Elbir standing on one leg, unsupported by his horse, deflected the sword, which had hit him from the left. It flew down due to the hit it took from the hammer, but before it could hit the ground, it levitated back up. Dev then attacked from the other side and Elbir reacted the same way, but due to shift of the hammer weight to the right, where he didn’t have his foot, he lost balance and fell. Karn, in the meanwhile, had laid down his weapons, and was now meditating.
I felt bad for not trusting these guys. I felt even worse for Elbir. The mighty warrior was really helpless. But no one moved to help him. He got up on his own, using his hammer to balance himself.
“Again.” They were trying to train Elbir to fight with just one leg. I didn’t see the point. There was no way he would be able to function the same way as he did before he lost his leg. They tried a few more times, without any change in the result. I had to intervene.
“Stop it! This will not work! Why are you continuing?” I shouted. Dev and Karn looked at me.
Elbir looked at me. “Don’t worry Kazena. This is just temporary. When we reach Khratosh, I will get a wooden leg. But till then, I should be able to defend myself, right?”
That was true. But this wasn’t the way. “Why don’t you use some other weapon? The weight of your hammer is the issue.”
He smiled. “That’s true. But I have used hammers all my life. I have no idea how to work with any other weapon. Plus we don’t really have any other weapons. Karn has only one useful blade, Dev just has one blade. Also, as I said, this is temporary. Once I get the leg, the weight shouldn’t be an issue.”
“I understand. But till then, could you use some other weapon? It will be difficult for you to be effective in defense.”
“Fair. But I really don’t want to approach any random smith shop for a weapon. Without a leg, I would be recognizable. I would rather not stop to shop, until I reach Khratosh, where anonymity is more assured.”
That was an issue. But I had an idea. “Why don’t you use the spear I have?”
The three of them were surprised. I realized that this weapon was extremely valuable, probably the most valuable in the continent, but I felt I could trust Elbir with it. It was anyway for a short time. It was my way of making it up to them for all the times I mistrusted them.
Karn asked, “Why are you doing this? Isn’t this sword extremely valuable to you?”
I nodded. “But Elbir’s safety is important. And it’s fine. Neither Elbir nor the sword will ever leave my sight.”
Elbir looked skeptical. “Thanks, but I wouldn’t feel right taking your weapon. It belongs to you.”
I nodded. “That’s fine. You can give it back once you are back on two feet and can use your hammer.”
I took the spear off my side and gave it to him. He took it tentatively and bowed. “Thanks, Kazena.”
He held it carefully, in one hand. Then he balanced it on the palm of his other hand. He then held the spear in both his hands and swung it around a couple of times. He then stopped and examined it. He looked surprised. “Has this sword ever felt… warm to you?”
That was a weird thing to ask. “No, it hasn’t. Why do you ask?”
Elbir kept looking at the sword. “No reason… must be my imagination.”
Dev hefted his weapon. “Ready to try out your new temporary sword?”
I was hoping that Elbir could use it well. It was considerably lighter than the hammer that he was used to. I was also a little scared. This weapon must be extremely powerful for the Imperium to guard it. I had seen it go through a thick marble pillar in less than a second. We were going to be using it as a replacement weapon. I was surprised how lightly we were taking this, especially me.
Dev levitated his sword and launched it at Elbir again. He used the spear with one hand to deflect it. But given the difference in weights, the spear just flew out of the hand as it deflected the sword. The spear flew right into the tree. It smashed through the tree, and then the next and the next. It went through five trees and got buried in the ground beyond the trees. All of us were shocked. I knew it was powerful, but I didn’t think it could do this. A mere flick cut through five thick trees. This is why the Imperium wanted it. It was amazingly powerful.
Elbir winked at me. “This will definitely work as a temporary sword.”
He hobbled over to gather the sword. Karn eyed the sword. “Now we know what it can do.”
Elbir brought it back and now tried to throw the spear directly at the tree. It just hit the one tree, but it didn’t do too much more.
“Maybe it needs to be thrown harder. Or maybe the same way you threw it the last time,” Karn said.
Elbir tried it a couple more times. And Karn was right. It went farther when it was lightly flicked versus when it was thrown head on. This was a powerful weapon indeed. But we had to be careful. We couldn’t let anyone see what it could do, otherwise we would be chased endlessly by commoners and military. And the news was bound to reach the Valantian Imperium fast.
Everyone agreed. We decided to hurry to Khratosh, so that Elbir could get the foot faster and use his hammer again. The others minimized their weapon practice because of the hurry. We returned to the Weltosh road soon enough. Khratosh was still a couple of weeks away. We still stopped at towns along the way, and took small detours to practice quickly.
Karn had started to practice as well. He was trying to get proficient with his broken blade. Dev was practicing using his sword without hands. We soon reached Amaronia, one of the larger cities before Khratosh. We were there in time for the latest newspaper. It was a month and a half after the blasts, and it was the second issue of the continental newspaper. We had browsed through the previous one, but there was no mention of the destruction. They probably didn’t have time to cover the story by the time it went for print.
This time it was mentioned. In fact, the blasts took over 20 pages of the 30-page newspaper. But the story was completely different from what I was told by my three companions. And I definitely trusted their word more than the Imperium’s efforts to use this destruction to suit their own needs. The newspaper seemed to suggest that the Imperium had advanced a lot in their investigation. Given that the “news” in the paper was put there by the Imperium, it wasn’t the most objective source of information for me.
According to the story, the barracks was attacked by a horde of revolutionary troops, with siege weapons. The defenders fought heroically and defended their barracks, but were ultimately defeated as they were outnumbered 5 to 1. Then the revolutionaries destroyed the barracks, burying everyone underneath and lit a giant fire over it. That was the flash of light seen.
That sounded really weak. After years of telling everyone that the revolution was over and that the remaining members could never escape the blockade, they now were saying that the revolutionaries were out in the open and powerful enough to destroy the mainland’s strongest barracks with a strength of over 10,000 men and siege weapons. I wasn’t sure what they wanted the masses to perceive. The general population, which believed everything that was written in the only official source of information they had, would start panicking.
The only thing that the Imperium had going for it was the peace they were able to maintain across the land. If they scared the people into thinking that the peace was not assured, the people would not be as supportive of their leaders.
The coverage did give a detailed story about how a splinter group from the trapped revolutionaries in the Üzilis Mountains, sneaked through the blockade to escape and attack the Barracks. After the attack on the Barracks, the Order of Seven and top members of the Final 100 attacked them together to completely annihilate the escaped revolutionaries. But the fact that the Blockade wasn’t perfect indicated that the population at large was at risk. They had taken a terrible risk to cover up what actually happened. But revealing the truth was risky too—the people knowing that there was something extremely small that could blow up an entire building.
The other thre
e also didn’t know how to react. They were happy about the fact that there was no mention of them, but there was one section that upset them. It was reported that a group of Romansh that was travelling by the barracks was killed by the terrorists as they retreated. Those Romansh apparently were the ones who rescued these three. The Imperium had gotten them killed as they were probably too close to the barracks and had actually seen what had happened. That was sad. All three of them were extremely morose for the next few days as all of us slowly arrived at Khratosh.
Chapter 36: The city of contrasts
The hustle and bustle of Khratosh started far before the city.
The street hawkers crowded the road, with the end lanes completely occupied by them. They also came onto the other lanes, often hounding the travelers for kilometers before they gave up. There was cursing, fighting, swearing on the streets. Unlike Welehölla, there wasn’t any part of the city that was walled off. I don’t think anyone ever tried. It was too unorganized and too chaotic to control within any sort of boundary.
There were a few sections that were organized and the center of the Weltosh road was one of those. The massive carriages carrying goods shipped to or made in Khratosh plied on that section, so it was given a wide berth by all citizens and visitors of Khratosh. The other places were the newspaper distribution center, the military barracks and the communication towers. These were also given a wide berth, as everyone knew what the Imperium would do to people who disturbed these places.
Then there were sections where the rich and the poor lived side by side. You had grand quarters, magnificent tall buildings, over 100 meters into the sky, right beside which you had people living in the middle of the garbage thrown out of these buildings.
And both these sections of society felt safe. The rich man knew the poor one wouldn’t try to rob him, otherwise he would be executed by the authorities. The poor man knew the rich man wouldn’t try and get rid of him, because there would be no one to take care of his household chores and other activities like garbage disposal, activities that were beneath the rich folk. There weren’t too many people who could be called middle class, at least near the city center. And the authorities couldn’t be bothered to change anything—as far as they were concerned, the current arrangement was working like a charm.
We moved slowly towards the healing centers. Given the large number of traders constantly moving in and out of the city, large healing centers were established for weary travelers. They catered to all, from people who genuinely needed healing to get rid of their travel fatigue or any other illnesses they might have picked up, to those people who needed special type of “healing” that they couldn’t get in their own homes.
I suspected Karn might have been attracted to the second type. Dev was too innocent and Elbir too honorable to visit such a place. Karn didn’t show any inclination either, openly and quite vocally denouncing these shady “healing” centers as shams. I thought that might have been for my benefit. He did look at me almost immediately after he denounced the seedier healing centers.
All of us checked into a large healing center called “Jeevyaved,” that was promised to use ancient techniques to relax and rejuvenate. Best of all, they weren’t too keen on scrutinizing our papers. We were to stay there, and get massages, special meals, saunas, for 6—7 hours a day. The rest of the time we were free to move around the district. Elbir took an additional package, which involved injury care and limb replacement, from a party that was again not too concerned about the source of the injury. This city truly had everything for everyone. I took a rejuvenation package too—it had been a while since I had got myself pampered like this, and I remembered having enjoyed it the last time I was in Khratosh for a nice little job.
We spent three weeks in Jeevyaved, having the time of our lives. It almost made me forget all my worries. We were still careful. We didn’t all go to any place of relaxation together. Two went, while the other two stayed back with the weapons. We covered the spear with an old rag and attached it to a small wood piece, to make it look like a common walking stick. We made sure none of us, especially naïve young Dev, interacted with too many people here. Everyone here, including the staff, was discreet, but given the magnitude of events we were involved in, even the most discreet person might be tempted to be indiscreet, should they learn the truth about our weapons.
Karn and Dev turned out to be amazing fun to hang out with. Karn was witty, and always looking to prank Dev, and Dev was always good natured, trying to anticipate Karn’s pranks, but failing miserably, especially given his complete lack of understanding of the world around him. They were definitely becoming the best of friends.
I was a little jealous. I had never had such a relationship. Elbir had his brothers in the past, Karn had Dev as a friend, and Dev had a master who was almost like a father. I was alone for most of my life. Of course I had made friends, but because of my secret, I was never truly able to connect with anyone. Until now.
Elbir got his stump looked at by a physician and finally got a new leg. It was a wooden one that looked like a foot with the boot on. It was a reasonably sophisticated foot, with a moveable ankle joint, allowing him to walk almost normally. It was among the most expensive replacement limbs available at Khratosh, but money was never an issue with me around. He was over the moon. He kept thanking me, much to my embarrassment.
“After the ‘accident,’ I never thought I could walk normally again. Thanks to you, I can! I am indebted to you forever, Karmin,” Elbir said, using the name on my papers.
I tried to brush it off. “No no, Erik. There is no need to be that way. You would do all you can to help me too. There is no debt among friends.”
He would often get misty eyed at the end of such conversations. But among the three, I was growing the closest to Elbir, his emotional maturity and stability (at least most of the time), his wisdom and strangely, his sadness. Amongst all of us, I felt he had lost the most, suffered the most. And now, despite achieving his revenge, or maybe because of it, he seemed just a little lost.
The other thing we had to do was get their weapons fixed. This was trickier. Especially Elbir, whose five hammers were famous. So we decided to get only one of his hammers fixed, the large one he used as a walking stick. The rest, we could ask Dev’s master to fix, once we were in his village. Similarly, Karn had to get all four of his side blades remade, and one of his back swords repaired. We split up and decided to get these weapons repaired by different, discreet black smiths, who we identified after some research.
With all our precautions in place, we still had great fun, and got to know each other better. While we didn’t discuss each other’s back stories in detail, we spoke enough to understand the other person better. But the good times were soon to come to an end.
At the end of our third week at Jeevyaved, Karn came into the room we were all in, with his weapons. They were done. We started to congratulate him, but he cut us off.
“Shhhh… I have a feeling that I am being followed. I have seen the same pair of people everywhere, and I feel uneasy whenever their minds are close enough. They also seem really good, because they don’t come too close to me. Otherwise I could read their minds to figure out what they want. We need to be careful, and try and observe whether only I have a tail, or all of us do.
We should plan to leave as soon as we can confirm there is a tail, or Elbir’s weapon is completed.”
We were all in a relaxed mood before Karn got in. Suddenly all of us were extremely tensed. Then, Dev jumped up, pointed to Karn and started to laugh.
“Ha ha ha ha! I finally got your prank. You couldn’t fool me this time. One point for Dev.”
Karn was bemused. He smacked Dev on his head. “You fool! Always wrong! The one time I am serious you think it is a prank.”
Dev rubbed his head, looking quite hurt. “So, it’s not a prank? Is he serious?”
Even though the situation was tense, I couldn’t help but smile at this kid’s innocence. Elbir spo
ke seriously. “Yes, Dev. It doesn’t seem to be a prank. We have to be careful from now on.”
I was the best person in the world to spy on the spies. I volunteered. “Let me confirm if there are actually spies here.”
Over the next day, Karn, Elbir and Dev went out at various times, seemingly to run some small errands. I was slowly following them, invisible to them. It was difficult in crowded spaces to maintain my lenses, but I still managed. I was getting better and better at maintaining my invisibility over the years, especially after meeting the intruder in the High Seat. The three of them helped me out as well. They knew I could be invisible more easily if there was more space, so they headed in directions where there were fewer people.
Karn was right. There were people following us. Two people would follow who ever left, till the time that person returned to the healing center. After that, one of the trackers would leave, while the other stayed. Within the hour, two others would come and take over the look out, as the first guy waiting also left. It was possible that the Imperium or Morgenian king had deployed these, as all of the spies were different and proficient. They were open to the possibility of being followed themselves and whenever I tried, I would lose them in the crowd. I was never able to figure out where they went or where their headquarters was.
We got together to discuss what needed to be done. Dev was in favor of calling them out and fighting. That was a terrible idea. We would lose, and lose badly. With these many people around us, and knowing that the government, Morgenian or Valantian, wouldn’t care about them, we could never fight on equal grounds without endangering innocents. We had to leave. Karn suggested that we go to the blacksmith, pick up Elbir’s hammer as is and leave from there towards Villasboro. In the open spaces to the west of Khratosh, we could potentially take on any force that followed us. All of us agreed.
Age of Azmoq: The Valantian Imperium Page 38