The Journey of Parzival - The Maps (Chapter II, part IV)

[Zilmrud]

The journey of Parzival
Chapter II, part IV
The Maps
[Previous Chapter, Chapter II, Part III - The goat-farmer]

After leaving the goat farmer's house, they all went north. Pretty soon they discovered that Left-Eye wasn't with them.

 “- Where is Left-Eye?” Z asked

“- I don't know, he walked at the back all the time. And I haven't seen him since we left the house,” Hammer said

Just then, Left-Eye came running up to them from behind.

“- Look, I found some maps” Left-Eye said with a smile on his face

"- You can't just find maps" Right-Eye replied brusquely.

"- Yes yes, so maybe found was the wrong word, maybe i meant more like borrowed. Or at least borrowed indefinitely” Left-Eye said laughing.

“- Have you stolen the maps? From who then” Hooves asked

 "- I took it from that stupid farmer in the shed over there while you were caught his attention" Left-Eye replied with a foul grin.

 "- But he helped us, you can't steal from him!" Z said encouragingly

 "- Oh, it was just an old farmer. He had nothing else of value than these two maps. But we need maps to find Barqa” Left-Eye replied

 "- It's not right that you stole the maps. But we can't go back and leave the maps anyway. We need to know the way to Barqa, and with maps we don't have to ask for directions. But I'll take care of them” Hammer said, ripping the maps out of Left-eye's hands.

 "- And going forward, we will discuss what we are doing. We must do this as a group if we are to survive. We are still hunted and the desert is treacherous.” Said Z

Everyone nodded slowly except Left-Eye who made a face and turned his head away. Z got an ominous feeling inside when he saw Left-Eye's reaction. If they start arguing within the group, it won't go well. But there was something in Left-Eye's eyes that felt wrong. His eyes almost sparkled as he talked about how he stole the map. They had all met the same fate and ended up with the slave trader. But who knows who they were before their memories were taken from them. Do they have a common past or are they from different parts of Historica?

Hammer unrolled the maps and they gathered around to have a look. The first map was a map of a larger area. There they could find Barqa but not Mophet. However, there was The Oil Road which was a trade route that went from east to west. That must have been the road they traveled before they got to Mophet.

Map 1

The second map appeared to show a smaller section of The Oil Road running from Mophet in the east to Barqa in the west where the Arkbri River empties into the sea. A logical route of transport if they were to get to Barqa.

Map 2

 "- There we have Barqa. From Barqa we can then continue north towards Avalonia. We should be due north from Mophet, south of Arkbri River. It shouldn't be so far to the river.” Hammer said, rolling up the map.

They continued their journey north and soon came to a crest of a hill in the sunset. When they reached the crest, they all stopped and looked at the beautiful landscape in the sunset light below. Down in the valley they could see a river flowing along a ridge. Here and there there were small pools of water next to the river that had created small oases of greenery. Next to the river was a small town with a city wall and many beautiful buildings.

But down by the town they could glimpse a group of dark-clad figures. Pointy with her elf eyes had a much sharper look than the others.

“- That doesn’t look promising,” said Pointy. “- Down by the city gate there are a bunch of dark-clad people. I can see that some have the “Eye of Maruu” mark on their shields.

“- We should avoid confrontation. The whole town down there could be full of spies. We should look further west on the river. "Maybe we can find a boat near the oases on the river. Fishermen should have their boats next to the river," said Hooves.

"That sounds wise. We're moving west," said Z
 

Spoiler

I can't find a way to put small thumbnails by the text. I used to have 75x57 thumbnails in front of each line a character said. 

 

Edited 6 hours ago by Zilmrud