made Tobal’s efforts seem crude in comparison. He examined them carefully and took mental notes so he could duplicate the work later. He did the same with other tools and items that caught his interest. This was the time clan members would show off their creativity and individual talents. There was music, hand made stringed instruments and wooden flutes. There were of course the drums that beat out a steady rhythm deep into the night for all the dancers. The second day was reserved for games and competitions. He was not surprised when Melanie won a knife throwing contest but he gaped in envy at the prize. It was a hand forged axe one of the third degree members had somehow created. With an axe like that work would go much more quickly than with stone axes and knives. It would help not only with firewood but also in the creation of bigger and more permanent shelters like log cabins. It was also on the second day when female clan members got their annual birth control shot to prevent pregnancies. There were lots of sexual jokes going round the camp and open invitations. Tobal wondered more about this and asked one of the medics. The medic told him the city felt it was too dangerous to have children or raise children under these harsh survival conditions. People were free to have children once they became citizens but not before. This was a rule that was strictly enforced and medics would fly their air sleds out to those females that had not attended this gathering. If they refused the shot, they were disqualified. This did happen, the medic told him. There were always 2nd degree couples content living as they were and wanting to raise families out here in the wilderness. In fact, there were enough of them that they had formed their own family type gathering spot two hundred miles to the West. When Tobal tried asking more questions the medic shut up like he had already said too much and that he needed to be going. There was certainly a lot Tobal didn’t understand. He wondered if the dead camp at the lake had been a family one. He hoped not because the thought of dead children lying in that cairn made him feel sick. Still, in his heart he knew it had been a family camp because his own hospital bracelet proved he had been there just as Adam Gardner had said. The old man had talked about other children that had been murdered too. There were secrets out there, secrets he intended to find out. It was on the last day the medics handed out special supplies and medicines like salt, wine, vitamins and medical gear scavenged from old med kits. Needles, hair brushes, combs, string and things like that were very welcome. So were scissors and razors, not to mention tooth brushes and other items that could be gotten at sanctuary. "Ok, let’s hear it," Rafe said cornering him on the last night. "You’ve been blowing me off all month, what’s up? Are you going to tell me what happened or not?" They were sitting near the central fire in an area that was relatively empty of all but dancers. "I see you’ve got some type of necklace," he observed. Tobal sighed and took it off his head handing it to Rafe. "It’s my mother’s necklace." "How do you know that?" Tobal showed him the hospital tags. Rafe looked carefully at the two tags and slowly handed them back along with the necklace. "I guess they are," he commented. "What else did you find?" Tobal slid the necklace back over his head and put the plastic tags back into his medicine bag before he unsheathed the dagger and handed it to Rafe. Rafe examined the golden dagger wordlessly and turned it so he could examine the initials better. "Your father?" He asked quietly and gave it back to Tobal. Tobal just nodded, blinking back some tears and a lump in his throat. "Is there anything else?" Tobal nodded and stood up. "Let’s walk a bit. We have to get away from camp first." Together they walked out into the woods where they had been hauling wood for the last month. It was about a half mile from camp and Tobal figured it was reasonably safe. "Watch," he pulled out the wand and pointed it at a nearby boulder they had sat on for lunch a few days ago. A bright red light showed briefly on the boulder and then vanished as Tobal pressed the fifth button. "So what!" Rafe said. "It’s a little laser light. I used to play with them when I was a kid. I used to tease the cat with it." "Not like this," Tobal said. "Come over and look." He went over to the boulder and pointed at the small hole that went straight into the boulder and came out the other side. "Damn!" Rafe whispered, running his fingers over the hole. "It’s not even hot." Tobal pointed the wand in the general direction of where they had been working the other day and pressed the second button briefly. Instantly the area fifteen feet in front of them was clear of snow and there was steam rising from the ground in the moon light. "Holy shit!" Rafe exclaimed. "Put that damn thing away and let’s get out of here! What are you trying to do? Get us killed?" Tobal put the wand back into the sheath on his left leg and they hurried back to camp in the moonlight retracing their steps in the snow. "I found a secret cave," he said. "It is where my parents used to meet secretly with a few others. It must have been the place Sarah’s father told me about. I found my parent’s things there and I also found the wand there. I couldn’t stay very long and explore so I left right away. I knew the air sleds would be looking for me and I wanted to be as far away as possible when they did. "They found me about one half hour later," he said. "Lucky for me it was Ellen and she was really pissed at me. At least she was at first. She made me take off my med-alert bracelet and did all kinds of tests on it to see if it was working right. Then she asked me what I had been doing by the waterfall. That’s when I told her I was coming back to where my old camp had been destroyed. She didn’t believe me at first but she took me to my old burned out site and I showed it to her. She wondered why I hadn’t told anyone about it. I said I had told you and that you had said it was not a good place to build. "That’s when she told me it was a ‘forbidden’ site and I wasn’t supposed to be there. It was dangerous especially near the waterfall. I guess there have been lots of rogue attacks in that area. "Now it gets weird," he whispered to Rafe, looking around to see if anyone was listening. "She told me to get back to sanctuary and get a new med-alert bracelet as soon as possible so I did. I felt strange though like someone was following me so I slept in caves at night where my med-alert bracelet would not work and went as fast as I could during the day toward sanctuary." "There was someone following me," He said. "I got to sanctuary and hid my stuff before going in to process. While I was processing three rogues searched through all my stuff and would have attacked me if I hadn’t broken my old med-alert bracelet." "Whoa, Wait up," Rafe said. "How could anyone track you except the medics and why did you break your old med-alert bracelet?" "When I got to Sanctuary and went into processing I took off my med-alert bracelet and smashed it. When I took it off an alarm sounded for the medics that said I needed help. When I smashed it, there was no signal at all so they sent three medics out to find me. When they got to sanctuary they saw three rogues dressed in black running out of sanctuary and into the woods. The rogues not only tracked me to sanctuary by my med-alert bracelet, they could also tell medics were coming and got away before they could get caught. Somehow they were able to track the med-alert bracelets." "That’s why Ellen thought it might be a good idea for me to just hang around with you guys getting up wood the rest of the month," Tobal finished. "It’s also why I didn’t want to say much of anything while Dirk was there." "I understand now," Rafe said. "Does Ellen know about the things you found?" Tobal flushed, "She doesn’t know about the wand yet. But she does know about everything else. I wanted a chance to examine it myself before I let anyone else see it.
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