Deserts Of Naroosh

by Bradford Bates

  Funny, all they had to do to wake him up on time was have JaKobi heat up the room.

  Tim sat at the firepit. There were a few stray wisps of smoke coming off the embers, but for the most part, it had burned out while they slept. Their meal from last night was there and looked untouched. He pulled out his magic teapot and filled it with coffee grounds and water before placing it on the warm coals.

  He might be in the middle of the desert, and it was easily a hundred degrees, but coffee was a way of life. Not a choice.

  The smell of roasting coffee brought the others out of their tents as though it was a Folgers commercial, and they gathered around the fire waiting for the sweet roast to finish.

  Neema looked at the pot. “What is that smell?”

  Tim grinned. “This is how the other half lives.”

  “Don’t let him fool you. Without sugar and cream, coffee is just bitter.” Lorelei extended her cup for some and winked at Neema’s frown. “It’s an acquired taste is all I’m saying.”

  Tim filled up a mug halfway and handed it across to the warrior. She sniffed the liquid, wrinkled her nose, and tried a sip.

  Neema gagged. “It’s disgusting.”

  “A dagger to the heart!” Tim sipped from his cup, then took Neema’s and dumped the liquid from hers into his mug to top it off. “On the plus side, more for me.”

  Neema looked like she was kicking herself for talking shit about their drink, but she didn’t apologize. “Last night, you were successful in fulfilling your quest. If you turn it in now, I will tell you the story of the Daughters.”

  Tim rose from his seat and walked over to where the honeyed tea was. He quickly placed Neema’s mug in his inventory and retrieved the clean cup. Once he filled it with honeyed tea, he handed it to her. “You're going to need your voice to tell a good story.”

  Tim hoped she realized this was his way of letting her know he wasn’t offended by what she said about the world's most perfect beverage. When he sat, he turned in his quest.

  Quest Complete: Slaying the Zerker

  Let’s be honest. You did The Etheric Coast and the people of Naroosh a great service. One of Jabari’s most intimidating generals is now off the board. With each victory, the resistance claims more of the land back for the people.

  Reward: Ten gold coins and increased reputation with the resistance.

  Neema smiled as she tossed small bags of coins around to each member of the group. “You’ve lived up to your end of the bargain. Now let me live up to mine.” She looked out over the fire as if recalling a memory or a dream. “The tale of the Daughters started long ago…”

  Sabrina and Savine were the twin daughters of the legendary swordsmith Gerald Halvelston. He knew early on that his sons would inherit the forge and all the wealth that came with it so he promised to give his daughters a different skill set. Surely if his sons could make the swords, his daughters could use them.

  Not being a man to do anything by half measures, Gerald devised a plan for his daughters’ training. What he expected from them was perfection, and what he expected of himself was to get them there. What was the point in doing a thing if a person didn’t put their all into it? Every task, no matter how small, had a purpose. This was as true at the forge as it was in life.

  Any thug could swing a sword, but a master was a symphony of destruction.

  So when it was traditionally time for the young women of their city to go to finishing school, Gerald put his plan in motion. He’d be damned if his daughters would be trained to cook and clean and dote on some man who didn’t respect them. They were born to walk a different path. This swordsmith’s daughters would not be women of the court or things to be shown off on men’s arms. They would control their destiny.

  First, they needed to train, and before they could train properly, the two girls needed to get in shape. They said a warrior was only as good as her sword. Gerald believed the sword only served to enhance the arm behind it, and so the girls trained. They needed to build strength so they lifted different sized bars of steel in the forge’s front yard. Their stamina was abysmal, so he made them run three miles a day and swim to the other side of the lake and back.

  His daughters were exhausted and cranky, but in Gerald’s mind, if they were tired enough to be irritable, they weren’t training hard enough.

  So he pushed them harder.

  It wasn’t long before some of the townsfolk asked after the girls. When the responses Gerald gave in town weren’t good enough, they came out to the forge inquiring after the young ladies’ well-being. The two young women were in fine health, but their hair had been chopped off at the shoulders, and they wore men’s pants. It wasn’t exactly proper, but the town could hardly afford to lose the swordsmith so when he told them where to shove their expectations for his daughters’ future, they didn’t say a word. His daughters were busy becoming something, not becoming something for someone else.

  Summer turned to fall. Then the new year was on them.

  The difference in Gerald’s daughters from when they started their training was as different as the seasons. Each morning they ran a nine-mile circuit around the city, followed by three laps in the lake. It was only right for a father to be proud of his girls for working so hard, but when the girls saw his smile their spirits wilted. It was an expression that said this was the easy part, and they were about to work harder than they ever had in their lives.

  The two daughters were right.

  Now that they’d stripped any useless fat off their bodies and strengthened their muscles to the point Gerald knew they could handle the stress, he gave them their most challenging task yet. Building muscle was the easy part. Training it into something useful was work. Harnessing the potential of a warrior's body also had to be based on flexibility and fluidity of motion. His girls wouldn’t be fighting in fancy metal plates. They had to be able to move.

  Now when they finished their morning exercise, instead of lifting the heavy steel bars, his daughters worked on a series of stretches. Gerald had bartered a sword with the monks of The Etheric Mountain to gain access to their training methods, and now he passed them on to Sabrina and Savine. When the women complained that their muscles hurt in ways they never felt before, he did what any father would do.

  He made them train harder.

  A year had passed from when the girls should have first learned to balance a book on their heads for posture. Instead, they could now balance on a heavy beam for hours at a time, as easily on one foot as the other. Their balance was superior, and their dedication unwavering. His girls had done everything he ever asked of them, and it was time to reward them for their efforts.

  Were their spirits crushed when he revealed their training blades? Maybe a little, but they were learning the why behind his madness. He didn’t need to explain to them that they had to earn the right to use real steel. Gerald could see in their eyes that they understood the lessons he had been teaching them since their training started.

  Nothing was ever handed to you. If you wanted something, you had to earn it.

  Gerald spent the next year teaching his daughters everything he knew about basic swordsmanship. When his daughters could easily best him and all of his sons in combat, he brought in an instructor. A year later he brought in another, and the process repeated until the girls could learn nothing new from a teacher.

  It was time to let them go.

  While his daughters had been busy training, he’d spent the last three years painstakingly crafting them the perfect weapons. The blades were forged from the ground up with Sabrina and Savine in mind. He made the steel lighter than he would have for a man but folded it on itself hundreds of times over, making it stronger than any blade he’d ever forged. The swords were the final masterpieces of a career spent pushing the limits of what swords and magic could do.

  Gerald presented the blades to his daughters, and this time their smiles weren’t ones of trepidation. Together they had fought through the endless hours of t
raining, and now they were ready to fight. He looked over the two girls, handed each of them a bag of golden coins, and told them to come back when they found what they wanted out of life, and he would support them in whatever they would do.

  Together the two daughters created their fighting style. It was said they moved together so well it was like fighting a single person with two blades. Their movements were too smooth to be called anything as barbaric as swordplay. It was more like they wove a deadly tapestry of death.

  It might not have been what Gerald envisioned, but he was proud of them.

  So Sabrina and Savine left the safety of the smithy to find their glory.

  It didn’t take long for the Two Daughters to make a name for themselves as mercenaries, then bounty hunters, and finally assassins. Their father’s training prepared them to fight, but not for the fallibility of men. Noble causes turned into treacherous ones, and eventually, the reason itself didn’t matter, only the coin.

  The daughters’ names became the thing of nightmares. Don’t fuck up this job or the Two Daughters will come for you. Just like any person of ill repute, Sabrina and Savine also gained a certain amount of attention and adoration. Almost all of the top assassins in the world were men, but none of them had the class, the looks, and the perfect record that the Two Daughters did.

  So Jabari’s scouts found them and offered them enough gold to pique their interest. Once The Daughters made it to the desert, their real work began. Jabari showered wealth upon them as they’d never seen before, but it was more than riches he gave them. He filled the role of the father they’d been missing since leaving home. He cared for them, and they protected him as if their lives meant nothing.

  With the Two Daughters by his side, Jabari accomplished more in a year than he did in the previous ten. Whenever one of the outlying villages disputed the Pharaoh's taxes or wanted to cause trouble, he would offer them a choice. All-out war, or their two finest warriors against his. Then he would point at Sabrina and Savine, and the men would laugh.

  They never laughed for very long.

  Once his power in the kingdom was secure, he turned the Daughters loose to run his raiding parties into other realms. They brought back with them countless riches, which he used to bolster his wealth and the palace’s defenses. There was always the threat of rebellion on the horizon, but Sabrina and Savine could quell any uprising.

  “Now, with half the world under the Pharaoh’s control, the Two Daughters are waiting for a new fight.” Neema sipped her tea and looked around the circle.

  The Desert Wolf shuddered as if remembering something horrible. “I saw them once, walking through the market. It was only for a few moments, but I damn near shit myself.”

  Standing from her spot by the fire, Neema moved to pour another glass of honeyed tea. “They didn’t look like much, just two women walking in front of Jabari. But when a man came out of the crowd and started yelling, they cut through him so quickly that as his body slid apart, Jabari walked through the gap without even breaking stride.”

  “Fucking A,” JaKobi breathed.

  Tim wasn’t so worried. Cassie had the perfect weapon to fight against the Daughters.

  Things might not be perfect, but he wouldn’t let a good story throw him off his game. If all someone needed to be dangerous was a good story, there would be many more dangerous people in the world. If the Daughters were looking for a challenge, the Blue Dagger Society would give them one.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Lorelei and Neema said their goodbyes as the others got the horses ready to go.

  When the horses were ready and their gear secured, they all met back around the fire. Neema took the lead. “I have a few things to do tonight, so I might not be back here before you.”

  The warrior pointed at an area off to the side of the camp. “There is firewood in there if you need it, and I will be bringing food back with me. It will be something we can eat on the move. I’d like to be back to the oasis by the morning if possible.”

  Tim was one hundred percent on board with that. The oasis had to be twenty degrees cooler than the rest of the desert. He could have sworn when they woke up today it was already in the nineties. The fucking nineties! What kind of madness was this, where the lows for the day were in the nineties? In a lot of normal places, those temps would be the worst heat of the summer. If it only got hotter from there, when would it stop? One hundred, one hundred and twenty? It was pure madness.

  Bitching about the weather wouldn’t make him a very respectful guest. It wasn’t like Neema could wave her arms in the air and turn the temperatures down for him. The weather was the weather and as unchangeable as the sun rising in the east.

  “Thank you for all your help, Neema.” Tim gave her a warm smile. “Our journey here wouldn’t have been nearly as direct without your guidance.”

  Neema moved to the edge of camp and jumped into her saddle. “Take care of the Two Daughters, and I’ll be in your debt.”

  “I like the sound of that.” Lorelei grinned as she watched the warrior ride off.

  Tim turned her way. “The sooner we get done, the faster you can return to your lady in waiting.”

  “Then let’s go kill these bitches,” Lorelei quipped as she walked toward the horses. “They’re seriously slowing my roll.”

  Nothing else needed to be said. They got on their horses and rode.

  Riding through the desert gave Tim time to think, and right now his mind turned to Phase Two. Whatever the hell that was. Khalid wasn’t so great with sharing information yet. Tim guessed they hadn’t earned enough of the man's trust to be included in other plans. Holding the resistance together couldn’t be easy, and openly sharing with people they hadn’t vetted would be a mistake.

  Tim got it. He just didn’t like it.

  There was also part of him that was in awe of the man. It was a pretty big achievement to get a large group of people together and keep them together. Let alone get them to accomplish anything meaningful as a single unit. Tim had been a part of more than one guild that imploded, and it happened for all different kinds of reasons from petty to flat-out insurrection. If it was that hard to keep twenty-five people together and motivated, he had no idea how Khalid could manage to do it with thousands.

  The fact the man wasn’t getting pulled apart by so many demands on his time was an impressive feat.

  The only thing Tim could use to compare his time management skills to Khalid’s was his first year in college. There was so much going on. Sure there were classes, but then there were also clubs and groups that demanded a lot of extra time. Not to mention all the girls, beer, and a part-time job begging for more of his attention. With so many things going on it was amazing more people didn’t fail out of college their first go around.

  He’d quickly learned how to balance things around what mattered most. He wasn’t going into debt so he could do keg stands and miss class. Tim went to school because his parents gave up everything to get him there. Flushing all their work down the toilet for a few beers seemed rather disrespectful. All he wanted to do was make them happy, and spend some time finding out what was next for himself.

  Tim was a simple guy.

  All he needed to have a good time was his laptop, a beer, and a really good game. Now that he was living in one, it was hard not to think of himself as the luckiest man in the world. His girlfriend was amazing. He had a group of friends that a guy couldn't live without. It was as if every single one of his fantasies had come to life.

  All he needed now was a bank account with at least six zeros after the first number, and he might as well be in heaven. He’d get there one day. Having the financial security to find something he was passionate about and pursue it for the rest of his life would be amazing. It was so close to becoming a reality he could taste it.

  Maybe not the millionaire thing, but Tim could probably swing becoming a debt-free college graduate relatively quickly.

  Their ride into the desert was going bette
r than yesterday's adventure, and by that, Tim simply meant that random body parts and trails of dried blood didn’t cover the road to their destination. In fact, the sands almost seemed to be receding a little, making way for a more luscious environment. If the path they were on wasn’t made of stone, he would have felt like they were making their way down a country lane instead of being smack dab in the middle of the desert.

  Tim reminded himself of why they were there, and it wasn’t to take in the sights.

  “Let’s buff up.” Tim cast his buffs and checked his status to make sure everyone else had done the same.

  JaKobi reined his horse to a stop. “Maybe we should let Lorelei go first. She might be able to sweet-talk these bitches into giving up.”

  “These bitches?” Cassie lifted one eyebrow and waited for an explanation.

  Tim wasn’t sure his friend could wiggle out of this. It was one of those unspoken rules that women could call other women bitches, but when men did, it was derogatory. The social etiquette code didn’t have to make sense to him. It was just how things were. A little sheen of sweat appeared on the fire mage’s forehead.

  “You know, the Dementor twins,” JaKobi stammered.

  It wasn’t a perfect gambit, but he didn’t plead ignorance so much as completely ignore the situation and try to steer it in a much more JaKobi-friendly direction. Tim was pretty impressed. Not many men lived to tell the tale of how they escaped using the dreaded word, but in the end, it might not have been his retort that saved him, but simply the fact Lorelei had called them bitches first.

  “Dementor Twins is acceptable.” Cassie turned to look at ShadowLily. “Training them is the hardest, isn’t it?”

  The assassin grinned. “Just wait. It's when they start training you that’s the problem.”

  ShadowLily took in the expression of disbelief on Cassie’s face and decided to explain further. “My mom hated sports, but she watched all the games with my Dad. Eventually, she cheered louder than he did.”