Warrior on the Edge of Memory (The Tale of Azaran Book 1)

by Zackery Arbela

  "I wouldn't know," Azaran responded. "This is the first forest I've ever seen."

  "How can you be sure about that?"

  "I'm sure there were others," Azaran said with a rueful grin, "but this is the first in all the ways that matter."

  Tereg was covered with forest, save for places like Otossa where men hacked out space for their dwellings. This close to the shore, the trees were mainly spindly pines or scrub oaks, few reaching higher than twelve feet. The ground beneath their feet was sandy, pale white to light brown in appearance, broken here and there by great slabs of stone shoved up from below. Flocks of brightly colored birds gathered in the highest branches, rising skywards as tiny monkeys with green fur and chittering voices scampered along the branches, screeching at the men below for having the temerity to enter into their domain. Game trails threaded through the place. Azaran recognized tracks for rabbit and wild pig, the knowledge appearing in his head as soon as his eyes saw the spoor. The air had the sharp tang of pine resin to it.

  "The ground isn't good for much," said Segovac. "Clear away the trees and you won't be able to grow much that is of use. No grain, no fruit. Those who lived off the land had a rough go of it. Roots, tubers, maybe take down the occasional boar. That's why no one much cared about this island in the past...there's nothing here worth fighting over."

  "Except its location," Azaran pointed out.

  "Well...yes, that. In the old days pirates might set up here. They'd last a few years, until one of the big cities of the south decided they'd had enough and sent a fleet up to burn them out. These days it's Enkilash who does the burning. Outside of Otossa this place is a wasteland."

  They'd been walking for half the day. It was late in the afternoon. The heat was starting to die down, though both men were still soaked with sweat. They stopped for a rest by one of the giant stone slabs rising from the ground, finding shelter in the shade. Azaran leaned back against the stone with relief, tracing his hand around the image of a round sea shell embedded in the rock. The detail was too great to have been carved by the hand of man...it looked as though the creature was frozen in the stone.

  "In my country," said Segovac, "there are hills to the north, where one can see the bones of strange beasts half-buried in cliff faces. Big creatures, tall as ten men, with teeth long as my arm."

  "What were they?"

  "No man can say, though many speculate. Some claim they are the remains of creatures from the days when the gods walked the earth alongside men. Others say they are the bones of demons, slain by the heroes of old, placed in the earth so that future generations may be reminded of their great deeds."

  "What do you think?"

  Segovac shrugged,. "I think we need water. Or the heat will do what Enkilash's men could not."

  Azaran pointed to the northwest. "There is a stream that way."

  "How do you know?"

  "I can hear it." Azaran stood and walked off in that direction. After a moment, Segovac forced himself back to his feet and went after. They went down a steep slope, holding slender saplings for support. Running along the bottom was a creek flowing over a stony bed. Azaran knelt down beside it and scooped up a handful of water.

  "Wait." Segovac looked about and plucked a few blue-colored berries from a nearby bush. He crushed them, dribbling the juice into the water. The water turned a pale blue, the juice swirling about in a widening inky cloud.

  "Drink from there," Segovac said, cupping his hands and pulling up a measure of blueish water.

  Azaran did the same. The water has a slightly bitter taste to it and left his mouth feeling like it was scrubbed.

  "The berries of the rasa bush have a unique property of making water safe to drink," Segovac explained, scooping up another drink. "The gods know who or what has been pissing in this creek."

  "Tastes foul."

  "Better than a belly ache, friend Azaran. In this heat it might kill you."

  They drank their fill. The creek bed was noticeably cooler than the higher ground. A soft breeze blew past. Both men sighed with relief.

  "Where are we going?" Azaran asked.

  "East...I think. Most of the camps are on the opposite side of the island, as far from Enkilash as they can get. Finding out which one Tavarus is in...well, that's a path we'll cross when it comes."

  "Will they have anything to eat?"

  "I should think so."

  Azaran looked downstream. Light glinted off the scales of small fish, darting about the creek bed. "We have water. We'll need food as well. You seem to know the land well..."

  "I know what rasa berries look like, they grow in every land. But this..." Segovac waved his hand about the spindly pines. "This is very different from my homeland."

  "I saw tracks for rabbits nearby."

  "Have you ever tried to catch a rabbit?"

  "Not to my knowledge," said Azaran. "But maybe it will come back to me..." His voice trailed off. He cocked his head towards the west, closing his eyes for a moment.

  "We're being followed," he said. "Men on foot...half a mile back. They have our trail."

  "We should run." Segovac stood.

  "They'll follow." Azaran rose up. "We'll be run down within a mile."

  "So we fight?"

  "I'll fight. You need to do something else."

  Orri the tracker ran his fingers along the ground. "They went this way," he said, tracing the outline of a footprint. "Two men, moving lightly."

  "Armed?" asked Ishkaal, standing by him and scratching furiously at his neck.

  "They took weapons from the Pit guards." The tracker stood, knocking dirt and dried leaves from his bare knees. "You should sound the horn."

  "Piss on that. I want the reward."

  The tracker held back his anger. A lifelong native of the island, he grown up running in the pine forests and could read them like a scribe with a scroll. To the pirates of Otossa he may as well have been a wild pig on two legs. "This way," he said, pointing east. "They will need water."

  Orri bounded ahead. Ishkaal stumbled after, his feet more used to a ships deck then these cursed woods. "Two hundred mina's of gold," he said, trying to keep up. "That's for the man who brings back Azaran's head. Two hundred...do you know how much that is?"

  Orri said nothing. He kept his eyes on the ground, stopping by a snapped twig. Fresh sap oozed from the branch.

  "A fortune ain't the word for it. The man with that kind of coin will be a king! Wine and a new woman every day. That's what I'll be getting, when I come back with his head. What say you to that?" Ishkaal waited for a reply. "Ah, you lot don't care.. Maybe if his lordship was paying in pigs..."

  "You talk to much." Orri looked back at him. "They'll hear you coming long before we see them."

  The trail continued toward a tall outcropping of rocks. As they approached, Segovac climbed to the top. "Good morning!" he called out. "Or is it afternoon? This time of year I can never tell."

  Ishkaal drew his sword. "That's the fellow what left with Azaran. Come down from there!"

  Segovac shook his head. "I rather like it up here. I think I'll stay."

  "Where is your friend? Tell me and I'll let you live."

  Segovac crossed his arms. "I'm supposed to tell you that Azaran left me behind. Ran off on his own. Left me behind to the tender mercies of you lot. Right about now, I should be falling to my knees and begging for my miserable life, giving all sorts of reasons why that would be a good idea."

  "Is there a reason for all this talk?" bellowed Ishkaal. "If I gotta come up there, I'll be killing you slow."

  Segovac smiled. "Do you not appreciate my rhetorical skills? I am a bit out of practice, but once upon a time I could keep a field of warriors spellbound with the power of my words. But yes, there is a reason for all this needless chatter. I'm trying to keep your attention on me."

  "What the hell for?" asked Ishkaal. Beside him, Orri reached for the sword at his side.

  "For this,” said Azaran, coming up behind them.

 
Both men spun about, just in time for Azaran to reach out and slam both their heads together. Both men dropped wordlessly to the ground.

  Segovac climbed down from the rocks. Azaran searched through the bag slung over the trackers shoulder. "Found some food," he said, pulling out a piece of biscuit, baked to the hardness of stone. "And a water bottle."

  "Anything on him?" Segovac asked, pointing at Ishkaal.

  Azaran looked at the fellow. "Nothing worth taking."

  Segovac knelt by the one of the men and felt at his neck. "Still alive," he said. "Do you want to do something about that?"

  Azaran frowned. He stood, placing a hand on his sword. Leave no witnesses to your passing, said the voice from the past.

  They are helpless, said the silent passenger. It is the act of a coward.

  "I...don't know...."

  Segovac nodded. "Leave them be then. We'll be long gone by the time either of those fellows wake.

  "They won't be alone." Azaran nudged a small horn hanging from Ishkaal's belt. "They are scouts. Others will come. We should leave now."

  Night came. They took shelter in another rocky outcropping, hunkering down between two huge slabs of dark brown stone shoved up from the earth. Both men gnawed at one of the biscuits, washing down each bite with mouthful of water from the canteen. No fire was lit, but the light of the full moon and the Mansion filled the forest with a soft glow that cast long black shadows.

  "Come morning," Azaran said, "we need to decide where to go. Do you have any idea where the nearest of these settlements might be?"

  "Not yet," Segovac answered. He stared at the remaining chunk of biscuit and set it aside. "Is this bread or have I gone mad and started eating stone?"

  "What do you mean, not yet?" Azaran pressed.

  “Keep an eye out," Segovac replied. He squatted on the ground, picking up a nearby twig and closing his eyes. A low hum came from his throat, slowly fading away to nothingness. His lips began to move, speaking silently in a language Azaran did not yet know, repeating the same phrase over and over. A chant, Azaran realized, or a prayer.

  He sat back and waited. Segovac traced a twig across the ground, drawing a spiral from the outside in, circling round and round, turning to the center. The humming began again, low at first, but slowly growing. His eyes opened, and Azaran stumbled back at the sight. The pupils were gone, his eyes glowed with a pale blue light, faint whispers of flame trickling out from the corners.

  Then he heard the voices in the distance. Shouts, tramping of feet, he saw the faint glow of torches. The voices grew louder. "This way!" someone yelled.

  Azaeran drew his sword and stood, back to the stone, ready to strike at a moments notice. The pursuers drew closer, closer, he could almost hear them breathing. They were on the other side of the rocks...his muscles tensed with energy, ready to strike.

  "Which way, blast you?" said an irritated voice.

  "Give me a moment..." someone else shifted about. "North! The trail leads north."

  "You are sure?"

  "Did I not say north?"

  "North it is! And the Great Mother's mercy if you are wrong!"

  The rocks echoed with footsteps, headed away, growing fainter, disappearing along with the torchlight, replaced only by the silence of the nighttime forest.

  Azaran squatted, keeping the sword out and an eye on Segovac. Time passed. Segovac stopping humming, his lips resuming their silent prayer. The twig continued to trace its spiral, pulling inward until finally it reached the center and stopped. His eyes closed. When they opened again a moment later the white glow was gone.

  "Is something wrong?" he asked, looking at the sword in Azaran's hand.

  "Nothing worth mentioning," came the reply.

  "Right...we stay here until dawn, then head southeast. A day's walk from here is an abandoned fishing village. That is where we must go."

  "And how do you know this?"

  "I've seen it." Segovac slumped on the ground, clearly exhausted. "I need to rest...that took a lot out of me..."

  "Was it magic?" Azaran asked, somewhat nervously. His friend had secrets. Dangerous ones.

  "I am a Rhennari. We have...gifts, you could call them, granted by Saerec, the one god above all. In my case it is the gift of divination."

  "You can see the future? That is a mighty gift indeed."

  "Not exactly. I can see how the future might be. The possibilities. In this case, determining where a single man will be within the next few days. He'll be near the shore...or at least it pleases Saerec to tell me that's where he will be."

  "Saerec sounds...strange."

  Segovac frowned. For a moment Azaran thought he might have given offense. "I suppose that's one way of putting it," Segovac finally allowed.

  Azaran squatted back down. He looked on Segovac with a new sense of respect. Not just a prisoner...a man with special gifts of his own. A thought then occurred to him. "You can see all possibilities, that's what you said."

  "If it pleases Saerec."

  "Then why didn't you escape before? Unless your god wanted you to stay?"

  Segovac pulled up a leg of his trousers in response. A line of calloused skin circled his leg just above the ankles. "Seeing the future doesn't count for much when the irons are about your legs," he said calmly. "Once on, they were never taken off, until the day they sent me to the Pit."

  "Makes sense." Azaran sat back down. "I apologize if I gave offense."

  "If you had, I'd tell you." With that, Segovac leaned back against a stone and closed his eyes.

  Breakfast the next day consisted of another hunk of stony biscuit, as well as a few flakes of dried fish Azaran found at the bottom of the bag. Azaran checked the tracks from the night before, all headed northward, with no sign they might be coming back. Segovac kicked dirt over the spiral and any other signs that marked the nights stay.

  They headed southwest, cutting across the center of the isle. The land grew more hilly. They avoided hill tops and ridge crests, anything that might make them stand out against the sky, a sure sign to any trackers on the hunt. Though there was no sign of the pursuit from the day before.

  Just after midday they came across the first abandoned settlement. Half a dozen wattle houses, their roofs gone save for a few stray pieces of thatch clinging to the poles. A few broken pots were scattered about the weedy ground. The remnants of a fence surrounded the place, broken in several places. Lying on the ground by one of the posts were a pair of broken arm bones. There was no sign of the body it had once been attached too.

  Both men walked into the place. A sapling grew in the doorway of what had once been the largest house. Birds chirped at them from the branches.

  Azaran's eyes swept the place, assessing what he saw, knowing without understanding why or how. "Five, maybe seven people in all," he said, walking over to a patch of ground slightly darker than the rest. A few bones poked up from the dirt, long picked clean of any meat, "They kept pigs. Gone for some time though."

  "Years." Segovac picked up one of the broken pots, turning it about in his hand to show the faded rosette pattern painted along the side. "Enkilash's men came to this place with an offer. Abandon their home and move to Otossa. Or die with their pigs. Any who said no were cut to pieces."

  "Was he that desperate for men to crew his ships?"

  "Yes, in part. But there was something going on as well. There were other ways to get men and those who came in from the villages wouldn't be much use as sailors until they spent some time in a ship. Much easier to recruit from ships passing by or from ports to the south. Plenty of men with a taste for violence would come on their own once they heard of it. No, I think he did this because he could. He lost his home, his family and all the works of his hands. Why should these," Segovac waved his hand across the village, "be spared the same?"

  "That makes no sense. Why would he care?"

  "Ask him, if you get the chance."

  They took an hour's rest, sitting on one of the abandoned houses. Azaran
tried to imagine what it was like. A hard life by any measure, backbreaking and tiresome. Up at dawn, work until dusk, eating only what they could pull from the forest. Maybe slaughter one of the pigs. Why wouldn't they take Enkilash's offer? Leave behind the forest, the poor soil and labor, head to Otossa and a life of excitement, living off the plunder they stole by the strength of their arms...

  But those arm bones suggested the folk here did refuse. Given the option of a hard life here or a soft life under Enkilash, at least one said no and paid a hard price.

  It's not much. But it was their own. The silent passenger offered its opinion.

  Their own. A miserable place...but it was theirs. Azaran thought on this. He didn't have a place of his own, so far as he could remember. Was there a place that the man he was called home? Where there people waiting for him, wondering where Azaran had gotten too? Friends, comrades? Wife mourning her husband, children wanting their father?

  For some reason, Azaran found that thought disturbing, to the point that his heart began to race. Wife...children...family...fear, terror, anxiety. He forced the ideas from his mind, closed his eyes and clenched his teeth, waiting for his heart to slow down.

  "Are you all right?"

  "Fine," Azaran said through gritted teeth. He let out a sign, his heartbeat returning to normal. "Just...something I ate."

  "Those biscuits." Segovac nodded in sympathy. "They taste like rocks."

  Azaran grunted. Something across the way caught his attention. "What is that?" he asked, pointing at a strange clay figurine half-hidden under a pile of old pine needles.

  Segovac picked up it, clearing away debris. "An idol," he said. It was shaped like a woman, with a round belly, round breasts and a head featuring a pair of curving birds wings rising from the top. The eyes were rough holes, and the mouth shaped like a smile.

  "To which god?"

  "I have no idea. Not of Eburrea though." He set the idol down carefully. "People came to Tereg from all lands and they brought their gods with them. Best treat them all with respect."