Warrior: The War Chronicles I

by Sean Golden

  Lirak took her hands in his. “Mayrie, they are men, flesh and blood, like us.”

  “Oh yeah, Lirak?” she shot back. “What about the one that killed Baxi with a stick? Flesh and blood like us?”

  “Yes Mayrie, and he died with your arrow in his neck.”

  “Mayrie is right,” Jerok said, his voice strained. “They are different, and they know how to fight better than we do. We were lucky. They could have killed us all.”

  Hetyl leaned forward and used his teeth to cut the thread coming out of Jerok’s side. Patrik rolled over and sat up.

  “We thought to catch them by surprise, but we were the ones surprised,” Jerok continued. “They aren’t just better at fighting, they have magic that we don’t have.”

  Lirak looked around the group. He felt Thorn come to his side, apparently unharmed. Four sets of eyes were focused on him.

  “This changes nothing. I took an oath. I’ll fulfill that oath.”

  “Lirak, this isn’t about breaking the oath,” Jerok said. “It’s about how to fulfill the oath. We can’t wander around in the woods trying to pick off stragglers, and nearly getting killed every time. We need to come up with a plan. We need to have some way to outthink them, because we certainly aren’t going to outfight them. Not yet.”

  “What do you have in mind?” Lirak asked.

  “First we need more men. Surely there are others who escaped the massacres, even from other villages. We need to seek them out and see how many will join us. Then we need to learn their ways of fighting. But we know we can’t fight them head on. We need to find ways to hurt them without getting killed ourselves. We need to dash in, strike, and then vanish before they can strike back. If we can do that enough, perhaps they’ll leave and we can live our lives free again.”

  Lirak thought about Jerok’s words, and thought about his dream. He didn’t know whether to believe his dreams or not, but if he could, then Jerok’s words made sense. There was another enemy, one that could stand and fight the invaders. And if they followed Jerok’s suggestion, perhaps that other enemy could defeat them.

  “I think your words are wise Jerok,” he said. “But how will we find these others who will join us?”

  “We’ll find them back at Luh-Yi, and the other villages that were burned, I think,” Jerok replied.

  “But they’ll be far gone by the time we do that. It will take days.”

  “There is no other hope,” Jerok said. “This ‘hunt’ you’ve brought us on won’t work. It killed Baxi, it will kill us all.”

  Lirak looked to the south and sighed. “Okay Jerok, you win. We’ll head back and see if we can find more who will join us. We will plan better.”

  They searched the bodies of the dead invaders, recovering six more of the long, heavy blades. They found the belts and sheaths for the long blades fit comfortably on their hips, and soon each besides Mayrie and Hetyl had one on their waist. They found more of the strange round items with faces on them. Jerok suspected they were used in trade, like the Dwon used shells and beads when trading with neighboring villages. They decided to take these too. The large bow-like devices still baffled them, so they left them. None of them wanted to wear the heavy arrow-bouncing fabric. They brought all of the long blades with them.

  Finally they turned to the body of the gray man. He lay face down, with the gray robe spread out around him. Jerok turned him over.

  “Oh my!” Mayrie exclaimed, bringing her hand to her mouth in dismay. Jerok’s mouth hung open in shock. Their reaction caused the rest of the group to look at the face of the dead man.

  “He looks just like you, Lirak,” Mayrie breathed, and it was true. The man’s face had the same shape, and the hair was thick and dark black. But most shockingly, the staring eyes were the same shade of gray as Lirak’s own. Lirak’s heart beat in his chest as he looked down at a man who could have been his twin. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Niwoq making Rysdun’s ward on his forehead.

  Jerok looked back and forth between Lirak and the dead man, his expression guarded.

  “It’s just a coincidence,” Patrik said. “Besides, they don’t look exactly the same.” And as the shock of the revelation receded, they all saw it was true. The dead man’s nose and eyebrows were subtly different. But the resemblance was still unsettling to everyone.

  In his robes they found more of the writing, and this they burned. They found the stick he had used on Baxi; it was about as long as Lirak’s forearm, was thin and had a short stubby knob on one end. They also found a pouch full of about a dozen round stones about as big around as Lirak’s thumb. But he had no sling.

  “These are evil,” Hetyl said, indicating the stones and the stick. “We should leave them.”

  “I don’t want to leave the stick, we know what it can do” Lirak said, taking the stick.

  As his fingers touched the stick, Lirak felt the same surge of energy as when he had first touched the firestones. His vision clouded and again he had that strange sense of double vision with strange swirling bands of color superimposed on the forest. His hair stood up on his neck. The sensation and vision was far more powerful than even while in the cave of firestones.

  “Lirak, are you OK?” Mayrie asked.

  Lirak shook his head to clear it and put the stick in his quiver. As soon as he released it, the images and sensations faded. “I’m fine,” he said.

  When Lirak touched the robe, the surge of energy and the colors swirling around intensified to the point that he gasped out loud. The robe was lighter than Lirak expected, and the threads shimmered in the morning sun giving off little rainbows.

  “What is it?” Patrik asked.

  But Lirak was lost in a sea of sensation. The sky was full of knots of pulsating colors which surged to and fro. As they surged above Lirak’s head, his hair stood straight out, to the shock of the group.

  “Put it down!” Mayrie cried, but Lirak scarcely heard her. He stared at the swirling, pulsating colors and felt almost as if he could reach out and pull the knots down and play with them. Then, abruptly, it all stopped as Jerok snatched the robe from his grasp.

  “Don’t!” Lirak said, expecting Jerok to have the same reaction, but Jerok simply stood there holding the strange robe. For a moment the two looked at each other.

  “Don’t you see it?” Lirak asked.

  “See what?” Jerok asked.

  “You don’t feel or see anything?”

  “It’s light,” Jerok replied. Patrik and Mayrie moved forward, and Patrik reached out and tentatively touched the robe, and then placed his hand on it. Mayrie followed suit.

  “Lirak, it’s just a robe,” Mayrie said.

  “No, it’s not,” Lirak replied. He reached forward but Jerok pulled it away.

  “No, you’re not touching it again,” he said, a hint of fear in his voice. “I don’t know what it did to you, but it’s not right.”

  Lirak fought an impulse to reach out and snatch the robe away from Jerok.

  “It is evil!” Hetyl said. “Leave it.”

  “Yes, I think we should,” Jerok said, pulling further away from Lirak. “I don’t like it.”

  “Jerok, you don’t understand!” Lirak said reaching forward, but Jerok stepped back.

  “You are not taking this robe,” Jerok said. “That’s final.”

  “You can’t tell me what to do,” Lirak said, anger boiling up inside. “Give me the robe.”

  Hetyl stepped between them. “No fighting!” he said. “Enough patching friends today. Enough hurting.”

  Lirak struggled with his urge to rush forward. He sought deep inside his mind for any guidance from his inner voice, but there was nothing. Even so he knew the robe was important. But Jerok’s jaw was set and Lirak knew that to get the robe he would have to fight Jerok.

  “OK.” Lirak took a deep calming breath. “You win.” He stepped back and turned his back on Jerok, trying his best to forget the incident. He heard Jerok walk into the forest and had to fight an urge to chase
after him.

  “Lirak, what’s going on?” Mayrie took his hand. “This isn’t like you.”

  Lirak sighed. “Jerok is wrong. That robe is important. There is something about it that I need to learn.”

  “You’re scaring me,” Mayrie said. “Hetyl is right, that robe is evil.”

  Lirak said nothing and eventually Mayrie relaxed as Lirak showed no sign of going after the robe.

  They recovered as many arrows as they could, cleaned them and put them back in their quivers. Lirak looked at Baxi’s grave, and then the bodies of the invaders. He walked over to Baxi’s grave and asked Kathoias to speed his journey to heaven. They didn’t call it a battle, and didn’t mark the occasion, but Lirak knew that the first battle had ended, but the long war had just begun.

  Magic Stick

  The defeater of death will be both warrior and warlock.

  – The Prophecies

  Lirak and Mayrie walked side by side back to their previous campsite, with the rest of the group trailing behind. Few words were said between them. When they reached the camp about mid-day Lirak sat with his back against the cold stone and lost himself in thought. The others also sat down and Hetyl and Patrik went about preparing a quick, cold lunch which they ate in silence.

  Finally Lirak spoke. “We’ll rest here today and start back to Luh-Yi tomorrow. I’m tired, and all of us are dealing with Baxi’s death. I’ll take the first watch tonight.”

  The rest of the group nodded their heads and soon they had each found a spot to sit and think about things. Jerok was soon snoring lightly. Patrik was again examining the invader’s blade. He held it in his hand testing the weight of it and demonstrating the balance which made it surprisingly easy to move in spite of its weight. He swung it around in the air faster and faster until it made a “whoosh” sound as it flashed in the sun. But soon Patrik and all but Mayrie were snoring softly in the late afternoon sun.

  Mayrie stayed close to Lirak, but didn’t sleep. Lirak felt her move his hair as she examined the knot on his head when the invader had driven his head into the ground, knocking him unconscious. Jerok had saved him. Hetyl seemed the least affected by the events of the night. He scoured the area for herbs or other healing items, making a clucking sound in his throat when he found something useful. Night fell and Lirak remembered Baxi’s refusal to continue to fight him, even when doing so defied his father. Baxi was a good man. Now he was dead. Eventually exhaustion from exertion and stress overcame Lirak and after rousing Patrik to take the next watch, he sent Mayrie to bed and fell into a restless sleep.

  In a fitful dream Lirak relived the frenzied chaos of the battle over and over. His vantage point in the dream changed so that he saw the battle from above and from different angles. Each time he relived the battle, it ended when the gray man had used the stick against Baxi. There was something about that scene that his mind wanted to study, in spite of Lirak’s repeated anguish and pain at seeing his friend struck down.

  Finally Lirak focused all of his attention on the gray man, watching as he pulled the stick from his cloak. Time after time he relived the event. At some point, Lirak could not say when, he realized that the scene had subtly changed. The gray man woke up, pulled out the stick, and a glow appeared within his robe. It was a subtle thing, but the more Lirak saw it, the more he was convinced it was real. The faint glow reached its brightest point just at the moment a flash of light sprang from the stick and hit Baxi’s head, which instantly blew apart. Then the glow was gone, and Mayrie’s arrow sent the gray man to his own death.

  That must be why they wear the robes, Lirak thought. But his dream went on repeating the scene. Lirak knew that he had not yet understood its meaning. Again and again he focused his attention on the gray man, for what seemed like an endlessly repeating cycle of death and destruction. Tiring he lost his focus and his attention wandered. He found his perspective shifting while the scene replayed itself, finally looking up through the leaves of the giant oak tree. In the sky above he saw the swirling ribbons of color, but this time they were coalescing and knotting directly above the gray man, and just before the stick sent Baxi to his death, the knots above seemed to drain suddenly into the gray man, and the glow in his robe intensified, flashed, then vanished. Then Lirak woke up.

  Lirak’s eyes snapped open. He felt the warmth of Mayrie’s body beside him, and heard the gentle, even breathing of her sleep. Patrik was by the fire examining one of the strange short and thick arrow like things that he had taken from the invaders. Hetyl was nowhere in sight and Jerok too was sleeping. Sitting up, Lirak stood, stretched and walked over to Patrik.

  “What do you think that is?” he asked as Patrik spun the deadly looking thing in his hands.

  “It’s an arrow of some sort,” Patrik said. He pointed to the thick, rigid protrusions that stuck out in three directions from the shaft. “See, these are just like the feathers on our arrows.” He held it so that Lirak was looking down the length of the shaft. “See how they twist? That means the arrow will spin, just like our arrows do.” He tapped the end of the shaft, “See the notch? It’s just like an arrow, but much wider.”

  Lirak nodded and patted Patrik on the back. “Good work Patrik.” He took the arrow-thing in his hands, surprised by how heavy it was and contemplated it for a moment before handing it back to Patrik. “I still like my bow.”

  Patrik nodded and stretched as he stood. “I think I’ll go to sleep now, wake Jerok up to take his watch.” He put the arrow-thing in his quiver and headed to his bedding. Lirak gazed into the night, but decided that he was too awake to go back to sleep, and so decided not to wake Jerok.

  Wandering around the camp, Lirak looked up at the starry night sky. Straining his eyes, he tried to force the glowing loops and knots to appear. Like when I touched the firestones, he remembered. Curiosity finally won out over caution and Lirak found himself pulling the invader’s stick from his quiver. As his fingers closed on the bulbous end of the stick, the night sky was suddenly swirling with faint colors in streamers and knots. Just like the firestones, he thought, marveling at the faint, but colorful display.

  Drawing it clear of the quiver, he held it gingerly, keeping the stick end pointed away from the camp and up into the sky. He took a quick look around the camp and then walked quietly some distance away from the camp to a higher point where he could see more of the sky. In the dim light away from the campfire, the swirling bands of color were clearer. The stick was roughly as long as his forearm, and thin as a river reed except where it thickened into a bulb on one end. It was light, maybe half as heavy as one of Lirak’s arrows. It was completely smooth and straight with a slight taper toward the tip. It seemed all of one piece, but it was not made of any wood or stone Lirak was familiar with, nor did it seem to be made of the material the Invaders used for their heavy clothing or weapons. It felt cold to the touch, but warmed quickly. There must be some connection to the firestones he thought.

  Finally, with some hesitation, Lirak held it in his hand as he had seen the gray man do, and he pointed it at a tree, half expecting to see the tree explode. But nothing happened. Gingerly at first, and then with increasing vigor, he waved the stick at the tree. Nothing. Feeling silly, Lirak lay down and looked up at the starry sky, still holding the strange stick. The familiar shapes of the star patterns comforted him as he realized that even if his own world had been shattered, still there were things beyond even that evil’s reach. As he had that thought it seemed he heard a voice faint and distant in his mind breathe evil reaches far. Ignoring that, he toyed with the stick, flipping it in his fingers, and swapping it from hand to hand. His mind finally began to relax, and he found himself studying the moon’s sliver, wondering why the moon followed its familiar cycles. For the moment Lirak felt more at peace than he had in many days. He lay back with the stick in his hand and focused his attention on the swirling knots and bands of color.

  “It’s everywhere,” he marveled. He closed his eyes, and again he could “see” the glow
faintly even with his eyes closed. Watching the pulsating colors above him, Lirak was reminded of wind rushing across the forest canopy. In some areas the colors seemed calm, almost purposeful, while in other places they coiled into tight knots and dove down into the forest. Far to the south the sky was like a bubbling cauldron, while directly above, it was almost serene.

  Remembering his dream he raised the stick into the air, reaching toward the colors high overhead. As he did so, the colors above began to swirl slowly around, then faster and faster. Yes his mind sighed, and a faint tingle from the stick encouraged him to reach higher. Reaching out with his mind, he imagined he could feel the pulsating colors above, and the whirling colors seemed to reach down toward him for a moment, before returning to their previous calm. An ache in the back of his head returned his attention to the camp and the day’s tragic events.

  He heard Jerok stirring and realized it had been a long time since Patrik had gone to bed. He quickly moved back to the camp, where Jerok was just sitting up.

  “Where’s Patrik?” Jerok asked, rubbing sleep out of his eyes.

  “He finished his watch, but I was up so he went to bed. I was just about to wake you up,” Lirak said.

  “You need your sleep too, Lirak,” Jerok lightly admonished. He noticed the stick in Lirak’s hand and his eyes opened wide in surprise and fear. “Put that away,” he hissed.

  Lirak raised the stick to look at it, realizing that the stick itself had a faint glow in the form of faint tendrils which seemed to reach out from the stick as if searching for something. Struggling with his desire to continue to examine the stick, he nevertheless forced himself to put it back in the quiver. The ubiquitous glowing color in the sky instantly disappeared. The ache in his head eased at the same time.