Black Sea Horan: Off Again
Rose awoke from a sound sleep the following morning to find herself alone. Thorsten's pile of cushions was dented, but empty. She swung her legs around and sat up, suddenly bereft – but then spied his backpack leaning against one leg of the low table. There were a couple of pieces of fruit on the table, holding down a tiny scrap of paper. When she picked it up, it looked like it had been carefully torn from his little notebook. In the neat handwriting she recognized from the map, he'd written only two words: "Back soon."
The fruits turned out to be ripe black plums, and she settled back to enjoy them slowly; the first fruits she'd had since her arrival. Licking her fingers to get every drop of the sweet juice, she almost regretted washing face and hands afterwards.
An hour later, however, she was beginning to get nervous at his continued absence. Surely he'd come back for his pack, at least?
After another hour passed, she couldn't sit still any longer. Ears pricked for any sound from the hallway outside, she picked up his pack and poked through it, curious. All she found were some clothes, however, which didn't give any clues to the man, his plans, or his current whereabouts. He must have taken the notebook with him.
She set the pack back down by the table and forced herself to sit on her bed, back against the wall, and be still. She refused to pace, or go outside. She'd just about lost that battle, too, when suddenly the door opened and he walked in, obviously irritated.
She couldn't stop her sigh of relief – and immediately, a look of contrition crossed his face, and he apologized profusely for leaving her along so long. Then he knelt down in front of her bed, handed her the package he was carrying, wrapped in a scrap of cloth, and smiled. "A peace offering. Try these on."
"These" turned out to be a pair of thin-soled shoes, dark blue, which matched her new apron perfectly. They also fit perfectly, and she peered at him in suspicion. "How did you know what size to get?"
"Swedish magic!" he replied, eyebrows raised, innocently matter-of-fact. At her "oh, really?" look, he merely turned up the innocence a notch. So then she crossed her arms, not letting him get away with it, and he actually blushed, surprising her. "I measured your foot with my hand while you were sleeping," he confessed, then hurried to reassure her (not that it was needed), "but I swear, I didn't touch you!"
Rose laughed then, letting him off the hook, and thanked him profusely for the gift. "They're lovely – thank you!" Then she turned serious. "But where have you been?"
The irritation returned, but it was evidently not directed at her. "Trying to get us out of here!" he replied, moving to settle himself beside the table again. "I was down at the port, looking for passage on a ship bound for Odessa," and she remembered seeing that city marked on the map, on the coast of the Black Sea between their location and Moldavia, "but there's none to be had! All the long-distance ships were pressed into service carrying supplies for the army. The only boats left are tiny local fishing boats – they wouldn't get us more than a few miles down the coast."
"So what's the alternative?" she asked.
"We'll have to go by land," Thorsten replied. "Which means either walking, or riding horses. Have you much experience on horseback, Rose?"
She laughed helplessly. "I've never been on a horse in my entire life."
He grimaced. "I wouldn't recommend a three hundred mile journey for your first time, then." He sighed. "Well, I suppose we could try to find a cart, and a horse to pull it. Otherwise, we're on foot." He thought a moment. "We could still make it on time. We have all of June, right?"
She nodded. "I guess so. The battle isn't until some time in July. I wouldn't want to count on it, though. We still don't know where it is exactly, and we still have to convince Charles, and then get there."
"True. Still, though – if we only manage ten miles a day, we'd make it to Bender by the end of June. Every mile more than that gets us there that much quicker."
Rose was confused. "What about horses, though? With or without a cart?"
He gave her a sour look and shook his head. "I walked back through the horse market. There's nothing to be had. The army apparently scooped up all available mounts, as well as ships." He sighed again. "We can go back and look again. But I'm not hopeful. We're probably going to be walking, at least for the first part. We should be able to find something eventually, though." Suddenly a thought struck him, hard, and he groaned and rolled his eyes, exasperated.
"What?" she cried, alarmed.
"Which means you need boots," he said, shaking his head – obviously at himself, this time. "Those shoes are paper-thin; they won't last one day."
She pursed her lips at him, eyes dancing. "I don't care. I still love them. And I'm not giving them back."
Mollified, he only smiled.
^..^
They found her some boots at a little shop near the inn, then walked through the nearly empty stalls of the horse market just in case. Thorsten was right; the only animals available were all either half-wild, or so decrepit they looked about five minutes from croaking where they stood. They were just about to leave when Thorsten spotted a hidden treasure – although Rose didn't agree with that assessment at first! – a young, tiny donkey, barely taller than Rose's waist. He convinced her to go along with it, though, and threw himself into the bargaining with the donkey's seller, telling her in English to "act like you're talking me out of it" and even pretending to lose interest and walk away before the man got down to the price Thorsten wanted. "We could probably have gotten him down to half this, even, if we'd been able to wait till tomorrow to finish it," he told her, grinning, as they walked away leading the beast on a fraying rope. "But this was still a good morning's work."
"So tell me why we need him?" she asked, still perplexed. "It's not like we can ride him."
"Actually, we probably could," he replied. "They're much stronger than they look. But mostly, we'll use him to carry supplies and food, so we don't have to keep stopping all the time." Matching action to words, he stopped at another shop and bought a better, leather lead, and a pair of woven wicker panniers to strap across the donkey's withers, and then walked back through the food market, loading them with hard-rind fruit, a few small loaves of bread, strips of dried meat, handfuls of hazelnuts, several small but thick blankets, a length of rope "just in case", and a long knife reminiscent to Rose of the ones the slavers had carried. She hadn't realized till just then that Thorsten was comparatively unarmed, having only a small knife at his belt.
"Poor beast needs a name," she commented as Thorsten strapped the lids of the panniers down at last, and he shrugged.
"Pick one."
She thought a moment, then decided. "Let's call him Caesar."
He threw her an amused look, then went to stand in front of the donkey. "Are you a Caesar?" he asked it, mock seriously. The animal looked at him, pinned his ears back, and brayed. "I'll take that as a yes."
^..^
Three or four days later, they'd made it a fair distance north of Caffa, but still on the Crimean Peninsula, Thorsten said. Walking along the dusty road, Rose stole a glance sideways at him striding along beside her, leading Caesar through the late afternoon sun, his blue eyes scanning the track ahead and the horizon all around, ever vigilant.
"Thorsten? Why did you buy my freedom, back there in Caffa?"
Eyebrows flaring in amusement, he tossed her a quick smile. "Had to!" he replied with sunny conviction. "I'm too well trained to leave a damsel in such obvious distress sitting in the muck!"
She snorted and rolled her eyes, but before she could speak, he went on, suddenly serious.
"I've learned to trust my instincts over the years. And the moment I saw you – no, the moment I heard you, speaking English, my instincts told me to step in. And I'm glad I did."
"Do you... really believe me, though?"
They took a number of steps while he thought about it. "I neither believe nor disbelieve your story about moving through time. There's no hard evidence either way. I'll wait until I get some.
"But there is one thing in your favor," he went on. "It's common knowledge that war has begun again between Russia and the Ottoman Empire, and that the armies are heading towards a clash somewhere to the west. You could have picked that up in the street. It's even fairly common knowledge that Charles is in Bender. But how could you have known that he was refusing to join the Turkish army?"
"But that didn't convince you," she pointed out.
He shrugged. "No."
"Then why...?" She gestured to the track, meaning their journey west.
"I'm Swedish," he said simply. "I'm loyal to my country, if not to my King. As I said the other day, I'd much rather see Sweden triumph over Russia, even by proxy, than the other way around. And if Charles's presence at that inevitable battle is what turns the tide – and it could be; he's quite a force to be reckoned with when he puts his mind to something – then why not try to get him there?" He was quiet for a moment. "As well, it's time I was heading back to Bender anyway, with the information I do have."
Diverted, Rose asked, "What information is that?"
He shot her a calculating look. "Not as much as I wish I had." He grinned. "You accused me of being a spy. I'm not – precisely – but I was on the trail of a Russian one, nicknamed Plokhoi Volk. I didn't find him, but I found some things out about him. I need to get that back to Charles."
"Plokhoi Volk?" she repeated, struggling with the pronunciation.
"It translates to 'Bad Wolf', I think."
"Well," she said. "I'm glad you don't think I'm the spy. Or do you?"
He grinned again, broadly. "If you are, you're the best actor I've ever seen. You don't understand ANY of the local languages, or you would have reacted to some of the things they were yelling at you at the market. I was watching, and you never blinked." Again, he turned serious. "But that gives some credence to your story, as well. How in the world could a young English girl have gotten halfway across the world, all by herself, with no knowledge of local language or customs – or even where she is – and nobody looking for her, either? They knew about you – talk was all over the city about this strange young yellow-haired girl – but no hint of where you came from, and no word of anyone else that you might have been traveling with, or belonged to. It's like you dropped out of the sky.
"Add all of it up, and my instincts tell me that – aside from you being a lovely young woman and happy companion – "
"Thank you!" she interjected, warmed by the description.
" – you're definitely someone to keep an eye on."
"I think," she added, ruefully.
Thorsten chuckled, then leaned over conspiratorially. "Besides, we blondes need to stick together!"
That put her back in mind of her other curiosity. "So tell me," she began casually. "Is there a Mrs. Thorsten?"
He shot her a strange look. "You mean ett fru Sjovold?"
She spluttered laughter. "Et froo..."
Joining in her laughter, he said it again, and again, trying to teach her to pronounce the Swedish. She finally managed a decent approximation, to his enthusiastic approval.
But it didn't get him off the hook. "So is there?"
Another sideways look, not serious. "Why, are you volunteering?" She spluttered again in response, embarrassed this time, then he rescued her once more, shaking his head. "No, I'm not married. I have nothing to offer a wife. I was the younger son, you see, and my brother, who inherited the estate – such as it was – managed to gamble it all away and drink himself to death at the same time, in just five years."
Shocked, she managed to mumble, "I'm sorry," but he shook his head again.
"It was a very long time ago," he said kindly. "And I've done well for myself, I think. I've had an … interesting life. But still... not enough to offer a wife."
"Well," she said sympathetically, "Money isn't everything." A beat. "But it sure does help," she added ruefully.
"Spoken like someone who knows," he grinned. Then, catching her by surprise, he turned it back. "And you? Is there a... Mister Rose?"
She blushed. "No." After a beat, she added, "But that doesn't mean there's nobody in my life."
"Of course not," he rushed to agree, hiding anything he may have been feeling. "And you are most anxious to get home to them."
"Yes..." She looked away, biting her lip against sudden tears, and an awkward silence fell between them.
He broke it a moment later, peering suddenly off to their left. "Is that an apple tree?" He left the track, dragging Caesar along behind, and walked across the open field to the spot. An ancient, weathered tree, guarded by a low hill on one side and the tumbled ruins of a tiny stone house on the other, stretched its kinked branches upward. And sure enough, old as it was, it still bore fruit, the red globes gleaming enticingly in the sunset.
Thorsten tied Caesar to the base of the tree, then began gingerly to climb up into the branches. "Be careful!" Rose called fearfully to him as the old wood began creaking and groaning ominously.
He grinned back down at her from above, and continued skyward, reaching for the next branch, when it happened. Inevitably, the limb he was perched on splintered with a resounding crack. Thorsten yelled in surprise, grabbing wildly for a secure handhold – but it was too late. He came hurtling down at least ten feet, even as Rose ineffectually lunged forward, missing him by inches – and as he landed, his head banged against one of the scattered rocks from the old house with a crack as loud as the breaking branch, and he lay sprawled on the ground, utterly still.