Over the next few days, nothing very noteworthy happened. We passed back through the series of towns and villages that I had traversed on my way to the capital and the large swaths of open area in between. After our experience in Fair Valley, we didn’t stop in any of them. That doesn’t mean, however, that bigotry wasn’t on full display. They indoctrinated them young in these parts, it seemed. When we passed through a settlement, it wasn’t unusual at all to have packs of children run after our small caravan shouting disparaging remarks and insults at my “slaves”. Sometimes, the bold and brave among them would get close enough to spit at the others, usually but not always at their feet, or to toss rocks at them. Of course, children are not known for their precision or accuracy. On more than one occasion, one of my companions had to wipe a gobbet of disgusting phlegm from their person, the skin around their eyes tightening at the indignity. After this happened a couple of times, I pulled everyone aside and talked about how to handle these not so petty slights.
“I am not going to pretend to know what you’re all going through,” I said. “I know you are all suffering. Being insulted is likely nothing new for any of you. It’s hard to grow to adulthood without being picked on or abused. I know it happened to me, and it likely has happened to most of you. I am going to ask you not to react to this abuse. While you have been watching the children who are pestering you, who are heaping abuse on you, I have been watching the adults. They seem to be looking for some sort of provocation on our parts, and if we provoke them I think you all know the likely result. Some of us will get hurt or die. Maybe all of us. Guarding your lives is the most important thing for me. We will find a place for you to be safe, where you are accorded the dignity that you deserve. We’re just not there yet, but we will get there. Please, exercise some patience and caution and I promise that your efforts will be rewarded.”
“If someone had treated me like this in my city, they would have been beaten or flayed,” Helvia responded angrily.
“Yes, I know,” I replied. “There, though, you were a member of the upper class. People curried your favor because they knew you had the power to make their lives miserable. Here, you don’t have that power. Here, you are treated like the lowest of the low. You aren’t viewed as a person, you are a piece of property. A piece of meat. I want you to have a better life, but all of us will have to endure some suffering to reach that point. There is no going back, only forward.”
My answer didn’t seem to satisfy her. She looked like she was ready to continue the argument before angrily snapping her jaw shut, her face turning beet red, as she turned and stomped away. Turning to the rest of the group I continued.
“We do what we must to survive. And if the time ever comes when we have the power to repay our debts, I will not object if they are repaid in full.”
I had, in fact, been watching the adults as we plodded through the villages. Some of them had encouraged the children, going so far as to scoop stones from the ground and press them into the hands of impatient preteens. Others sat there, theirs eyes shining as they sat on the edges of their seats, eagerly waiting for any excuse to intervene. I don’t believe that if we gave them that chance, things would go very well for us. I do think that certain thoughts and ideas are universal and transcend cultures. One of the most powerful that I have observed is the need to feel better than someone else. People seemed to take a certain glee in the idea that although their lot in life is shit, there are others buried deeper in it.
When we were slowly passing through the countryside, our main focus was language skills. Our attempts to develop a common language proved very difficult, especially for some of the adults. Patrick, Bowen, and Werner, and to a lesser extent Helvia all knew a version of English from their worlds, so they were the primary language instructors. Of course, it would have been better for everyone to learn whatever the common or trade language was in this world but nobody besides me could speak it, and I didn’t even know when I was speaking it. This gift of tongues was wild. When I spoke to the group, everyone heard what I said in the language they were most comfortable with. Of course, I felt like I was talking in my native tongue.
Even though our language instructors all spoke a version of English, no two versions were the same. Well, besides mine and Patrick’s. Even then, I think that without the gift of tongues we would have had some difficulty understanding each other’s idioms and regional language peculiarities. It was like the beginning of a bad joke. A Scottish person walks into a bar in the deep south of the United States and ends up drinking with a Cajun. In their efforts to talk to one another, hilarity ensues. Except none of this was very hilarious. If the others couldn’t effectively communicate with one another then we had a very weak system with a single point of failure. That point of failure was me. If I wasn’t around, then absent a common language there was no coordination, no communication. What a miserable existence.
Unlike the Scottish guy talking to the Cajun, this was a thousand times worse. Rather than dealing with accents, with vocabulary that had developed in a single world, we had to find commonality among language that had evolved on several. The first few days, I kept the instructors walking together. Their task was to identify the similarities that existed in their language and to come up with some sort of simplified version that would serve for basic communication until something better came along. I hoped at some point to find another person familiar with this world to integrate into our small community. Maybe that person would be able to teach the language of this world giving everyone a better chance to survive and thrive. That day was still a long way off, though.
As we made our way west and then south, I often heard my instructors arguing with each other, trying to master the monumental task that I placed upon them. As beneficial as the gift of tongues was at other times, when this happened it became maddening to me. I could understand from context that they were discussing syntax and the subtle meanings of different versions of the same words. With everything perfectly rendered in my own language to my ears, though, it seemed like they were arguing over whether the word the was the same as the word the. Eventually, I just had to tune them out.
Slowly, though, over the course of several days, they came to an understanding on a common basic vocabulary. I could tell, though, based upon the often bewildered looks on their faces that the method to string that vocabulary together to make sentences, to express thoughts, remained a work in progress.
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Nonetheless, they persisted, forging gamely onward. Several hours each day were spent teaching these new words and phrases to the others. Some people learned fairly quickly. Mero, Lapina, Aleyda and Xeng were soon communicating with each other in the equivalent of baby talk, one or two word sentences that were just enough to convey basic meaning. Others were having a much more difficult time, however. Jahhaf and Mariam were both struggling mightily to retain the information from their lessons. They picked up a word or two but slid farther and farther behind everyone else. I wondered why? Was it their ages? I knew learning new languages was tougher for most of us as we aged. Or was the language so foreign to their own that it was just more difficult for them? I imagine some linguists back on my version of Earth could have made a good living doing research on the subject.
Helvia was dismissive. She contended that we should have all learned her version of Latin because at least it was structured in a way that made sense. I pointed out that she was the only one who spoke the language, and that would mean she would have to become the only instructor. Faced with the prospect of that degree of hard work, she quickly revised her opinion.
Our progress was significantly slower than my own had been on my march to Westfield. People could walk faster than oxen pulling laden wagons. Who knew? Maybe I should have sprung for the horses. We rotated our team to keep them fresh. I quickly realized that I had not purchased nearly enough food for the livestock, so that slowed things further as we had to budget ample time to allow the oxen to graze at the side of the road. Every day, we were lucky to make ten miles, a far cry from the twenty plus I was averaging when I walked this road alone.
Just as my own pace had stressed my patience, our slow meandering along the road tested each of us. Tempers became short and arguments were not uncommon. Just like in most groups, everyone did not get along well with each other. Aleyda and Helvia actively disliked each other. Bowen and Xeng looked like they were about to come to blows on a couple of occasions. Werner irritated a lot of people, and I was not the only one who wished that Lapina would just take a breath and shut up for a few minutes, her constant narration of every thought that passed through her head tiring even to those who had no idea what the hell she was saying.
But just as there were rivalries and anger, the seeds of genuine friendship and companionship started to take root as well. Everyone liked Jahhaf. It’s hard not to like the person who is feeding you, and he was always so quick to share a little smile. Patrick was naturally inclined to be a peacemaker, stepping in and trying to defuse disagreements before they got out of hand. Aleyda and Lapina often walked together, and I could see the seeds of a burgeoning friendship there. And almost everyone seemed to get along with Mariam and Mero. A guess some graciousness towards the young and the old spans cultures as well.
I was incredibly stressed from trying to be the glue that held everything together. I was the one with the resources and the plan, so that earned me some natural deference. That deference, though, was isolating. Beyond Patrick and Mero, everyone else seemed to be a little wary around me. I guess I would be cautious, too, if I was beholden to and reliant on someone, especially if their true motives were inscrutable to me. Even though I was a part of a decent sized group of people, I was still very lonely.
One day, just after the road had turned to the south, we were passing through another nameless village. This one was pretty small with a population of maybe fifty or a hundred people, universally orcs. Even though the scale of the greeting had changed, our reception was pretty much what we had come to expect. A small group of orcish children were hounding us during the short time it took for us to make our way through town. It’s amazing to me how cruel children can be. Don’t get me wrong, adults are cruel, but when children resort to cruelty they show little inhibition.
They were bouncing around us, spouting insults from a deep well of vitriol, spitting, throwing small stones. One clipped Mero, who was riding on Mariam’s wagon, in the arm. He burst into tears, which ratcheted up the tension even more, especially when the child who had flung the stone started strutting around like he had won the pie eating contest at the county fair. That seemed to add fuel to the fire, emboldening the children to get closer, to be more outrageous. The village dogs, sensing the tension, bounded around our wagons, barking and growling. The normally placid oxen started to become spooked from all the activity, picking up their pace and fighting against the reins. On one occasion, a dog got too close to the ox pulling my cart and its hoof flashed out narrowly missing the bounding canine.
Finally, I had enough. I couldn’t take it anymore. Bellowing as loudly as I could from my wagon’s seat, my voice boomed out across the village.
“What gives you the right to abuse my property?” I screamed.
Several children in the pack, which numbered around a dozen, shrank away and went running away. The ones that were left, though, mainly the older ones, were emboldened by my ire. One of them, a girl in her early teens, defiantly answered me.
“You can’t talk to me like that! My father will beat you into the dirt.”
Oh, that’s a new one. My dad can beat up your dad. That one’s straight out of page one the childish argument handbook.
Of course, in this case her argument might have had some merit. I saw a large orc stomp down from the porch of one of the closest houses. Rough looking with an unfriendly look on his face, he was carrying a large club that looked to be the handle from some sort of tool. He headed directly to my wagon. After telling everyone else to keep their cool, what in the hell had I just done?
“Are you talking to my daughter?” he growled at me.
Fighting hard to show no signs of nervousness, I responded. “Yes, I asked her and the rest of these children what right they had to abuse my property. I spent good money on all of these five-fingers and none of you have the right to damage them.”
“I don’t like you,” he replied. “You don’t live here. You have no say on what happens in our village.”
“We will be out of your village in a few brief moments if you leave us alone, then you will never have to see us again.”
Helvia, who was seated next to me on the wagon’s seat, cleared her throat as if she was preparing to speak. I quickly touched her on the leg and shook my head, telling her to remain quiet. Then, I turned my attention back to the confrontational orc, who seemed to be working hard to fashion a reply.
“You might leave the village but it probably won’t be in the same condition as it was when you entered,” he said, his hands fingering his club.
I could see where this was headed, and it was nowhere good.
Emboldened by her father, the orcish girl ran up and spit again. This time, she wasn’t aiming for one of my companions, she was aiming at me. Her accuracy left something to be desired. She missed me entirely, but when I glanced over towards Helvia I noticed she had been struck and was wiping something from her hair.
Then, Helvia spat back.