“That’s good to hear. They were a bit worried that they damaged you. Most people don’t stay unconscious for long,” the redhead said with a look of indifference upon her face. “I suspect that you were tired and actually regained consciousness just long enough to go to sleep.”
“I was tired,” Caleb agreed, but his thoughts were focused on her earlier words. “Who was worried about me?”
“You don’t know what kind of trouble you’ve gotten yourself into, do you?” she asked with a raised eyebrow. When he looked even more confused, she sighed. “Those highwaymen that you encountered are not the type of criminals that you think they are. They rob anyone who has the coin to satisfy them. Anyone who doesn’t have the coin is beaten. If they don’t die, then those thugs normally take them prisoner. I heard the boss of these thugs tell the one who captured you that we were going to get moving soon. Apparently, we’re going to the Isle of Akabar to be sold.”
Caleb’s eyes grew cold as he heard that last part. “We are going to be sold as slaves?”
“Yeah, that’s correct,” she answered with a downtrodden look. “If you’ll look behind us, you’ll see a dozen others. They, like me, will be sold at one of the markets there. You, on the other hand, will probably be sold to the arena that was built there. The ones that captured you spoke highly of your fighting capabilities. It would make you a very valuable slave. After all, anyone can do physical labor.”
A momentary glance behind him showed Caleb that there were seven men and five women clothed like him and the girl that he was talking to. “We aren’t going to be sold as slaves,” Caleb stated with a fire in his eyes.
“That’s what I tell myself every day,” she said softly, her look of indifference slipping to reveal fear. “They captured me a few weeks ago, and I’ve tried to escape. They take our boots to stop us from running, and they whip anyone that tries to escape.”
“You misunderstand me,” Caleb said as his eyes focused on the only brigand that he could see. The man was facing away from them on the other side of the campfire. “I’m not going to run away.”
With that, Caleb jumped to his feet and began to run towards the fire. Using his training as a hunter, he was able to move swiftly and without making too much noise, though the metal chain of his irons rattled occasionally.
One of the things that Caleb had learned from an early age was that a person could move their hand through fire without injury if they did it quickly enough. It was that knowledge that made Caleb jump through the campfire as he neared it.
Though he felt warm for the brief moment that he was inside the fire, it did not burn him or set his clothing ablaze.
The brigand turned around just in time to see Caleb emerge from the fire with both hands raised into the air.
As he soon the brigand reach for his sword, Caleb landed on the ground and brought his hands down about nine inches in front of his foe. The metal chain that connected the iron cuffs around Caleb’s wrists whipped down and slammed into the top of the brigand’s skull.
The sound of bone cracking filled the area as the man before Caleb fell to the ground face first. The sound was so loud that it caused twelve brigands to emerge from the various tents, though a handful of them were still in their underclothes.
“Who gave him that long of a chain?” the only brigand with a full beard asked, looking towards the man that had captured Caleb.
“I have no idea,” he answered.
The leader of the brigands sighed and looked towards Caleb carefully. “Boy, tell me your name.”
“I am Caleb of Kirakath,” the sixteen year old boy said with his eyes darting from the various foes.
“Do you know Michael Sullivan?” the man that had captured Caleb asked.
Caleb’s eyes narrowed in anger. “You could say that. He’s my father.”
A small sparkle appeared in the man’s eyes at that. “Let me introduce myself then. I am Correll Staerk, a former associate of your father’s. We served together in the King’s Army before my desertion.”
“I don’t care,” Caleb said, mentally vowing to kill the man. Deserters were betrayers. His father had always made that clear, and betrayal was the greatest crime in Arcadia. Betraying the kingdom of Arcadia was a death sentence. “My father is dead. The village of Kirakath was massacred.”
“I will allow you to walk away from here alive,” the leader of the group suddenly said.
“Jon, you can’t be serious,” Correll said lowly. He did not even try to hide the shock on his face.
The leader of the brigands, now known as Jon, did not seem to hear his subordinate. “In honor of your father’s memory, I will let you leave of your own accord. I served alongside your father as well.”
“You want to honor my father’s memory?” Caleb asked softly as he closed his eyes.
“I do,” Jon said with a nod of his head.
“Then you shouldn’t be surprised by this,” Caleb said as he dropped to a knee and drew the sword from the fallen brigand’s scabbard. With his eyes open, he grasped the hilt of the sword with both hands and held it in front of him, ready to fight.
“Are you mad?” Correll asked in surprise. “It took six of us to beat you earlier. You have no hope against twice as many.”
“I was tired earlier. Now, I’m not,” Caleb said simply as he suddenly dashed towards the closest brigand and sheathed the sword in the man’s stomach. The speed and unexpected nature of the actions surprised the brigand, preventing him from even trying to get his sword out of its scabbard.
Removing the sword from the dead brigand’s stomach, Caleb glanced to Jon and Correll.
“You have nerve… just like Michael,” Jon said as he raised a hand. “Kill the prisoner. He’ll cause us nothing but trouble.”
Fury consumed Caleb, fire coursing through his veins painfully. To him, it seemed as though the brigands were moving in slow motion. Still, he did not move at all until the first four brigands had surrounded him with their swords drawn.
With an arc of the blade, he decapitated two of the brigands. A thrust of the blade later, it was sticking through the chest of one of the others. And to finish the last of those four attackers off, Caleb let go of the sword, clapped his hands together, hit the final one across the temple with the heavy chain.
It seemed to everyone else that Caleb had just killed four men in the blink of an eye.
“Are you sure that you took him down with only five men other than yourself?” Jon asked skeptically. The man before them was not who he had expected. There was no doubt in Jon’s mind that Caleb was indeed a man. Age was irrelevant to him. If a boy could kill five men within a few minutes, despite being slapped in irons, then there was no contesting that the boy was deserving of the title of man.
“Maybe he really was tired,” Correll said as he drew the sword at his hip. “I’ll end this real fast.”
Caleb froze as he saw the sword that Correll was holding. It was the sword that his father had told him to bring to Caldreth. The sight of it in a brigand’s hands stirred anger of greater intensity than anything Caleb had ever felt before. He knew that he wanted Correll dead.
It was to the young man’s satisfaction that Correll came running towards him and swung the sword in a horizontal arc towards him.
The motion had been so predictable that Caleb had been able to get out of the way. He had an idea as the sword began to start the arc though. Pulling the chain tight with his right arm high and his left arm low, Caleb blocked the blade of the sword.
The fast moving sword making contact with a single length of the chain of Caleb’s irons had an unexpected reaction. The chain length snapped and fell to the ground. That meant that the chain was in two pieces, each dangling from one of Caleb’s wrists.
With a snap of his wrist, Caleb struck Correll in the face with the chain from his left wrist. A snap of his right wrist caused a similar reaction.
Jon’s eyes widened as Correll dropped the sword and Caleb struck the man rep
eatedly in the face with a flurry of rapid movements. It only stopped when Correll’s face was covered in blood. At that point, Caleb slammed his fist into the man’s face, knocking him to the ground.
Taking a deep breath, Caleb picked up the longsword that was rightfully his and placed the blade’s tip over Correll’s heart.
“Help him!” Jon commanded. His eyes suddenly widened as he saw that all of his subordinates were dead. He had originally had twelve subordinates total. Caleb had killed six of them, so five more should have been alive, excluding Correll. Instead, they all had six inch long wooden spikes protruding from their throats.
Looking towards the prisoners, Jon saw that only one of them was standing. It was the redheaded girl that his men had captured a few weeks ago. The first thing that he noticed about her was her smile. It was a smile that promised pain.
That was the last thing that he saw before Caleb’s sword removed his head from his shoulders.
With Jon dead, Caleb took a deep breath and looked around. After running Correll through, he had noticed that Jon had been the only one left alive. An observation after Jon was dead confirmed his earlier thoughts.
“Caleb of Kirakath, thank you.”
Caleb’s attention turned to the dozen other prisoners that had been sleeping earlier. They were all looking towards him.
“We owe you a debt,” one of the men of the group said.
“I don’t have need for a debt,” Caleb said as he wiped off the blood from his sword on Jon’s tunic. “Just return to the lives you lived before today. I have some things I need to do,”
One by one, the former prisoners left the camp. From Caleb’s gruff dismissal, they feared that they would upset him. Well… all except one of them felt that way.
“I’m not accepting a dismissal,” the redheaded girl said with a serious expression upon her face. “The others may have been content to accept it, but I won’t. I pay all my debts in full.”
Caleb looked at her curiously. “What do you expect me to say? I do not want anyone to feel that they have to pay me a debt. All I did was fight for my freedom.”
“You could have accepted his offer to leave of your own accord, but you didn’t,” she countered.
“He said that he’d do it in honor of my father,” Caleb said with a flash of anger in his eyes. “My father would have been ashamed of me if I walked away and left others with a life of slavery awaiting them.”
“I care not for your reasons,” she said as she walked up to him. “All I want is to pay the debt that I owe you.”
Sighing, Caleb asked the only question that seemed to be needed. “What do you have in mind?”
“By your words, your home village was razed and massacred, right?” she asked. She saw him reluctantly nod, but she continued regardless. “You are no doubt hunting them. That is something I can help you with. You can’t hunt them down if you can’t find them, and you can’t find them without coin or the know-how.”
As much as he hated to say it, Caleb could see the uses of such a person. He was not happy about it, but the important part was that they met their end. He would resort to any means to achieve that.
“If you want to do this, then you’re going to be with me for a while. I have something else that I need to do first,” Caleb said flatly. He was not interested in explaining everything to her at that moment.
Though curious, the girl nodded her head. “I’ll stick around then.” Something occurred to her at that moment that surprised her. “I never introduced myself. I’m Katie.”
“I’m Caleb of Kirakath,” Caleb said with a small nod.
“I noticed,” Katie said dryly. “Now, if you’ll follow me, I will show you where we can find what they took from us.
She may be useful to have around after all, Caleb thought.
With that, she began to walk towards the largest tent, which was directly across the camp from the spot where they had met.
Caleb quickly walked over to Correll’s body and removed the scabbard from his belt before following after Katie. Along the way, he sheathed his longsword.
Entering the tent, Caleb immediately saw that the tent had a rather simplistic design on the inside. There were two large chests to his left, two to his right, and a cot centered at the back wall.
Katie stopped at the first chest to their left and lifted the heavy lid with little effort. Peering inside, she removed a pair of boots from it. Moving away from the chest, but leaving it open, Katie sat down and slipped the boots on, going over her leggings and coming up just below her knees.
Walking over to the chest, Caleb immediately saw that it was full of boots.
This must be where they put everyone’s boots so they couldn’t run away, he thought as he grabbed his boots. Dropping them to the ground, he slipped them on and moved to the next chest.
Caleb flipped the latch up and hoisted the door open, seeing that it was full of belts, and his was at the top. He picked it up and cinched it around his waist before stepping back.
The moment that he was out of the way, Katie removed her belt from it. It seemed to have six sheathed knives attached to it.
Caleb began to move to one of the other chests when Katie spoke.
“The other chests are empty. They showed that to me when I tried to run the last time,” Katie said softly. “They didn’t want to beat me, so they stuck me in one of those chests for an entire day.”
He nodded, seeing that it was not a subject she wished to talk about. “Do you know if they have keys to these irons?” He held up the irons that had been clapped around his wrist at that point.
She looked at him for a moment before stepping in front of him. Grabbing his right wrist, she inspected the iron cuff carefully. It had a small keyhole on its underside.
After several moments, she removed one the knives at her belt, stick the tip of the blade in the keyhole, and twisted her wrist. With a click, the shackle fell to the ground. She quickly repeated the process with the iron cuff on his left wrist.
With the shackles removed, he rubbed his wrists. “That feels much better,” he said, looking at her in surprise. “You have a talent or two after all, it seems.”
“I do,” Katie said, looking a bit confused suddenly. “Why do you have an empty sheath at your belt?”
Glancing down, Caleb felt a pang of guilt as he saw that the knife his father had given him was not at his belt. Memories of him throwing it at a highwayman came to the surface, but that did not change anything. He would be hard pressed to find it.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said with a sigh. “Let’s just get out of here.”
“Where are we headed to?” Katie asked.
“Caldreth,” he replied simple as he began to walk away from the camp.
“Of course,” Katie said with a small laugh.
He shot a look of curiosity at her at that, but she did not seem inclined to reveal what she found so humorous.
Chapter 7
“We need to stop and rest for the night,” Caleb said an hour after they left the brigand camp where they had been held captive.
They were standing on the road that ran from Vendae and Caldreth. That portion of the road seemed to be built on a hill. There was no doubt in his mind that a boulder could easily roll off the top of the hill to their left and gain enough momentum to take out a cart rather easily. That was actually one thing that made the location convenient.
“I see a cave up there,” he said as he pointed towards it.
“I thought you’d want to go farther than this,” Katie commented, though she did not sound upset by the news.
“I’ve been here before,” he said in annoyance. “They captured me about ten miles down the road from here.”
Katie did not say anything in response to that. It was clearly not a subject that he wished to speak of, and she understood. She would not have wished to tell anyone the details of her capture either.
“What’s the plan?” Katie asked, peering at the cave throug
h the darkness.
“We go inside, make sure there’s nothing in there, and go to sleep,” Caleb said with a yawn. “We’ll deal with everything else in the morning.”
Planning is not his forte, apparently, Katie thought with a bit of humor. “And what do we do if there’s a bear in there?”
“Then we eat well in the morning,” Caleb said as he began to walk up the hill towards the cave. “It wouldn’t be my first encounter with a bear.”
The thought of Caleb fighting a bear with only his sword brought a smile to Katie’s face. She was unsure how such an encounter would end, especially if he was as good as he appeared to be during the fight with the brigands earlier.
Through the Flames Page 5
