The Trials of Caste

by Joel Babbitt

  His yearlings; yes, his yearlings. He thought of them as his, and felt as proud of them as their own parents did. Each one who had not completed the training hurt his heart. Despite the low numbers of male whelps that had been conceived fifteen years before in that year of famine and drought, and who had then survived the orc raid now six years in the past, Manebrow would not bow to the pressure some members of the council put on him to lower his standards. In his mind, to lower the standard and cheapen the accomplishment of becoming a warrior would only serve to weaken the gen, and thereby make their gen an easy target for marauding orcs. To accept less than the best into the warrior ranks was to court disaster.

  Tired now, Manebrow placed his axe back in the rack on the cavern wall that their tent was built against. He carefully wrapped the sharpening stone in a cleaning rag and placed it in one of the pouches on his belts. Checking his equipment one last time, he went back to bed. Putting his cares aside for now, he was eventually able to sleep.

  The next morning Ki would look upon his gear, configured now for a trip to somewhere dangerous, and his carefully sharpened axe, and without a word being spoken she would know that their calm life was about to be shattered.

  Section II – The Trials of Caste

  Chapter 14 – The Trials Begin

  Durik’s uncle Drok shook him. “Awaken, young one. It is time,” his uncle said quietly. Durik rolled over and looked glassy eyed at the bright, white form standing next to his bed; the all too familiar heat signature of his uncle, standing in the darkness of the cool, black room.

  “Uhn…” Durik muttered as he blinked, still somewhat groggy from the night’s events, though sleep had washed away the tension of it all for the moment.

  “Hmm… eloquent as usual, I see.” His uncle laughed as Durik wiped spittle from his jaw. “Well, come. Wake up and come eat. It’s going to be a long day, may as well start it.”

  Durik grunted and rolled off the cot onto the cool floor, wincing at the sudden sensation from the cold stone. He preferred sand, but he was lucky to have a room at all, much less one to himself. It was a luxury few whelps had, and proof of his uncle Drok’s deep affection for his orphaned nephew and niece. For six years Durik and his little sister Darya had lived in their uncle Drok’s tent, ever since the orc raid that had left them orphaned. His parents, seeing their escape cut off, had hid him and his sister under a pile of straw so that the orcs wouldn’t see them. He could still remember stumbling over the cold bodies of his parents many hours later after the orcs had looted the entire cavern area. He had cried until there were no more tears to cry. His little sister had wailed uncontrollably for days.

  Their uncle Drok and his lifemate were childless and had taken them both in, always treating Durik and Darya as though they were their own whelps, and the two young kobolds loved them as though they were their own parents. To Drok, seeing Durik and his completely bronze scales reminded him much of his older brother, who like their father had had completely bronze scales. The rest of Durik’s grandfather’s descendants, Darya included, only had bronze tips on their otherwise rust red scales, taking more after their grandmother who was of Kale Gen descent.

  Durik shook the memory of that horrible day from his fuzzy mind as he stood and stretched. On the other side of the tent wall, in the chamber that served as a kitchen and living area for his uncle’s family, he could see the bright light of a small fire starting. Quickly he put on a fresh loincloth and his belt, and pushed aside the flap door into the living area. Karial, his uncle’s lifemate, was tending to the fire. Durik sat down and watched as she took a large chunk of shelf fungus and broke it into smaller pieces, throwing them one at a time into a small copper pot full of water. Durik watched for a minute, then stood up and stretched, shaking out his arms and legs, getting his blood flowing as he thought about the day’s events. After a minute, his uncle returned through another flap in the wall of the living area tent, followed by a still very sleepy young female.

  “Do they have to start so early? The first gong hasn’t even sounded,” complained the young kobold, hiding her muzzle deeper in the blanket she had wrapped around herself. “I’m still sleepy.”

  “Good morning, Darya!” Durik said with a sudden burst of energy. “How’s my little sister this day?”

  She looked at him with a sleepy grimace, which turned slowly into a smile. “Not so little any more! If we’re going to get up this early, you better take the cup!”

  Durik laughed. “Just for you, little sister. Just for you. Now, come, sit next to me and tell me about this whelp I’ve seen you with out in the meadow in the evenings,” Durik joked.

  Together they sat and ate shelf mushroom stew and talked of life. When they finished Durik stood, gathered his equipment from his chamber and joked that Darya wouldn’t even know how he’d done, being too busy watching Keryak.

  Darya didn’t answer. Instead she blushed and waved goodbye, her eyes gleaming with love and hope.

  Lord Karthan sat groggily looking at the bowl of roots, tubers, and stewed meat that a servant had placed on the table in his personal chambers. As his mind came into more full alertness, he wrestled it away from thoughts of insurrection to the task at hand for the day; the Trials of Caste.

  Lord Karthan had never had to undergo the trials. He had been born into his position as the only son of his father, then lord of the gen. Not having undergone the trials did not mean that he was a stranger to hard training and discipline, however. For many generations, the eldest son of a council member had the right to take his father’s place on the council. This tradition was deeply set and was only broken when there was no son to take his father’s place. This had given the leader caste the opportunity to slacken in the training of their whelps. It had made them weak and left them unchallenged.

  Lord Karthan’s father had set a standard among the leader caste when he had made a position for an elite warrior trainer for the whelps of the twenty four council members who were the leader caste and forced their first sons to undergo two years of combat training, which was above what all the other sons of the leader caste or the common castes had to endure. Young Karthan had been in the first group to enter the training.

  If there was one thing his father had tried to pound into his head, it was that you can’t lead someone where you aren’t willing to go yourself. So, he had forced young Karthan to lead the way and thereby guaranteed, through his son, that this change in culture for the leader caste would remain long after his son took charge of the gen.

  Before he had died, Lord Karthan’s father had taken this path to its logical conclusion. He had taken away the special status of the leader caste’s whelps, making all males in the gen undergo the Trials of Caste. He then began replacing council members as they died with elite warriors, breaking the walls down between the castes, making promotion to the leader caste merit based. It was scandalous and after a full generation the echoes of that controversy still resonated among some. But by the time young Karthan became Lord of the Gen in his father’s place, it was a stable, perhaps even well established tradition. Young Lord Karthan had made the mistake of not following that precedence once, however, as Khee-lar Shadow Hand had become leader caste by being the younger brother of Lord Karthan’s lifemate, an action that Lord Karthan had come to regret.

  Lord Karthan looked back on his younger days with mixed emotions. They were simpler days, that much was true, but they were also times of much turmoil in his life as he struggled to come to grips with who he was and who he wanted to become. The events of his life had defined him; two years of training, the joining to his lifemate Kiri, killed six years ago now in the orc raid, the birth of their whelps Kiria, barely fifteen, and their two much younger sons, Karto and Lat, and the pressures and stress that accompanied his position as lord of the gen.

  After six years, and much speculation about who would take Kiri’s place, Lord Karthan remained unmated. This did not mean that he had ceased to care about family life. The lessons he ha
d learned in their union, and the lessons he continued to learn through being a father, helped define his character as he sought to build a better future not only for his whelps, but for all who would work with him to ensure the future of their gen.

  Now more than fifteen years after becoming Lord of the Kale Gen, Lord Karthan felt that he knew himself well and, more than that, he felt that he had finally gotten to a point where he was fully comfortable with the direction that he was taking the gen and with the laws and traditions that he had instituted. Yes, there had been and continued to be insurrection, but he had hopes that the gen would get past it. Perhaps, he mused optimistically, the infiltrator’s failed assassination attempt and Trelkar’s self-imposed exile would end the insurrection that was brewing, and there would be no more during his rule. He wasn’t counting on it, however, and had already made plans to safeguard his family again. After all, he didn’t have the Kale Stone yet, and so the insurrections would go on, for his were a fractious people.

  The more he thought about it, his decision to give the yearlings the quest to find the Kale Stone seemed more and more to fit into the direction he had set for the gen. Indeed, he was quite happy with himself for having made that decision despite the further divisions it had caused among the council members.

  Finishing the stew, Lord Karthan soon exited his room and saw that all was in order, despite the tired eyes of many of his warriors. Not long after, Lord Karthan left for the arena, flanked by Khazak Mail Fist and a contingent of the warriors of his bodyguard. Knowing the treachery that was afoot, the guards formed something of a perimeter around their lord, his still somewhat sleepy daughter Kiria, and his two overly excited young sons, Karto and Lat.

  Kyro grumbled as he pulled the cart through the next patch of sand, helped only nominally by the handful of elite warriors from his warrior group. They may have been dressed as servant caste for some reason or another, but as the only true servant caste in the group they seemed content to let him struggle with the cart mostly by himself.

  “Come on, now, put your back into it.” The new elite warrior whom he’d not seen before this morning looked at him struggling with the cart and instead of helping decided to offer useless advice. But Kyro was a servant caste, and so was careful not to let too much of his frustration show.

  Behind him in the cart the large barrel full of wooden weapons for the Trials of Caste rolled from one side of the cart to the other, knocking the cart and Kyro about with its sudden shift.

  “Ah, here, you two,” the new elite warrior said, waving at a couple of the other elite warriors, both of which were dressed as servant caste as well. “Help this lesser caste,” he said condescendingly.

  Kyro grimaced and pushed, helped suddenly past that patch of sand then left to push by himself along the flat area of stone beyond it. My son Keryak better not be as arrogant as these idiots, he thought, not daring to say such a thing out loud.

  “Hurry up!” the new elite warrior urged between gritted teeth. Behind Kyro a couple of the elite warriors apparently figured out that Kyro pushing a cart alone simply could not move as fast as the rest of the group, which carried nothing. Suddenly Kyro felt them put their weight into pushing the cart along as well.

  Kyro wondered why the charade; all this just to deliver a barrel of sticks? And these sticks were obviously of inferior quality. Kyro couldn’t imagine that the trainers would do anything but ignore this barrel full of practice weapons…

  Sighing, Kyro pushed until they came to the arena doors, open now and guarded by a couple of warriors from Lord Karthan’s Honor Guard Warrior Group.

  “Barrel of practice weapons for the arena,” the new elite warrior said. The pair of warriors waved the group in without any further inspection. Once inside they all pushed the cart along through the hard-packed sand of the lower chambers, eventually coming out into the arena.

  All about the scouting competition part of the arena various warriors and servant caste from the Honor Guard were putting keys into obstacles, starting up fires to burn the chemicals two of the obstacles required, and conducting final checks on the ropes and ladders that the yearlings would soon be climbing.

  “Over there, just under the trainers’ stand,” the new elite warrior commanded.

  As one, the entire group pushed the wagon through the sand until they reached the base of the trainers’ stand. Offloading the weapons barrel with a heave, they stood for a moment breathing hard and observing the rest of the arena, all except for Kyro who stood looking at the odd assortment of warped sticks in the barrel that seemed very heavy for what it contained.

  “That’s the room over there?” one of the elite warriors asked, pointing toward a small door tucked into the base of the raised stands where all the spectators would soon be sitting. “How will we see the Trials, then?”

  “See, it’s got a slot in the door,” another offered.

  “Good thing we won’t have to spend all day in it, though I wish we wouldn’t have to miss the scouting trial.”

  “Here,” the new elite warrior caught their attention. “Take the bag of clothes over to that closet and keep your mouths shut. The rest of you,” he said looking about, “you need to get back to your families. All should look as normal. Remember, no word of this to anyone,” he said, looking fiercely at Kyro.

  Kyro meekly nodded. He hoped that this whole charade was all about some surprise for the Trials of Caste, maybe some sort of show or another. It didn’t really make sense why the barrel of sticks… In his heart Kyro doubted it was anything so innocent, and a sudden thought, a memory of what he’d overheard between Trelkar of the Deep Guard and his own leader caste Raoros Fang a week ago, now left him feeling unsettled.

  The elite warriors all left quickly, the new elite warrior leading the way. Soon, Kyro was struggling to pull the empty wagon back to the caverns of the Wolf Riders alone.

  Durik and Keryak wandered along the halls of the gen, laughing and joking about things that had happened during the year of training; Durik inwardly feeling the stress yet outwardly seemingly unconcerned as they both tried to cope with the immense pressure of the trials through levity.

  “Father?” Keryak said as a hand cart with a servant caste struggling along at the pushbar approached. Kyro looked up at the two yearlings.

  “Ah… Keryak… and Durik,” Kyro panted as he raised his head.

  Keryak jumped to the other side of the push bar while Durik put his shoulder to the left wheel that was dragging a long rut through the sand. Suddenly the empty cart was easy to push again, and Keryak’s father looked up in muted appreciation.

  “What’s wrong, father?” Keryak asked, seeing his father was still wearing the mask of worry he’d had ever since Keryak had returned from the underdark. “You look so worried lately. You should be happy! I’ll be a warrior today.”

  Kyro nodded and tried to smile, but shook his head instead. “Ah, the uppers have been at it again,” he said to try to dismiss Keryak’s concerns. His son had enough to worry about without him adding rumors of insurrection on top of it.

  “What do you mean?” Durik asked as he grabbed the bar next to Kyro.

  “Oh nothing, really,” Kyro said, but it was obvious to both yearlings that it really was something. After a moment of Durik staring at him as they both pushed, obviously not accepting his explanation, Kyro got flustered. “Alright, alright. Troll brought in some new elite warrior. He and a bunch of the other elite warriors from our warrior group were acting strange this morning.”

  Durik could tell that Kyro wasn’t telling them everything. “Raoros Fang has been acting strange as well, wouldn’t you say?”

  Keryak saw what Durik was trying to do and jumped in to help, but said more than he intended to. “Does this have anything to do with Trelkar wanting to take over the gen?”

  Kyro looked at Keryak in sudden realization. “How do you know about that? What has Raoros told you?”

  Keryak shook his head. “He’s not told me anything, but Dur
ik and I found out a lot more than he wanted us to know I think.”

  Durik nodded, inwardly struggling with how much he should say. They’d said a lot already, however, but Kyro was clearly a friend. “He asked me to go to the lower caverns where the hot mud is, and to watch for someone gathering poison from the Fang Cap mushrooms, and to bring the mushrooms to him as proof. I’d never been to that cavern, so I asked Keryak to show me the way.”

  “And we found Spider harvesting poisonous spores from the mushrooms,” Keryak said in a low voice. “We followed him and saw him try to give the poison to Trelkar of the Deep Guard.” A family of kobolds were coming up the passageway on their way to the arena; the first of many families that would shortly be traversing this path.

  “No!” Kyro said after waiting for the family to turn the corner. “Last week Trelkar of the Deep Guard came to talk with Raoros Fang saying something about overthrowing Lord Karthan.”

  “Our Wolf Rider leaders are in league with… Trelkar?” Keryak asked.

  “I don’t know about that!” Kyro said, a bit taken aback by the whole revelation. “Raoros did not promise anything to Trelkar, other than to keep it a secret. And I can’t imagine Troll is involved in anything so nefarious; he’s not that bright!”

  “Troll came to me last night and threatened my family if I don’t help him kill Lord Karthan when the time comes,” Durik grimaced.

  “What!” both Keryak and his father said as they looked dumbfounded at Durik.

  Durik nodded. “It’s true. Raoros has been acting strange, and Troll is definitely involved in trying to overthrow Lord Karthan.”