“How is your head?” Wyant asked.
“I’ll be fine,” Brakas grumbled. “The lad got lucky.”
“No, the lad fought as best he could with what he had,” laughed Wyant. “He was resourceful. Don’t feel too bad about it. His moves surprised me too. We are so trained to expect a certain type of fight that sometimes the unskilled can surprise us. Perhaps it was a lesson for both of us.”
“Easy for you to say,” retorted Brakas. “It was my face what got hammered. You at least got to hit him good.”
“I do believe he was going to kill you, or I would have let it continue,” declared Wyant. “It did prove one thing to me though. He is not a spy. I am sure if the Jiadin sent in a spy he would be prepared for the little game we play with new recruits. The lad really thought you were going to kill him and that means he had no idea we were testing him.”
“True,” conceded Brakas. “I did have men go back out there and check things out. There was nothing hidden. No water bag. No food sack. I really don’t see how he could have possibly crossed the badlands without provisions. It isn’t possible.”
“And yet the sentries never saw him,” Wyant stated. “There was nobody with him and no signs of him setting a horse free. I understand your concerns.”
“He doesn’t know about horses,” offered Brakas. “I could tell that by the way he rode with me on the way in.”
“It is clear he doesn’t know anything about weapons either,” added Wyant. “He is quick and strong though. And intelligent I think. It might take a lot of training, but he could become a good warrior, perhaps a leader over time.”
“Maybe,” Brakas said, “but there is something about him that doesn’t sit quite right, if you know what I mean. I think we should keep him locked up at night.”
“I agree,” Wyant said. “I think we should team him up with Klavin. The lad would not only learn, but will also provide us with some entertainment.”
“Why Klavin?”
“Because Klavin was sleeping the day they handed out brains,” Wyant chuckled, “and the boy is smart. It might be fun to see if brains or brawn is superior.”
“Klavin is a good warrior,” argued Brakas. “One of the best warriors we have.”
“Which is the only reason he is still with us,” responded Wyant.
“What about making the lad into a real spy?” asked Brakas. “You said he isn’t a spy because he doesn’t know how the tribes operate, but that very quality would make him the right person to send into the Jiadin camp.”
“I don’t know,” hesitated Wyant. “That could be sending the lad to his death. You said he wanted revenge on them. It is hard to believe that he could fake wanting to join them. That advisor Grulak has, Veltar, he scares me. There is something inhuman about him. I think he could read the lad’s soul the moment he entered their fortress.”
“What is more important to us?” reasoned Brakas. “They have raided a village in our sector. That is against the agreement we have with them. I think we need to know what they are up to.”
“That village was good for maybe two clova a year,” Wyant stated. “It certainly is no great loss for us, but you do have a point about the agreement. The Jiadin are up to something and we need to know what it is. Still, I think the lad would not succeed. I will dwell upon it. We have time yet to make that decision. For now, match him up with Klavin. At night we will keep him locked up until we are satisfied that he is what he says he is.”
Rejji heard the moving of a chair and the closing of a door. He waited until he heard the footsteps receding down the hallway before he moved away from the wall. He walked towards the center of the room and spread out on the floor in a patch of moonlight and closed his eyes.
***
Using the small flask she had cut open, Mistake carried the last two coals to the spot she had selected. When she reached the spot she had chosen, she let the coals slid out of the mutilated flask onto the heap of the other coals she had transported. She looked at the last rays of the sun and decided to wait a little while longer. She dropped her improvised scoop and the moss she had used to insulate her hand from the heat. It had been tedious transporting all of the coals over such a distance, but if her fire had been any closer to the fortress, she would have been noticed. As it was, it had taken her all day to prepare for this. She hoped it worked.
When she felt it was dark enough that the smoke would not be noticed, she piled armfuls of damp grass over the coals. When she had piled all of the damp grass over the coals, she started heaping the dry leaves on top of the pile. As soon as all of the leaves were in place, Mistake started running. She was still a fair distance from the fort and she had to approach it unseen. And quickly.
She rethought her plan as she ran. Following the patrol that had captured Rejji had been easy. They moved slow enough and seldom looked around while they rode. Figuring out where they had put Rejji would be a little harder. All she knew at this point was that they had turned right after entering the gate. When the gate closed, so did her opportunity to follow Rejji. The opportunity she did have, however, was to observe the guards that stood on the platform behind the wall. She had already chosen the section of the wall she would attempt to scale. Now she had to hope that her diversion worked like she planned it to.
The idea was a delayed fire. The hot coals would dry out the damp grass, sending off clouds of smoke, but it would be too dark for anyone to see the smoke. When the grass dried out, it would ignite and the dry leaves would create an instant fire, clearly visible from the fort. On a clear night, like it was, there would be no lightning to blame the fire on. The Zaldoni would have to figure out it was manmade and investigate it. Being nighttime, she assumed they would not send a small force to check on it. They would know that no large army could get this close without be spotted by a sentry and would want to overwhelm whoever it was quickly. At least that was the plan, she thought.
She managed to get right up to the wall without the guards seeing her. The spot she had chosen had large trees on the other side of the wall. There was no way for her to reach them from outside, but she was hoping that she could reach them from the platform on the other side of the wall. She took her dagger out its sheath on her belt and another dagger from her boot. She held one in each hand and shoved the left one into the crevice in the wall as high as she could reach. The right other she put between her teeth as she flexed the muscles in her hands. She knew this trick was going to require all of her strength and she would only get one shot at it.
It wasn’t long before she heard the first shouts. She resisted the temptation to turn around and admire her handiwork and instead concentrated on listening to the movements of the two closest guards. Initially, both guards tended to move along the platform towards the gate to get a better view, but the second guard had not moved far enough for her to make her entry unseen. She tensed as she felt the failure of her plan, fearful that the patrols coming back from the fire might see her. She had planned to be inside by then.
She heard the two guards exchange words but she could not make them out. What she did hear though was one of the guards scrambling down the ladder. She backed up slightly and peered upward to see which one left. Mistake felt a shudder of excitement as she saw that the second guard had left his post. She swiftly moved back to the wall and pulled the second knife from her teeth. Grabbing the knife already embedded in the wall with her left hand, she pulled herself upright with one arm. When she had raised herself as far as she could, she reached up and imbedded the second knife in the wall and hung on it as she pulled the first knife out. She repeated her movements by pulling herself upward on the second knife and embedding the first even higher. She continued this until she could grasp the top of the wall. She hung there and shoved one of the knives back into her boot. The other knife returned to her teeth.
She pulled her self upward until she could look over the wall. There was no guard visible to her right and the one to the left was intently watching the dram
a outside the fort unfold. She pulled herself up until she could lie atop the wall and then gently lowered herself to the platform. She couldn’t reach the tree as she had planned and the ladder was much too noisy to use, so she lowered her self to the floor of the platform and eased towards the edge. She bent her head over the edge and looked below. There was nobody in sight and she started to slide her body to the edge.
She froze when the nearest guard’s feet scuffed and she looked towards him and saw that he had just shifted his feet. Keeping her eyes on the guard, she slid her body off the edge and dangled from the platform. Still seeing nobody below her, she moved hand-over-hand away from the guard. Her arms grew tired and eventually she let herself drop.
Her landing was not as quiet as she would have liked and she heard the guard’s feet shuffle quickly to see what the noise was. Mistake swiftly backed under the platform and pressed her body against the wall. The guard moved towards her and leaned over to look below, but he soon grew disinterested and returned to observe the commotion outside.
Mistake moved quietly under the platform to the next ladder. There was a rack with weapons there and Mistake stole a coil of rope and slung it over her shoulder. She looked out across the compound and realized she was fairly close to the corner of the fortress. The only buildings around that she could see were a large, high-roofed building and some storage sheds behind it. Mistake stole across the open space to the first of the sheds. She tried the door and it opened. The shed was empty but there was evidence of it having been used for storing farm goods, probably plunder from the villages the bandits extorted.
Mistake decided to work her way down the row of sheds and then check to see what buildings lie beyond the large one. All of the sheds were empty except for the last two. She turned her attention to the large building and saw that it had a crawlspace underneath it. She slid under the building and realized that it was huge. The sides of the building had planks coming down over the crawlspace, but the front and back were open. The only obstruction under the building was a large round section towards the rear of he building that protruded through the floor into the ground. It was warm and smelled of smoke.
She crawled up to the front of the building and peered out. She saw men returning through the open gate and splitting up. She recognized one of the men as the leader who captured Rejji and he was walking straight towards her. She was tempted to start crawling backwards to get away from the edge of the crawlspace, but she realized that her movement would be detected more than she would, so she lie still.
The man marched straight towards her and mounted the steps above her head. She held her breath as he climbed the steps and slid backwards as soon as he passed overhead. She turned around and followed the sound of his footsteps towards the rear of the building. When he stopped, she heard muffled voices but could not make out what they were saying. Mistake removed the coiled rope and placed it on the ground. She crawled to the rear of the building and checked for anyone coming by, and then crawled out and decided to check further into the compound.
Mistake spent the next two hours surveying the entire fortress before returning to the only building that looked like it might be a place to hold Rejji. She gazed up at the trees and decided to climb one to get a better view of how things were laid out. As she worked her way higher into the tree, she noticed that they had cut the wall guard in half. Nobody was walking around the compound either, which probably meant they felt fairly safe here and everyone was sleeping except for the few wall guards. She looked down at the large building and noticed the hole in the roof to allow smoke to escape. She scurried back down the tree and under the building to retrieve her rope, figuring nighttime was the best time to go exploring inside.
The young thief picked a sturdy branch that overshot the roof and started crawling out on it. When the branch started to sag appreciably, she tied a loop in the rope and passed the free end around the branch and through the loop. She worked the entire rope through the loop and lowered the free end to the roof. She flattened herself on the branch and wiggled until her body dropped and she hung from the branch by her hands. She grabbed the rope and silently lowered herself to the roof. She walked a short distance to the large opening, dragging the rope behind her. She flattened herself to the roof and inched towards the hole and peered down into the large room to see if anyone would notice her entry.
She saw a body on the floor of the room and stared at it. A lump formed in her throat when she recognized the body and realized it was Rejji. She stuck her head in further and scanned the rest of the room. It was too dark to see anything past the patch of moonlight and Mistake decided to chance an entry. She slowly fed the free end of the rope into the hole until it was taut. She swiveled so that she was sitting on the roof with her legs dangling inside the room and grabbed the rope with both hands. She lowered herself almost to the floor before realizing that she was over an open fire pit, which explained the structure under the building. She twisted her body to make the rope swing from side to side. When the arc was wide enough to carry her over the pit to solid floor, she dropped down and held the rope to stop it from swinging back to the pit.
Mistake looked around the room again and swiftly moved to Rejji’s body. Rejji jumped when he felt Mistake touch him and she whispered his name. Rejji sat up and turned to face Mistake.
“How did you get here?” he whispered as he looked up at the rope hanging from above. “You should be long gone on your journey to find the Sage.”
“I am not going anywhere without you,” she whispered back. “I made a pledge to Brontos and I intend to keep it. Come on, let’s get out of here.”
“Go without me,” Rejji said. “Go find your Sage. I have to stay.”
“Are you crazy?” she scowled. “You are no more a bandit than I am a priest. Get on that rope or I’ll wrap it around you and haul you up.”
Rejji smiled strangely at Mistake and reached out and held her hand. “I believe that you would,” he grinned, “but I must stay. I must avenge my village and countless others that these people prey upon. To do that, I must learn their ways. Here they will teach me to use a sword, to ride a horse, to think like they think. I overheard them talking about me tonight. They plan to use me for their own ends, but that works both ways.”
“Rejji,” Mistake pleaded, “you are not cut out to be a bandit. You will die here. These people do not care about what happens to others. They care only for themselves. Trust me on this because I know. I used to be just like them. Brontos in his strange way made me see that. He knew right off I was a thief. He didn’t hate me for it. He was saddened because he thought I deserved better and he convinced me of it too. All my life I have been the object of hatred. You can’t imagine what that does to you. It makes you return the hatred, not only to people who despise you, but to everyone. I don’t want to live that way anymore. If you stay here you may learn to ride a horse, but you will suffer for it. You will become one of them. Don’t do it.”
“I can’t run and hide,” frowned Rejji. “My life has been turned upside down. It is not only my grandfather and the rest of the villagers, Mistake. It is everyone. If nobody takes a stand against these crimes, then how will it ever stop? Which village will be next to be slaughtered? We could probably run away now and maybe we would even survive the chase, but what then? What would we do on our travels every time we came to another slaughtered village? You just spoke how they think of nothing but themselves, yet you are asking me to be just like them and think only of us. I cannot do that. Somebody has to try and set things right. I may not be the person to do it, but I cannot fathom giving up without trying.”
Tears formed in Mistake’s eyes as she realized she was losing the argument. “Then I will stay too,” she declared.
“No,” pleaded Rejji. “You can’t. They will kill you on sight. Go find your Sage. Turn that new leaf and live a happy life. This is something I have to do. Not you.”
“You think you are better suited for this than I am?” s
he questioned. “I can ride a horse. I know how to use a sword and daggers. I bet I can beat most of these overweight braggarts right now. They move so slowly that they won’t even be able to strike me.”
“That is not the point, Mistake,” Rejji sighed. “You are a girl. Have you ever seen a girl bandit?”
“And just what do you think I have been doing all my life, Rejji?” she asked. “If the Greens don’t have woman bandits, maybe I should enlighten them.”
“You said you were walking away from all that,” Rejji protested. “Now you are eager to get back into it?”
“I don’t want to get back into it, Rejji,” she answered. “I want us to get out of here, but you refuse. I am merely stating that I am going where you are going. You can decide where that is to be.”
Rejji sat and shook his head. It was clear to him what he must do with his life, but he did not want to drag Mistake into it. He stared up at the dangling rope and realized what she must have gone through to get in to see him. It became clear to him that she was not just going to leave because he asked her to.
“Can you survive in the woods alone?” Rejji asked. “Without being seen or detected?”
“I have done so fairly well so far,” she retorted. “Why? What are you scheming?”
“Give me a couple of weeks here,” Rejji suggested. “Let me learn some basic skills and find out how they operate. I will try to learn as fast as I can and then maybe we can leave this place behind us.”
“Maybe?” Mistake questioned. “It sounds like you aren’t too sure that you will want to leave.”
“I do not desire to be a bandit,” Rejji declared. “You know what I am after. I just don’t know if I can learn enough in a couple of weeks. I will try to. But you must leave. I cannot have your capture on my mind.”
“You needn’t worry about me,” the thief protested. “I know how to handle myself. I will meet you half way.”
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