Eloy's Challenge

by Kara Timmins

  “You’re just asking this now?” Eloy asked.

  She shrugged. “There didn’t seem to be a right time for it, I guess. Before we left to find the Seer, I was too busy trying to get everything in order since I didn’t really believe I would be coming back.”

  “Neasa . . .” Eloy started, his tone solemn.

  She shook her head and swiped at the air toward him. It’s nothing, the motion said.

  She went on with her questioning. “And then other things took priority after we got back, so this is the best time I could find.”

  Eloy told her about what had happened with Anso’s warriors at his childhood home and about the conversation he had with Amicus. As he finished relaying the things he had been told that night, he took the stone out from under his shirt. He had fallen out of the habit of taking it out, but he reached for it often. Sometimes, he even woke up with it clenched in a painful grip.

  “There’s certainly a sense of otherness about it, that’s for sure,” she said. “But I guess there’s more about this whole thing that I just don’t understand. I mean, why? You don’t seem like someone who’s only interested in riches. Not that I’ve seen, anyway. Why are you doing all of this?”

  “At the beginning, the adventure and promise was exciting. That was enough. I knew others had more than what I had, and I wanted to know what it felt like to live like that. Those things are still true. My father used to work until his hands cracked and bled, and I was prepared to live the rest of my life like that too.”

  Eloy rubbed his palms together. “When Amicus told me of what I could have, the images of me slumped over day after day went away. It was freeing. I’ve seen things, and I know it’s better to be someone who has than someone who doesn’t. I want to make sure my family is always taken care of. I want to know that Francena and Corwin never have to feel strain or struggle again. This place of wealth that was promised for me is mine to take. I want it. I want to know what’s waiting for me at the end of this journey. At this point, I’ve put in so much time I couldn’t stop even if I wanted to. I can’t turn around now. But the more I go on, and the older I get, there’s something else that keeps me going. I want to know why. Why me? Someone or something out there put me on this path, and I want to know the reason.”

  “Makes sense,” Neasa said, taking it all in, “but Gwyn told me that you gave him almost everything you found in the forest for him to sell and told him to split the profits with my father. Why would you do that if wealth is something that’s so important to you?”

  “Because I’m not on this path to hoard everything that comes by me. What he makes from those sales will help them both, and it’s good to know I was able to do that. That wasn’t part of the prize that was promised to me, and I don’t need to take from others when I am sure I will come upon what’s meant for me.”

  “I can see the appeal.”

  “I’m glad, because you’re in this with me now,” Eloy said.

  They both looked out over to the path during the lull in conversation, and Eloy noticed a portly man waddling away from Nicanor’s camp. Eloy hadn’t thought the person they were looking for would be coming from the camp.

  “What kind of man is that?” Eloy asked. “He doesn’t look like a trader or a warrior.”

  “A tute,” Neasa said.

  “What’s a tute?”

  Neasa sat up straighter, pinched her mouth tight, and gave Eloy an incredulous glare.

  “They’re guidance givers,” she explained cautiously. “They have the ability to see a person’s path so they can give them the push toward their true purpose. They’re people who don’t need any assistance from earthly things to see the grand scheme. Tutes are people of great honor.”

  Eloy looked at the man’s simple, long brown tunic as it swished back and forth between his bowlegged walk. “Would you say he’s a man who is welcomed by most and respected by the rest?”

  Neasa stared at Eloy in defiance and shook her head. “You can’t do that.”

  “Does he fit?” Eloy stood up. “He does, doesn’t he?” He felt a jolt of encouragement, but he did his best to keep it hidden from Neasa, who was looking at him like she had just bit into rotten fruit.

  Neasa stood up too. “You can’t. There are rules.”

  “It’s him, Neasa. I know it is.”

  “You don’t understand,” Neasa said, her features contorted from her stress. “Tutes are protected by the people. Anyone has the right to protect a tute under any means. Causing harm to a tute is a terrible offense.”

  “I’m not going to harm him. I’m just going to take him into Nicanor’s camp.”

  “He just came from there. How are you going to convince him to go back?” Neasa put her hands up to her forehead and gripped her hair. “I can’t do this.”

  “You don’t have to. I can go by myself.”

  Neasa bit the inside of her lower lip and looked at the tute, who was now making slow progress down the path, the muscles under her cheekbones pulled tight.

  “Okay,” she said, lowering her hands, “but let me try to get him to come with us willingly first.”

  “I can’t see how that would work. If this really is the man the Seer told us about, he’s not going to be interested in doing what we want him to do.”

  “Let’s try talking to him first before we put any kind of weapon to him, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay.” Neasa took a breath, an apparent attempt at pushing back a wave of nausea.

  The two jogged down the hill and closed the gap to the tute. The man didn’t seem startled by two people running up behind him.

  “Hello,” the tute said. “Is there something I can help you with?”

  “Umm,” Neasa said, “we’ve been asked to bring you back to Nicanor’s camp. He has some business he wants to discuss with you.”

  The man in the rough-looking tunic shifted his scrutinizing gaze back and forth at Eloy and Neasa, his face giving the slightest twitch of suspicion.

  “Oh, no,” the tute said. “I don’t think so. Not today. Have to be going on.” The tute tried to sidestep around Neasa, but she shifted to keep herself in his way.

  “You don’t understand,” she said. “You have to come back with us. It’s very important.”

  The tute pursed his thin lips together into a tight wrinkly knot. “No,” the tute said. “I won’t be going back there today. I’ll come back as soon as I can, though. You tell Nicanor I have to be on my way.” He took another step forward.

  Neasa looked at Eloy for assistance.

  “We weren’t given a choice,” Eloy said. “We were told you have to come with us, even if we have to use force to get you there.”

  “Use force against me?” The tute put a pudgy hand to his chest. “That’s just not something people do, let alone Nicanor. I was just there. Why didn’t he call for me then?”

  “I don’t question him.” Eloy pulled his sword from its sheath at his back. “Will you come?”

  Neasa put her hands to the sides of her face as the color drained away.

  But she didn’t see what Eloy saw—the flash of something, an expression that came and went so fast he almost missed it, but he couldn’t deny it. The moment Eloy took his sword out, he saw violence and rage in the quick sneer as the tute exposed his little jagged teeth. The look was enough for Eloy to know that he had the right person. He had found the man the Seer said he would find.

  “It’s time to go back.” Eloy gestured with his head in the direction of Nicanor’s camp.

  “I’m telling you,” the tute said, “this isn’t a good idea. You shouldn’t be doing this, young man. You’ll have your head hung from a tree for threatening a tute.” The aggression was long gone from the tute’s face. In its place was the innocence and helplessness he had obviously mastered from years of practice.

 
“He’s right,” Neasa said in a hushed voice. “We’ll die for this.”

  “Go back, Neasa. You don’t have to do this,” Eloy whispered.

  Neasa looked down the path toward Nicanor’s camp. “I’m not going back.” Her words were quiet but strong.

  They walked behind the tute toward the fork in the road. The weathered sign sticking out of the joint in the wide dusty path looked like it had once had something carved on the sign—a town name perhaps—but now said everything it needed to say with the deep sword cuts marring whatever word used to be there. Wrapped around the post above the sign was a dingy yellow swatch of fabric blowing in the wind. Eloy focused on the flapping cloth. He had seen ones like it so many times before at the Bowl.

  “We won’t die for this,” Eloy said. “This is what we’re supposed to do, remember? Everything the Seer told us is true. He’s our way into the camp.”

  “She never said anything about me.”

  Eloy’s stomach tightened.

  “What are we supposed to do when we get there?” Neasa asked.

  “I’m not sure.”

  Neasa groaned.

  24

  The tute huffed his way down the dirt path toward the battle camp. He looked back over his shoulder every so often to see if Eloy still had his sword unsheathed and ready. The tute seemed to direct most of his wide-eyed looks of panic toward Neasa, and every time he did, she would look to Eloy in a silent effort to change the plan.

  The wordless walk made Eloy second-guess what he was doing. Had he seen a flash of something spoiled beneath the surface of the man he kept at sword point? His memory started to distort in a way that made him wonder if he had found the wrong man. The look of the man’s round cheeks, splotched with red from the exertion of the walk, didn’t calm Eloy’s doubts. Every few steps, the tute would let out a helpless whimper that made Eloy’s heartbeat quicken.

  Eloy couldn’t see the camp, but he could hear it. The sound of a large gathering, bigger than what he had heard in Valia and nowhere near as jovial. The three rounded a bend in the path, and then the camp was there. It felt abrupt, as if it had rushed up on them like a predator. The stone-stacked wall stretched out on either side of the road, its end lost somewhere in the distance among the trees. The only break in the wall waited at the end of their path. The gap looked wide enough for ten fighters to move through if they were shoulder to shoulder, but there wasn’t a horde of fighters there now. There was only one man on vetting duty.

  “What are you going to say?” Neasa asked in a raspy whisper against Eloy’s shoulder.

  “I’ll try to tell as few lies as I can,” Eloy whispered. “If I keep close to the truth, there’ll be less of a chance that they’ll realize we aren’t supposed to be here.” Eloy put his sword back in its sheathe.

  The man sitting at the mouth of the camp didn’t seem very concerned by their presence. He barely roused from his lounging state against a grooved-out chunk of rock. The young warrior’s attire was so familiar to Eloy, identical to the standard, nondescript tan he had seen all those years ago on those who had milled about the camp at the Bowl. The sight of the warrior made Eloy realize he was walking into the brain that controlled the body of aggression that had fractured his life by dividing his family years ago at the bridge next to the Bowl. The realization gave him a refreshed surge of purpose.

  The young warrior lifted his eyebrow.

  Eloy didn’t give the warrior a chance to speak. “The tute needs to see Nicanor.”

  “Well, okay, then,” the man said with a shrug.

  The sense of change was immediate once inside the camp. The main path branched off at regular intervals in what looked to be a precise grid. It took a moment for Eloy to identify what was so unsettling about the camp. There were no trees. Whatever had once grown there had been cut away long ago, like a scalp missing a chunk of flesh and hair. Rows and rows of tattered tents filled their absence. The draped fabric hanging across a taut line were the same as the ones Eloy remembered from the camp by the Bowl, a seemingly endless number of them. The people roaming around had the same aura of coldness, but he saw something about the warriors that hadn’t been in the people from the camp by the Bowl. These warriors walked with a slightly wilted look to their shoulders, their faces gaunt and the color around their eyes a little darker. No one seemed to give the tute and the two people walking closely behind him any attention.

  Eloy tried to scan the area for any signs of where Nicanor might be. The warriors around him looked too plain, their clothes too free of color, for them to be anything other than lower rungs of the operation. Eloy kept walking through the uneven ground of footprint-pocked mud that sucked at his feet with every step. He knew he had to keep a steady presence at the tute’s back. He couldn’t have his sword brandished amid a group of warriors of which he was not affiliated. He also couldn’t let the tute get the idea that he was being escorted by two people who didn’t belong. Eloy thought it would have been obvious given that neither Eloy nor Neasa wore the bland garb of the others, but the tute hadn’t seemed to put it together.

  Eloy followed the paths he thought might lead to the heart of the camp, but he had to turn himself around a few times. He felt sweat trickling from his underarms down his sides. People in the camp would notice him any minute. The patches of sweat seeping through his clothes would be enough to give him away, he was sure.

  “If you are trying to get us to Nicanor,” the tute said, “shouldn’t you be going toward the west peak to where he is?”

  “Of course,” Eloy said. “There were just a few things I had to check on first.”

  He shrugged at Neasa, her face tight with anger and fear. Even in her displeasure, her focus was on him. There was something else in her look under the anger and fear—support.

  Eloy scanned the skyline and spotted two rising hills above the tents before making his way toward the westernmost peak. The more they walked, the more the men and women around them exuded a sense of command, and Eloy could tell they were getting close.

  He couldn’t avoid the anxiety that slithered through his gut. He had walked himself into the heart of peril, and he knew it would only take one warrior to speak up and put him and Neasa both to death. Fighters passed. A few scanning Eloy and Neasa and their out-of-place clothing. Eloy kept his neck tall and his face relaxed.

  Act like you belong, he told himself. Act like you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be.

  The mental chanting didn’t relieve the waves of sickness that came with every assessing glance. But the looks never stayed on Eloy or Neasa for long. Anyone who saw the three only looked at the tute, and every person who did lowered their head in an acknowledgment of respect before continuing on their way.

  Once a tent lined with stiff-statured warriors came into view, Eloy had little doubt they had found the tent that held the leader of the yellow warriors. If anyone confronted them now, he would say his business was with Nicanor. The thought of meeting Nicanor face-to-face sprouted a new kind of sweat, a reaction of primal fear, but Eloy kept his feet moving toward the tent.

  Nicanor’s tent was fitting for his position, with its panels made of woven animal hide in place of the fabric and its weakness against the cold northern air. The tent was taller than the others, its poles made of thick and polished tree trunks, tied and leaning against one another in a masterful display of construction.

  Eloy tried to identify the entrance of the structure, but he couldn’t see any obvious indication of how to get inside. He moved in front of the tute and motioned to Neasa to stay at the tute’s back before moving toward one of the guarding warriors at random.

  “The tute needs to see Nicanor,” Eloy said to the warrior’s impassive face.

  “I’ll let him know.” The warrior looked at the two companions at his side and walked ten steps to a slit in the tent that wasn’t obvious until the warrior lifted the two sides
apart.

  The sounds of the camp seemed distant and muffled as they stood outside of the tent, waiting to be ushered inside. Eloy felt the space between his back and the tute’s front close, warming with the invasion of space. The tute’s breath was on the back of his neck for a long moment before the man whispered just loud enough for Eloy to hear him.

  “I don’t know what you think you’re doing or why you’re doing it,” the tute said, “but I’m looking forward to watching you slung up and cut just enough to bleed out slowly. I imagine they’ll do fun things with your companion as well. A spectacle most definitely worth the delay in my trip.”

  Eloy could feel pearls of sweat spring up at his temples, adding to the cold sweat of his panic. He held on to one calming fact—he no longer had any doubt that he had the right person. The hot hushed words that had brushed against the hairs at the back of his neck were poison-tipped. The man behind him had a core of menace and rage, and Eloy knew that was the key to why the Seer had him find and bring the tute all the way to Nicanor. But not knowing what to do next kept Eloy’s fear alive.

  The guard who had gone in poked his head out of the flap. “Come on,” the guard said and waved Eloy, Neasa, and the tute to enter.

  The inside of the tent was stuffy from the breath trapped within the thick animal skins, but the warmth was a comfort next to the cooling air of nightfall. The man standing fifteen strides from the entrance in the center of it all, flanked by at least twelve men and women adorned with badges and weapons, would attract attention whether he was in a lavish battle tent or a dusty cave.

  Nicanor wasn’t a thick man, as Eloy had expected, but lean and straight, elongated all the way from his legs through his neck. He was older than Eloy expected as well. The lines around his blue eyes were visible even from fifteen steps away. If any other lines etched his face, they were hidden by a neatly trimmed brown-and-white beard.