Kinderling 37

  In case you are interested in starting this story at the beginning, Kinderling 1 can be found here:

The Tricycle of Thought: Kinderling 1

Please don't judge the story or the writing too harshly, this story is written with little to no editing.  It is just meant to get me writing regularly for practice.  

Now back to our story, already in progress...

I felt sure that the answer to the riddle of the Gorf harnesses would be key in explaining what was going on, both in the village, and on the mountain.  I didn't have enough to answer that riddle yet, but it did answer the question of how Flower and I managed to escape two whole squads of Gorf soldiers.  Sure, there was the brave, or stupid depending on how you look at it, leap off the cliff, but that doesn't explain how we managed to get out of the caves in the first place.  I've been chased by Gorfs before.  They aren't stupid.  We shouldn't have even made it out of there.

Now that I have time and relative safety to look back and think on it, the Gorf platoon that attacked us in the cave were slow and not particularly bright.  Just like the Gorfs that Daggi was commanding the day Mama and I rescued Mizzy.  

That cinched it.  Those Gorfs were being controlled, but by who?  We would have to get have to go see the Mountain Gorfs to find out.  We had to go there anyway.  I promised to help Flower find her people, and every indication was that the Mountain Gorfs had them.  Besides that.  I couldn't leave Watcher and Mouse to their fates either.

So, there was the plan.  Get up to the mountain to the home of the Mountain Gorfs.  Find Watcher and Mouse, and the rest of Flower's tribe.  Find out what is going on with the harnesses.  Then, somehow, escape.

Of course, none of the details were filled in, so I had no idea how I was going to go about doing all of this, but at least I had a framework to start with.  

With go-stick gone, it looked like the switchback road was going to be the only way.  So far, we had been avoiding the road, and below the tree line that wasn't exactly easy, but it wasn't impossible.  Not far above the tree line, there wasn't a whole lot of options other than the road.  When you have only one way forward, and you have to go forward anyway, you take that one way.

The climb  up the switchback road up the mountain was just as I remember it.  At one spot where it evened out on one of the switchbacks, there was some loose dirt and gravel and I swear I saw one of my own footprints, undisturbed, from when the four of us made this climb days ago.  It struck me as odd that the Gorf squad that assuredly would have come looking for us, could have missed this footprint.  If they found it, I would think there would be Gorf footprints all around it at very least.  Gorfs like to sniff everything, and in my experience, if there area a group of them, when one of them sniffs something interesting, the rest will also want a sniff.  Gorfs are good trackers.  They are great at reading sign, and those big noses really should have picked up my scent from that footprint.

I pointed the footprint out to Flower.  "Do you smell that?"

Flower nodded and pointed out a half dozen more of my foot prints that I hadn't seen.  That sealed it.  Either the Gorfs that were chasing us hadn't come down the road to look for us, or the harnesses were making them so dumb that they couldn't follow a scent.  I tried to look at the road so I could tell, but everything was trampled enough that I couldn't really tell for sure which.

We kept climbing.

By mid afternoon, we found a place where there were some rocks along side one of the switchbacks that we could use to rest  I set up the no-see-me to hopefully obscure our hiding place in case others came looking, and we settled down to eat a little and get some rest.  It wasn't ideal to be stopping this early, and we sure weren't making very good time getting up the road, but slow and safe beat getting there fast and walking right into another trap.  Well, not safe exactly, but safer anyway.

Flower had lost her pack when we were attacked in the cave.  Luckily we Flower managed to grab mine on her way through, because we would never have gotten away without the go-stick.  But that meant all we had was Kinderling food.  Flower persevered and didn't complain, leastways not in a way that I could understand, but I could tell that some of the flavors were off putting to her.  It stood to reason that different peoples would like different foods.  I noticed that she liked some of the stronger, more earthy mushrooms, and didn't like things that were sweet or overly herby.  As hard as it was, I split our remaining food supplies accordingly.  There wasn't much left.

As the sun was going down, we heard the tromping of booted feet coming down the road.  Flower seemed to have sensed them coming before I did, and was curled up shaking.  She was terrified.  I thought I should be afraid also, but I wasn't.  Not really.  We had a no-see-me set up, and while our location wasn't ideal, we were in a place where they shouldn't see us unless they went out of their way to leave the road.  The no-see-me should keep them from finding the path.

Another nice thing about our hiding place was that I could shimmy up to the top of a boulder and if I was careful, watch the Gorf soldiers as they passed with minimal chance of discovery.  I was surprised because instead of a single squad, there was a whole platoon marching past.  Other than that, I saw what I expected to see.  Gorf soldiers with harnesses, just like the others.  This time though, I saw a couple smaller Gorfs walking along side of the platoon.  Those Gorfs weren't wearing harnesses, and were dressed much finer than I had ever seen a Gorf dress.  Even Watcher didn't dress this well.  The three were sniffing and grumbling at each other, and for not the first or last time I really wished I could understand the Gorf language.