Daria on the Trail Chapter Twenty Five: The Colonel Wishes to Know

DISCLAIMER: I do not own either the Game of Thrones or A Song of Ice and Fire. Nor do I own Daria Morgendorffer. The former belongs to GRR Martin and Daria belongs to MTV Viacom. This story based on the real Oregon Trail and has little or nothing to do with the computer game of the same name.

This story is written for my personal amusement and for ego gratification, not for profit. If you are enjoying this story, please write and post a review.

ADVISORY: This chapter rated "T" for crude language.

-The Colonel Wishes to Know-

Daria's POV

It didn't take long for the youngest Thatch to start living down to my worst suspicions. He was a guy who was immensely curious, immensely active, and all too easily distracted. If this was the twenty first century, Othar would have been labeled as being hyperactive, ADD, or both. As we started walking towards the Fort, I tried pointing things out on the trail and asking the Thatches and occasionally the Trouts what they were and giving their names in English when they didn't know. My plan quickly proved to be less successful than I hoped. I soon learned that I could only give part of my attention to the Trout and Thatch daughters and that I'd have to allot the rest of it to keeping tabs on Othar.

Othar gave me my first scare of the day when an oncoming wagon train came up from the east of our camp site. Looking back, I had some role in my first morning scare: I wasn't in the habit of clutching kid's hands and let Othar have free rein. My mistake. Othar waited until the what seemed like the last second, then ran in front of the wagon's team. By the time I'd begun to react, he was already on the other side. I swore in English, told the other kids not to move, then waited for a wide enough gap in the wagons to safely cross in front of a team and grab the little miscreant.

When I reached him, he was grinning ear-to-ear like he'd pulled some great prank. I grabbed hold of his arm. He struggled in vain to get away, but I held on, looked him in the eye and said "Othar Thatch, do you have any idea as to how stupid and dangerous that was?"

He smirked at me and "Nope" in English.

"It was, and you'd better not do it again!" I replied, still speaking in Andal. I didn't swear and maybe I should have. I held onto Othar and waited for a safe gap to cross back over to the other side. Othar used my distraction to kick me and pull away from my grasp.

Unfortunately for Othar I'd taken self-defense classes, first at Highland High, then later on at Raft. I held onto Othar, swept his footing out from under him, shifting my hold on his arm so it was twisted behind his back as he lost his balance. At that moment, everything I'd learned in social studies and in Twenty First century psych classes went out the window. I moved him over my knee and gave him three swats on his behind. "That was stupid and careless!" I shouted. "Now behave, damnit!"

Othar began crying. It may or may not have been an act, but I was feeling distinctly unsympathetic.

"Tough shit," I said, mangling my Andal grammar. "You could have been trampled or had your head or arm crushed. You were being stupid and reckless."

The last wagon rumbled by and I crossed back over to where Jilla, Minti, and the other Thatch girls were waiting. "Here we are back again," I said. Othar glared at me, then looked away. I gave a sigh of relief. I wasn't clued enough on child rearing to know that he'd act up later.

We resumed walking. We were passed by several more Emigrant wagons. At a guess, they'd just crossed the Platte and were headed for Register Cliff. I tried to carry on a conversation about the wagons and draft animals, in this case mules, and realized that I needed to learn more English words for mules and their coloring.

"Let go!" said Othar.

"I would if I thought you would behave," I replied. "If you're going to run off like a baby less than three name-days old, I'm going to hang onto you."

"All right," said Othar. Maybe this kid has learned his lesson, I hoped.

A short time later, I saw Lieutenant Potter.

I turned to my charges and said "This is Lieutenant Potter. He is a soldier in the United States Army," then I turned to Potter and said "Good morning, Lieutenant" in English.

"Ah, Miss Morgendorffer," said Lieutenant Potter. "I was looking for you. I see you've got company."

"Yes," I said. "These are Jilla and Minti Trout, who you met the other day. This young lady is Jessa Thatch, the other young lady is Lena Thatch, and this rascal is Othar Thatch."

He grinned at me. "Child-minding suits you," he said. I glared at him but he refused to ignite and turn into a pile of smoking black ash. "I was sent this way by the Colonel. The Colonel wants to talk to you."

"Did he say what?" I asked.

"No," he replied.

"Sounds like matters of national security," I said. "When does he want to see me?"

At that moment Othar decided to make a break for it. I turned and ran after him. I caught him and dragged him back.

"Is he yours?" he asked.

"Thank God, no," I said. "His life expectancy could be measured in seconds. He's one of the other Emigrants' kids. I'm trying to run off this kid's energy, then take them back to our camp."

"I think he wants to talk to you in person, as soon as possible," he said.

"As in now?" I said.

He nodded. I then glanced in Othar's direction and saw the kid going off-track again.

"Othar, behave yourself!" I yelled in Andal.

"I can do it, but the kids will have to come with me," I said.

Lieutenant Potter nodded.

"Children, we are not only going to the Fort, we are going to meet the Commandant," I said in English. I repeated myself in Andal, but it sounded like "Children, we are going to the Laramie Holdfast and we are going to see the Castellan."

"And you, sir, can help me wrangle these kids," I said to Lieutenant Potter.

Jilla and Minti giggled at my comment. No surprise there: they were getting fluent.

I'll be shameless about it: getting to the Colonel's office was a lot easier with the Lieutenant to help with the Thatch kids. If Othar thought we were ganging up on him, he was entirely right: we were.

The walk to the Commandant's office reminded me of Mark Twain's description of golf: "a pleasant walk, spoiled." I was able to talk to the girls and to the Lieutenant about his uniform, all of us building vocabulary, except when Othar got it in his mind to run off and investigate something and Lieutenant Potter and I had to run off and catch him.

As we drew closer to the Fort, I heard someone playing a bugle call. I'd heard buglers on my previous trip, so I knew they meant something.

"Lieutenant, if I'm not mistaken, I hear bugle calls about once an hour," I said.

"That's right," said the Lieutenant, clearly humoring me.

"I know those bugle calls mean something," I said. "Can I ask what they mean?"

"Bugle calls can mean different things, but the ones you heard probably meant that some tasks and duties were meant to be completed and others were supposed to start," he said.

"Ah," I replied.

I smiled and asked Lieutenant Potter what they meant. He told me that they not only signaled the hour but also when some tasks were to be completed and other tasks were to start.

As such there was a company of infantry drilling on the Parade Ground as the Lieutenant led me and my charges to the Colonel's office. Othar found the sight of them captivating: he ran off towards the soldiers and I had to go catch him.

"I think he has his heart on becoming a soldier," Lieutenant Potter said after I brought him back.

"I think he does," I said, remembering Dad's stories about his miserable time at Buxton Ridge Military Academy. "I suspect he'd lose it if he realized that it means discipline and sometimes having to stand still."

By now, the Lieutenant had learned enough about Othar's ways to shake with laughter.

We reached the Fort's headquarters and walked inside. There was a woman standing outside what I knew to be the Adjutant's office. Judging by her age, dress and appearance, not to mention her wrinkled nose and her look of disapproval at my outfit, I guessed her to be one of the officers' wives. She looked vaguely familiar. Some photograph I'd seen somewhere, maybe?

We entered the Adjutant's office.

"Sir, I've found Miss Morgendorffer," said Lieutenant Potter.

"And her retinue, I see," said the Adjutant.

"Good afternoon, Sir," I said.

At that moment, the woman I'd seen in the hallway walked in.

"Major Wiggins, who are these people?" she asked. Virginia accent, educated, I silently noted. Probably an officer's wife.

"This is Miss Morgendorffer," said the Adjutant. "She is an Emigrant traveling West with a mixed party of Westerosi and Americans. These are some children she's minding."

The woman's expression turned to a sneer. "The rubbish of Westeros," she said.

"Most of the ones here are commoners and are roughly equivalent to freeholders and private landowners," I said. "Much like many of the emigrants from the British Isles a century ago. They're showing the good sense to move away from the Arch in case the wars in Westeros spill over." I said nothing about the Civil War: I knew it was brewing and that its causes were very touchy subjects in the mixed company of Southerners and Northerners.

The woman turned around to face me and scowled. She did not like being contradicted.

"Miss Morgendorffer, this is Mrs. Ashfield," said the Adjutant, trying to defuse the situation.

Othar saw something interesting on the Major's desk and reached for it. I grabbed his hand before he could touch it. "No, you do not," I said sternly in Andal.

Mrs. Ashfield smirked at me. "You speak that Westerosi language?" she said.

"Yes, I speak the Westerosi common language," I replied. "I don't speak their Old Tongue."

"The Colonel invited Miss Morgendorffer here to ask her some questions," said the Adjutant.

"About those people who claimed to be from that preposterous Airship crash," scoffed Mrs. Ashfield.

The Adjutant's face lit up with alarm.

"This young man, these little girls, they don't need to know about that," I said, changing from English to my rusty French.

"They don't need to know about that," the Adjutant said in English.

"I understand," Mrs. Ashfield replied in French, giving me another frown.

There was more and more about Mrs. Ashfield that bothered me. Then it clicked. Could she be?

"Excuse me," I said. "You wouldn't have been born and raised in Loudon County, your maiden name wouldn't have been Squires, and the farm you were raised on wouldn't have been Greenwood, would it?"

Her eyes bulged at my question. "How would you know?" she said. "We've never met before."

"I had a hunch," I replied. "And if you are who I think you are, my grandmother's mother and her mother were still telling tales about you or your counterpart decades after they met you." Now I remembered one of her married names: Bethany Ann Ashfield. She'd been widowed and had married again.

She rounded on me to give me and my appearance an unfriendly examination. However scary she was, I decided that I could deal: she wasn't my real ancestress. "You couldn't possibly be…" she said.

"I'm not saying that I am," I said. "I'm inclined not to believe it. You're in the here-and-now, my history books made no mention of the Arch when I was growing up and that's not something I think that everyone across the whole wide world would forget."

She still disapproved of me. Well, I could give her that: I was still dressed in dirty twenty-first century clothing and I truly needed a bath.

"And that means?" she said.

"I think it's likely that I've been physically and temporally to a different world from the one I grew up in," I said, "and that you are my ancestress' counterpart."

"And if we are related?" said Mrs. Ashfield.

I shrugged. "It won't be the last time you're likely to disapprove of your descendants," I replied.

I threw a glance over at the Thatch kids' direction. Othar began to look like he was running out of steam. Nap time, maybe? I hoped to God it was true.

The Adjutant had disappeared to go into the Commandant's office, then came back out.

"The Colonel will see you now," he said.

"One moment," I said in English. I switched over to Andal. "Jilla, Minti, could you keep an eye on the Thatch girls? I need to keep an eye on this Othar."

"We can," Jilla replied in English.

I had an evil thought. "If you'd like, perhaps you can talk with Mrs. Ashfield," I said in English.

Jilla looked less than thrilled at the prospect. So did Bethany Ann.

The Adjutant showed me and Othar inside the Colonel's office, then closed the door.

"Miss Morgendorffer," said the Colonel, rising from his chair. His lips quirked. "And your companion."

"Colonel, this is Othar Thatch," I said. "At a guess, his surname translates to Thatch or Thatcher."

I turned to Othar and changed languages, "Othar, this is Colonel Wade. He is an important man. He is the Castellan of the Laramie Holdfast."

"This place doesn't look much like a holdfast," said Othar.

"The soldiers here have enough long arms and artillery to make life miserable for any raiding party out of Westeros," I replied.

"Even the Mountain That Rides?" said Othar.

"I suspect that a buffalo rifle could do for him," I replied.

"And what are you doing with young Thatch?" asked the Colonel.

"I was trying to teach the Thatch children some English and run off some of this fellow's excess energy," I said. "I walked him and his sisters, along with the Trout daughters, up here to walk off some of their energy and hopefully teach them some English along the way."

The Colonel smiled at me. I suspected that he was a parent with years of experience while I was a beginner.

"The reason I asked you to come here is that I got a message from the War Department concerning that air ship you learned of from Lieutenant Potter," he said.

"From what little the Lieutenant told me, I don't think I'd be able to help you repair it and fly it here or further east from the crash site," I said.

"I wouldn't expect you to," said the Colonel. "But you do know things about airships and I believe that you could give my officers a briefing about how these ships are built and laid out."

"Begging your pardon, Sir, but I would think that at least some crew members from the wreck would know more about this ship's design than I would," I replied. "Surely the War Department or the Navy Department would send at least a couple of the survivors along to discuss the ship's design and assist in salvage operations."

"I was informed that they were unavailable and that the War Department is sending in a party to locate the wreck and conduct salvage operations," said the Colonel.

I had thought that James Buchanan was the worst US President ever. Whoever was in the White House was proving his match. I took a deep breath, closed my eyes and exhaled. This sounded like a mess in the making.

"I trust that the folks in Washington, I mean Washington City, are sending experts to assist with the salvage," I said.

"They say they are," said the Colonel.

"But no air crew?" I said.

"No air crew," said the Colonel. "They say the man's an expert."

I heard the Colonel's silent emphasis loud and clear. The Colonel didn't trust the so-called expert's expertise.

At that moment Othar's curiosity got the better of him. He walked over to the Colonel's desk, his hand extending for an inkwell.

"Othar, NO!" I shouted in Andal.

The Colonel cocked an eyebrow at me.

"I got handed him just this morning," I said. "He doesn't stay still, doesn't pay attention, and grabs for everything."

"Miss Morgendorffer, if I may?" asked the Colonel.

"Go ahead," I said.

"Othar," the Colonel said in a voice that commanded attention catching his eye and attention, "Do not touch my desk." He fixed the kid with a stare that would frighten trained soldiers. Miracle of miracles, Othar realized that the Colonel was not someone he wanted to tick off. He went to a chair and sat down.

"Do you have chalk boards and chalk?" I asked.

"We do," said the Colonel.

"I could make drawings based on what I know," I said. "They won't be detailed or accurate and they won't be to scale. I am certain that I'll overlook important design elements that a real dirigible would have, but I can give your people an idea what you might expect at the wreck site and what you might want to salvage."

"Excellent," said the Colonel. "I'll expect you here the day after tomorrow at 3:00 PM."

"Sir, I would ask for some favors first," I said.

"What sorts of favors?" said the Colonel.

"I would like a change of clothing and directions concerning a bath," I said.

"We might be able to do something," the Colonel said with a smile.

And with that, I rose and said good-bye.