by Sam Sea
Les chuckled, not believing his hearing. "Five... You won't make it through the main gate with only five… There are at least fifty fully trained fighters in there."
But the Grand Master was unaffected by his cautious words. "Yes, I think five should be plenty... two will sneak through their patrols and cover the most likely escape exit, and two to go and flush the snake out, and one to be watching it all from the distance…"
The old priest cleared his thought before he continued. "I guess you know who is going to be watching it all from the distance, right?"
Les knew he meant himself. "I would not expect anything else from anyone calling himself Grand"
"So you better start drawing maps, and rest for we leave as soon as you can run up the stairs." He saw a doubt pass over Les's face as he looked away, unsure what to do. "I know that the clan was your life for a long time, maybe as long as you can remember. But before that, you were someone else, a boy who lost his family, and now... Now you are not the man who you used to be. You are the priest of Bo’Ra now. I have taken you to the pool of life, and blessed you to bath in miracle water... That had purified your soul, not just healed your broken bones…"
But none of that seemed to have quieted Les's mind.
"They will kill me as soon as they see me... You will see. You are sending me to certain death."
"Don't worry... You will have your angel next to you, to protect you at all times." Les could not make out the smile on old priest's face, was it mocking, or assuring...
Mikka joined them hearing only the fragments of their conversation.
"How many men did you say we expect to find there?" Mikka asked again.
"In the temple itself, not more than sixty who have already mastered the art of fighting... There will also be about hundred or so of those that are still being taught. You will find boys and girls of all ages there..."
Suddenly Mikka thought about Silent and felt sad.
"I did not sign for this to kill little children."
"If we do it my way, you will not have to..." Derran swiftly interrupted her. "It will be just Les and you."
Mikka looked at all the priests sitting around. "There are five of them that I saw practicing with swords... They could help. I've seen them move. They are decent fighters. They could be of some help."
"Yes, they are good fighters. I’ve trained them the best I could..." Derran nodded his head. "And I am sure they would show no fear going to the hideout. But they are not skilled sword masters. They would get butchered in a close combat. And I am not ready to let that happen. They are good man, and I will not trade their lives for your comfort. So, no! Four of you are here to do this. Priests stay behind and keep safe our back. We leave before the first light, and if you do everything I ask from you, we will meet here all again before the next day is all over."
Welda was out of the river with new clothes making her look almost normal, if not for her unsettling eyes. “I know what you are trying to do… and it will fail. I know-:
But Mikka would have none of it."Yeah, if you know so much..." Mikka was sure as hell not ready to stand there and listen to the crazy woman talk, "tell me, who am I?"
"Oh, that is easy... There is a person here who believes you are an angel, although you are not an angel even though you might have come from heaven itself... You are..." Mikka's eyebrows twitched as she stared at her much closer, waiting for Welda to finish picking her words. "...special, someone very special, torn between the light and the dark..." Welda laughed in the end seeing the expression on Mikka’s face.
"If we let you lose, and let you go, what would you do?"
"Well, what do you want me to do, oh great wizard? You are the one that call the great, aren't you? And, yes, you are the great, not like the others...you cure people, make them live... I know who you are… Welda knows everything-"
Mikka moved closer to her to give her another smacking, but Welda jumped back, still laughing like crazy.
“Your laugh is disturbing me… You better start to pull yourself together, or I’ll smack that craziness out of you.” Mikka warned her.
Welda instantly quieted down, remembering to feel the bump in the back of her head. “You do not need to tie me. If you live through tomorrow, I will come with you and help you. Welda will help you find the man who did this to my people…”
But the old priest had another idea. “No, Welda. I do not want to take you with us. I want you to return to your Irtria. Take one of these craws with you and if that man ever comes your way again, you send that craw to me. That is the way you can help me… Understand?”
Chapter 16 – The House of Black Claws
They rode through most of the night along the river, and crossed it with an old barge as the sun made a day.
Then they all split up, and Les took their almost completely emptied supply wagon. Mikka was supposed to hide in its back.
Les would constantly turn his head around and try to see Mikka, but where she hid when there were only three small water barrels and a bit of straw left, he could not tell.
"You know, growing up as a kid, all I wanted to be is a knight... A hero..." he started to talk
"You aren’t much of that now..." she answered him almost behind his ear. “And stop turning around trying to see me… You look too nervous that way. Just stare straight, and pretend that everything is normal.”
"Yeah, you are right about that," he answered as he relaxed his stare on the deserted road ahead.
"So, why haven't you become a knight? Seeing all the knights you have around here, should not have been that difficult."
"Well, my parents decided to send me off to learn a skill of an armor master, except, my armor master had some very particular ideas about teaching me and other boys."
“What ideas exactly?”
"Well... there were four of us he picked from Skinos. It's a small town by the South Sea. A kind of a town where kids starve unless their fathers catch anything on the water. I guess mine wasn't much of a fisherman since we were always hungry. So, anyway, he was going to take us to Tisto, a bigger town about a few days riding from Skinos. On the first night we got to Tisto, he picked a boy, the biggest of us... I remember, he was a head taller than me, shoulders as wide as yours. He took him to another room, and... did things to him that no adult should ever do to a boy. We could hear him cry and beg for a whole time."
"It seems he bought us with a coin or two, and he was not only thinking of free labor that he would get, you know... But then, I was already too old to be taken for anyone’s little bitch, I've already been smacked around too many times to be afraid of the pain, no matter how stronger and bigger the person was. My father was never gentle with his hand, or stick… I guess, now that I think about it, I should be thankful to him for that…”
“So what happened?”
" So… I looked at the two other fellas in the room with me. Seeing how badly they pied their pants, maybe even shit them, I calculated that my ass was probably next. Well, I didn't want to wait for my ass to be next, to tell you the truth."
"Good for you… So, what did you do?"
"I didn't even wait for the raping to be over. I just took a metal hook I found laying on the table, and went inside the room and put it inside his neck.”
"A hook?"
"Yes... It looked sharp, and it was the best thing I could find.. So, as he turned around I just... hooked him."
Mikka chuckled. "Good for you... I’m really glad you did it. I hate rapist. I would have done the same."
"It took a while for him to die... But I loved every second of it. Maybe that's when I became assassin already, and everything later was just to make me do my job better."
"Yeah, but you are not an assassin anymore. Aren’t you a priest now?" Mikka was saying through a teasing smile, he could tell.
But Les’s mind was sober. "Yes, a priest who's on a pilgrimage to assassinate another man… What does that really make me?"
“Don’t think
about that too much… You’re a human being, and that is enough…” Mikka tried to cheer him up, but Les fell silent.
"What happened with those boys?" she asked him as the gloom on his face was not departing.
"I don't know. I never saw him again... They took me away afterwards, cuffed me with irons and threw me behind the bars. And since my parents didn't want anything to do with me, they were just going to get rid of me... I was going to hang for killing a man. But... then I got a new master."
"The one we are going to kill now?"
"Yes... He went to get me from the jail after hearing what I've done, and paid for me a lot of money, according to him anyway. He reminded me of his generosity my whole life, but now that I stop to think about it, I doubt it was more than a single gold coin, maybe half of it."
"My master was not like that."
"Yeah, did he beat you?"
"Never. With him everything was mental."
"Oh, so he talked to you...taught? Mean?"
Mikka did not answer.
"Did he made you do... questionable, immoral things?"
'No... "
"Not even made you steal to get a hot meal, push all women off the road and steal their purses? Wait next to taverns and then club drunks that come out, take everything they had and leave them butt naked in a ditch?"
"You did all of that?"
Les nodded his head in silence.
"And just when I started to respect you."
"He asked, and I... delivered. I was not more than twelve."
"No... my master... he was a good master, a great teacher to tell you the truth. He was so good he made me love him the way I loved my father. Except, he left me... just like my old man did."
"Oh, that's horrible. He left you?" Les said in a patronizing voice. "Heartbreaking? Treat you so good and then he had to leave? Monster!" How old were you? Were you like twelve like me?"
"Shut up. On a second thought, I liked you better when you did not talk."
But it was too late for that. Les was just starting "Were you at least old enough to know how to dress yourself?"
"Shut up!?"
"Feed yourself?"
Mikka knew he was only going to continue if she shows that it bothers her. She turned her voice to sober tone, not really liking where the conversation was heading.
"No.. That was like ten years ago..."
"Horrible...what, that... you were just a baby back then??? Monster!?"
"I know I should have not talk to you, or tell you anything..." Mikka said in a quiet, sad and regretful voice.
The tone of it surprised him "Why do you say that? I was just teasing you… pain is a pain, if you feel it… doesn’t’ matter what causes it… I know that now… So don’t be sorry for talking to me. I actually enjoy it, a great deal."
“I know you do, but I am sorry for myself, because… whenever you share your life with someone, it hurts... It hurts when they betray you and you have to deal with it then."
"Talking about being betrayed... I guess your world, my angel, is not that much different than mine."
"Makes me wonder, if your good master made you how you are now, I would hate to see what you would be now if you had mine."
"You, I noticed that both you and the Grand Master are very close. Are you are both gods?" Les suddenly asked blatantly.
"What do you mean?"
"It seems you are gods... I am pretty sure you came from heaven, and took our form. But why? To talk to us? Why"
"No... I don't think that is quite true..."
"But then who are you?"
"It's kind of hard to explain."
They both let the silence melt with the road, and the creaking of the wheel substituted for their words.. It got so quiet that in the end, Les could not help it but to turn around and try to see again where Mikka might be. "Are you really here? Or am I just imagining talking to you, my mind playing a game with me? Would not be the first time."
The smack he got to the back of his hat almost made him dive to the front and drop in the horses tracks. "
"That real enough for you?" Mikka voice was asking behind him.
He was still feeling the bump in the back of his head when they rode next to the first house they've seen since yesterday. It seemed run down, and few sheep grazing nearby seemed to mark it as a shepherd’s home. An old man sat quietly in a door way, waved at him uninterestingly as he lazily smoked his pipe. Nobody else seemed to be around. The stables gates were open and empty of all horses. Les caught it all in with a swift glance, and waived back to the old man. HE stared at him the whole time his cart trotted slowly over him, trying to read the impression on the old man's face. When he was almost out of sight, he placed his hand under the seat and took out a gold coil, and then threw it hard toward the old man. The coin never touched the ground as the old man's left hand swiftly jerked forward and took the coin in.
"Pretty fast for the old sheep keeper." Mikka voice whispered from the back
After a while Les talked without turning his head, or moving his lips at all. "That was the first gate keeper on a road to hell. He will send a craw to the hold as soon as we leave his sight. The master will know we are on our way."
"He’ll know you are on your way... They can't see me."
Les nodded his head slightly.
"Do you think he recognized you?" Mikka asked.
"Of course he did... he is the one that taught me how to throw knifes when I was thirteen years old."
After a while, Mikka asked again, obviously bored. "Do you think they’ll let you reach the gate?"
"Probably... what do they have to worry about? It's just me. The master will probably want to know what happened with other assassin. And now will want to know where I got that pretty coin. I think..."
"Yes, that’s good. I like when you do that... I like when you think." Les had to smile on Mikka's teasing words.
After a while they reached the stream which flew under a small stone bridge. It all seemed very nicely maintained "So, are you going to tell me how I cannot see you..."
"Didn't you say I was an angel? Why do you think you can see an angel?"
Les smiled again.
"Do more of a thinking and less of a talking, okay?"
"I like that word, don't know what that means, but I like the word okay... seems like a promise that everything will be fine. Whoever you are, you are..."
"..Your angel, right?"
"Yes." Les said, feeling better, with a smile not leaving his face, hoping his angel never leaves him.
He felt her eyes on him. Even, on occasions, he could swear he felt her breath on his neck, warm yet subtle, assuring. He felt better knowing she was around, trying not to think that the death was waiting for him up the road, maybe even behind the next curve. Maybe it will be an arrow, maybe it will be my master's sword...
He looked up the road and the hills whose outskirts could already be seen. He was not afraid of all the men waiting there to kill him, many of whom he knew, many who were better fighters than him. But he was more afraid of the feeling his life served a little purpose, and that it would be over before it would make any sense to him.
To Les's surprised, they did not run into anybody for the rest of the trip. He knew they were constantly being watched, and often looked to the sky where a hawk was circling.
When they finally made the hills, a strange sensation had overcome Les. Looking over familiar landscape, places he had not seen for years and how little they have changed in the meantime, he felt nothing but peace. He did not quite understand that. He did not even need to hear Mikka's voice to be encouraged. He did not even dwell on the memories of his childhood and training years spend there. It was very overpowering sense that whatever happens ahead it really does not matter in a grand scheme of things. He felt his life but a drop in the water of the Great Sea. And somehow, he felt good about that. The pain was there no more. The struggle has come to the end. The circle will be closed. The feeling did not change
even when he saw a ten feet tall stone wall and a wooden gate. The gate opened, and Les let the cart inside the court.
Everything was there just as Les has remembered it, the well with the iron wheel to pull the water bucket out, the long stone-carved bath from which horses could drink icy-cold water, the house up front which looked like any well-maintained village home with dark wooden beams supporting the roof and a covered porch. The garden, which stretched all around the house and to the back seemed to finish producing the last of the squashes, flowers and grasses of different types. The poison that flew through Les's veins must have come from there.
A single man came out of the house, and with a lazy stroll when to greet them. He was a huge man, twice the size of Les in every way. He had arms the size of Les's legs and the neck the size of Les’s waste. The familiar tattoo of the black claw was covering his skull instead of hair.
The face was without expression, the eyes cold as mountain water. "So you came back after all. It's been a long time. Master has almost become worried about you."
"Good to see you too, Sor." Les said with a small, defining smile while he did not forget how many times he got a beating from the man. How many times his bones were broken? How many times did he lose consciousness? Pain, so much pain. But that was years ago, when he was young, before he got a tattoo of his own.
Les looked through the wall of ever-green wines covering the left side of the court. He could see none of the young recruits practicing in the field beyond. Last time he was in that field, he killed two of other recruits. Vastra and Skol. He lived with them for ten years, slept, ate and practiced, shared everything. And then, on the final test, the Master placed them in the fighting ring, and told them that only one can make out of there alive, that only one of them will earn the tattoo. Sor stood next to the master as he gave them their final test.
Being the strongest and fastest of them, they instantly understood the game, and united to attack him together at once. He cut them as they cut him. A week later when he woke up from the coma, he found his back tattooed.
Pain, so much pain. Soon there may be none. Les thought how hard it would have been to kill the man in front of him. To try to do it two months ago before he was captured when he w2as on top of his game, it would have been a challenge. Now, it would probably be a suicide.
