Chapter 21

CHAP 21

The Noemen Camp

Lilly hardly slept that eve and now Gamray’s daughter was just poking her head into the eastern sky. She badly wanted to have a wash, but of course she couldn’t, the brown dye would wash off. She would also liked to have taken the ‘ribbons’ out of her hair but she couldn’t. So instead she woke Morii and they crept downstairs and out of the inn so as not to wake anyone at this time of the morning.

Glodsun was harnessing two fresh horses to his cart and gave only the slightest acknowledgement that they were there at all.

The morn was fresh and rather cool, quite unlike mornings in Bell-da-hallen, which seemed to retain a constant warm temperature any time of the day.

 Once on the cart and leaving Rin-goreekie, Lilly began to think about certain things. She and Morii could not really mardle as the cart driver would have guessed they were really Norsonians.

Lilly suddenly had an amazing thought, she had to bite her lip to stop herself calling out. THE BOX, she thought excitedly. Where was the metal box that Gamray had been held in? The box with the strange designs and patterns. Someone had made that box, a very skilled metal worker. Lilly could contain her thoughts no longer, she had to speak to Morii.

She nudged her friend and Morii looked at her inquisitively. Lilly mouthed to him silently, ‘THE BOX.’ Morii looked confused and just shrugged. Lilly repeated her silent message, slower this time ‘THE BOX.’ Still Morii didn’t get it. Lilly looked behind them at the cart driver, she dare not speak out loud in case he should hear. She signalled to Morii, never mind, by closing her eyes and slightly shaking her head.

Lilly went back to her thoughts, I could contact Gamray she thought, closing her eyes and concentrating.

Yay Lilly my child, is the something wrong? Gamray thought to her.

‘Gamray, what happened to the box, the one ye were trapped in?’

Why, tis in Sardor’s keeping I believe Lilly. I feel what ye are thinking, I shall instruct Sardor to bring it to me as soon as he returns with Pel. Yay Lilly tis a good idea.

‘Good, can ye let me know what marks are upon it, maybe I can enquire of Borgup, when I find him. He may know who made it.’

Yay Lilly I will do as ye request, be on yer guard now.

Lilly sighed and shifted her position slightly, so that she could watch out sideways from the cart. Thoughts were streaming through her head, could it be that they might find out who the box was made for, it would certainly be a start.

The scenery was beginning to change, the green pleasant lowlands of grazing Aurochs was being replaced by more scrubby, rocky terrain. Strange little shrubby bushes with evil looking sharp spines were appearing among the lightin bush plants. And there a few yards away was a Tisk, with what looked like four pups! Lilly was about to call out to it, then remembered that she was in disguise and wasn’t supposed to be interested in such things, being a Noeman younger.

Morii had dozed off, Lilly noticed. That boy could sleep anywhere, he didn’t even need to be comfortable thought Lilly, with a small smile.

What seemed like an eternity passed and Lilly was beginning to get rather uncomfortable, when the driver muttered something that Lilly couldn’t quite hear. Morii opened his eyes at that very moment and sat up, stretching. ‘We’re almost there dear kin.’ Morii informed her.

Lilly knelt up on the sacks in the cart and saw to her amazement a long line of tents in the distance, nestling into the foothills of some incredibly high mountains.

Wow, thought Lilly excitedly as they continued up the dusty road. The encampment looked massive, more like a city. Tents stretched as far as the eye could see. Long lines of floating, brightly coloured fabric stretched high above the tents, looking like enormous washing lines. Plumes of smoke stretched lazily into the bright sky and the steely ring of hammers echoed through the mountains.

Corrals of horses had been placed around the perimeter of the make-shift city and Lilly could just make out people, still so far off that they looked like ants, dashing here and there, carrying things on their heads in baskets. 

The nearer they got, the more noise could be heard. Drummers beating away, music that sounded like flutes or some other wind instruments, shouting, metallic hammering, people calling to each other and dogs barking. Smells, amazing smells, came wafting across the arid landscape. Roasting meats, bread, spices and garlic, coffee and fruit, a whole and very lovely mixture of everything. Now Lilly realised she was hungry, very hungry indeed.

Morii gave Lilly a look that said he was thinking the same thing.

A few moments later, the cart driver pulled up and let Lilly and Morii get off. The driver turned in his seat and eyed them both up and down. ‘Ye think twice afore ye get yourselves in trouble again.’ This was said sternly to Morii. ‘Youngers, they’re the same everywhere,’ he muttered as he pulled away.

Lilly and Morii couldn’t help it, they burst into fits of laughter and fell about for a few moments. Once they had recovered, they remembered their empty stomachs and set off to buy some food.

Proper streets had been formed over the years that the Noeman had been coming to this site and the whole tent city was quite well organised. There was a food quarter, which Lilly and Morii found by following their noses. They found themselves in a square with tables and benches, six or seven alleys ran out from this with stalls and tents selling all varieties of food. Morii went for a stall with roasting meats on skewers, Lilly followed and in no time the two of them were enjoying roast meat and slices of flat white bread. It was delicious and reminded Lilly of kebabs. She was explaining this to Morii when Gamray came back into her head.

‘Lilly, I have the box. It has squares and figures of infinity carved along the sides, it has a dragons head embossed on the lid and the corners are wrapped in gold. Can ye see this image my child?’

Lilly hushed Morii for a moment and closed her eyes.

‘Yay Gamray, I see the image ye send me and I shall try to find out if anyone remembers making it or has seen it before. Thank ye.’

‘Ye are most welcome child and I send ye both my blessings.’

With that Gamray departed as quickly as he’d come. Now Lilly remembered to tell Morii what she had be dying to tell him on the journey, but had forgotten in all the excitement of arriving at the Noeman encampment.

Once it had all been explained, Morii agreed that someone had to know who had made the box. ‘I can not think that there be any more skilled than the Noeman craftsmen. Let us finish this food and see if we can find the metal workers quarter. The sooner we find Borgup the quicker we can begin.’ he told Lilly.

They finished their meal and bought some honey cake for later, with a stone flagon of some sort of sweet juice. Morii said it was called ‘borildew’ and was a speciality of the Noeman. Lilly thought it a bit too sweet for her tastes, but it was ok. It tasted like cold lemon tea with loads of honey in.

After a short walk, they found the metal -smiths quarter. This area was entirely different ,as most of it was outside or in makeshift workshops, which had been fashioned from some sort of metal sheeting, instead of in tents. Each workshop housed a rather large muscled metal smith hammering away at his or her anvil and most had a hand painted sign hanging above the opening, stating who worked there and what their speciality was.

FLOELLA FOR FINE SWORDS  or  HUZZAN FOR STEEL KNIVES

 Lilly was amazed to see so many female smiths. Morii told her that the women metal smiths were renowned for the quality of the swords they made.

Lilly was fascinated and could have watched for hours. Fires blazed away and Noeman youngers took turns to stoke the fires or used large bellows to keep the coals red hot. Smoke and black dust coated everything and in some places the heat was unbearable. It was very interesting indeed.

They wandered along until they rounded a corner and saw at the end of the alley, another hand painted sign.

BORGUP

Metal smith extraordinaire

MAKER OF FINE ORNAMENTS

Morii turned to Lilly and said, ‘I see we be here, shall we go in?’

Lilly nodded and they hurried toward Borgup’s workshop. The sound of tapping on metal came from the inside of the workshop, it didn’t seem quite so noisy or dirty down this alley, Lilly guessed that was because this lot seemed to be mostly jewellery smiths or ornament smiths, like Borgup.

Inside the workshop, a small man sat cross-legged on a mat, tapping a metal tool, like a very large nail, onto a small silver hair slide, resting on a mushroom shaped table. He was engraving intricate patterns, his hands working so quickly, that in the few moments Lilly and Morii stood watching, he had engraved a dragonfly beautifully into the hair slide. He looked up as he finished and gave them a friendly smile.

‘Quest-ce?’ he asked, what do you want?

Morii did a small bow and told Borgup that they had heard he might have some part time work.

‘Oui, if you can collect my supplies for me and maybe fetch me a bite to eat now and then. Can ye clean the workshop for me of an eve?’ he asked looking from Lilly to Morii and back again.

‘Yay, master Borgup, we can do these tasks, we are strong and healthy.’ replied Morii.

‘Good, good, ye can sleep in yonder tent, the one with green and brown stripes, I’ll pay ye 10 sollars a day ‘til we go journeying to Bell-da-hallen, then I shall have need of ye no more.’ the little man told them.

He spat into his palm and held it out to Morii. Morii spat into his palm and shook hands. Borgup then turned to Lilly and spat into his palm, Lilly did the same and shook her bargain. She felt like a real Noeman younger now, she’d never spat on her hand and shaken on it before. Borgup was chattering away to Morii and laughing a rather high pitched laugh.

Lilly took this opportunity to look around her. There were shelves of exquisite hair ornaments, brooches, clips and buckles all made of silver or silver and dirrand stone, which looked even more like diamonds than ever to Lilly. On the other side of the workshop were stacked piles of sheet silver and many boxes of cut dirrand stone in different shapes and sizes. At the rear of the workshop and within easy reach of Borgup, were lines of cutting tools and engraving tools, all in neat rows and several of the little mushroom shaped tables that Borgup used to rest his work on. There was a kind of stove with a brass coloured kettle steaming away and small silver cups on a little table. Hanging just above his head was a brass lantern giving off a little light in this rather gloomy space.

Morii had finished his conversation with Borgup and was saying that they would return at first light to start their work.

Borgup wished them a good eve and carried on with his work.

Outside Morii led Lilly around the back of the workshop and down a small path. Two hundred metres on was a green and brown fabric covered tent. It was quite large and rectangular with metal  poles sticking out either side of the roof at a sort of jaunty angle. Large ropes secured the front and back and Lilly guessed there must be some sort of framework holding up the inside, it reminded her of a circus tent she’d been in. Inside, the tent had been split into four sections, two of them obviously belonged to Borgup and the other two were empty apart from a stack of furs and a couple of hay beds. ‘I think this must be where we shall be staying.’ Morii looked at Lilly and smiled. Lilly walked over to the hay beds and pulled one over to the side wall of the tent, ‘might as well make ourselves comfy,’ she said to Morii. ‘Can ye pass some of those furs Morii.’ Morii grabbed three or four and brought them to Lilly. ‘Shall we go for a wander round before it gets dark?’ he asked. ‘See if we can get an idea of the layout of this place, it seems far bigger than when I last visited. I came here with Bathin about four seasons ago when he wanted to order a new sword.’

Lilly nodded, ‘I should like to look round, it’s a really interesting place. Did Bathin get that huge sword he carries here? He used it to free Gamray from the box that day.’

‘Yay Lilly, he did. He also got himself a wife, a lady metal smith, at the same time!’ Morii said laughing. ‘Freya be her name and she do have arm muscles as big as Bathin’s and that be true.’

Now Lilly laughed as she imagined the enormous Bathin and his equally enormous wife.

They left the metal smith’s quarter and walked through the dyers quarter, this was where all the colourful fabric hung in rows over their heads, Lilly thought it was just like going through masses of giant washing lines. It smelled quite awful though and they were both glad when they got out of that section and into the market.

Lilly had never seen so many stalls selling so many different goods. There were wonderful clothes and fabrics, sweet treats, shoes, leather bags, nuts, pens of ground peckers, cages of snakes, it just went on and on. In between this wonderful array of colours and smells were wandering musicians, story tellers, dancers. Folk walking with large trays or baskets on their heads, selling pastries or fruit. Drink sellers with extraordinary contraptions made of metal, slung on their backs from which flowed tubes full of liquids that they caught in small metal cups and stopped with their thumbs.

Morii bought Lilly a cup of borildew and Lilly thought it was better than the stuff they had back at their tent, not so sweet.

After a little more wandering Lilly noticed a crowd gathering at one end of the street. ‘What’s happening there Morii?’ Lilly pointed to the gathering crowd. ‘Ah Lilly, this ye must see, come on.’ He caught Lilly’s hand and pulled her through the crowd, until they reached the front. Lilly could see a rather beautiful dark skinned lady was sitting on a wooden cart arranging her many coloured petticoats carefully around her. Her bare feet hung over the edge of the cart and she had bracelets around her ankles. Her hair was in ribbons, which were very, very long. She glanced around every few moments, watching the crowd gathering round her. She spotted Lilly at one point and smiled, Lilly noticed that all her teeth seemed to be made of gold. Suddenly the crowd became quiet and the beautiful lady lowered her head and began to shake her wrists and hands. She wore many metal bracelets that jangled as she twisted her hands around. She clapped her hands in rapid succession and then stopped. She raised her head opened her eyes and began her story.

‘A Noeman storyteller?’ Lilly whispered into Morii’s ear. ‘Yay Lilly, ye will enjoy this.’ he whispered back.

Several hours could have passed for all Lilly knew, the story was spellbinding and was done as a kind of play, with the beautiful young woman playing all the parts. She was amazing and Lilly could understand why everyone thought the Noeman storytellers so good. The story itself, as far as Lilly could make out, was about a young girl living in a crystal castle. She could not escape it and spent years trying. In the end she managed to work out a way of escaping the castle, only to find that she was not a girl at all, but a speck of dust floating in a cloud of smoke from a dragons breath and evaporating bit by bit. She ended up becoming a rain drop. It was an extraordinary story that made absolutely no sense, but while you were listening to it, it did.

Lilly didn’t know how, but it did. The beautiful woman said that the story had come from Verilamland, which was hundreds of day and eve’s travel west from here. It had been told to her by her mother and her mother had heard it from the dragon himself. The strange thing was, Lilly thought, was that she almost believed it, so convincing was the woman.

As they walked away and back to their tent, Lilly asked, ‘Morii, are all the story tellers like that, ye know, able to make ye feel that it’s all real and leave ye wondering if there really are girls who turn into raindrops and dragons living in Verilamland?’

Morii laughed. ‘Yay Lilly, they mostly are like that, some even better. The Noeman storytellers have stories about everything, some true, some not. The woman, Arrarbena she be named, is one of the best I have heard. Ye were lucky that it be she ye first heard.’

Lilly told Morii she was glad it was Arrarbena she heard as well. ‘She was just an amazing lady’ Lilly sighed. ‘I loved all her bracelets and she had the most beautiful eyes and her acting and her different voices.’

‘Yay, some do say that true Noeman women are the most beautiful and tricksy of all women anywhere.’ Morii told her.

‘Really!’ replied Lilly. ‘Why tricksy?’

‘I do hear it’s because they can make ye believe just about anything, ye will have to ask Bathin about that when we get home.’ Morii was grinning now and Lilly realised he was making fun of her.

‘Ok Morii ’ Lilly was laughing herself now. ‘I know I went on a bit, it’s just quite an amazing thing to see for the first time.’

‘Yay, I do know how ye feel, it made me like that to begin with. Well here we be Lilly, there’s the alley down to Borgup’s tent.’

They walked slowly round to the tent and went inside. Borgup was already there and snoring away softly in his room, Lilly smiled at Morii and whispered that they better do the same if they were to be up and working at first light.

Sometime later, Lilly was awoken by strange shuffling noises coming from outside. She sat up in her haybed trying to adjust her eyes to the darkness. She could just make out the hunched shape of Morii snoring softly and still the shuffling, scraping noises filled her ears in what otherwise was silence.

Lilly climbed quietly out of bed and grabbed her jacket and boots, she tiptoed to the entrance curtain and pulled her boots on. One arm in her jacket sleeve, she crept around the side of the tent, feeling for the other armhole. The noise was coming from a group of tents across a small patch of grass. Keeping to the line of the tents and being careful not to fall over the guy ropes, Lilly edged towards the other side of the grass patch. Carefully she peered around the edge of the tent where the noises were loudest.

Three large and bulky men were manoeuvring a very large trunk or box on a kind of sled. It was obviously heavy and they were having trouble getting it up a small slope towards a waiting cart. The box was covered with a tarpaulin and Lilly was just about to go and wake Morii, when the tarpaulin slipped. Lilly’s eyes opened wide in amazement. It was a carved metal box, almost identical to the one that Gamray had been trapped in.

Lilly went as quickly and quietly as she could back to the tent to wake Morii. Together they crept back to where the men had been but there was no sign of them. Morii, looked at Lilly. ‘Are ye sure ye were not dreaming,’ he asked rather sleepily, rubbing his eyes. ‘Of course I wasn’t dreaming, they were here just a minute ago.’

Lilly started to dash off towards the path where the men had been. Morii caught her arm and swung her back. ‘Wait a moment Lilly, let’s go carefully, we don’t want to alert who ever they be and they can’t have gone far.’ Morii walked up the small slope and stood on tiptoe looking up and down the track. ‘Listen. I hear something.’ Lilly whispered. Sure enough, there was a distant creaking and a faint rumble of something heavy being wheeled along the dirt path up ahead of them. Morii and Lilly set off in pursuit.

After a couple of wrong turns at forks in the path, they could see ahead of them three dark shapes pushing a cart. It was fairly easy to follow now, as they were still surrounded by tents and closed up stalls and Lilly and Morii found they could keep pretty much in the shadows.

Eventually the men arrived at the western end of the encampment and stopped at a wide crossroad. Morii pulled Lilly behind a rock pile and the two of them scrambled as quietly as they could up to the top.

‘Did ye hear something just now?’ one of the men was saying, looking around him. The other two looked round as well. ‘Can’t hear it now,’ the first man said. ‘How long do ye think we will have to wait?’

‘He said he’d be here before sun up and he will be.’ answered another.

They were speaking in hushed voices and had strange accents. Morii motioned to Lilly to keep low and quiet. Lilly nodded that she understood.

After what seemed an eternity, and with no more conversation from the men at the crossroads, Lilly heard horses hooves, clipping along at a good pace from the west. Morii and Lilly peeked over the top of the rock pile. The three men were sitting around the cart, and Lilly could see a red glow every so often from the lighted end of whatever they were smoking, it smelled awful, even from this distance. The sound of the galloping horses drew nearer and the men at the cart stood up.

Two horsemen arrived pulling a large flat topped wagon behind them. They jumped down from their saddles and greeted the three other men in a friendly backslapping way. Between them, they hoisted the box up onto the wagon and just as it looked like the men were all shaking hands again, two of them fell to the ground, clutching at their necks. Lilly stared in disbelief as the remaining man was also knifed and fell to the ground. Up until this point, Lilly had begun to get the tiniest bit bored and was wondering if this wasn’t just a business transaction that had, for some reason to be carried out at night. Now though, she realised there was something very evil going on here. Worse still, she and Morii had witnessed all of it!

The two horsemen, were dragging the bodies over to the rock pile that Lilly and Morii were hiding in. They lay as flat as they could against the top rocks and held their breath.

The horsemen, dumped the bodies of the three men unceremoniously behind the rocks and then went over to the hand cart, they pulled that over to the rocks and turned it over so that it covered the bodies, more or less. Then they gathered a few bits of bush and scrubby plants and covered the whole thing over, adding a few small rocks and slate pieces. They didn’t say a word all of the time it took them to hide the bodies. Lilly found that silence worse than anything, it was almost as if they were robots, the way they worked together and knew exactly what they were doing.

After a few minutes the two horsemen walked back to the crossroad, looked around them, scuffed the piece of ground where they had committed their crime with their huge, heavy boots, got onto their horses and disappeared into the night with the wagon and the box. They headed North.

Morii let out a huge breath, ‘pheww.. What in Gamray’s name have we just witnessed?’ he turned to Lilly, who was feeling so shocked by the whole experience she could not bring herself to speak for several moments.

Now she started shaking uncontrollably. Morii got hold of her hands and half pulled and half coaxed her down from the rocks. He put his arms around her and guided her away from the pile of bodies, cart and rocks.

‘Oh Morii!’ Lilly’s voice was small and sounded strangled as the words came out. She coughed a couple of times and cleared her throat. ‘What do ye think has happened here tonight, who were those horsemen and why did they kill those other men, they all looked so friendly.’

Morii shook his head. ‘Who can know. What I do know is that we cannot let anyone know we were here. If they can do that to their friends can you imagine what they would do to us?’

Lilly shivered, ‘Let’s get back, and look, Gamray’s daughter is rising, we have to get Borgup’s mornfood ready and light his furnace.’

The two young people raced as fast as their legs would carry them back along the track to the camp. Signs of life were appearing, smoke started to rise from fires being lit and smells of cooking were in the air by the time they reached Borgup’s tent.