Into Eden: Pangaea - Book 1 by Frank Augustus Page A

with grief if she leaned that you had gone off chasing an-nef. If you really want to help I suggest that you delay letting anyone know of our departure for as long as possible. Tell them that you were sworn to secrecy by the Master of the house of Nashon. Isn’t that correct, Jesse?”
    “Yes,” Jesse replied, hesitantly. “I’m sorry Abijah. But Enoch’s right. I’ll have to order you to stay here and I order you to keep our whereabouts secret. Do you swear it?”
    Abijah hesitated a long time, as if trying to think of some other way to talk them into taking him with them. At last he replied, “By the gods, I swear it.”
    “Good,” Enoch said, “Now let’s get the gate open before everyone gets up…or this whole thing will be over before it starts.”
    Abijah opened the gate and Jesse urged the horse forward. They hadn’t ridden far when Jesse snapped at Enoch, “Why’d you tell him what I was up to? How do you know that he still won’t say something?”
    “Because Abijah’s an honorable man. Gets it from his father. I find it troubling, young Master of the house of Nashon how easy it is getting for you to lie. I’m not sure that your father would have approved.”
    “As you have already pointed out, Enoch, I’m embarking on murder. What’s a lie or two between friends to help me accomplish it? You said that you wouldn’t interfere! We hadn’t even left the compound before you had broken your word! Now if you can’t do as we agreed then I’ll be forced to put you out and let you go chase rabbits!”
    “That’s cold.”
    Jesse was still angry, but he said no more as he steered the buckboard down the road and over the bridge and into the Territories. The road that they were on was the Southern Highway, the same road that Hezron had taken a couple of weeks before in his pursuit of the jackal-heads. Despite its grand, officious-sounding name, the Southern Highway was little more than a bumpy dirt path that followed the Elmer River southward. This far north the Elmer itself was barely a brook that meandered out of the Foothills, providing water for stock and some fish but was not much more use to the locals. Further south it would widen, and by the time that they reached Whitehurst—some one-hundred miles to the south—was navigable.
    As the horse clopped along, neither Jesse nor Enoch spoke. Both were lost in their own thoughts. As the sun rose Jesse could see a landscape dotted with small farms covering rolling hills. Each farm was divided by stone walls, and the cattle, pigs, and occasional herd of goats gave this part of the Territories a feel much like the Foothills. To Jesse it felt like home. Maybe being exiled to one of these thatched-roofed little farms wouldn’t be such a bad thing—as long as he didn’t have to spend the next eight-hundred years with Meroni complaining about the smell of the dreadful beasts.
    After a few miles they came upon a large granite rock formation that resembled a horse’s head.
    “This is where it happened,” Enoch broke the silence.
    “What happened?”
    “The ambush. Where your brother died and Hezron was forced to turn back.”
    Jesse reined the horse to a halt with a, “Whoa!” He got out and walked around the field beneath the formation. It had been only two weeks and yet there was no evidence that a battle had been fought here. Nothing to show that men had died and others had bled at the hands of murderous an-nef. But as he was returning to the buckboard his foot struck something in the high grass. Bending over he discovered an arrow, almost completely submerged in the dirt. He grasped the fletching and pulled it out. It was shorter than those that he was familiar with—probably fired from the same mechanical bow that had wounded him and killed Josiah. Upon examination he discovered that its manufacture was also more refined than the arrows that he had grown up with. The tip of the arrow had been cast of iron, and was attached to the shaft by