A Warrior's Knowledge

by Davis Ashura

  All because she had the misfortune of loving him. But it wasn’t like the ridiculous notions of young love in some Ashokan romance. What she felt for Rukh was something else: a bond of caring, friendship, and loyalty — and, yes, desire. Even more, though, there was also a debt owed and a pragmatism wherein she hoped to change his heart so the two of them could both shortly return to Stronghold. After all, most of her people had finally realized just how much Rukh could help them.

  So, when Rukh had departed her home, Jessira had gone as well, and though she kept pace with him, to say they walked together would be a falsehood. His stiff-necked pride held them apart. He had yet to completely forgive her people — or her. Did he still think she had betrayed him when she’d let him cut her out of his life? She didn’t know, and Rukh wouldn’t talk to her about it. The situation had Jessira struggling to find her balance, and she didn’t know what to do or say to fix the dilemma in which she found herself.

  What she did understand was that neither of them was happy, and neither of them knew how to move past it. Actually, that wasn’t true. Jessira knew, but Rukh would have to take the first step. He would have to accept her decision to accompany him. First Father, she was heartily tired of his stubbornness. She was here. It was time he accepted it.

  She bit back an oath of frustration. And the price she had paid for going with Rukh would likely be steep, at least based upon the short, heated follow-up conversation she had with Disbar following the Champion’s Gala. He had been waiting for her outside the Home House. It had been the last time the two of them had spoken, and she knew Disbar’s poisonous words would damage her reputation, but she didn’t care.

  Her only regret in ending their engagement was the trouble it would bring to her family. They shouldn’t have to suffer on her account. And of course, there were those who would judge Jessira as being selfish for the choice she had made, but had she gone through with the marriage to Disbar, she would have merely been a martyr on the altar of society’s expectations. Jessira had another name for someone like that, a better name: victim. It was a role Jessira refused to accept for herself.

  She wanted more out of life. She wanted love.

  But Rukh had been cold toward her since their departure from Stronghold and she didn’t know why. Their situation together left Jessira wondering if she would have been better off staying at home. Had she does so, at least she would have had some semblance of her dignity intact because right now, following along after Rukh, she felt like his loyal dog.

  It was humiliating.

  Sometimes she wondered if she should have allowed Sign to be the one to accompany Rukh. After his victory in the Trials, talk had swiftly arisen on how best to bind him to Stronghold. The most obvious ploy would be through marriage and who would make a better choice than Sign Deep, the beautiful woman he already knew and liked? Jessira’s parents had been all-too-happy to help facilitate such a union. They had even approached Rukh at the Champion’s Gala and presented him with the proposal.

  Even if he hadn’t turned them down, Jessira would not have allowed it. At this point, there was no chance she would allow some other woman from Stronghold to try and win Rukh’s love. She’d sacrificed too much to allow something like that to happen.

  So here she was, trudging through the cold and snow, with a man who wouldn’t talk to her. Wonderful.

  Love could be such a horrible Bitch, almost as bad as Karma.

  *****

  A little less than a week after their departure from Stronghold, Rukh and Jessira found themselves traveling through a long valley amidst the lowlands of the Privation Mountains. There was no snow to shroud the ground down here in the lower reaches, but the world remained cold and damp with an incessant, icy rain. They made camp beneath the sheltering limbs of a copse of pine trees. Thin, ashen needles littered the forest floor, softening it and protecting Rukh and Jessira’s gear from the muddy ground made boggy by the icy drizzle steadily falling for the past two days. The rain chilled them to the bone, and they sat huddled around a small campfire. The sound of water pattering off the leaves and ground, hissing as it struck the fire, were the only noises to be heard. The wiser animals were huddled deep in their holes and burrows, staying warm on a night like this.

  The chill, wet weather; the loneliness in the world beyond their camp — all of it seemed an apt metaphor for Rukh and Jessira’s travels thus far. The darkness at the heart of their relationship had yet to brighten. Their conversations were as terse and cold as the falling rain. Rukh knew it was mostly his fault, but he didn’t know how to make himself speak the words he knew were needed. He was too angry with Jessira. The worst part was he wasn’t entirely sure why. It was monumentally unfair to her, but he didn’t know how reconcile his own feelings about the state in which they found themselves.

  Just then, Jessira shivered and inched closer to the fire. “A hot bath and a warm bed would go a long way to making me feel alive again,” she said. “I think my fingers have fallen off.”

  “If you’d stayed in Stronghold, you could have had both,” he observed.

  She stared at him, unmoving and expressionless. Her face hardened, and she rose to her feet. “If that’s what you wish,” she said. “Goodbye, Rukh.” Jessira strode to her bags and began putting away her bedroll and the rest of her gear.

  “What are you doing?” Rukh asked as she slung a pack over her shoulder.

  “I’m leaving.”

  “Why?”

  “Why do you care?” Jessira challenged.

  “I just thought … ”

  His words were interrupted when she stepped forward. Before he could react, she had gripped the front of his shirt and pulled him close. She kissed him. It wasn’t soft and gentle. There was no tenderness. Her kiss was hard, fierce, and demanding. But just before she broke away, her lips momentarily softened against his. It was an offer to share more of herself, give more if asked. The kiss was pure Jessira. It was a distilled expression of who she was as a woman and a person.

  “I thought I could handle your anger, but I never expected your hatred,” she said.

  “I don’t hate you,” Rukh said. “I could never feel that way toward you.”

  “Really? Because given your behavior the past week, it certainly seems like you do.”

  “I don’t hate you,” Rukh repeated. “It’s just … ” He ran out of words, struggling to express what he thought and felt.

  “It’s what?” Jessira asked. She dropped her pack and waited on him with arms crossed. “Is it because you think I abandoned you when we reached Stronghold?”

  Rukh shrugged. “You made a decision based on your own self-interest.”

  “Yes I did,” Jessira said. “And you pushed me to it. Whenever I came to visit you, you turned aside like you didn’t want to be seen with me or didn’t want my company. I knew what you were doing — you were trying to protect me — and I might have eventually accepted your choice. But I never abandoned you.”

  Rukh waved aside her explanation. “I understand that,” he said. “But it’s not the reason I’m angry with you. I promised your nanna that I would stay away from you. I promised to help protect your honor. I haven’t. In Stronghold, your reputation is ruined, and I can’t help think that I am to blame for it,” he said. “I feel like you would have never ended your engagement if not for me. It makes me out to be a liar and a thief.”

  Her hardness toward him softened. “And that’s why you’re mad at me?” she asked, her face a mask of confusion as she struggled to understand his reasoning.

  He threw his hands in the air. “Kummas don’t look for companionship with another man’s wife or fiancé, and yet here you are with me. I’ve lost my integrity, and after being found Unworthy, my good name and my word were all I had left. There’s nothing left.”

  “Your word and name are still with you, and so am I,” Jessira said. “It was my decision to end my engagement to Disbar.”

  “I know but — ”

  “But
nothing!” Jessira interrupted. “What I did, the choice I made, had nothing to do with you. Disbar wasn’t the man I thought he was. I couldn’t have married him even if I had never met you. I dissolved my engagement based on my own needs, not yours. As such, any dishonor I suffer will be due to my actions, not yours. I am my own person, and I don’t need, or want, your protection.”

  “It’s not how things are done in Ashoka,” Rukh explained. “There, a man is expected to shield a woman from harm. Women are our future. Without them, there is nothing.”

  “In Stronghold, such matters are handled differently,” Jessira said, a dangerous glint in her eyes. “Perhaps you should remember that from now on.”

  Rukh considered what she was saying. And he thought back on how frustrated he’d been with her decision to come with him, how it put a lie to every thing he had promised her nanna and … His thoughts pulled up short. He realized with a dawning horror how little any of it really mattered. Jessira was her own woman. She was right. She could make her own decisions. Rukh felt nauseous when he thought about how he’d behaved toward her. “I’m sorry,” he said, unable to meet her eyes. “I’m such an ass.”

  Jessira studied him, a thoughtful expression on her face. “Yes, you are,” she agreed. “And you’re also an idiot.”

  Rukh sighed. “So what happens now?”

  “What do you want to happen?”

  “Can we start over again?” he asked. “Pretend the past few months never happened?”

  Jessira tilted her head in speculation. “How do we do that?”

  He put out a hand. “My name is Rukh Shektan. I’m a Pureblood Kumma from Ashoka.”

  Jessira took his hand and shook it, smiling faintly. “My name is Jessira Grey. I’m an OutCaste from Stronghold.”

  “Funny. You look like a ghrina to me,” Rukh said. He ventured a smile, hoping she would see the humor in his words.

  Jessira eyed him with pursed lips. “Say that word to me again, and you’ll be picking your teeth off the ground.” She brushed past him and set out her bedroll.

  *****

  A few weeks later, the morning dawned sunny and bright, painting the sky a rosy blush. The blue skies were a welcome respite after weeks of clouds and rain. The forest stream, beside which they’d made camp, gurgled happily while barn swallows and purple martins loudly chirped their presence. The weather remained cold and the trees bare, but the morning had a spring-like bite to it. Down in this low, rolling hill country, life was returning as winter’s grip slowly loosened.

  The sense of spring was a lie, though. It would be months before winter released its icy hold, but nonetheless, the weather today seemed an apt reflection of the thaw in Jessira and Rukh’s relationship. Of course, with all changes the two of them had gone through, it was hard to keep track. When they had first met, they’d been enemies. Then they became allies. Then friends. And finally … well, they never had a chance to figure out what they might have become, but it could have been wonderful. Then Stronghold had come between them. Now Jessira had no idea what was going on.

  “Could you pack up my gear?” Rukh asked.

  Jessira looked up from her own work as she put away her bedroll. “Is something wrong with your arms?” she asked.

  “No,” he replied, “but after everything I went through in Stronghold, it just seems like you might want to do something nice for me.”

  Jessira sighed in irritation. “Get over it. You’re not the first person who’s had a tough time with their life, and … ” She trailed off when she saw Rukh’s smirk. “What?”

  “It’s funny when you’re mad,” Rukh said with a grin.

  She rolled her eyes. “And you’re funny looking all the time.”

  “Also pretty,” he added.

  Jessira slitted her eyes, pleased by the compliment but annoyed by his attitude. Fine. Two could play this game. As she lugged her bags to the packhorse, she stepped by Rukh. His back was turned, and she goosed him. He yelped. “You’re cute when you scream like a girl,” she commented.

  She smiled as he mumbled something unintelligible under his breath.

  “I wanted to tell you something,” Rukh said after they got underway.

  “What? That I’m ugly when I’m not mad?”

  “No. You’re beautiful always,” Rukh said, sounding entirely sincere.

  His words took her aback. He thought she was beautiful? Rukh could be such a jackhole, but he could also be sweet. “What did you want to tell me?” she asked.

  “I’m glad you decided to come with me.” He hesitated. “And I’m glad you stayed with me even when I behaved like an ass.”

  Jessira’s nostrils flared. “You didn’t behave like an ass,” she replied, heat in her voice. “You were an ass.”

  “Does this mean you’re still angry with me?” Rukh asked, his voice contrite.

  Jessira’s face softened. “No. I forgave you a long time ago.”

  Rukh smiled. “Good. Are we friends then?”

  Jessira smiled with him. “Friends,” she pronounced.

  Later in the early afternoon, Jessira and Rukh walked along a muddy deer track as beams of sunlight peered through skeletal limbs of winter-bare trees. It lit the forest floor in dappled patterns of gold. The world looked so different when bright and happy. Yesterday, this same forest had been gloomy and oppressive beneath a heavy sky of gray clouds and frigid rain. Today, though, with the yellow sunlight breathing warmth back into the world, everything appeared so much more alive. Jessira inhaled the scent of moss and wet ground. Again, there was a subtle promise of spring arriving soon.

  Jessira laughed. It was a good day to be alive. “I’m happy,” she announced.

  “I know. You have this jumpy way of walking when you’re feeling chipper.” Rukh said, sounding smug in his certainty.

  Jessira shook her head. “How do you always manage to say the wrong thing? It’s not even what you say, it’s how you say it.”

  Rukh smiled. “A gift,” he replied. “And plus, most times, I only say what I do when I know it’s going to irritate you. It’s fun.”

  Jessira laughed. “And why do you insist on annoying me so much?”

  “Think about it long enough, and I’m sure you’ll figure it out,” Rukh advised.

  “I’d rather not. Knowing why might have dire consequences for my self-esteem.”

  “So you don’t think it has anything to do with my winning personality and charm?”

  Jessira snorted. “If you had to rely on your personality and charm to make your way in the world, I’m thinking Cook Heltin might have poisoned you as a child. And I sure wouldn’t have come with you out here into the Wildness.”

  “Then why did you come?” Rukh asked.

  Jessira smiled and patted his cheek. “Think about it long enough, and I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”

  “I really am sorry for taking my frustrations out on you,” Rukh said, changing the subject.

  “I know,” she replied. “I could tell two days ago. You have a mopey way of walking when you feel like you’ve done something wrong.” She gave him a knowing look, waiting to see how he would react.

  He grinned in response. “Well played.”

  She smiled back at him. “This feels good,” she said.

  “Laughing with one another,” Rukh said, guessing her thoughts.

  “Yes,” Jessira replied.

  They walked through the silence of the forest, but unlike the earlier part of their journey, this wasn’t a quiet full of tension but one full of the stillness of serenity. Soon, they came upon the banks of a narrow river with foam-capped water rushing over a bed full of boulders. Dangerous eddies swirled about. They trekked the near bank to find an easier place to cross, going a mile out of their way in order to do so. It still ended up being a harrowing crossing, and once on the opposite side of the river, they paused to rest.

  “Why are we going to Hammer?” Jessira asked, as they sat upon wet leaves and soft moss.

  R
ukh shrugged, looking mulish. “It was as good a place to go as any.” He bit his lip, hesitating as he stared out over the river. He threw a rock across the water before turning to Jessira. “My nanna’s final letter to me mentioned The Book of First Movement,” he finally began. “He said it was important, and if I ever had a chance to recover it, I should. He was pretty adamant about it.” He shrugged. “So here we are.”

  Jessira gave him an incredulous look. “We’re going to Hammer for a book?”

  “Nanna is never wrong about things that are important,” Rukh said, defensively. “If he says recovering The Book of First Movement is worth the risk, then it is.”

  Jessira shook her head. “Unbelievable. You dragged me on a journey to Hammer because your nanna told you to go and get a book.”

  Rukh glanced at her and smiled half-heartedly. “Would it help if I told you how much I trust him?”

  “No,” Jessira replied. First Mother! Sometimes Rukh did the most idiotic things.

  “Watch out for the puddle,” Rukh advised.

  “What pud — ” Too late. Jessira’s feet were completely soaked when she stepped in two inches of muddy water.

  Chapter 19: Mandatory Disciples

  It may very well be through our funeral pyres that our dreams of peace are achieved. Death’s sickle will free us from Mother Lienna, but who then amongst the Chimeras will walk the righteous path?

  -From the journal of SarpanKum Li-Dane, AF 1938

  Li-Choke stumbled to his feet. Blood leaked from his ringing ears, and he could hardly stand without falling over. But his eyes and nose worked just fine. The smell of blood and offal clung to the air. All around him, flung about in scattered bits and pieces, lay the broken remains of his brothers. These had been the last Baels of the Eastern Plague of the Fan Lor Kum.

  After their escape from the Chimera breeding caverns, Li-Choke had taken Rukh Shektan’s advice and led his brothers here, to the Hunters Flats. They’d found refuge amongst the Kesarins and had built for themselves quiet, if uninspiring, lives. Summer had turned to fall and fall-to-winter, and yet, their presence had remained undiscovered by the other Chimeras. And with each passing month, they had allowed themselves to hope and, in some cases, believe that they were safe.