by J. C. Hendee
Bones of the Earth:
NAMELESS
includes:
Karras the Kitten
Karras the Cat
Karras the Nameless
T · N · D · S
Tales from the world of the Noble Dead Saga
Copyright
Copyright © by J.C. Hendee
Published by J.C. and Barb Hendee / NobleDead.org
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
1st Edition, February 2015
Cover, design, layout, and compiling by N.D. Author Services
NDAuthorServices.com
ASIN: B00TFTB6XM
BNID: 2940149867868
eISBN: 1230000298247
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior contractual or written permission of the copyright owner of this work.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to persons, living or deceased, businesses establishments, events, or locales is entirely incidental.
Table of Contents
About
T · N · D · S
Karras the Kitten
Karras the Cat
Karras the Nameless
Other Works
by Barb and J.C. Hendee
About
T · N · D · S
Tales from the world of the
Noble Dead Saga
No knowledge of the Noble Dead Saga (a.k.a The Saga of the Noble Dead or The Noble Dead Series) or related works is necessary to read and enjoy these stories. They are written for fantasy enthusiasts in general and not just our established readership. Readers new to this world can step into it through any of these works.
Some connections will be apparent to readers of the saga, as these independent works center upon characters, places, and events left behind in the saga’s multiple series/phases and books. As well, there are new characters, places, and certainly events never before experienced.
For those who have read part or all of the saga, you will expand what you know about this world. For more information and up-to-date news concerning current and future works by the authors, please visit www.NobleDead.org.
If you notice what you believe are errors in this works, please report them first to N.D. Author Services (www.NDAuthorServices.com); if you have difficulty doing so, then report such through NobleDead.org.
—Barb & J.C.
Karras the Kitten
1. Misery Hates Company
2. The Hidden Debt
3. Invoke with Care
4. A Fall Cometh Before Pride
5. It is Always Worse than You Think
6. Prank in the Making
7. Doubts about a Doubt
8. Fishing for a Kitten
9. Fate and Other Mistakes
10. Fishing with a Kitten
11. Death Comes with a Grasp, not a Gasp
12. Catch of the Night
13. It was a Dark and Stormy Night
14. Flight of the Duchess
15. Site of Sorrow
16. Hopefully Hopeless
17. To Have and Have Not
1. Misery Hates Company
“Enough! Go away!”
Those words echoed from the dim underground smithy into the dark stone passage outside. Beyond the open doorway to this seldom-visited place stood Karras, who humans of the nearby Numan nations might call “Carrow.” And that shout, like a thunderclap through the mountain’s bowels, seemed to vibrate through the stone beneath his broad, booted feet.
Karras shuddered in the lowest level of Dhredze Seatt’s eastern settlement.
The stronghold seatt—a “fortified place”—within the great peninsula peak was the realm of his people, the Rughìr or Rughìr’thai’âch, the “Earth-Born,” or as humans called them, the dwarves. In his view, these depths of the seatt’s “underside” were no place for one of his honored family and clan. His father and mother were part of their clan council and spoke freely for their clan among the five tribes.
Just the same, that shout silenced him.
Slightly more than a yard and a half tall, Karras was a touch short for his people though suitably broad, nearly one and a half times human width at the shoulders. His dark brown hair was trimmed, oiled, and groomed into a sleek tail that hung barely below his collar. It was tied back with a delicately braided leather thong, bartered that very day at the market cavern. His faintly granite-like complexion common to all rughìr was a little less noticeable, for he was slightly tanned as well. A bit thin-lipped, with maybe a little protrusion of his brows, he considered himself plain but not unattractive, physically speaking.
He had dressed in a white linen shirt beneath a vestment of fine but simple russet felt. Both were bound with a thick leather belt and a brass octagon buckle displaying the vubrí or emblem of his family name, Iamílchlagh or “Tumble-Stone.” And finally, he wore light toned pants to match.
Karras had done all that he could to be presentable without appearing high or superior. Now all he did was stare blankly through the open door, watching her work so late at her family’s glowing forge.
Over the last winter, Skirra had spurned him twice. In two-plus years, she had done so more often than that.
She pulled an iron bar with her tongs, its end red-hot from the glowing coals, and hammered on it. Each clank scattered sparks across her charred leather apron, one careening off her glistening, soot-smeared cheek. She did not even flinch.
Unlike their people, her black-irised eyes were a bit large. All of her wavy and dark scarlet hair was tied back to expose her broad face. In place of Karras’s new hair thong, hers was simple, old, and darkened by years of sweat and smoke. Her nose was smallish, dainty for a rughìr, and her jaw curved smoothly, though it was properly prominent. Her brows, not as bushy as a male’s, appeared to sweep up a tad when one looked closely.
She might be a bit taller than him, and a little older as well, but the latter mattered not, as their people could sometimes live as long as two hundred years. Handsome, and some might say beautiful, as he would, she was earnest if cruel, dedicated if obstinate, and strong like the bones of the earth.
And she wanted nothing to do with him.
Who else would seek alliance by marriage with her dwindling, fallen family? No one that Karras knew remembered why the Yêarclág—the “Iron-Braid” family—had generations ago come to such a sorry state.
So why was he not good enough for her?
Skirra, a name that Numans or humans of nearby nations would change to “Sliver,” actually meant “shard,” as in a sharp piece of forged metal. She was that hard and wounding, though not chill. She smoldered within, and even her black rughìr eyes appeared to glow by the forge’s light like the iron she pulled from the coals once more.
The click and wheeze of chain and weight driven bellows smothered the next clang of her hammer. Smoke and sparks sucked up a wide tin flue over the stone forge. Without looking up, she snarled at him.
“Are you still here?”
Karras once more turned away to trudged the dark and deep tunnels beneath Chemarré—“Seaside”—one of the four major settlements of Dhredze Seatt.
His family lived high above on the seaward mountainside. The frontage of their manor, cut into the native stone, looked out upon a sun-sparkled ocean strait and across to the distant Isle of Wrêdelîd. He wished to show Skirra such bright days, yet she would rather stay here
in the deepest depths where dwelt those with little means and even less standing. It was beyond his comprehension compared to what he offered her and her frail mother.
So why did he pursue her all the more?
Here and now, Karras could not think clearly of such things. There had been—were—reasons that had led him to her the first time, the second, and so on. At first, it had not been for love, but she had become his obsession, something important in life that he could not have. There were all the wrong and right reasons to want her, to marry her, but as yet he did not understand how and why he needed her.
He stepped from the side passage into yillichreg Bâyir—“Limestone Mainway”—and plodded the great tunnel with its central stone columns as big as trees in what humans called “elven” lands. For this poorest of levels, only every other column held a steaming crystal mounted on high to offer a little yellow-orange light. In the darkness above and between every other column, there was no comfort to be found. Eventually, he reached the mainway’s end and stopped well short of the broad archway ahead.
That mouth opened upon a gradually spiraling tunnel leading upward through the seven underlevels of Chemarré. Suddenly, two strokes of a great bell echoed distantly out of that huge stone archway. This marked the end of Night’s Summer, the second fourth of night. Late as it was, the long climb to the mountain’s exterior seemed too much to bear. And in the empty mainway, the muted din of many voices pulled his attention.
Karras peered left as perhaps one voice rose over the cheers and shouts of others, though any words were not clear to hear. A dingy banner above a doorless archway of framestones bore a faded vubrí or emblem.
KÌNNÉBUY—“The People’s House.”
Karras sagged. He so disliked any cheag’anâkst or “greeting house,” though it would not be the first time he had taken refuge in this one. He preferred a quiet, private réhanâkst or “common house” as humans mistakenly called them. Those were limited to a specific family or clan and their selected guests.
Looking about, he saw nowhere else open this late to lick his wounds like an abused dog. Thought of his people's great and treasured hounds made him sulk all the more. They were treated better than Skirra had ever treated him.
Karras slunk into the archway but hesitated at the noise, pipe smoke, and cloying smell. Thick rughìr bodies crowded in at many long tables in the huge inner chamber. At its center was a cheag’anâkst’s typical stone platform, over seven strides in diameter and as tall as his boots. Almost resigned to enter, he stalled again with a groan at the worst sight in that place.
Fiáh’our—“Hammer-Stag”—had returned once more to the seatt. The thänæ or “honored one” was in full bluster as he strutted the platform in shouting out another “telling” of his so-called great exploits.
Karras nearly backed out upon spotting his distant clan-kin, but where else could he go except on the long walk home? If—when—he arose bleary-eyed before dawn, his father and mother would wonder where he had been. There would be questions and angry berating over whatever left him slow in his duty to the family’s trading and shipping business. Still he hesitated in the archway.
He had met Fiáh’our several times in accompanying Father and Mother to clan gatherings of their leaders and honored ones. That bulky, grisly blusterer looked much the same though grungier now. Could he not at least bathe before appearing in public?
Tall for his people, Fiáh’our’s long and ruddy ore-colored locks were shot with glaring streaks of gray. His bushy eyebrows almost hinted at the antlers of his namesake, and his eyes always seemed too boisterous, regardless of being underlined with faint wrinkles. He had to be beyond a hundred years and maybe a half century more. His full beard and thick moustache matched his hair, though they were darker—and needed grooming.
Karras preferred to be cleanly shaven; a practice that drew odd stares from his kind and outright scowls from his father and mother.
The thänæ, dressed in a scarred chain vest over a quilted leather hauberk, gestured wildly in the air with his big hands. Steel pauldrons and couters on his shoulders and elbows were stained with what Karras preferred to think was dried muck and mud. A silvery thôrhk, the open-ended hoop marking all thänæ, hung around Fiáh’our’s bullish neck. Its braided metal was thicker than a thumb with ends like small butt-spikes on the haft of a war axe. Those ends marked him as being so rewarded by a temple to one of the three warriors among the Bäynæ, the Eternals, the ancestral spirits of their people.
Karras did not like tellings, especially in a common place like this, and more so from that braggart. A few times in passing, he had glimpsed Fiáh’our here and then quickly slipped away. At least now the bellower did not draw either war dagger at his belt, poking it about for emphasis. And the heavy double-bladed axe remained sheathed upside down on his back. Swinging that over the crowd’s heads would have been—had been—even more appalling.
At Fiáh’our’s next pause, the crowd’s din grew with shouts and banging of tankards. Striding the platform’s edge, he rounded farther and farther and…
Karras ducked before the thänæ’s gaze turned his way. A passing server with a loaded tray elbowed him. In reflex, he stepped aside into the cheag’anâkst. For that mistake, he quickly ducked even lower behind the nearest onlookers.
There was no chance to get back to the entrance without being spotted. All he could do was creep along the inner sidewall to an empty table in the near back corner. There he slouched alone on a bench, for all who had come to hear another telling had packed in as close as they could to the platform.
Karras hunkered, desperately hoping to pass unnoticed by a loudmouthed clan-kin. Otherwise, it would be a more miserable end to a final miserable night in having sought out Skirra.
2. The Hidden Debt
Fiáh’our finished his telling to thunderous shouts for more and the hammering of tankards, some not quite empty and sloshing the tabletops. Even a wet enthusiasm was heartening and humbling, but the glory was not what mattered. For as said in one of the temples…
Chuoynaksâg Viônag Skíal;
Skíalag Viônag Chuoynaks.
or, in the words of those scribblers, the human “sages”…
Remember What is Worthy of the Telling;
Tell What is Worthy of the Remembering.
It was not the words but what lay behind and within them that needed remembering. Worthiness was tested in that alone. A good “telling” reminded all, including the teller, of what was virtuous. Only in this could Fiáh’our inspire them to live truly as those of “stone and earth” upon which rose up all good things of the world.
And if, after the end of his days, he might be remembered—if he might be re-told and one far day gain a place among the Bäynæ…
Well, it was not so much to hope for.
In re-telling over generations, his people—not the Bäynæ themselves—would judge him worthy or not to stand among those Eternal Ones. That would not happen if he did not tell the people something, and often, and told it well.
But as Fiáh’our stepped from the platform, graciously declining demands for more, one thing—one sneaky little thing—stuck in his awareness. Amid grins, hearty laughs, and effort at humility, he peered over heads or between wide bodies crowding in.
And there he was.
In the hall’s dim back corner, a hunched figure likewise peered through the shifting crowd. Not toward Fiáh’our but toward the archway out, as if to spot a break by which to reach it.
Ignoring a clan-kin would be most impolite, so Fiáh’our pushed through with many thanks and claps upon a back, either given or received. The nearer he came to that far table, the more the lone figure slouched. He was almost at the table’s front when the young one finally glanced up sidelong at him.
“Karras, is it not?” Fiáh’our said loudly. “I thought I spotted a clan-kin slip in late upon my telling.”
Still, the young one said nothing.
Fiáh’our waited
patiently, not taking a seat. That would be presumptuous—very ill mannered—without an invitation.
Karras finally gestured to the bench across from himself.
“A’ye!’ Fiáh’our breathed out. He clunked down so heavily that the thick bench creaked, and then he chuckled. “Such a long telling—what an effort! Yet they always want more.”
Karras winced and nodded once with a quick half-smile that vanished. With a slow sigh, he finally swung his outer leg back over his bench, turning to face his guest.
“What keeps you out into Night’s Autumn?” Fiáh’our asked, for in sitting so far back in the hall, it could not have been for the telling.
Karras was reticent at first. “A matter…” he grumbled and then mumbled, “personal… I failed to… something… I could not settle.”
“Must be troubling to keep you out so late,” Fiáh’our returned. “A warrior must be well rested by dawn to face another battle… or a barter?”
Karras scowled openly, his eyes narrowing. Not that he looked any less sour on other occasions, but Fiáh’our had only meant it as a friendly jibe.
He often reminded others that a little laugh at one’s self was a good thing, especially for a heavy heart. He had laughed many times at his own foolishness and even some failures, but in being away from his people so much, he sometimes forgot how sensitive the young could be. He had to remind himself of this.
“Would this matter, barter or not, be with someone particular?” he prodded, as if he did not know or could not guess. “Personal, you said… perhaps with a woman?”
