Daria on the Trail
Interlude: Cyra Trout One
DISCLAIMER: A Song of Ice and Fire was written by George RR Martin. I do not own it. I did not create Daria Morgendorffer, nor do I own her either. This story is based on my research on the real Oregon Trail, not the computer game of the same name. If you have enjoyed what I've written, please post a review.
ADVISORY: This chapter contains graphic descriptions of death and mayhem. Not for minors, not for the squeamish! Please avoid if you are under 16 years of age or are very sensitive.
Daria on the Trail is only a small part of a larger work I had in mind titled Bleeding Kansas. Bleeding Kansas is a story based in part on the Japanese Anime Gate and on a story by an UltimatePaladin over on another message board (clue: S*B*). His work stalled shortly after King Robert Baratheon met President Thomas in Topeka, Kansas and well before Ned Stark arrived in King's Landing to take up the post of King's Hand. Mindful of my shortcomings when it comes to Westerosi customs and religion and fanfic authors stalling when they bite off more than they can chew, I changed the Earth year of contact to 1852, set the time of this story to 1860, then zoomed in on one wagon train and inserted a modern, college-educated girl as a point of perspective.
Rolf and Cyra Trout were the son and daughter-in-law of Orrick Trout and his wife Kara. They lived in the Riverlands, one of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros. Unlike Orrick and Kara, they chose not to cross through the Arch and travel on the Oregon Trail. Despite the rising tensions in the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros and rumors of raids by Gregor Clegane, Rolf and his goodfather (father-in-law) assumed that the Tullys would maintain order in the Riverlands. They were tragically mistaken.
WARNING: This Chapter contains scenes of death and gore. NOT for the Squeamish!
Daria on the Trail*Daria on the Trail*Daria on the Trail
The train slowed down to a halt with squealing brakes and a toot of a whistle at the Westport station and the passengers began to get off. A few stepped down from the passenger coaches and onto the wooden platforms. Others, the majority, clambered down from the house cars and the gondolas that had gotten them from the American side of the Arch at Fort Ready to this town by the banks of the Missouri River.
Cyra Trout slid off the train and gracelessly landed on the ground. She got back on her feet, picked up her meager belongings, set them aside, and caught little Adger in her arms when he slid off the boxcar. She took a deep breath and looked around where she was. There was a building called a station, where passengers bought tickets either to board the train or got off, warehouses, and a stand that held the fuel for the locomotive and a water tank for the locomotive's boiler. Despite the fact that she'd been told that Westport had been there for nearly a quarter-century, everything seemed so new and raw.
So where could she find food and shelter? She'd been told that the Faith of the Seven had formed some sort of camp for the refugees streaming in from the Riverlands. It was supposed to be run by a Septon named Brother Osgood. She hoped it was true; she'd learned to discount word-of-mouth even more than she had been living at home.
Home. The thought of home still brought her to tears. Her home had been sacked, burned and butchered by raiders led by the Mountain Who Rides and almost everyone she knew or cared for had been butchered or burned. She and Adger were only alive because her husband Rolf had told her to run into the woods and not return until it was safe.
She still remembered him holding a sword and shield, along with some of the other men of the village waiting for the raiders to come.
"I'll come and get you," he said.
Those were the last words she heard him speak. She gave him a quick farewell kiss, then ran into the woods. Others had done the same, but she was one of the lucky ones: she'd managed to run far enough and deep enough that that the Mountain's men never managed to find her.
She and Adger waited in the woods for two days: alone, hungry, and frightened almost out of their wits. She'd overheard screams and cries of others who'd run into the woods, but not deeply enough. On the morning of the third day she told herself that the Mountain and his men had left and decided to risk returning to the village to see how Rolf and her mother and father had fared.
She returned to a nightmare from one of the Seven Hells. It was bad enough that the village had been burned to the ground and that where it had been stood was littered with the remains of the Mountain's sack. But far worse were the bodies: men, women, and children who had been cut down, tortured, violated, then wantonly slaughtered after the Mountain's men had tired of their play. She'd first found the bodies of her mother, her father, and her younger sister: their bodies butchered, their eyes and mouths open, and flies buzzing around and onto their corpses.
She then found Rolf's body and her sorrow worsened. Rolf and a few others had tried to make a stand against the raiders and had been massacred by the raiders. Some had fought, some had been wounded and then slaughtered, a few others must have tried to surrender but were slaughtered anyway.
Rolf had been one of the lucky ones: he must have been slain early instead of being captured and tortured to death.
The next couple of days were spent in a daze. The few survivors set to work digging a common grave. Cyra remembered finding a bucket and water somewhere and had washed Rolf's and her parents' faces. The local lord's men-at-arms had showed up after the massacre but quailed about pursuing the raiders after learning that they had been led by the Mountain himself. Instead, they helped the surviving villagers dig a common grave.
There was no real funeral, at least not by canon. The village Septon had been one of the Mountain's victims and the best the survivors could do to bury the dead was to repeat as much of the liturgy as they could remember. There were tears and prayers for their friends and loved ones' souls and that the Warrior would avenge them. A couple of villagers quietly muttered curses not only against the Mountain, but also against the Mountain's master—Tywin Lannister.
After the funeral, Cyra and a couple of women lingered as the lord's men saddled their horses and prepared to ride off. "So where will you go?" said Thalissa, a woman that Cyra barely knew but had somehow survived the sack. "Your goodfather's?"
"My goodfather went through the Arch," said Cyra.
"Riverrun?" said Thalissa. "The Lord has many men at arms."
"I fear that the Tullys will not be able to give us any protection," said Cyra.
"So if your goodfather has gone through the Arch and you fear that there is no shelter at Riverrun, where would you go, then?" said Thalisa.
"I will make my way to the Arch and see if I can find my goodfather," said Cyra.
And that's what she did. That evening, she went digging through the remains of her goodfather's house and discovered the cache of coin she and Rolf had hidden in case of some crisis. Her father's house had only half-burned and the cache had been concealed in a cellar that had survived the fire. The following day they set off on their long journey to the Arch and what laid beyond.
The journey had been hell. She and Adger and a group of refugees spent ten days on the road shambling north to Lord Frey's lands and the banks of the Trident. The villages they'd passed through had little food and little hospitality to spare for the refugees streaming away from the Mountain's devastation. She'd paid an outrageous sum to first ferry across a river, then another to cross Lord Frey's bridge. A couple of guards had asked more of her, telling her that if she did not give them what they want, they would not allow her to cross. Desperate, frightened, fearing for her life, Adger's life and the life of the baby she was carrying inside her, she went gave them what they demanded. Just thinking about it still made her spit by reflex. But she made it to the railway and spent another outrageous sum to buy a ticket that would take her through the Arch and on to Westport.
And now she was here in Westport. She searched around to see if the camp actually existed or if it was a fable created by hopeful, desperate refugees in search of food and shelter.
Glancing beyond the station she found a signboard saying REFUGEE RECEPTION printed in the Common Tongue, and something underneath it painted in the Yankees' English alphabet. A man was standing near the sign dressed in Septon's clothing. He was already being mobbed by the new arrivals.
"Greetings," he said. "Welcome to Westport. I'm Brother Osgood. I'm sure you all want food and shelter. We have tents and food. But first we need to get your names so we can place you and perhaps help you find your kin if some are already here."
It was clear that the Septon was trying to organize the new arrivals and help them line up for the camp. That didn't stop Cyra from walking up to him and saying "Bless you, brother."
That didn't stop her from getting in line. There was a line of three dozen refugees lined in front of a table where a man and a woman were seated and writing down their names. Cyra took her place at the end and waited as the line slowly moved forward.
The distance between her and the table slowly diminished as the man and woman took down names and gave them directions to the camp. As she listened to the man's and woman's speech, Cyra decided to talk to the woman. The man was trying to help but it was clear that the woman had a far better grasp of the Common Tongue.
"Greetings," said Cyra. "May the Seven bless you."
"May the blessings of God the Father, His Son, and the Holy Spirit be upon you," the woman replied in Yankee-accented Andal. "My name is Jessica Newell."
"So you do not follow the Faith of the Seven?" said Cyra.
"No," said Jessica. "I'm a follower of the Three-in-One God."
"So why are you here?" said Cyra. "Are you trying to convert me to your Three-in-One God religion? I still worship my Gods."
"No," said Jessica, shaking her head. "I am on a mission. I believe that God called me to assist you all to find shelter and safety here in the States."
"So what is this place?" said Cyra.
"It is a temporary camp for refugees that came through the Arch." Said Jessica.
"So what else are you doing?" asked Cyra.
"We also do what we can to reunite families displaced by the war," said Jessica.
Was she? Or was this some sort of trick? She stared at Jessica, trying to read the Yankee woman's express. After a while it came to her. By the Seven, she's serious, Cyra thought with wonder.
"All right," said Cyra. She gave her name, Adger's name, the name of her father, then the name of her older sister, who had moved south but hadn't written back.
"Do you have any other family?" asked Jessica.
"My goodfather is Orrick Trout," said Cyra. "I think he might be somewhere nearby, but I don't know." She paused. Was he nearby, she wondered. "He might be here. Unless he gave in to his Oregon Madness."
"Oregon Madness?" said Jessica.
"My goodfather talked a lot about going through Arch and then setting off for someplace called Oregon," she said.
"I'll ask Brother Osgood if he stops by," said Jessica. "In the meantime, I'll give directions to the camp." She gave Cyra and Adger directions as to where to find the camp and they set off to find it. The camp was about a mile or so from town and mostly consisted one or two shacks and a small sea of tents.
There was a fence and a couple of gates, and once the refugees reached the camp, Brother Osgood and another Septon made an effort to greet them as they came in, sometimes having brief conversations with the new arrivals. Cyra waited for her turn after an old crone asked Brother Osgood about her son Colwin. Brother Osgood spread his hands and said that he didn't know where he was.
Cyra then walked up and said "Excuse me, Brother Osgood, do you know an Orrick Trout?"
"We have hundreds of people pass through here," said Brother Osgood. "Orrick Trout, you say?"
"He said that he wanted to go to Oregon," said Cyra.
"His name is starting to sound familiar," he said. "Wait a moment." He paused in thought for a moment. "Orrick Trout. Oregon…Now I remember," he said. "He was here back in early June, then left on a wagon train bound for the west. He'd asked for my blessings before he left and left me a sum of money for my work. There's something else. He also wrote me a letter from someplace called Fort Laramie. I might still have it someplace. If I have time, I'll try to lend it to you."
"Thank you," Cyra said gratefully.
So her goodfather had stopped there. And he knew Brother Osgood. Maybe, Gods willing, she'd have someplace to go.
That night she and Adger slept in used blankets under canvas, relieved that they'd not face the Mountain or bandits. Not that the camp was safe: she still had a handful of coins left and was told that she should guard against thieves.
A day or so later, rested and better-fed, she sought out Brother Osgood in a shack that he used as an office.
"Greetings, Miss Trout," he said. "I'm glad you stopped by. I have something that I think you'd enjoy reading." He held up a piece of paper that the Yankees called an envelope and handed it to her. The envelope had something written on it in the Yankee script by an unfamiliar hand. Cyra recognized the letters for "Brother" and "Osgood" and "Westport." The envelope had folded papers inside.
She unfolded them and began reading the letter. Just holding the letter stirred up so many feelings. Her goodfather was still alive, at least when he wrote the letter, but had clearly given in to his Oregon Madness. Why couldn't he have stayed behind to rescue her?
That didn't stop her from reading his letter. Her goodfather described the lands he'd crossed to get to what he called the Laramie Holdfast. It consisted of hundreds of miles of grasslands, sounding much like the sea of grass where the Dothraki lived. She shivered at the thought. He then described the people in his company and then said that he had been chosen as their captain, and Cyra remembered Rolf telling her that his father had been a caravanner in his youth.
He then described Fort Laramie, a place he described as being more a town than a holdfast.
He then closed the letter, saying that he would continue his journey west and asking the Septon to pray for them.
Where was the Laramie Holdfast anyway, she wondered. Her goodfather wrote that it was over 600 miles from Westport and over 500 miles from the Arch, but in what direction? All she knew was that it was some river called the Platte.
Cyra gave the letter back to the Septon and thanked him profusely.
"When did he write this?" she said.
"Over four weeks ago," Brother Osgood replied. "His letter only arrived in the last couple of days."
"And how far away is this Oregon place?" she asked.
"Months," said the Septon. "It is now late in the seventh month of the year as the Yankees count it and I've heard tell that a journey to Oregon takes over four months. Assuming that all is still well with him and his family, your goodfather should be about halfway there."
"Can I join them? Could I reach them by the first snow?" said Cyra.
"No," said Brother Osgood.
"It's too late this year," said a man who spoke like he was from the Vale. "If you want to set off for Oregon and not die in the snows, you'll have to wait until the spring."
