He dreamed he was with his sister again.
The night came and darkness crept into the streets of the town. A cold breeze froze the water that dropped from the side-windows. The filthy, frozen sides of that small street shone beneath the white, bright moon. Jaber moved from edge to edge, never making a sound. He was going to steal. He would not steal anything if it was not needed, and food was for his family, his sister. Yet he wasn't stealing food in the dream, he was stealing something else.
He woke up in the wagon. He found himself shivering from the cold of the dead night. Sweat formed on his neck and forehead like a cold linen and was sticky when he passed the back of his hand to wipe it. Jaber pushed himself back, resting on the hard wood of the moving wagon. He wasn't alone: two men he did not know lay asleep before him. They were picked on the road, delivered by a group of riders south of Treehill.
The moonlit muddy road glimpsed from the bar-windowed front; the twigs of trees rustled on top of the wagon as it passed through the Shadecrossing. The horses made a sucking sound with their hooves as they went through mud. It's been a long time since they left Liongate, and still is a long journey to prison. Jaber thought about his sister and the dream. He was very far away from her in Liongate, and now he's further far, never going back, never seeing her face again.
The thought of escape had not come to him for the first time. When he was caught at Treehill, he escaped. He had been very swift and stealthy, yet he failed to escape the guards of Liongate, bringing himself a hard beating. Now escape seemed harder, being in a cell, a moving cell, yet hope lingered. He pushed himself toward the barred window, wriggling it with both hands. The wooden door creaked and cracked, softly, but the bars did not hinder. Jaber went back to his place. How can I escape from this? He was the one responsible for her living; the thought made him shiver. He sunk his head in his hands, tears pouring from his eyes. He was trying to cry without making a sound, but the sobbing was inevitable. He sobbed hard.
"What the hell is that?" said the man sleeping on the opposite side of the barred-window. His face was half eaten by darkness, and the other half gleamed with a fading light, showing a hollow eye-socket split in two.
"You cryin'? You miss your mommy?" He blurted. Coming forward, he smacked Jaber on the head with his hard, stuffed hand. The blow sent him face first onto the wooden wagon floor. The lower half of the hand caught his ear, and it rang like a bell.
"Next time I'll hear a voice from you, I'll choke you with me bear 'ands." The man grunted, and went back to sleep.
Jaber slept and woke as the wagon took its way through the rough road, bumped here on rocks, and there slashing through watery mud. Dawn broke, and the early faint light came through the window. Soon the small crack from the window was blazed with light, and it was morning.
A breeze rose swiftly and swept into the wagon. Jaber shivered, holding tight to his ragged torn cloak. He closed his eyes and hoped dreams of home would take him off to sleep, yet it did not work. Nothing seems to work, he thought. He pushed himself up and put his back against the hard wood, covering still his eyes with the back of his hand from the coming light, and wondered what to do next, where to go. The answer didn't need much thought. The Divide. I will be sledging away my time at the Divide, far away from home, he thought. Far away from my sister. His chest tightened on him, and his breath shortened as he thought of sister.
Outside the moving cell, the world came alive. Birds flew between the twigs of the trees and they chirped, welcoming a new day. The sound of the wagon changed into a smooth tone, a softer one. Morning put his mind at ease, and, for a few moments, he forgot all that troubled his mind.
The two cellmates slept before him. They did not mind the racket of the wagon or the morning light. They seemed experts at being captured and prisoned. When Jaber's eyes took him, he heard a conversation, which at first seemed in his dreams.
"It been so long for me since I'd a taste of it," a man's voice said.
"Same as me," another voice joined.
"See, milk like this should go all the way up north to the Crossing Rivers."
"You'd be a fool to say so, Slimy. Everything's short these days, even the dates. We're getting nothing from down under."
"Politics. Don't talk politics. All I want me is to enjoy some milk and dates on my breakfast. As long as it is there," Slimy said, and continued "And all I'll do is take this wagon down to the Divide, and protect it. That's what they pay me for, after all, and yourself as well."
"I ain't talked nothing. But these days you can't go on with your mouth shut all the time, 'specially when everyone's talkin', y'know," the second guard said.
"Talking about what?"
"Stuff, y'know." Silence took over for a while. The second guard started again, "Word's that they're reinforcing the Divide. They're wipin' the streets clean from thieves and such, in every town back in Liongate, Hillrock, and Treehill, to send 'em down. Sometimes they even take the poor and low people, ones who can't feed themselves or fend for themselves."
"Uuh. Then we too should go down, or aren't we poor?"
"No, I'm telling you. There's somethin' goin' on. The food is short and costly, the Sids are filling the Divide with men. I don't know."
"It's nothing," Slimy said, coughing. "It's always been like this. Every time, since I was a boy, the food was short and kept getting shorter and costly. Men were taken for the divide and, undoubtedly, were living and dying. That's the course of it."
Jaber was thinking that something might be down, but Slimy's words reassured him that it's always been like that. Yet he hoped for something to happen, something… that would take him back home.
The wagon stopped. A chatter went on outside, and then the wagon's door opened. "Out," shouted a guard. It wasn't much of a good place to stop at, but he was glad to get out of the cell and stretch his legs.
The other wagons stopped on the road. They were lined one behind the other in the muddy road, it looked like a summer festival. Guards warned them if there were to be any attempts to escape. They shouted and screamed and threatened, yet some of the inmates did not heed their warnings and, the moment they went outside, they took leave, running side-ways into the open forest. The guards went after them. They took a hard beating when they were caught, and were put back straight to their wagon cells, where they bled.
Jaber spotted a tree trunk near his wagon. The tree was tall and old, its leaves were yellow and out of time, and most of them fell to the ground, creating a pond of crackling leaves. Crunching his way through it, he seated himself up on the hanging trunk. His legs drifted on free air, and his hands, crossed with heavy chains, rested on his lap.
"You have nightmares, don't you?" a man drifted towards him, mysteriously. Jaber gazed down at him. It was his cellmate. The one that slept all night long.
"What? What are you talking about?" Jaber thrusted his head forward.
"I heard you mumbling in the dark," the cellmate said.
"Yeah? And what you heard?" Jaber turned his eyes back at the festive movement by the line of wagons.
"Yeah. Well, maybe... There's no shame for a man to cry," the cellmate said, grinning. Jaber looked back at the cellmate again; his words held back in his throat, yet at last he managed to talk "Leave me alone," he said, anxiously. He tightened his jaws, and his hands stiffened into fists, chains clinking. The cellmate sneered at him; he stood unmoved, eyes fixed at Jaber.
"I said go. Leave me alone," Jaber snapped at him, jumping over the pool of old leaves.
"Ey, ey!" The cellmate stepped back, "There is no need to be mad, uh. I don't want anything bad here. I'm just vexing you, boy," he said. His words sounded better than before, but Jaber was infuriated still. He managed a look at his face, and noticed, for the first time, his countenance. Boy, he's calling me a boy and he is one himself. The cellmate's face was small and pinched inwardly, with red, small marks filling his nose and cheeks. His fair hair shone gaily under the sunlight. A hint of moustache mixed with sweat showed him not to be a young lad, but also not old.
"I don't care what you do," Jaber said, walking away.
"I'm just showing you how things are out here, uh! One's gotta keep an extra shoulder by his side, uh!" Jaber walked still, pretending not to listen, but he did. Maybe he is right, he thought. This is a new world after all. Jaber knew nothing of what he'll be facing, and he had never been down this far from home, and worse, he had no friends here; he might have known some people back at Hillrock, and many, of course, in Treehill, yet down here, his acquaintances were limited to naught.
It was near midday and the sun peeked on them from atop. The guards prepared fire camps all over the sides of Shadecrossing. The fires blazed and crackled here and there, and the guards fed it more wood. They were going to feed them. It had been a while since they gave them something to eat. Soon enough they brought kettles filled with water; and when the water boiled, they threw pieces of carrots, onions, garlic, and after that they grilled venison. Venison was much more available here in the woods, south of the Liongate.
The stew was good, and venison was even better. Jaber sat on the tree log and ate passionately until his wooden bowl was empty. He wanted more but, glancing up toward the crowds, he saw prisoners fight each other over bits of meat. One prisoner strangled another to death with his chains; a guard took him away from the fire camps into the thick woods, returning a while after, cleaning his blood-soaked sword with a cloth. Jaber shuddered in his place. His stomach was full by then.
Jaber was alone since they stopped, since that man came to him. He thought again of what he told him. All the killing, the savagery that happened around here, and for sure will happen at the Divide… I need friends, people I can trust, he thought to himself, as the scene of prisoners killing each other for food hardly left his mind.
The woods breathed a cool air into the road as the sun slowly followed its course. It was far from setting, but the breeze the shading wood heaved was cold. Jaber walked between guards and prisoners alike. Some guards were huddled in groups and playing cards, and some were on the watch. Others started lining up the prisoners and counting them as time for leave closed on.
Jaber's cellmate laid his back on a tree reading a book, nonchalantly.
"I see you've come after long thought, uh," the man said, his eyes never flinched from the book.
"I'm not here for your comments," Jaber said.
"Oh, that I know. Many people don't come to me for my bad manners." The man grinned. Jaber stooped by his side.
"You asked me earlier about nightmares," Jaber busied his hands with a stroke of dry leaves, "I do, actually, ever since I left Liongate."
The man closed his book on a finger and looked at Jaber, his eyes sparkling with curiosity.
"And what are they?" he asked.
"It's about my sister. She's all alone now."
"And all you want is to get back to her, yes. I'm sorry about that," the man said. Standing, he put his small book in a pouch under his rags.
"I'm Hemer." He approached him to shake hands, "You can call me Hem."
Jaber took his hand; both their chains crackled. "And I'm Jaber."
"Get in line, shitheads." The shout of guards interrupted their conversation. Together, they trotted towards the lining.
A breeze tussled through the trees, sending dead leaves spinning like golden coins down onto the old brick road. There was a sudden motion in the near brushes as a shape of a man saddled on a horse thrashed its way free. The sentry unsheathed their swords and stood, swords in the air, alarmingly.
The horse's hoofbeats died away as he came close to the guards. He wore a red, velvet cloak embroidered in oak-green slashes. A guardsman of Liongate, Jaber thought. He held his helm's visor up and went down from his horse. The guards held back their swords and leapt forward to help him as he fell on the dirt; his cloak stained with blood on his side. The prisoners stood still in line as they watched the new arriving.
The horseman took a sip of milk the guards had brought him and rested around a camp fire, while others were bringing him some stew and leftovers of stale bread and venison.
"What happened?" the guard in charge of the caravan threw a shocking look at him. He too was one of the guardsmen of the Sid of Liongate, sent to take the prisoners to the Divide.
"I was sent to scout the area around the east, for some trouble that arose between the locals. We were three. They attacked us. A group of southerners. They killed the others, and I managed to escape," he took a long gulp of the hot stew brought to him, and tore a chunk of bread with his teeth.
"This never happened since…" one of the guards said.
"Since the rise of the Divide," completed the guard in charge, with a stern look on his face. Then he said, "You've got to go warn them. Go directly to the Sid, and tell him what you saw. It might be nothing, but it also might be something."
The guardsman nodded; his face seemed half-shook by fear and confusion. The guard in charge ordered his men to provide him with food and water for the road. The guardsman mounted his horse and galloped away, back to Liongate. Jaber wished he could leave with him.
War. The word spread faster than fever in a man's body. Prisoners and guards spoke of it. Some say it will break soon enough. The southerners had had enough of it; it's time for them to rebel.