Callida knew that Kayun was not bred nor trained as a pulling horse. He was a war horse, and his armor didn’t have to go over his head in the same way that a yoke did. He didn’t like it. He didn’t like being tethered to another horse — a large, female draft horse bought recently from the Horse Tribe named Amura. The requirement to keep pace with another, slowly plodding horse was irritating for him. And he didn’t like the feel of a cart chasing after his hindquarters. Callida was patient with him, coaxing him gently into cooperating, humming to him and petting him continuously while he stamped and whinnied in protest. Eventually he calmed down and accepted this foreign task, and Amura’s steady, unchanging plodding won out as they took their first steps through the military base. Callida rewarded her reluctant mount and his work partner with a chunk cut from an apple and she stayed close to Kayun, encouraging him through his adjustment to his unfamiliar work environment.
While Callida managed the horses, Rogue watched over the boys rolling about a section of the cart that had been left clear for them to ride in. As the triplets curiously bumbled about the space, the twins, now almost six months old and both about as chubby as they come, sat propped up on all sides by giant piles of blankets so they could look around without the jolting of the cart knocking them about too much. The babies grinned and squirmed happily whenever they caught Rogue’s eyes; Rogue took a certain delight watching the way the cobbled road made their jowls bounce and jiggle; Callida didn’t take the blossoming father-son relationships for granted.
She sighed, taking in the familiar sights one last time. The bunkers, the training arena, the palace gardens, and the palace itself — they all rolled by sleepily in the early morning light and were marred only minorly by the entourage the Yudha family collected as they moved through the scenery. Callida determinedly ignored what was behind her, but by the time they reached the turn toward the palace steps, the marching of feet was becoming distracting.
“Callida!” The call split the morning stillness, and Callida glanced up to where the Lion King was skipping quickly down the stairs, accompanied by his own entourage of bodyguards, his wife and son, and his new Lion General. “You weren’t going to say good-bye before you left?” Verum asked in a judgmental tease. There was something sad in the way he was looking at her. “That’s so typical of you,” he added in a pained whisper, and it was true. Callida would have preferred to skip the tearful last words entirely. Verum cast his eyes about, blinking a little too much. “So! Should I be suing you for stealing my tribe’s military?”
“Stealing your….” She trailed off as her eyes registered what she’d been avoiding. Baca hadn’t been kidding. They were being followed by a literal army of men, most of them still in the black and gold uniform of the Lion Tribe military, queued up behind her half dozen smirking commanders. Callida was instantly overwhelmed.
“I guess I’m not surprised,” Verum snorted sadly. “You know, Callida, Mother of Prophecy or not, it makes sense to me why people want to follow you.”
“You’re all insane,” she breathed through a wave of threatening tears, her fingers finding the chain of family crest rings hiding beneath her shirt. “My path is, and always has been, stained with blood. I don’t recommend that path to anyone.”
“And yet, as long as you are the one walking it, people will take that path, and they will consider it an honor to walk it with you for a while.” She was wrapped in a hug, and Callida found herself inhaling his familiar spices as her tears broke free, committing that smell to memory for the last time.
“It’s been an honor, Verum.”
“The honor was mine,” he countered before releasing her. “Thank you for everything, Callida. I’m sorry to see you go.”
She nodded and moved past the king to hug Flore, then Optatio, and then Vir, fielding more goodbyes with damp cheeks and mournful smiles.
“Remember in the good old days what you always promised us?” Vir asked her when it was his turn. “Give me your best…”
“... and I’ll give you mine,” she completed. “Yes, I remember.”
“I’ll always remember that, because that was a promise I knew you’d keep, and it always felt like I was getting the better end of the deal. It looks like I’m not the only one who felt that way,” he said, indicating with a nod the men patiently waiting for her to say her goodbyes. “You’ll be greatly missed, General.”
“Vir, I’m going to miss you too, but you’re going to be a great Lion General,” she said, wiping her cheeks and nose with the back of her sleeve. “Say goodbye to Ancora and the girls for me. Oh, I left something in Callida’s new room. I hope she can forgive me for leaving.”
“She’ll be sad, but we’ll help her understand.”
Callida did her best to smile and walk away gracefully, but her face kept traitorously pinching, and her tears kept insistently leaking….
“Goodbye, General,” Verum offered a last parting.
“Goodbye, Your Majesty,” she returned, tugging Kayun and Amura forward.
“Be safe.”
Nodding a last acknowledgement, Callida took a deep breath and squared her shoulders, her eyes turning once again to the gates where a great many people were waiting to add to the caravan behind her. She never looked back as she marched forward.
***
It was really hard to conceptualize thousands of people without seeing thousands of people. It’s not that Rogue hadn’t believed the reports he’d heard about the number of people at the gates; it was more that he hadn’t understood them. Callida had been protecting him and the boys from the chaos of this prophecy nonsense by keeping them home - practically on house arrest - since all of this had started. And now he understood why. So. Many. People. There was no way to know which of them had honest intentions and which of them were dangerous, and the thought that anyone, let alone tens of thousands of people, wanted to follow them blindly into the wilderness was mind-boggling.
Rogue was infinitely grateful for the buffer created by the commanders and their men that shielded him and his family from the masses of Primordialists. The commanders had voluntarily taken up positions, three on either side of the Yudha family cart, to direct the believers to enter the line at the back and to keep the fanatics and curious onlookers from harassing the young family. More than once, people had tried to approach the cart to investigate the restoration of the Lost Tribes miracle. More than once, the boys had gotten scared because of these crazy people and started crying. Each time, the commanders took it upon themselves to push the zealots back, shielding their amicos and giving Rogue the space to focus on calming his sons instead of worrying about the crowds.
By the time the caravan had begun skirting its way past Astu Centralis, things had mostly settled. The train of believers had all fallen in line behind the group of ex-Lion Tribe soldiers, and the commanders were no longer contending with over-eager zealots. But the boys were hungry and becoming cranky. A stressed out Rogue began awkwardly rummaging through a box of food sitting in the back of the cart. While the triplets were weaned and could eat normal food on the go, the twins were still nursing… well, were nursing. Their nurses had both opted out of the colony life, so Tajam and Ddalu were going to have to wean cold turkey. For this trip, they had bottles and plans to purchase animal milk to refill them as they passed through the different towns. Otherwise, the twins would have to make do with the solid foods that they were still quite new to. It was manageable but inconvenient, and it seemed likely that the stubborn six-month-olds would struggle with the sudden changes to both their diet and routine.
Rogue found the small wheat loaf and milk bottles he was looking for and began the challenging task of distributing manageable chunks of bread to three toddlers while holding the bottles in place for the babies over the edge of a moving cart. He felt ridiculous, and he was quite certain that he also looked ridiculous.
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“The boys are hungry?” Moro appeared by Rogue’s elbow and, without further discourse, collected Tajam from the cart and the respective bottle from Rogue. “Hey, buddy!” he cooed, and Tajam happily settled in the crook of Moro’s arm. Half a minute later, Adjutus claimed Ddalu in a similar manner, leaving only the triplets for Rogue to manage.
It was such a small thing, but it made all the difference.
***
They’d successfully skirted Astu Centralis to the main road leading west, out of the Lion Tribe, but Arum was frustrated by the pace, as were most of the ex-soldiers who had packed light and were readily mobile. The people traveling behind them were not so much — traveling with carts filled to capacity, many of them on one extreme end or the other of the age spectrum. Arum was of the mind that, if people fell behind, good riddance. They were probably dead weight anyway, but Animo had other ideas and periodically sent small task forces of ex-soldiers down the length of the caravan to look for people who were struggling, instructing them to help those who needed it and then report back on the sustainability of the pace she was setting.
It took a while for Arum to realize why she cared about the people falling behind. This was the whole reason she was uprooting her family to begin with: to draw these people away from the Lion Tribe palace. Arum grudgingly had to admit to himself that his impatience was counterproductive to the main objective.
They’d only made it a mile or so outside of Astu Centralis before Animo called it for the day. They’d traveled, what, eight miles? Maybe? But it had taken twelve hours with minimal stopping. And now everyone was setting up their tents, and he and his comrades were finding it necessary to gatekeep access to the Yudha family. This was the most enormous camping trip ever — like camping with an entire city’s worth of people, and all of them wanted a piece of his friends.
“But we’ve been waiting to meet them all day!”
“We only wish to pay our respects.”
“You can’t keep us away forever!”
And it was true. They couldn’t. But they could give Animo and her family the time they needed to be able to accept and prepare for these interactions on their own terms.
“We wish to see the miracle for ourselves.”
“We only want to know if these people really are the family of prophecy.”
“Is it true that the children are members of the Lost Tribes?!”
“We demand answers!”
Arum responded to these people the same way every time. “Will the answers you receive make any difference?” He was usually met with responses like “of course!” or “naturally.” And that’s when he’d hit them with this gem: “General Yudha has declared that she and her family have nothing and want nothing to do with the prophecy. She’s not your Mother of Prophecy. Your insistence that they be your Great Unifiers or whatever, not the prophecy, drove them out of their home.” And then he’d be met with delusional outrage and an utter unwillingness to accept that answer. It was maddening. You literally just asked for the answers I gave you!!
But it also got him thinking. Why were they so determined that Animo and Rogue were the Parents of Prophecy? And was it true that their kids — including his own amico — might be members of the Lost Tribes? Surely Animo would have told him if that was the case. Except, Animo had always been an especially private person. When he’d first met her, he’d had to painstakingly pry every single personal detail out of her. It had been a process getting to know her and getting her to open up about super basic things, so maybe she wouldn’t have told him.
As the approaching sunset began casting long shadows over the camp, the masses settled, and Arum was at long last freed to find the campfire he was sharing with his fellow commanders and the Yudha family with a lost-in-thought scowl furrowing his brow.
“What’s on your mind, Arum?” Baca called him out almost immediately.
“It’s nothing.”
“Doesn’t look like nothing,” Baca teased cheerfully. “Is there something going on that we should know about?”
Arum frowned. “No. I was just wondering what all of these people are doing here, you know? They have zero proof of anything, but they’re here, and they are so determined that…. Animo?”
“Hm?” she responded distractedly as she was busy helping Tiaki with his dinner.
“Animo, is there anything you haven’t told us?”
“Told you about what?” she asked, setting the bowl of food in her hand aside as Tiaki was refusing to eat it anyway. Arum found himself hesitating. She’d been avoiding this question for months — deflecting, redirecting, or straight up refusing to answer this question. “Is there anything I haven’t told you about what, Arum?”
“Apart from your last name, is there any validity to these peoples’ claims that you are the Mother of Prophecy?”
She froze and finally met his eyes. “Aren’t you the one who told me that the prophecy was too vague and too poorly preserved for any of us to draw any conclusions?”
“Animo, you’re avoiding the question again. These people are claiming that your sons are members of the Lost Tribes. They aren’t, right? It would be a quick way to dissuade a few of these zealots. You and Rogue are both wolves, so your boys all have to be wolves too.” Animo shot a nervous glance at her husband, and Arum’s frown returned. “Right?”
“Callida, I thought they knew. You didn’t tell them?” Rogue asked, and Animo shook her head, her eyes staring blankly into the campfire. “You didn’t?!” She bit into her lip. “Don’t you think they ought to know at this point? I mean, we’re here now. ”
“Do you wanna tell them?” she asked pointedly, and Rogue sighed.
“Fine. Short answer, Arum: yes. There’s a reason we took the boys to a temple last October. That’s sort of when this all started.”
“So, wait,” Rapax jumped into the conversation with incredulity written on his face, “what are you saying?”
“He’s saying that they’re not wolves,” Animo said to the fire, and the whole circle fell into stunned silence.
And Arum started geeking out. “Then what are they?!” He jumped to his feet with a breathless fascination. “Animo, what haven’t you told us?! They’re not wolves?! Are you serious?! Then what are they? Are they actually the Lost Tribes?! You have five sons, and there are five Lost Tribes! Which one is Manasik a host to?! Primordials, Animo, say something!”
“I would if you’d stop rambling long enough for me to get a word in edgewise,” she snarked humorlessly and then sighed as he sat back down. “None of them are wolves, and none of them are the same as each other. And…. To answer your question, Arum, Manasik has been identified as a snake host.”
“A snake?!” Arum was on his feet again, freaking out as the rest of the nobilises eagerly asked about their own amicos.
“Settle down!” Animo had to shout over the excited din. “Baca, Tiaki is a shark host. Moro and Adjutus, Tajam is a komodo host, and Ddalu is a crocodile host. Rapax, Probus is a lion. He’s the only one who isn’t host to a ‘Lost Tribe’,” Animo confessed reluctantly.
“So you’re only missing the Badger Tribe?!” Arum noted, positively delighted by this information. “Why didn’t you tell us sooner?!”
She sighed again, and Arum consciously reeled back his enthusiasm. “I guess there are a lot of reasons. One, I didn’t want to fan the flames of… of this. Two, I didn’t want you all to look at them differently. I mean, you’re their nobilises, and they’re still just my sons. I want them to have a normal life that’s not defined by something as arbitrary as their animal spirits. Three, I guess it just didn’t feel important enough to share? And four, I didn’t want people to… to get the wrong idea about things, you know?” she added with an awkward glance at Rogue.
“Oh.” Arum felt his face flush. He hadn’t even considered that people might misconstrue the nature of her sons to mean that Rogue wasn’t their father. “But, Animo, the Lost Tribes!”
“I know. I can’t explain it.”
“Have you considered that there might be something to this prophecy thing?” Rapax asked, treading carefully.
“Reason number five: I don’t need the people closest to me to lose their heads over this,” Animo snapped. “Look, I have considered that possibility. Considered and rejected. I want nothing to do with this prophecy, and I’ll thank you to respect that for my sons’ sakes. They are already facing a life of chaos, and I just want to give them as normal of a life as I can. Please?”
“Understood,” Rapax agreed, and Arum nodded solemnly along with the rest of the group.
“Hey, Animo?”
“What?”
“Prophecy aside, have you considered how cool this is?!”
She snorted and then broke into a full chuckle. “You would, Arum. You would be the person to just find the whole thing ‘cool’.”
He grinned at that. “Yes, I would.”