D. Thourson Palmer's Blog, page 7

RAZE – 026 – The Boat

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So, the warrior knew me. I was not so unrecognizable as I had feared after my adventures on the ocean.

The elk rider stumbled up behind me and reached for his knife on the ground. He shouted at the newcomer in their own tongue, and the club-wielding warrior responded, gesturing for him to stay back.

“Your friends still wish to kill me.”

“That is their task. Guarding these shores.” He gestured to me. “Come away. Let them regain their feet.”

“I hope I did not wound their pride overmuch. They fought bravely.”

He led me a short distance toward the trees, along the brook. The elk, with its cut harness hanging loose, pranced away nervously. My host turned over his shoulder, saying something to the men I had beaten. They picked themselves up, but their rage turned to a kind of hushed whispering.

“What did you say?” I asked.

“I told them there is no shame in losing a battle to you. I told them your name, or at least, the word for your name in our tongue.”

“And?”

“They’ve heard a tale or two.” He grinned and sat on a rock, grunting as he lowered himself. He let his club rest beside his knee. I sat beside him, grunting myself. “Nice to see age has had some effect on you. Some of the stories, the ones that don’t say you’re dead, say you’re bound to spirits, to youth and strength.”

“As much as I wish it, I know too much for that. And, I must say I am at a disadvantage.” I bowed somewhat where I sat. “I guess I have landed on the shores of Rowatokon, which was my destination eventually. So that is fortunate.” I waved out to sea, to the red glow on the horizon and the ship wreckage. “But I didn’t arrive in precisely the manner I’d hoped.”

“So it would seem.”

“And you know me, but here is where I am disadvantaged. I must apologize for not knowing you.”

His grin went lopsided. “I had hoped you might.”

“The club. You know something of the Open Path.” He nodded. “Then I have a guess.”

“Go ahead.”

Then, it was my turn to laugh. “I’m certain I’ll mispronounce your name. Ask a wee tyoo.”

He chuckled. “Askuwheteau.” He repeated, more slowly, enunciating for my benefit. “As-Kuh-Whaeh-Tow.”

“Pleased.”

“As am I.”

We sat on the rocks and I listened to the brook between the sounds of waves. I breathed deep. “This is a cold country.”

“It’s midsummer. Come back in two months.”

“I’d rather not. I’ve much work left to do.”

“So you said. You came here for a purpose.”

“One beyond not dying in the ocean, yes.”

“And you know we don’t allow outsiders.”

“Not,” I said, “to be too blunt, Askuwheteau, but who will throw me out?” He made a sound and scowled. “I mean no harm. You can trust me. But I need the knowledge your people protect.”

“Knowledge.”

“Yes. And a boat.”

“I’d heard you could swim fifty leagues.” He pointed out to sea, eyes scrunching. “Ulara is that way.”

I swiped a hand at the waves. “Twenty-three, once, and that was, oh, far too many years ago. No, I require a certain boat, and the Rowatokon have the skills and knowledge I need to make it. As I recall, the Askuwheteau I had heard of was a Story-breather, and Story-breathers have the authority to admit outsiders into your kingdoms.”

“Well.” He stood, stretched his back. “I am a Story-breather, and what you have heard is true. I have heard something of you, and we’ve fought a bit, and we’ve talked.” He faced me where I sat. “And I don’t doubt your identity. It’s long since I thought I’d meet a warrior who could throw me down the way you did.” He rubbed his lower back and made a face. “I have three conditions.”

“Go on.”

He extended a hand, and I took it. We clasped wrists and I stood, met his gaze. After a long moment, he leaned forward, and I did the same, and our foreheads touched. He laughed. “Good. You’re not entirely barbaric. That’s one. Come.”

We walked and rejoined his Sunshadows. He spoke to them and they led the way back into the trees. We went in silence, and the warriors dispersed amongst the trees and stone and moss. The mist grew thicker, and in the dark beneath the trees, the guardians vanished, the white mottled paint on their faces and arms blending with the dappled sun-spots that came down through the cedar canopy.

I started to speak, but Askuwheteau held up a hand and whispered. “We do not speak in the south forest, or on the north coast.”

We went in silence, and though I burned to know why we mustn’t speak, I did not ask. We came to a river and took bark boats that maneuvered gracefully and silently, as I was pleased to note, between rocks and over rushing white waters. We left the boats and crept through a pine forest, our feet silent on the needles and the sound deadened but for the beating of crows’ wings. At a cliff, we climbed down, traversed switchbacks down along a narrow path.

At the base of the cliff, the Sunshadows went on but Askuwheteau stopped. He faced me. “Here we may speak. The last two conditions: one, that you show me the technique you used to turn my club.”

“I showed you once.” I stayed serious as long as I could, but my grin crept out despite my efforts and his shock turned to stung amusement. “Of course,” I said.

“Very funny. Two: You must remain here, for three days. This part cannot be negotiated. Stay below the cliff, within twenty paces of it. We’ll bring food and water and wine. I’ll return on the third day, and then you may see it.”

“See what?”

“Muspuahtche. The City Before the World.”

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RAZE – 026

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So, the warrior knew me. I was not so unrecognizable as I had feared after my adventures on the ocean.

The elk rider stumbled up behind me and reached for his knife on the ground. He shouted at the newcomer in their own tongue, and the club-wielding warrior responded, gesturing for him to stay back.

“Your friends still wish to kill me.”

“That is their task. Guarding these shores.” He gestured to me. “Come away. Let them regain their feet.”

“I hope I did not wound their pride overmuch. They fought bravely.”

He led me a short distance toward the trees, along the brook. The elk, with its cut harness hanging loose, pranced away nervously. My host turned over his shoulder, saying something to the men I had beaten. They picked themselves up, but their rage turned to a kind of hushed whispering.

“What did you say?” I asked.

“I told them there is no shame in losing a battle to you. I told them your name, or at least, the word for your name in our tongue.”

“And?”

“They’ve heard a tale or two.” He grinned and sat on a rock, grunting as he lowered himself. He let his club rest beside his knee. I sat beside him, grunting myself. “Nice to see age has had some effect on you. Some of the stories, the ones that don’t say you’re dead, say you’re bound to spirits, to youth and strength.”

“As much as I wish it, I know too much for that. And, I must say I am at a disadvantage.” I bowed somewhat where I sat. “I guess I have landed on the shores of Rowatokon, which was my destination eventually. So that is fortunate.” I waved out to sea, to the red glow on the horizon and the ship wreckage. “But I didn’t arrive in precisely the manner I’d hoped.”

“So it would seem.”

“And you know me, but here is where I am disadvantaged. I must apologize for not knowing you.”

His grin went lopsided. “I had hoped you might.”

“The club. You know something of the Open Path.” He nodded. “Then I have a guess.”

“Go ahead.”

Then, it was my turn to laugh. “I’m certain I’ll mispronounce your name. Ask a wee tyoo.”

He chuckled. “Askuwheteau.” He repeated, more slowly, enunciating for my benefit. “As-Kuh-Whaeh-Tow.”

“Pleased.”

“As am I.”

We sat on the rocks and I listened to the brook between the sounds of waves. I breathed deep. “This is a cold country.”

“It’s midsummer. Come back in two months.”

“I’d rather not. I’ve much work left to do.”

“So you said. You came here for a purpose.”

“One beyond not dying in the ocean, yes.”

“And you know we don’t allow outsiders.”

“Not,” I said, “to be too blunt, Askuwheteau, but who will throw me out?” He made a sound and scowled. “I mean no harm. You can trust me. But I need the knowledge your people protect.”

“Knowledge.”

“Yes. And a boat.”

“I’d heard you could swim fifty leagues.” He pointed out to sea, eyes scrunching. “Ulara is that way.”

I swiped a hand at the waves. “Twenty-three, once, and that was, oh, far too many years ago. No, I require a certain boat, and the Rowatokon have the skills and knowledge I need to make it. As I recall, the Askuwheteau I had heard of was a Story-breather, and Story-breathers have the authority to admit outsiders into your kingdoms.”

“Well.” He stood, stretched his back. “I am a Story-breather, and what you have heard is true. I have heard something of you, and we’ve fought a bit, and we’ve talked.” He faced me where I sat. “And I don’t doubt your identity. It’s long since I thought I’d meet a warrior who could throw me down the way you did.” He rubbed his lower back and made a face. “I have three conditions.”

“Go on.”

He extended a hand, and I took it. We clasped wrists and I stood, met his gaze. After a long moment, he leaned forward, and I did the same, and our foreheads touched. He laughed. “Good. You’re not entirely barbaric. That’s one. Come.”

We walked and rejoined his Sunshadows. He spoke to them and they led the way back into the trees. We went in silence, and the warriors dispersed amongst the trees and stone and moss. The mist grew thicker, and in the dark beneath the trees, the guardians vanished, the white mottled paint on their faces and arms blending with the dappled sun-spots that came down through the cedar canopy.

I started to speak, but Askuwheteau held up a hand and whispered. “We do not speak in the south forest, or on the north coast.”

We went in silence, and though I burned to know why we mustn’t speak, I did not ask. We came to a river and took bark boats that maneuvered gracefully and silently, as I was pleased to note, between rocks and over rushing white waters. We left the boats and crept through a pine forest, our feet silent on the needles and the sound deadened but for the beating of crows’ wings. At a cliff, we climbed down, traversed switchbacks down along a narrow path.

At the base of the cliff, the Sunshadows went on but Askuwheteau stopped. He faced me. “Here we may speak. The last two conditions: one, that you show me the technique you used to turn my club.”

“I showed you once.” I stayed serious as long as I could, but my grin crept out despite my efforts and his shock turned to stung amusement. “Of course,” I said.

“Very funny. Two: You must remain here, for three days. This part cannot be negotiated. Stay below the cliff, within twenty paces of it. We’ll bring food and water and wine. I’ll return on the third day, and then you may see it.”

“See what?”

“Muspuahtche. The City Before the World.”

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RAZE – 025

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The old masters have said that fighting one man is the same as fighting one hundred. That is, to put it mildly, something of an exaggeration. It’s far fucking harder to fight two than it is to fight one, and harder still to fight four. That said, fighting six or twelve or twenty and so on isn’t much different. It becomes a matter of stamina. Unless they have arrows, and spears as well as short blades, and, well, I suppose you understand the point is that there are many things to consider.

By this time in my life, I had considered most of them.

The elk-rider raced ahead of the rest as they dashed from rock to rock, but the arrows rained down ahead of him.

The points glinted above. I moved, slid between the raining missiles. Wood, feathers, metal heads, not stone. I turned my body, avoided most, swept my weapon up and snapped one, caught another in my off-hand.

The elk rider bore down, whirling a ball-headed club. Too much momentum. He expected me to move away, dodge back, so I moved in, stepped forward. He smelled of clay and smoke and sweat in the mist. With no more than an incline of my head, I felt the wind of his club pass my head. He raced past, and as he did so I slashed his beast’s bridle with the arrow.

His fellows reached me while he wheeled around. They were tall, copper-skinned with dark hair cut and spiked into ridges atop their heads. White paint mottled their faces and arms. Their weapons were not crude, but forged. They wore skins and furs, great cloaks and high leggings.

Three rushed at me and I leaned back, twisted, slipped, and their axes and clubs whistled past, one, two, three. I hid behind the blade. I saw the familiar confusion, the sudden squint. To them, for the space of a blink, I was gone. In the blink I struck out with my stick, one, two, three. Their weapons fell as they clutched their hands. I swept their legs from under them and knocked them flat, but I heard the approach of the elk again and turned, jabbed, let the stick slide to its furthest reach. The glowing point exploded in sparks against the rider’s shoulder and he fell while I sidestepped his snorting mount.

The rest reached us. Surrounded. They circled, stalked, leapt from stone to stone. The brook babbled beside us and the water flowed down the sand to the waves.

I breathed. Mist damped my mustache, salt met my nostrils. Cedar sang in the air, damp earth. I blinked. An overcast sky. I moved my grip, holding the stick like a Toji greatsword, high and straight, the wood whispering to my calloused, battered old hands, telling me its weaknesses, its strengths. Another breath. My foes capered, sprang out and away. Their feet on the stones, their breathing, the silence of a barely held breath. It was all so, so familiar, and they raised axes and clubs and nocked arrows, and knew so, so little.

“Do you know me?” I asked in a gentle voice. I spoke Ularan, hoping they’d know it.

“Why do I want to know a dead old man?” The warrior, the elk-rider, had righted himself and drawn an axe and knife.

“Many have thought me dead before.” I let him circle me, remained still. “I promise, this dead man is about to teach you something new.”

One of them moved behind me. I drove back, an elbow into a stomach. A bowstring, but I swept down, snapped the arrow. The rest attacked, a trap of steel and wood springing.

There was a time before, when I used forms and techniques that had names, that had rote methods and proscribed movements. That time was past. The Open Way, the fifth Lesson, had shown me the truth of combat, and the truth was to destroy. I had become it.

That said, these were just boys and children to me. I had stopped being a monster long past.

I drove through them, rushed headlong with my stick lifting, clearing, striking. I slapped clubs aside, turned steel with wood. Outside their circle I whirled back, struck the stone. Driving at the center, I shattered rock with my bit of stick. The shards flew, driven by will, by force, by the power of my shout. The attackers withered back beneath the hail, but I moved in the moment, rapped wrists, tripped, kicked away legs. I thumped heads. I batted axeheads aside with my fingers. Their power was misplaced. I let clubs fall behind me, around me. Their force was witless. Then, with a smouldering stick, I emptied hands, deadened arms, tapped foreheads, and they fell, and they fell, and they fell.

“Stop!” A voice echoed on sky and ocean. I let the last blow land, sank the elk-rider to his knees, weaponless, and turned.

The one who’d shouted rushed at me, a tall man, crag-faced and white-painted on skin brown as old leather. He was bald. He came over the rocks like a downpour, cloak high, eyes locked to mine. His club, a long, ridged, fire-hardened weapon, soared above him, struck down, drove, ripped the air.

I surged in, whipped up the stick. It turned his club and it fell beside me, shattering rock, but I caught the back of the man’s head and pressed, shifted his weight. He resisted. He resisted well, but his technique was imperfect. I spun him down, hurled him, smote him on the smooth stone beach and stood, waiting, while he scrambled back to his feet.

He raised an open hand, but I saw the fear in his eyes dissipate as the men I’d felled moved and writhed, in pain, but alive.

“You.” I pointed with the stick. I measured him and my lip curled up. “Will you fight?”

He stared. He said not a word for a long time, but his eyes searched over me. Finally, he spoke. “Are you a gwashay?” He used a word I didn’t know. “A ghost?”

“Not for lack of your friends’ trying. What language is that?”

He ignored my question. “I have heard of one man who could fight twenty Rowatokon Sunshadows with a stick, and win, and spare them. But he is dead. So you must be a ghost.”

“Not yet. I ask again: will you fight? Have you anything new for me?”

His face broke into a broad grin. “Not for you. I know you. The one they call Raze.”

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RAZE – 024

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It appears that Lonireil’s Master of Truth has taken an interest in my writings. I overheard that there are some aspects of my account which do not align with those they have collected. They wish for more of Lonireil, and so my execution must be stayed until they receive some answer or other.

It occurs to me to cease writing, to allow their curiosity to rankle them, but if my execution goes as I suspect it will, they will have far more pressing concerns than the stories of an old man.

So instead, I will leave my tales of Lonireil for a time. You will have to wait, Master of Truth. Now, there is a pretentious name for oneself.

In service to Lonireil, I learned the first lesson, Passion. I clung to a black rock in the cold water of my mind, my spirit, and I became hard and cruel and, I thought, powerful. My power was a house built on shifting sands, however, as I found many years later, when my training was progressed, my ultimate intentions taking form, my abilities at their peak. It was not by simple Passion, nor by Position. It was in the Open Way, in losing all and, thereby, gaining everything.

It was a mere seven years ago. I was sixty years old, and I was as you have heard of me: I was Raze, the Unmaker. Blue-turbaned, tall as a carriage, broad as an ox, with a sun-scorched face and beard black-and-silver. I wore Khalughnoran steel etched with patterns and whorls, with lapis insets from Bulai, tied with braids of azure. I bore a shield from Narsal that had borne a god through the Wood of Weeping Clouds. The shield was called Summit. In my right hand I wielded Wind, the sword that was tempered in the twin hearts of the khren called Leuvesuis, the Tooth of Ulara. It was a scimitar of black metal, Jedah steel, with a scrolling silver grip. Script etched in silver stood out along the blade.

That is how the story goes, however, it has been somewhat exaggerated. I’d lost my godsdamned sword and shield in the ocean, where I had also cut away my armor rather than sink. I was soaked, bedraggled, beaten by waves. I awoke on a cool beach, my bruised face down, blowing bubbles with my breathing. I took a mouthful of sandy pebbles when I woke too quickly and sat up,sputtering into my beard, cursing like the pirates I had just sunk, my ass in the damp sand and my clothes audibly drying to crust from the salt as if I was an old roasted fish.

When I recovered, I looked around me. A fair shore of gray pebbles, with the mouth of a spring rolling over gray rock. A cool breeze, too cool for my soaked old bones. Mist. A rising forest of black-needled cedar trees and craggy stone and ferns. Down the beach lay smoking bits of wood, tattered sails and nets and barrels and the like. A trail of smoldering wreckage bobbed on the waves, showed my path from a red glow on the ocean horizon under the black clouds. I sat back, beard full of pebbles, laughing. Red Kharcos’s fleet was stolen, the fleet of Captain Turov sunk or sinking. I stood up, groaning and clutching at old wounds and new, still chuckling. A fine month’s work come to an end.

I turned to the spring and did my best to look dignified as I approached it. By that time, as I said, I had learned much. My training was my own, complete but for what I could learn alone, for no warrior in the world was my equal by then. Some dozen people watched from the treeline, skillfully hidden. Their breathing sounded between the waves. Their feet snapped cedar needles or brushed ferns, and so I knew they watched me.

For all of my boasting, I admit I had no fucking guess as to where I had landed. I could hazard several, that is, but the islands and countries in that part of the world were manifold and less known to me. I would find out soon enough, as soon as the watchers revealed themselves.

With great grace, for an old man who has been exploded and then carried by waves and wreckage, I went to the spring and knelt and drank, scooping water up with my right hand. With my left I took hold of a piece of broken ship, a pole of some kind. I also never learned the names of ship parts so well. Everything that is called one thing on land is given another name by sailors, so that they may feel intelligent for once when no one knows what they call any given thing.

The pole, or whatever part it was, was blackened, the end still glowing deep inside and dusted with ash. It was a stout beam, though, a good size for my grip, soaked black from Skertah alchemical water-sealant, smoking a little. I took it as a walking stick and pushed myself up with it, supporting myself most visibly on it. I noted, as I stood, that it was about the length and thickness of a Toji greatsword. Such a weapon I had used well before.

I faced the forest, the dozen folk who watched me. I heard bowstrings. So it should be. My stomach grumbled, for it was some time since I had eaten – who knows how long? – and I pressed my lips in annoyance. How long would they stalk me if I went into the wood? Following the spring would bring me to people sooner or later, but here stood a dozen, preparing to fight me. I adjusted my turban. Perhaps they would recognize me and avoid making the error of shooting?

No, they would not. As soon as I let the stick lean against my side and set my hands to re-wrapping my headwear, they attacked. They loosed arrows. Others rushed from the woods, leaping from rock to rock in near silence, bearing axes and ball-headed clubs. One rode out on a great elk, a white beast with fuzz on its antlers and black marks down its throat. They howled. The arrows shrieked toward me.

I sighed and flicked my walking stick into my hands. A lesson they would have, then.

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RAZE – 023

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I fell under a hail of blows. Fists and sticks rained on me. Yamurik shouted.

As soon as it had begun, the barrage ended. More screams. I looked up and saw blood through my narrow vision. Someone shouted “run!” and I did, limping and falling, and I dragged Yamurik with me. The Tash laid about with her spear, furious, crushing and slashing. Estevo shouted again and I looked before me, into the long street toward the bridge where Weckar, and, strangely, safety waited.

Another villager bore down on us, shouting a curse and Yamurik’s name. He raised a sickle, wild-eyed, and I lunged and thrust out with my new sword. The blade sank into him and I dragged Yamurik again. Estevo and the Tash came up from behind. They seized me, seized my charge, and pulled us along while behind us the villagers roared for our blood.

A few more lurching steps. The bodies, the dead, the dried brown blood. We ran and the birds sprang from their perches and cawed. Ahead of me I saw the bridge, the smoke of the camp. Weckar stood, a white pillar on the bridge, indistinct and far off. She moved, a flicker at the distance, and the wind stirred the dust in the road, whipped it up, curled it into yellow waves that sped toward us along the roadway.

A howl, a surge. Wind blasted. Dust streamed at my face. I halted, cowered, shut my eyes as the wind bore down.

The screams of anger and rage behind became terror and agony, but I felt nothing. I opened my eyes.

The wind blew all around us, but not on us. We stood, the four of us, in an island, an eye of the flaying, knifing storm that coursed and flowed all around like a river. I turned and saw how the people caught in it died.

They fell, blinded. They turned and tried to flee. Their clothes shredded, turned to ash, dissipated like so much smoke. Their skin turned pink, then red, and then what had been a person melted and sprayed and the remains fell into the dirt. Some of them made it to shelter, dived down alleys or into shattered doors. It might have saved them. I never found out.

The wind fell. The air went still. We four stood in silence, staring.

“Good Salat.” All rage was swept from Yamurik’s voice, scoured away. “”Good Salat why?” His legs buckled and he sat heavily in the dust.

The Tash shook. I wept openly, memory welling in me despite how I tried to push it away. I looked down at the bloody blade in my hand. Another. The thought was a stone in the midst of a black ocean. In thought, I held onto it, my lifeless stone amongst the cold waves, gripped it though my fingers splintered and tore. My shame sucked at my legs but no, I was mighty. I had killed three men. No one could hurt me anymore if I could kill. My life was mine.

“Come.” Estevo’s voice shook. “Come on. Up with you.” He dug a cigarette from a pocket with fumbling fingers, broke it. “Lick of shit, get up. You act like you don’t see that everyday.”

“Only most days.” I dashed my tears away and dragged Yamurik up. “Tash. Thanks.”

She nodded, straightened, and all emotion left her face. She met my gaze and looked through.

“Are you alright?”

She said nothing, and I could see no wounds. We made for the bridge.

Weckar stood where we’d left her, a hand outstretched, but otherwise motionless. At our approach she lowered it, sighed a breath in and out. Her black eyes peered out from her lacquer face. “Yamurik,” she said.

“You could have done that any time.” The words came from me, although I hadn’t intended them. She turned her dead face on me. “We might have died.”

“And?” She stared and I found I had nothing else to say. “Would that displease you so much?”

Her words shook me. My mind was a tumult. In three days so much had changed, over and over. I stood, waited while she spoke to Yamurik. She offered him a choice–to work and farm poppy for Lonireil, or to die. He chose to work. The Lonireilan army would bring settlers, farmers, workers, and he would direct and package and sell poppy and pay tribute to Lonireil. He would be richer, far richer, as a man of Lonireil than he had as a man of Serehvan. He would be powerful.

While she spoke to him I stood, hearing only that part of their talk that I remembered later. I was lost in thought. Everything was different. My life was different again. Gone was the farm. Gone was the emptiness and the wish for death and the fear that came after. I held a sword. I was mighty with it. I would learn to fight and kill all the better and in so doing would become my own. Then nothing could hurt me again. I gave thanks for Lonireil, de Trastorces, Weckar, the soldiers; they had shown me weakness and they had shown me what might was, what strength was, and I was reborn as something more. I had become il Lonireil, born of that nation, made by them, new because of them. 

At the time, so I thought. It was many years before I confronted myself and the cruelty that had overcome me. It was many years before I found my way out of the deep water, found the strength to swim away from my barren black stone in the cold, all-consuming ocean.

But perhaps that tale will go untold. For two days I have waited for the guards to come and tell me that my execution is set, and I hear them approaching in the halls. Perhaps tomorrow is the dawn. My last dawn, and the dawn in which my many, many years of labor will come to fruition.

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RAZE – 022

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We stood on the steps of the Yamurik’s manor. The Tash yelled without words and brandished her spear. Estevo held Yamurik. I stood, my leg shaking, holding my spoils and the sword I’d taken.

The survivors closed on us. They were dirty, cut, bloody. They carried broken kitchen knives, rakes, cutting sickles for the poppy fields. One of them, with the left side of his face all spiderweb cuts and raw skin and pus, held up his sickle. “Yamurik,” he said. “Why?”

“What do you–”

“You’re a dead man, Yamurik. You and your friends.”

“They’re not my friends.” He stammered. “They did this. I had nothing to do with it.”

“You won’t curse them, I see,” Estevo said under his breath. “il-Lonireil, get up. Hold that sword like you just killed the whole household.”

I stood and moved back toward Estevo and Yamurik. I said, “Who are these people, Yamurik?”

“My people. Workers from my fields.” He raised his voice again. “Help me! There’ll be gold for any man who does.”

Estevo and I looked at each other. I put my arm around Yamurik’s shoulder and shouted at the villages. “Now he’s rethinking his bargain. You don’t think these people can see how your house was left alone while the wind cut through theirs?”

The people below, now near a dozen of them, cursed and shouted. “Why is your house untouched, Yamurik?”

“Why didn’t the demon wind cut you?”

“You wanted all the profit for yourself! Sold us to Lonireil for their gold and Skertah magic!”

“No!” Yamurik shouted. “Shit, no, I’m not–”

“Maybe we should give him to them,” I said. Estevo once again looked at me, then smiled.

“Ah, yes. He’s worth nothing to us. A traitor. He’s served his purpose. What do you say, Yamurik?

“You dog milkers.”

I called out to the encroachers. “And you? What do you say, should we let you have him? Our purpose is done here. We’ve got Onappa-ka one way or another.”

The leader shook his sickle again. “Give him here. I’ll gut him myself.” His people joined with him, calling for blood. They moved closer and the Tash swiveled with her spear, warding them off.

Yamurik shouted at them. “Idiots! I’m not with these people.”

Estevo pushed the fat man toward me and I held his arm, put my sword to his side. Meanwhile, Estevo stepped down a stair and raised his voice. “Look, he tried to play both sides. He’ll pay. Never fear. We’re to bring him back to our commander and then we’ll behead him. Now, if you all wait, there will be work soon. Fields to harvest, poppy to–” He paused.

“Milk,” I offered.

“Poppy to, ah, milk. There will be Lonireil gold. It’s as good as Yamurik’s, isn’t it? We’re going now.” He took another step, picked up his spear, joined the Tash at the gate of the manor. “Come on, il-Lonirel. Bring the traitor.”

I limped down the first step, drawing Yamurik with me. He cursed under his breath but came along without fuss. Ahead of me, Estevo and the Tash moved out through the gate, holding their spear points up, but ready.

The people–the survivors of the Slaughter of Onappa-ka–kept still. They lowered their weapons, but did not step back. We moved amongst them, the four of us surrounded.

They stared at us with reddened eyes. The dust and blood covered them. Their clothes were frayed and torn and the razor cuts of the knife wind crisscrossed their arms, cheeks, foreheads. Even their hair was ragged, as if chopped away.

Too close. They were too near. We moved through them and the survivors watched us, staring through. I knew the horrors they’d seen. I’d witnessed the aftermath. I’d felt the knife wind flay at my legs for an instant. Could they see me quaking, trembling? I needed the fire that dwelt in me but it was spent, gone, and I shook as I moved amongst them and forced myself to meet their eyes, forced myself and failed. My gaze went down. I heard them breathing.

Just a little farther. I pulled Yamurik alongside me, watched the Tash’s feet in the dust. I bumped someone and stumbled on my wounded leg. The chipped kitchen knife in the hand of the man I’d bumped moved a little. His fist tightened and my breath caught.

Yamurik spoke. “My friends. These are–” He was not allowed to finish.

“You sold us!” A woman leapt on Yamurik with her blade. The people howled. They attacked.

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RAZE – 021

From within the locked door, the gruff voice called out again. “Leave me alone or I’ll have you pulled inside out and strung up as a Khor ma Dal decoration.”

Estevo moved down the steps, toward the Tash. He gave me a last nod, paused. “il Lonireil. My name is Estevo.” Then he went down to where she was with his spear.

I stood for a moment. A name. My name. Not boy or dog or shitlick or nothing. I hadn’t thought to tally before, but by the age of the poppies along the river, it might have been three months since I left home. I had been nothing since that night, three months past. Now I was il Lonireil now.

Returning my attention to the door, I considered another kick but instead tapped on it with my spear. My voice creaked a little. I had hardly spoken in months. “Whoever you are in there, come out. Everyone’s dead but you.”

“Make me, piss-puddle. You work for the Lonireilans? But you’re from Naban, by the backwards country hill-fuck cast to your voice. Go and eat ox-shit you traitor dog-milker.”

I had no choice but to soldier for Lonireil, but somehow the words hooked into me. My teeth clenched. “Come with us. You don’t want Weckar to have to come to you.”

“Weckar can share at your shitpile. Save some for her.”

“She’ll be angry if we don’t bring you.”

“Good. Hope she knifes you, and your dog-milking mother too.”

Something turned over inside me. Between the barbed words and the danger behind us and the name, the name given to me and claimed by me, an uncontrollable fire burst to life in me, a flame in a closed hearth when the air gets in. It guttered, flared, burned. I kicked the door again and a scream came from my throat.

Slam! The doorjamb shook. Wood splintered. Slam! My leg twinged but I gave it another. Slam! The door burst open in a cloud of dust.

I barrelled in. The rage was hot, bigger than me, than all my life. I sought for the voice, something to hit, but two shadows came at me. Screaming, I shot into the first with my spear. The shadow grunted and spat out blood. Others shrieked and called out but I pushed back, back into a dark hall, shoving the dying man impaled on my weapon. I jerked the spear back and he fell, clutching at me.

Others shouted, yelled. The place was dark and I couldn’t see. Shapes rushed at me, sound bombarded me. Two people ran. I flailed, struck, but they ran on, stumbling.

A blade flashed in the light from the door and I reeled back, deflected it with my spear haft. The voice, the gruff voice, distanced itself and feet thudded on stairs. I drove back at the blade in the dark and it retreated, down the hall, through shadow, up stairs.

It was a man, in leather armor. He had a beard and a great blue turban. I gave chase, saw another man on the stairs above him.

“Kill him! What do I pay you for?” The man above him was the gruff voice, the house master. My target.

I thrust out with spear and he batted it aside. I rushed up a step, another, jabbing. He struck at the spear haft, shouted. I roared back, rushed up another step. He caught my spear haft. His blade stuck in the wood and we wrestled, grappled, shoved and pulled.

“Die, boy.” He kicked me and I struck back, pushed, and he backed up another step. I followed.

I howled, wordless. Tears streamed on my face. He was my obstacle, my enemy. He was everything that I had faced and failed that had hurt me. He was between me and something larger, grander, more than I. In him, I saw some kind of salvation.

I pushed him again and he fell, moved away. I lost him in the dark and tumult. Shouts. My blood rushed in my ears. I raced up, lashed about, found nothing, knocked over furniture, fine things, glass. In the dark I sought, saw, rushed. The house-master ran, his guard stood behind him, sword up, and I lunged. He struck, knocked down my spear. I fell on him with fists, got beneath his weapon. I punched, kicked, clawed. We wrestled. I hit a wall, pushed, pushed hard, drove my feet at the ground, and then there was light. We struck a window and I pushed and out we went, falling, flying, in the air and light.

We hit. I heard him break, and when I looked, the man was dead beneath me on the stones steps before the manor, his head lolling.

I fell, rolled off him, the stone stairs battering my body. Pain invaded my senses, cut through my leg, arms, shoulders. I stumbled up, shaking, fell again. My leg would not take my weight.

“Lick of shit. Heshim?” Estevo shouted. He ran to me, clutched my arm but I recoiled, weeping in pain and relief and rage without a target. “What did you–”

“He’s inside,” I managed to croak. My tears wouldn’t stop and I fell on the dead man to hide my face in his robes. Spasming sobs wracked through me, making the pain all the worse. Everything hurt. Why hadn’t it hurt in the fight?

Seconds later, Estevo dragged the housemaster out. “Yamurik. That’s you, right?”

“Lonireil dog. Dead-fucker, lover of oxes. I’m Yamurik and I’ll own you one day. I’ll buy you for dog meat.” He cursed and spat. I recovered enough to stand and he laughed when he saw me.

Yamurik was short, round and fat, with a beard and a curled mustache. His cloth was more costly than my family’s farm. One of his eyes was a pale, milky ruin, and above his mustache it squinted and laughed louder than his booming, gruff voice.

“Mewling whelp. Quite a fight you gave for a wailing pup. Well, go on, take your spoils. You’re a warrior, you dog-milking sack shaker.” Estevo handled him roughly but he he spat. “Go on, hit me. End me. Your Weckar, whatever ass she crawled from, will be angry won’t she?” He looked at me again with his squinting pale eye. “Go on, loot your enemies, conquering bastard. Go take the gold and spoils from my house, traitor brother-killer Naban shit. Murdering brother-killer.”

On my quivering leg, I stared at him. He stared back, defiant. This man, his bodyguards dead, his city destroyed, wealth lost, in the hands of his enemies, sneered down at me. He cursed me, swore, and spat.

Passion. That was the lesson of my time in the army of Lonireil. I had killed two. I had conquered. Passion had let me, though the cost was high. And passion let him remain free, even when we held him.

While he watched, I fell on the steps beside the dead man and I took his sword and his fine blue turban. It was the color my mother had worn, a perfect blue dyed cotton found only in Serehvan.

The Tash shouted. We looked up, and there, the watchers had come closer. They came into the open before the manor, dirty, armed, staring.

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RAZE – 020

Weckar’s warning changed something in me. Rather, it awakened a feeling in me which was other than the emptiness or the pit. The emptiness was me, was all that was left. The pit was what I had gone to when I had killed. I had killed four, in truth; the woman who attacked us, the boy I used as bait, the boy I used as a shield, and the last, the man I had tricked and captured and who Weckar had slaughtered. That was not her. It was me.

Weckar’s warning awakened a dormant part of me. It awakened hatred. “Do not run,” she had said. I would not. I would not let her knife or her evil, spirit wind kill me. I would never let Weckar have me.

Estevo, The Tash, and I made our way into the city of Onappa-ka. It was a small city, no bigger than my own province’s capital of Naban-ka, with an outer wall and timber gates and short houses made of unmortared stone or yellow clay. The dead lay everywhere, littering the main road, and the banners and signs were pitted or shredded to nothing. Trees were stripped of leaves and their bark carved away on one side. Windows gaped like open mouths as we picked our way among the dead, watching around ourselves, ears straining, reaching nothing but the buzzing. The flies were everywhere and black birds sat on the tops of the buildings, peering down. I saw one other living thing, a scrawny cat which sniffed at one of the dead and sat beside it, as if considering.

The center square was not far. The flies swarmed about the ruined market, where strips of cloth hung as cobwebs over collapsing stalls, dust-covered, chewed-up fruits and vegetables, meat gouged and rotting on hooks, and everywhere the dead, flayed by wind, clothes sheared and bone exposed to the flies and the bright sun. The scars on my legs and backside itched in sympathy and memory of where the knife wind had briefly caught me, but that brought other thoughts and my mind emptied. I chose nothingness and forgot and gave no mind to my parents and brother and sisters. I chose emptiness, for to choose otherwise would fill me to cracking, to breaking. To be empty, to be dead, was better. I was like those in the market square. They were my kin now. They. The Tash. No one else.

We walked to the largest house, which was undisturbed, entirely. Its bright blue banners hung clean and unmarred, straight and silent in the windless day. The dead lay on the doorstep and before the low, decorative walls, but on the balconies little green plants blossomed orange flowers.

Estevo, whose name I didn’t yet know, spoke in Lonireilan, and then spat. The Tash and I looked at him and he swore, a word I had learned. “Lick of shit,” is the best translation I can make. “Lick of shit, he can’t be the only one left in there. How are we supposed to get him out if he has guards, or a slew of butlers or kids or something?”

The Tash said nothing. I said nothing. We had been told to bring him, so I started to the door.

It is odd to me now. I hated Weckar and the hate was all there was beside the emptiness and the pit. But it was the hate that made me go on. The hate made my only goal to succeed. To prove to her, to it, to whatever Weckar was, that… I do not know. Perhaps I never will. I would prove. That was all I thought.

“Of course, just knock and ask him. You go on, il-Lonireil,” Estevo shouted behind me as I approached Yamarik’s manor door. Estevo bounded after me on gangly legs when I did not slow. “Tash, stay and watch out. Someone else is alive in this city. Shout if you see something.” I paused and turned to see that Estevo had stopped to look behind him as well. “You can shout, can’t you?”

The Tash nodded, keeping her eyes down.

“Look. Out. That means out there. Don’t watch us and don’t watch the ants.” She turned and faced away from the manor, out into the shredded market, and then Estevo started for me and the door again. We went together, him lighting another cigarette and I clutching my spear.

We stepped over bodies and waved flies from our faces. Estevo tried the latch and found it locked. “Very typical.” He pounded on the door. “Watch the upper windows.”

I looked, seeing no movement. The windows were drawn with deep, cerulean curtains in their graven window frames. The house was grand indeed, with balconies and shining glass and bright colors painted on the near-white clay. No answer came, despite Estevo’s repeated bangings.

I pushed him aside and kicked the door.

“Go away!” someone shouted from inside, a man’s voice, deep, gruff.

Before we could address the voice within, an animal sound came from behind us, a wordless grunting cry. We stopped and turned and the Tash was pointing out into the market. There, behind a stall, I saw figures watching us. There were three, creeping, behind cover but not out of sight.

“Oh good.” Estevo took a long drag of smoke. “I’m sure they’re here to help us.” He rapped on the door again and looked at me. “Listen, it’s Heshim, right? we’re going to have to talk, or we could die here. Alright?”

“Alright,” I said.

“I think the door gave when you kicked it. Give it another kick. Really hammer on it. You’re a stout boy. I want to keep watch on those lurkers out in the market.” He started to turn, then reached out and touched my shoulder. I flinched and he took his hand away and when I looked at his face, I saw disgust. That is, at first I saw disgust.

Perhaps it was the fear. Those people in the market would be hunting us. Already, I knew that if there were any more of them, it would be a miracle if we escaped. Part of me did not want to. Perhaps it was the hatred that Weckar had awakened. Whatever it was, I saw through the falsehood of my shame, the veil of disgust I had woven for myself, and saw clearly what was in Estevo’s ugly, cigarette-hanging face. It was pity, and it sickened me.

Estevo drew his hand back and did not try to touch me again. “I didn’t do.” He paused. “That. To you. I need your help. Let’s get this shit-lick out of his house and leave. Alright, Heshim?”

I nodded, looked at the dirt, and then looked at him. He was waiting. I found it in me to speak. “My name is il-Lonireil.”

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RAZE – 019

The guard says my name – not my name, but the name he has given me, the name he calls me, and at that time I had become nothing in my own mind, so the name was good enough. I was ‘il Lonireil.’ I was little, worthless, dirty, nothing. Owned by another. It was my first new name, the first of many. I had once been Heshim. I had become il-Loniriel.

He said my name and I shrank into myself, there on the windswept hillside over the trading post, looking over the fields of poppy in the north. I lowered my gaze, said nothing, waited for the words I didn’t know, the cudgel words that hammered me flat and useless into what I felt I was.

He approached, took a deep breath. I chanced a peek at him to see that he was looking out over the poppies too, not at me. The smoking guard was tall, bandy-legged, sandy-headed, not as white as the other Lonireilans, not as dusky as I, but more wheat-colored. He caught me watching him and the smug look I had first seen him with returned before I cast my gaze into the dirt again. I started edging away.

“Stay here.” I stopped, motionless, afraid even to breathe. “Still want that smoke?”

I was certain what would come next would be an open palm to the face, harsh Lonireilan words. Instead he produced a pair of cigarettes, somewhat bent and mangled, and held one out. I looked at it and in the remembered scent the night at my home returned to me. Panic seized me. I ran, holding tears and sobbing, strings of spit hanging from my mouth. Some of the others saw me run down from the hill and through the post and they laughed and shouted after me in their foreign tongue.

Other Lonireilans came, joining still others who had come to trading post camp with us in the days since we’d taken it. Most arrived throughout that last day, and from noon onwards they came by the hundred. A thousand Lonireilans of different captains and bands had gathered by the time the sun was falling. Never had I seen so many people.

Before dusk, they gathered us. We would go into Rouk following the knife wind on the morrow. Tasks were divided amongst us, the breaking of camp, packing of supplies, setting aside goods for the carters who would take riches back to Lonireil. “The true riches will be ours tomorrow.”

De Trastorces bid me and another of the slave-soldiers go to a stable, which we’d walled up as a prison for the young man I had brought out of the cave house. There we’d kept him like an animal for days, threw in slop for him, made him live in straw and his own filth. We brought him back to the crowd of expectant soldiers, and there, waiting for us beside the captain, was Weckar, the lacquer-faced woman.

She stayed with our troupe, never eating, never resting, seldom moving. She stood like a stone column beside de Trastorces on a hocker’s stage, where, before we came, folk had sold fruit or Skertah remedies for gout and nerves, where a storyteller might have performed. Weckar stood atop it, facing us from the center with a long knife in her hand and her red mouth open and empty black eyes staring.

“Bring him up,” de Trastorces called and gestured. We hauled the prisoner up. I shook in front of Weckar, the knife in her hand subsuming all I could see. I knew. I knew what she would do.

She spoke words I didn’t know. Her breath sighed out of her and she cut the young prisoner’s pleading throat and his blood sprayed and then dribbled out over the worn boards. The wind blew and howled around us, and then rushed away into the oncoming night. When we were dismissed, I was sick behind a shed and I remembered my sister. I remembered.

The next day dawned bright, cheerful, but in the north we heard wind. The poppy fields stood almost untouched as we marched down into them, but in the rows we found shredded bodies, the plants around them torn and tattered but the rest unmarred. Somewhere ahead, I began to hear a loud buzzing sound. While I marched, de Trastorces approached on camel-back.

“You there, boy.” I nodded, kept my eyes down. “That was you who went into the cave house. Good work. Very fine work. I have another task for you today. Weckar has asked for you.” That surprised me, but I stared at the dirt and said nothing. It was much later that I learned why. “You’ll go with Weckar. Do as she says. When we reach the river, she’ll go to the bridge with you. Nothing to fear with her, alright?” I nodded again. “Good boy. Do as she says and do it quick.”

At the bridge, most of the force made camp. The buzzing had grown so loud by then, but without apparent cause. Weckar rode ahead to the bridge over the river into Rouk, saying nothing, and I and two others followed on foot: I and Estevo, smoking, and a girl called the Tash, a word in our language for a she-wolf. She was like me. The Lonireilans had given her that name when she’d killed one of the other Serehvan captives for food. She tore his manhood away while he screamed and the Lonireilans winced and laughed. “Don’t get between the Tash and her dinner,” they said. She said nothing, never speaking.The buzzing was so loud.

The bridge. I remember the bridge. It was wide, gently arched, with fine wood work embellishments carved like Serehvan animals, running and leaping over the water.

The sound was deafening now, buzzing, droning. Folk had run from the wind, run across into the city that lay on the river, the city Onappa-ka. They did not outrun the wind. Bodies lay, already stinking in the bright sun. Flies buzzed in black clouds. That was the sound I had heard from the fields. The carrion flies. No birds feasted on these dead, all lying flat, pointing the same way, their clothes and skin and muscle shredded down.

Again I was sick. The Tash made no indication of seeing. Estevo smoked his way through cigarette and looked everywhere but at the dead. Weckar stopped, looked at me on the bridge. “When you have finished, Heshim il-Naban,” she sighed in a voice of wind, “there is one remaining inside with whom I must speak. His name is Yamurik, and his house is on the market square, and is the highest. You three, go there. Bring him here, to the bridge. He must see.” She paused and the breath whistled through the opening of her mouth in her smooth, lacquer-skin. “Do not run. If you run, the wind will catch you.”

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RAZE – 018

When you picture an invasion, what do you see? Smoke? Nighttime raids with volleys of flaming bolts, tracing fire across the firmament while people scream and run, slipping in mud, jerking back, twisting in the air as if yanked on a string when hit by a slingstone or a arrow? A war machine at a wall, battering down a gate while defenders, valiant heroes or murderous, foreign pigs depending on whose side of the wall you’re on, throw down vats of oil or pots of Skertah neckwrecker smoke to scrape and scour the air out of your lungs?

For us, there was little of this. We followed the knife wind. I did not see pitched battle in those first weeks, nor the months thereafter.

In the first weeks of my – shall we say service? – we had taken Naban-ka, the capital of my home province. We moved on, changed direction, stopped, started. I kept my silence whether  we halted in the rain or walked too far in the sun or waited for days on end in a boring place. Those waits I especially feared, for when the Lonireilans grew bored, they looked to me and the others pressed into their service for sport. It was best to hide at those times. I was nothing but for de Trastorces. He had taken me, made me what I was, which was worthless, and then had given me life again. I survived and I would live and there was nothing else but going on.

We waited at a trading post for several days. I did not see a pitched battle, but it was there that I killed a human being for the first time.

Some days after the killing, I went off alone. The other soldiers were bored, so I avoided them, and I had no space in my mind for talk or defending myself. There was food and drink aplenty and  no one to fight since the first day, and even then no kills save mine. We stayed at the cluster of clay buildings and caves dug into a rocky embankment beside the road, where south of us was Naban and north the narrow, riverside province of Rouk. Looking out in the morning with the sun coming up over the rocky steppe to my right, I saw millions of poppies on the riverlands to the north. Red specks without counting in bright, green, irrigated fields, and then I understood Lonireil’s aim in coming to Serehvan. I wondered, if I ran toward the river, if the soldiers of Rouk would shoot me. Or perhaps the Lonireilans would before I got away. After the killing, I thought that would be best.

I stood on the embankment into which houses had been dug back in clean, cool caves, lushly furnished with the wealth of the trading post master. Chimneys came up from the rock, iron stovepipes. Very luxurious. The caves were cool and never smoky, laid out with beautiful woven rugs, hung with fine tapestries, the walls painted white.

I had been in once, when we first arrived and the Lonireilans had sent me and two other soldier-children in with short knives. When I had killed.

The day our troupe had taken the post, we captured the dozen or so shop boys and servants and workers and the post master with a fight, but no killing. However, Weckar insisted that two hid inside the cave house, two who might harm our commander de Trastorces. How she knew, I didn’t understand at that time, other than to know that she was a Skertah mage and that she could speak to spirits and do and see things that no person should be able to do or to see. She said two remained, and so they sent me and two others into the dark to flush them out.

I went in, prodded from behind by my own army’s spears. I and the other two children-soldiers crept on, tears on our contorted, snarling faces as behind, de Trastorces’ voice urged us ahead. “Kill one, bring the other,” he called after us. “Are you warriors or pigs? Do what you can for me, and I’ll take care of you, lovelies. Fail and we’ll put you to better use than fighting. I want to see blood on your knives when you come back, or don’t come back at all.” So we crept on, desperate to look fearless. My heart choked me, shame pushed me onward. I wouldn’t go back to what he threatened. I’d be a warrior and I’d be strong enough, finally.

They’d put out the lights in the cave house and it was black inside, too black to see. Before we went too far, we found a lamp while the voices outside goaded us. I and the others didn’t speak. These were rivals. I took a lamp, lit the wick after fumbling with some Skertah sulfursticks with yellow resinous alchemical tips. Once I had covered the lamp, one of the others snatched it from me.

“Give it here,” he said, voice quavering. He had a dust of hair on his upper lip, a thin face. He glared at me, holding his knife, and it was then I conceived a horror. At the time, it seemed very much like genius.

I acquiesced and he turned to face the dark recesses of the cave home, holding the light up before him.

We explored, moving slow, jumping at our own shadows, hearing nothing. The home was a grave.

I called into the dark, in Serehvan. “Weckar said two people were here.” The boy in front of me hissed for silence, but I shouted again. “Come out. You won’t be hurt. Show yourselves.” We passed a grand sitting room, strewn with pillows. An office, with a desk and records and ledgers. We crept deeper, past bedrooms, an entertaining hall, a smoking room with an iron chimney and a grand, heavy wooden door. We saw no one, heard only our own breathing.

I called out again. “We’re not armed.” Again, the boy bearing the lamp hissed at me for quiet.

We began to circle the place a second time, peering at shadows, shaking. I tried to hide the knife and stay some distance behind the boy with the lamp. The third stayed behind me.

I moved in silence and my patience was rewarded. The boy with the lamp passed a doorway and a shadow crept out of it behind him. I halted, kept still, while it closed on him in the dark. It moved soundlessly, on bare feet, and he didn’t notice till too late.

I would be coming out of that cave, even if that meant the other two did not.

It struck him and he fell with a cry. The boy behind me shrieked. I am ashamed to this day to say that I grabbed him, pushed him ahead of me, onto the knife of the shadow figure. While they struggled, I struck, stabbed, slashed wildly. I gave no thought to where my blade fell and when they both sagged down I felt mighty indeed and my blood rushed in my veins.

I lifted the dead shadow, a woman, discovered. I held her up before me and put my knife to her dead throat. “Come out, we have her. I’ll kill her. Show yourself!” It was only a second before the last came out, a young man, and I made him stop where he was, then called for the rest of my people. They rushed in and he surrendered, then wept to find that I’d deceived him. I was rewarded with de Trastorces’ kind hand on my shoulder, a few words in Serehvan. He told me I was good.

Days later, I stood on the embankment above the cave house, watching the sun rise. I stood, watching the poppies, understanding. I came to a decision and was about to run down the embankment and charge the guardsmen of Rouk, when behind me a voice called out from the lower part of the embankment. “Hey, il-Lonireil.” I turned to see the guard, the smoking guard from my home, striding up the hill on gangly legs.

 

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