“No.” Erik smiled, shaking his head as he gave a brief laugh. “No. In fact, my memories of home—of my family—are quite fond. It was Befel and Bryon—my brother and cousin,” Erik jerked his head to the back of the carriage, “that hated home so much.”
“Interesting,” Bo said. “Then why leave?”
Erik sighed. A chilled breeze escaped the neighboring forest to the south and broke through the thick cropping of elm and oak trees. It rattled branches, whistled through small spaces in the dense foliage of the woods, and crawled up Erik’s back. He shivered brief and hard. He shook his head again, a rueful smile still on his face.
“That look says more than any words ever could,” Bo said.
“My brother hated working the farm. I don’t know why. It’s hard work, but he’s the oldest boy and would have inherited our father’s lands. And my cousin, well, he is my uncle’s only boy so he would have inherited his farm as well. But not only does he hate farming, he hates his father.”
“So you left because you wouldn’t get an inheritance?” Bo never kept his eyes off the road in front of him, but Erik could see a raised eyebrow through a sidelong glance.
“No,” Erik replied quickly, “I liked working the farm. Ever since I was little, I found something redeeming in the hard work. And, besides, I would have gotten a bit of land to work. Simone, the woman I intended to marry, would have added to it—a wedding gift from her father. It would have been enough.”
“So your brother and cousin left to avoid farming the rest of their lives, but if you enjoyed and saw a future in it, then why did you join them?”
“The feudal lords of Hámon have been encroaching on our lands. They have been farmed by free men for several hundred years . . . but maybe not for much longer.”
“So you left to avoid a fight, but now you fear you have left your family in harm’s way?”
“I left because my brother and cousin wanted—want—to go east, where fame is readily available, and fortune is easily gotten,” Erik replied, unable to hide his growing doubts.
“And with this new wealth, you thought you could buy off these lords and keep your lands free? You left to save your family?”
Erik nodded, but then frowned.
“I left because I’m an idiot. What a stupid idea.”
Bo shrugged, watching the road once again.
“Perhaps,” he said.
“We left a little more than two summers ago. I haven’t more than a handful of rusted, copper coins to my name, and every night I dream of Hámonian nobles riding through my father’s farm, killing him and the men who work for him, raping their wives, and selling my sisters into slavery,” Erik explained as a small tear dripped from the corner of his eye.
“And now you are heading east with a bunch of wayward travelers, a company of miners, and a band of gypsies. What does this have in store for you?”
“My brother thinks we can be miners, but my cousin wishes to go to Finlo and become a soldier in the armies of Golgolithul.”
“Both can be very lucrative,” Bo suggested, “but both are very dangerous.”
“Well, I’ve decided I’m going back home. I’m tired of wasting my time. I’m tired of breaking up fights between Befel and Bryon. I’m tired of having these terrible dreams about my family.”
“If you feel that is what is best,” Bo said, “then that is what you must do.”
“You think that’s a bad idea?” Erik asked.
“I don’t know, but I will tell you this: fame that’s easily won is seldom earned, and fortune easily attained is often ill-gotten. The former doesn’t last, and the latter often leads to a man’s doom. You are right in wanting to help your family, but people have a veiled understanding of the east. It is not all beautiful women, golden fields, and rivers of flowing wine. Believe me, I would know.”
Erik looked to Bo with a tilt of his head.
“Perhaps a tale for a different time,” Bo said with a wry smile.
Erik looked forward, still trying to hold back his tears. He could feel them, daring to leave his eyes, but he sought to blink them away. He took another drink of honey wine; alcohol always did seem to stem the tide of tears.
“But I do believe in following your heart,” said Bo, breaking the silence.
Erik chuckled. “My grandmother used to always tell me that following your heart can get you into trouble. She told me to follow my head.”
Bo nodded and gave a short laugh.
“My grandmother used to tell me the same thing. But she would also tell me that the desires of our heart—the desires of a good man’s heart—are put there by the Creator. Therefore, your heart and your head are connected in a way. I don’t know you, young Erik, but if you’re a good man, then follow your heart. If you don’t, then the Creator may have to remind you of what your heart is saying, and sometimes the Creator’s nudgings aren’t so pleasant.”
Am I a good man? Erik thought as he looked down at his chest. What are you trying to say to me? What are you telling me to do?
Chapter 9
PATÛK AL’BANAN, A NAME THAT struck fear, commanded awe and reverence, demanded respect—once—sat across his destrier, a giant gray horse, old, hard, and sour like his master. As Al’Banan watched men board a ship in the harbor of Finlo, a long scowl crossed his face. The hard, grumbling snarl that followed it, stretching the wrinkled skin along his jaw, could not be misinterpreted.
“Fools,” he muttered under the cowl of his heavy gray cloak.
The tall hillock provided a good vantage point to closely watch the young men of Háthgolthane load onto ships. Sailing east with hope of glory and honor, the salty winds would blast against faces, turning cheeks red and bloody, and blinding eyes for several days. Patûk Al’Banan despised them, and when he spat at the wind, it did not have the will to blow it back into his face.
He clenched his teeth in a grimace and pulled the cowl of his cloak back, revealing close-cropped white hair. He ran a hand through it, wishing once more it would return to the glimmering black shade of his youth. The white hair, the wrinkles, the age spots on the back of his hands, these all belied the fire that burned inside Al’Banan’s stomach.
He trained his men hard, but not harder than he trained himself. He often would say to his young recruits, “Any of you. I will take any of you and turn you into a weeping baby . . . if I even let you live. I’ve bedded more women, killed more men, and seen the passing of three kings.” And all who heard knew he spoke the truth.
A sharp gust of ocean air blew up his hill like a swarm of angry bees. His huge steed stamped its feathered hooves impatiently and gave an indignant and fiery snort.
“Easy Warrior,” he soothed as he patted the muscled neck of the gray warhorse. His voice turned to a lover’s canto when he spoke to his beloved companion. “We will leave soon enough.”
“Lieutenant,” Patûk Al’Banan barked, his voice back to an iron-hard growl.
A younger man, with high cheekbones, soft skin, and a chin slightly tilted toward the sky that gave away his nobility—once—rode up next to Al’Banan, but when the old warrior gave him a steel-melting sidelong glance, the younger man pulled
back on his horse’s reins and remained slightly behind his commander.
“Yes, General?” the younger man asked, pushing the cowl of his cloak back, also revealing hair cut short. Although it shone midnight black in the noonday sun, several streaks of gray revealed a middle-aged man. His smooth, pale skin and perfect teeth, his clean and soft looking hands, suggested a man unaccustomed to hard work, a man different from Patûk Al’Banan. However, for all his laziness and self-righteousness, for all his stupidity, this younger soldier proved zealous in his loyalty. It was a quality Al’Banan could not overlook.
“Phurnan, what do we know about this ship?”
Patûk Al’Banan didn’t take his eyes away from the men still boarding the ship in the harbor.
“Which ship is that, my lord?” Sorben Phurnan asked, his voice carrying its usual twinge of haughtiness.
“The ship being boarded by all those fool bastards, you imbecile,” Al’Banan hissed. Did his subordinate’s zealotry really shadow his stupidity?
“Yes, of course, General. My apologies,” Sorben Phurnan said quickly, but with the lisping condescendence of Golgolithulian royalty.
“No high ranking officers to speak of, sir. Just seventy or eighty fools that are willing to pile into a boat made to house forty men and risk a voyage around the Dragon’s Tooth for the scraps that imposter throws them.”
Did his zealotry shadow his stupidity? Yes indeed it did, and Patûk Al’Banan almost smiled. He always enjoyed listening to Phurnan’s rants on the Lord of the East, the Ruler of Golgolithul. The curses he invented, the things he said, the claims he made, the lewd jokes and slanderous tales would make a whore’s toes curl—and they made Patûk Al’Banan smile. Nothing else ever did.
“How many cross the Plains this month?”
“I am not sure, my lord,” Sorben replied, and before Al’Banan could give him another steel-melting stare, he quickly added, “but I will find out, sir. I hear the wagon trains across the Plains of Güdal are slowing, what with summer on the horizon.”
“They are easier targets,” Patûk grumbled.
“Aye sir, they are,” Sorben said. Al’Banan looked back at the Lieutenant over his shoulder. He hadn’t meant for his second in command to hear him.
“We sunk one ship last month, sir,” Sorben added, a triumphant smile on his face.
“A pittance,” snarled the old general, revealing yellowed but healthy looking teeth despite their many years of service to the commander. “A grain of sand on a vast beach. What are seventy fools to a pompous runt who has hundreds flooding through his gates every day, all desiring to die for a cause they don’t even understand.”
“Even a mountain will fall.” Sorben Phurnan, again, had heard what Al’Banan had meant to be his private grumblings. “Even if it needs to be destroyed a stone at a time.”
Patûk Al’Banan snapped his head back, a dark shadow looming over his already hooded eyes. He glared at his lieutenant, breathing heavily through his nose, and in the chilled air, the moisture looked like steam spilling from a crack in the earth.
“I grow tired of you listening to my private thoughts, Lieutenant.”
Al’Banan’s words dripped poison, and Sorben Phurnan made no reply. He dropped his chin to his chest like some wild dog cowering to its alpha, pulled back on the reins of his horse, and practically backed the animal into the horse of another man.
Patûk watched his lieutenant, the anger-filled stare of resentment and hatred fixed on him. A sharp shiver clattered through the younger man’s body, and goose pimples broke over his skin. Was it his stare, or the cold breeze coming from the South Sea? Another gust blew across the top of the hillock, throwing dirt into tiny, short-lived tornadoes.
Looking back to the city of Finlo and the South Sea, Al’Banan caught the returning gaze of a man in his middle years, gray creeping along the edges of his temples. The man held a thin hemp line, five plump, brass scaled Perches hanging from brass hooks—a modest catch, and two or three days’ worth of food for a half-day’s worth of work.
The fisherman, pants cut below the knees and a sleeveless shirt open to bare a leathery, tanned, blond-haired chest, tensed, the muscles in his neck and forearms straining as he scanned the hill of armed soldiers, his blue eyes darting from spear tip to sword handle back to spear tip.
A warm, gentle shiver ran through Patûk Al’Banan, settling in his stomach. It was a welcome feeling he remembered from years past, the one he got when looking at a man he respected, even if he had to kill him. Apprehension dotted the angler’s face, with caution in his squinted eyes, and his muscles ready to fight or flee. He slowed his breath, but not in fear.
Another gust blew across the hill, caught Patûk Al’Banan’s heavy, wool cloak, and flipped it open for just a split second. It was just enough, and it allowed the midday sun to briefly glare off the steel breastplate. It was embossed with the image of a coiled cobra, hood spread wide, fangs bared, ready to strike.
The fisherman saw that image, and his squinted blue eyes widened. Al’Banan cursed himself and closed his cloak tight. The man couldn’t know what it meant. He was too young. But perhaps his looks lied about his age? Perhaps his father or grandfather had told him?
“Fool. Sheep-brained fool,” Patûk Al’Banan muttered to himself. “A tiny pebble in our cogwheel, and the whole machine breaks.”
He pulled on Warrior’s reins, turning him around.
“Lead our men to camp,” he muttered to Sorben Phurnan, a look of anger and self-inflicted disappointment still strewn across his furled brow.
The lieutenant nodded, and when he whistled, the company of twenty footmen and four horsemen snapped to attention and fell in behind their lieutenant.
Al’Banan looked down at a man nearly his age, but his white hair was not as neatly kept as the general’s. Scars dotted his face, old, faded, and pasty white, but one still glared red and wide. It angled across the bridge of his nose, over the distorted lid of his dead, right eye, and traveled into his hairline, creating a valley through his balding scalp.
Bao Zi had served Patûk Al’Banan faithfully from the time the general stood a fledgling lieutenant with a single silver strand stitched across his purple tabard. And Bao Zi still served his master, answering only to him, and commanding his personal guard. Two other men stood behind Bao Zi, hands resting on long sword hilts, cloaks covering steel breastplates, cowls shielding hard faces.
“Kill him,” Patûk Al’Banan muttered matter-of-factly, as he nodded in the direction of the fisherman. Bao Zi glanced over and bowed.
Chapter 10
THE CRUNCHING OF GRASS AND snapping of small twigs under wooden wheels heralded the break in the mid-afternoon silence. As if a switch had been flipped, the hard stamps of wide-flanked draft horses and oxen, the dissonant snorts of hogs, and the sharp bleats of sheep created a dissonant chorus of sound that ripped through the still air.
It was a thunderous explosion of noise that seemed to rattle the ground, and the sudden commotion sent sleeping fowl into the air. The fluttering of their wings caused the green elm buds to swagger gingerly on their long pedicels.
The flapping of wings from thrushes to sparrows to jays sounded a drumming warning to any predators. The scre
ech from a red-tailed hawk from somewhere deep in the Blue Forest of elm and oak and sycamore sliced through the sky and sent each bird flying into a frenzy until they looked like nothing but specks of dust against the sun-scorched blueness overhead.
That cry, that tolling bell of impending doom in the Blue Forest, also sent small mammals scurrying. The sound of their padded feet, pattering through the leaves and underbrush of the forest and up the sides of trees might as well have been a stampede of bison across the Plains of Güdal. With all those helpless creatures stirring from one hiding hole to another, a small red fox darted about, hoping to capitalize on the sudden opportunity for a mid-afternoon snack.
How the presence of humans could send the world into such disarray. Bells jingled, and harnesses rattled. Reins snapped while the creatures of the forest—from predator to prey—watched a train of people as diverse as any large city roll by, unaware that the whole world around it followed its every move.
A pair of piercing dark eyes watched that train slowly roll through that part of the forest. A fox or a wolf? A cougar or a hawk? Those eyes did belong to a cunning hunter, an experienced killer, and a predator without mercy or fear. But when the thin lips below those eyes parted into a devious smile, showing crooked and uneven teeth, they revealed something more than a simple animal trying to survive.
The caravan drove by, several men hanging behind and prodding along errant sheep with sticks just in case some brave wolf decided to make a run at their livelihood. Then, as quickly as it had been broken, silence returned to the Blue Forest, a hushed shadow of fake serenity.
The fox marched back to its hole, the white fur of a rabbit bloodied between its small, sharp teeth. A thrush knocked its beak against the bough of a great oak tree as the fox trotted by, but no one paid any attention to the warning. The cool, thin air of the high atmosphere fluttered under a red-tailed hawk’s primaries and ruffled the down-like feathers of its crown. It shook its head, floating gently to earth with its wings outstretched and the limp body of a red-breasted robin clutched between long, yellow toes, and black talons.
A Chance Beginning Page 5
