“Klavin,” he stated, “I know you don’t want to be teaching me, and I know you are taking that frustration out on me by punishing my body, but think about this. There may come a time soon when I am at your back in battle. It might be my blade between you and some opponent you can’t see. I don’t ever expect to be a warrior of your caliber, but I do want to learn to handle myself. I need your help to do that. Will you train me?”
Klavin stood for a long time staring at the boy. Finally, he nodded.
“Alright, lad, I’ll train you,” he said. “Don’t think that means the bruises will stop though. You aren’t going to learn without feeling your mistakes. If you are serious about learning, I will make you learn, but trust me, you will be sleeping well every night.”
“Thank you,” Rejji said as he picked up his wooden sword and held it before himself with two hands.
Klavin was true to his word and he taught Rejji until the evening meal. Rejji was bruised anew, but the new bruises represented Rejji’s mistakes and not punishment from Klavin. Klavin nodded approvingly when Rejji suggested more practice after the evening meal and they returned to the field and continued training.
By the time Rejji returned to the command center from the practice field, he was dead on his feet. As sore as he was, he did not stop at Gregnic’s hut, but went straight to the meeting room and stretched out on the floor. He was vaguely aware of Wyant checking on him and locking the door and he thought he saw Mistake again that night, but he wasn’t sure if it was a dream or not.
The days began to blur together as Rejji spent every free moment training with the giant. Klavin was indeed a good warrior and a good trainer. After the fifth day, Rejji was able to stay awake after he reached the meeting room and he found out that Mistake had been visiting him every night. He also found out that she was stealing food out of the storage sheds and had managed to acquire some throwing daggers with arm and leg sheaths. Before Rejji knew it, his two weeks had gone by.
“You said two weeks,” Mistake complained as they sat in the dark corner farthest from the door. “Now you want more time? I knew you would not leave.”
“Just a little bit more,” pleaded Rejji. “I have just started to learn to ride a couple of days ago. I could not acquire knowledge this quickly anywhere other than here. What is wrong with me learning to take care of myself?”
“It is not the learning,” Mistake stated. “I think you are beginning to enjoy your life here. Have you forgotten your pledge to help me find the Sage?”
“Of course not,” protested Rejji, “but surely that search can wait another two weeks. You have been looking for years already. What does it matter if we take a little bit longer?”
“And at the end of two more weeks, then what?” she pouted. “You will ask for yet another two weeks. No, Rejji, it is time for me to go. I want you to come with me, but I think you have found a new home here. Soon you will be pillaging villages with the rest of them.”
“That is unfair,” Rejji began, but he stopped when he heard footsteps coming down the hall. “Out quickly!”
Mistake swiftly climbed the rope while Rejji moved to the spot in the wall where he could listen.
“Are the preparations made?” Wyant asked.
“They are,” Brakas replied. “I still don’t like the idea of taking everyone with us. What if they decide to ambush us once we are on the road?”
“If they can ambush our entire tribe, then what does it matter?” retorted Wyant. “They are strong enough now to walk all over us. Our only hope of survival would be to band with the other tribes.”
“But here we have the fortress,” Brakas complained. “It is a very defensible place.”
“Yes it is,” agreed Wyant, “but it is not impregnable. And if we only took a portion of the troops we would be setting ourselves up for just that. I am already leery about the Jiadin holding this meeting on sacred ground. Something smells to me.”
“You think it is a trap?” questioned Brakas.
“I do,” answered the Zaldoni leader. “The Jiadin have broken every agreement the tribes have made. They have attacked villages in our territory as well as others. Now they appear to have set up camp in the sacred lands, where no tribe is to be. If this is not a ploy to put all tribes under the Jiadin, I’ll eat my horse.”
“Then why go at all?” asked Brakas.
“Because we need to show strength to the other tribes,” explained Wyant. “I am hoping to convince some of them to join with us in opposing the Jiadin.”
“If Grulak finds out about that he will attack us for sure,” commented Brakas.
“Then he had best not find out,” frowned Wyant. “By the way, Rejji is not coming with us.”
“So you do think he is a spy then?” questioned Brakas.
“No, I don’t,” answered Wyant. “He has trained hard to be one of us and Klavin says he has learned well and swiftly. It is his desire for revenge against the Jiadin that troubles me. To take him there would be too tempting for any man to resist and it would expose our entire tribe to danger. I like the young lad, but I am going to turn him loose in the morning when we leave. Perhaps he will rejoin us someday in the future.”
“Makes sense I guess,” Brakas responded. “Vandegar Temple is not the place for us to start a fight.”
Chapter 6
Rocky Road
“It sure would be nice to have that gold Brontos gave you,” needled Mistake, “or at least something other than my daggers to get food with.”
“The villagers gave us what they thought they could spare,” replied Rejji. “You are just looking for an excuse to start stealing again.”
“It would have been easy, Rejji,” she grumbled. “They weren’t even watching me.”
“We will find another village or some travelers we can ask for food,” Rejji promised. “Maybe I can find some work at the next village and pick up a few gold coins.”
“Maybe,” Mistake frowned, “but we have been a week on the road now and haven’t seen any other travelers and the villagers are suspicious of everyone.”
“Can’t say as I blame them,” responded Rejji. “If Wyant was right about the Jiadin gathering all the tribes together, Fakara is going to become a much more dangerous place than it has been.”
“It never has been safe,” Mistake pointed out. “You have lived in a idealistic world, Rejji. Outside your little village, people have been robbed and murdered daily. That is the way of this world. You take what you can get and guard it from others.”
“Well that is just stupid,” Rejji stated. “If people worked together, there would be more for everyone. Our village survived because we shared everything. Nobody was left to fend for themselves.”
“And where are they now?” Mistake blurted out and immediately regretted it.
Rejji halted on the trail and stared at Mistake. “The people who attacked our village will pay for it,” he promised. “If all the young men of the villages weren’t running off to join the bandits, the tribes would think twice about attacking the villages. Somebody has to stand up to them.”
“I am sorry, Rejji,” apologized Mistake. “I shouldn’t have brought that up, but you should not believe that everyone is good at heart either. While all of the tribes are bandits, not all bandits are members of the tribes. There are other bad people in this world. Someone will always be there to take what is yours, tribesmen or not.”
“There are a lot of good people too,” countered Rejji. “Those villagers this morning didn’t have to give us anything, but they did, and they don’t even know us.”
“True,” admitted Mistake, “but that has not been my experience in the past.”
“Of course not,” chuckled Rejji as he started walking again. “You never bothered to ask.”
“All right, Rejji,” she smiled, “I am willing to try it your way, but I am still hungry.”
As they rounded the next bend in the trail, four men stood blocking their path. Rejji and Mistake halted
and gazed at the men who were brandishing swords. They wore no markings of any tribe, but they did not look friendly.
“You are trespassing,” declared a tall lean man. “Do you have gold to pay the fee?”
Mistake’s hand hovered near the dagger on her belt as she asked, “Do you have any food to spare, good sirs?”
The men laughed and Mistake heard laughter coming from behind her as well. She stole a glance behind her and saw two more men on the path they had just walked down.
“We have no gold,” Rejji stated. “We didn’t know we were trespassing and we offer our apologies. If you will point out the shortest path off your land, we will be gone swiftly.”
“Your hand goes any nearer to that dagger girl and you will have one less arm,” sneered the tall lean man. “Why don’t you remove it and drop it on the trail before one of boys thinks you plan on using it.”
Mistake looked at Rejji and when he nodded she dropped her dagger to the ground.
“That’s a good girl,” grinned the tall lean man, which Mistake now assumed to be the leader. “It’s a long ways off our land and would take you days on foot, so we will give you a ride so you aren’t tempted to stray further into it.”
Mistake sensed the men behind her coming closer and started to turn when she felt the blow to her head.
When Mistake came to, she was in a wagon made into a cage and Rejji was holding her. There were other people in the cage as well and Mistake could see three more such wagons behind them. There were at least twenty riders accompanying the wagons from what she could see.
“What happened?” Mistake asked.
“They don’t like us talking,” Rejji whispered. “I assume the men behind us hit us over the head. I woke up just a few minutes ago. I guess they found a lot of trespassers.”
“They are slavers,” whispered an old woman next to them. “You give them any trouble and they’ll cut you just as soon as look at you. They been working these trails for over a year, but I never expected they would come into the village.”
“How do you know they are slavers?” Rejji asked.
“My husband was killed by them,” the woman cried. “They said nobody would buy him cause he lost a leg a while back and they didn’t want no cripples.”
“Quiet in there,” shouted one of the riders. “Keep your traps shut or I’ll shut them for you.”
Rejji looked at the people in the cage with him. Most of them were old and over half of them were women. There was one small boy around ten years old and another that Rejji figured was a year or two younger than himself. The older boy had a wild, ragged look about him and he stared constantly out the back of the wagon. The boy intrigued Rejji because his clothes appeared to be all animal skins like Mistake’s. Everyone else was dressed like normal villagers with mostly clova wool garments. Many of the people appeared to be sleeping and nobody spoke.
Mistake caught Rejji’s attention and showed him that she still had the daggers in her arm and leg sheaths. Rejji looked around the wagon again to see if there was anyone else who might still possess a weapon, but he didn’t see anyone who was likely to.
The trail they followed was well used and they headed mostly westward. Several stops were made to add more people, but none of them were put in Rejji’s wagon. The caravan rode mostly in silence, but the driver of the wagon behind them cursed loudly at times and used his whip on the horses when they didn’t follow at the desired distance. He didn’t appear to know much about handling horses, Rejji judged. Rejji’s wagon always slowed smoothly for stops, but the wagon behind them often jolted with the horses continuing along until they almost bumped into Rejji’s wagon. The driver would then apply his whip and try to pull the horses back.
When they stopped at night, the slavers would take the prisoners out one at a time to relieve themselves and then pass out pieces of stale bread, a bucket of water, and a cup. It was the only time anyone was allowed out of the cages. Even if Rejji could get away, there was no way that he could do so with Mistake and he was not going to leave her behind. It was doubtful that he could even succeed at it in any event. What Rejji did discover was that there were only a couple of guards at night and they were usually too far away to hear people talking.
Mistake tried picking the lock on the cage door at night with one of her daggers but was unsuccessful. After a few days, the prisoners tended to stay awake and talk at night, while trying to sleep during the day. Sleeping during the day was difficult, as the trail grew rougher the closer they got to the Fortung Mountains.
One day they stopped to add more prisoners to the cages. As usual, the wagon behind Rejji’s had come too close while stopping. When the slavers brought an old man to Rejji’s wagon, the horses spooked and rose up. It appeared the horses would come down and crush the old man and the slavers dove out of the way. The old man stood there, frightened for his life. The older boy in animal skins, who had been silent the entire journey, started making strange noises. To Rejji’s amazement, the horses remained on their rear legs and actually backed up before coming down, sparing the old man’s life.
Nobody seemed to have tied the horses’ actions to the sounds the boy made, but Rejji knew there was a connection. That night he moved next to the boy and started to engage him in conversation.
“What was that you did today to save the man’s life?” Rejji asked.
The boy glanced at Rejji and then returned to gazing out the back of the wagon.
“I guess either you can’t talk or don’t wish to,” surmised Rejji. “I will respect your wishes, but I wanted you to know that I appreciate what you did for the man. You truly saved his life.”
Rejji patted the boy on the shoulder and was going to return to his spot next to Mistake when the boy spoke.
“Why do you care what happens to him?” the boy asked. “You do not appear to know him.”
Rejji stared at the boy and immediately sat down next to him.
“No, I have never seen him before,” admitted Rejji. “That does not mean I should not try to save his life as you did. Why wouldn’t I save a stranger if I could? We all need looking after at one time or another in our lives. I am just glad you had the ability to make a difference. I would not know how to do whatever it is you did.”
“It is bad enough the horses have to suffer the driver they have,” stated the boy. “He is a man that should not be allowed near animals. If the old man had died, they would have taken it out on the horses.”
Rejji’s jaw dropped as he realized the boy had acted to save the animals from harm and not the old man.
“You like animals very much I guess,” offered Rejji. “I guess I should be doubly thankful to you. For you not only saved the old man’s life, but you saved the horses too.”
“Animals are pure,” the boy declared. “They do not know greed and hatred as man does. When they must kill, they do so swiftly and efficiently and do so only for food or to protect their young. Man kills because he likes to.”
“Your words are sad but true, my friend,” nodded Rejji. “My name is Rejji. What are you called?”
The boy smiled at finding someone who understood things as he did. “My name is Bakhai,” he grinned. “You are not like the others. You understand the evil of man.”
“I have seen more of it than I care to,” agreed Rejji, “but there are many people who are kind and generous too. I guess you have not run into many of them though. Where are you from?”
“I lived in the Giaming Mountains mostly,” Bakhai said. “There are many animals there and it is peaceful. I should have stayed there instead of trying to become accepted by those who look like me.”
“You mean you live with the animals?” asked Rejji. “What of your parents?”
“I do not have parents,” Bakhai answered. “The animals are my family. It has always been so.”
“Then who taught you to speak?” inquired Rejji.
“I spent time in many villages,” Bakhai frowned. “I was trying to find others li
ke myself. At first the people were friendly and took me in. They taught me their ways and language, but always they ended up chasing me away. They did not like me talking to the other animals. They said I was possessed, a spawn of evil. Then they would chase me with their weapons or their farm implements. Whatever they could find to hit me with. I do not like people.”
“This happened more than once?” questioned Rejji.
“Many villages I went to,” nodded Bakhai. “All were the same. I was going home when these people caged me.”
“Is that what you did with the horses?” Rejji asked. “You spoke to them? Did they understand you?”
“Of course they understand,” Bakhai stated. “Why would I talk to them if they did not understand me? Can you not talk to the animals?”
“No,” Rejji replied. “I wish I could, but I wouldn’t know how to begin.”
“You would really want to?” Bakhai grinned. “You do not think I am possessed?”
“Possessed?” Rejji asked. “Of course not. You have a rare talent and should be proud of it. We should all use the talents we were given to make things better for everyone. At least you know what your talent is. I have yet to find mine.”
“You are unlike any human I have met,” smiled Bakhai. “I like you. When we get out of this cage, I would like to come visit your village.”
Sadness fell over Rejji’s face as he thought of his village. He wondered if perhaps Bakhai had the truth of it after all. What other creature besides man would destroy a village for no reason?
“I have no village,” declared Rejji, “but I would love to see your home when we get free. Mistake and I were headed for the Giaming Mountains when we were captured. She seeks the Sage of the Mountain. Have you heard of him?”
“I have never heard of such a person,” answered Bakhai, “but you will like my home. The girl can come too. Why does she have such a strange name?”
“I guess because she has had experiences like yours,” sighed Rejji. “You speak truth about people being cruel. They really are not all like that though and finding a good one is worth the effort.”
Web of Deceit Page 7
