The Path of the Sword

by Remi Michaud

  “Oh god,” he breathed. “Valik!” He gaped at his father wild-eyed and his father nodded gravely.

  “Aye. Valik,” he confirmed. “He said a lot of nasty things about you but I thought to reserve judgment until I spoke to you.” He examined Jurel's bruised, puffy face under the dim light before continuing. “It seems my decision was a good one.”

  “How is he?” Jurel asked before his father could say another word. He did not want to hear the answer. He had to. He'd done considerable damage. Two white specks floated across his mind's eyes, a jaw hung improperly. Valik would not be chewing anything solid for quite a while.

  “He's beat up pretty bad. How do you think he is?” Daved snorted. “Marta found him in the dining room this morning, unconscious and covered in blood. She also found your coat hanging over the chair where you left it last night.” An accusing glare accompanied Daved's words. “After raising a big stink, Marta got a few of the men to carry him up to his bed. Some ladies, including Ingirt, of course, are tending to his wounds as we speak. Of which there are many. Now answer my question: What happened?”

  Jurel stared, gathering his muddled thoughts for a moment before he answered. Was it really him? Did he really do it? Now that he was a little more awake, he certainly remembered the fight but in the light of the gray dawn, it was like he had been a bystander, witnessing the unfolding events from the sidelines. He touched fingers to his throbbing cheek and winced when a knife of raw pain stabbed him.

  Not a bystander then. No, definitely a participant.

  “He attacked me,” he began and went on to describe to his father how Valik had entered, drunk and belligerent, into the house late the previous night. He haltingly spoke of Valik's threats and recriminations and no matter what Jurel said to him, he became more worked up.

  “He struck me, father. Over and over, he struck me. I asked him to stop. I begged him,” he said, a spark of heat lighting in his eyes, “but he wouldn't.”

  Jurel's tale stumbled to a halt. He remembered all too clearly what happened next. He wished for nothing more than to forget. He had snapped. He had raged and he had hurt Valik. He had picked Valik up, thrown him with no more effort than an angry child throws a toy and when Valik begged and sobbed, Jurel had ignored him, and beaten him. He could not tell the rest; it locked in his throat and fought him—admittedly he did not fight back very hard. A glance at his father showed the implacable expression that he had seen so often before. The one that said Daved would not relent until he was satisfied that he had all the facts. He sighed.

  “Something in me broke then, father,” he muttered. “I don't understand it. I just...broke. I'd had enough. So I fought back.” He shrugged, feeling miserable and alone. Very, very alone.

  “You fought back?” Daved barked an astonished laugh. “Is that what you want to call it? You fought back?” He rolled his eyes. “It's an incredible thing, Jurel, that you fought back at all, but this?”

  A wave of resentment seeped into Jurel like a poison at his father's accusing tone.

  “You told me to defend myself, father. You've told me a hundred times if you've told me once.” An image rose unbidden to his mind's eye of Daved, once again wearing Gram's body, looking up at him. “Defend yourself,” Daved/Gram told him and he had.

  “I know Jurel. I have told you countless times to defend yourself. That does not include beating a man to within an inch of his life.” He gripped Jurel's shoulder with vise-like strength. “What were you thinking?”

  “I was thinking that I wanted him to stop,” Jurel growled. His glower was so forceful that for the first time in Jurel's life, Daved retreated beneath his gaze and snapped his hand away from Jurel's arm.

  “All right lad. Fair enough but I hope you understand the situation you've put yourself in.” Daved raised his arms in a placating gesture yet his words echoed with an ominous tone and Jurel averted his eyes, squirming.

  “What situation father?” Jurel asked though he had a pretty good notion. Daved echoed his thoughts aloud.

  “Well let's see,” he muttered. His lips twisted with a sardonic smirk and he raised a finger, “Number one,” he ticked off, “you beat the bloody hell out of a man whose father's corpse was still warm. That probably won't make you many friends around here no matter how justified you thought you were or how much people don't like the man. And number two,” another finger, “you beat the bloody hell out of this farm's new owner. Something of a pickle, wouldn't you agree?”

  Every word pelted Jurel making him flinch and quiver. The shame of his vile actions were matched only by the numb resignation at the knowledge that he would be leaving the farm after all. He felt like a child all over again, turning to Daved to save him from his own foolishness.

  “What am I going to do father?” he cried. He felt a lump rise in his throat though he could not decide whether it was a lump of sorrow or of anxiety. An irrationally rational voice spoke in his mind. Perhaps it's a little of both, it said. He had to leave. As a child he had entertained idle ruminations of leaving on a grand adventure to see wondrous sights and perform heroic deeds. Even yesterday, he had been thinking it. But he knew he had just been daydreaming. He did not want to strike out on his own anymore. He wanted to stay with his father and with...

  He froze, his thoughts jumbling into each other, one slamming into the next. He felt he walked the edge of a precipice; one wrong step and he was certain he would tumble into a never ending abyss like in his nightmares. Sitting bolt upright, he could barely breath as some part of his mind cruelly whispered the end of his thought in his ear.

  Erin.

  He had Erin. He was meant to woo her, perhaps wed her and have children, a family, a life. His foolish act had erased that future, leaving a blank slate of uncertainty ahead. What could he say to her? How would he explain? What would she think of him after this? He had to speak to her. He had to assure her that what he had done, he had done in self-defense. Would she believe him? He did not believe it himself.

  Fool! I'm a bloody fool!

  So, he had been right after all. He had always been sure that confrontation never led to anything good. He had always avoided any kind of fight like a farmer avoids a stampede of cattle. If he had not heeded Daved's words, he would have awakened in his own bed that morning, black and blue perhaps from the beating Valik would have inflicted, but still relatively certain of his place on the farm. Last night, something had come over Jurel. He had finally found the courage to do as Daved had so often advised. He had not wanted to find it. At least, not like that, not with such vehemence, but he had found it. He fought back. He fought back and he would be exiled from his own life for it. Being right should have brought a certain satisfaction, a sense of victory. But of course, nothing was ever so easy. It was an empty victory, and a costly one.

  “What am I going to do, father?”

  “I don't know, Jurel. What you must, I imagine,” Daved sighed and leaned back. “Well, let's go get packed and we can be off before someone finds you.”

  Following his own advice, he stood and made his way to the ladder leading to the barn floor. Jurel started up, throwing off his canvas blanket, and followed his father all the way to the barn door before Daved's words truly hit home.

  “What do you mean, 'we can be off' father?” Jurel asked. “Your life is here. I dug my own hole and fell into it and I have to suffer the consequences. I can't ask you to fall into it with me.”

  Daved turned to Jurel with a wry smile, his hand on the door latch. “You've a good heart lad but you don't know anything of the world out there. What would you do? Where would you go?”

  Jurel pondered for a moment, not knowing what to say. He knew only that he could not drag Daved out there with him. Daved had settled on the farm to get away from the world.

  “I don't know yet. But this is something I must do. I cannot ask you to do this. Please father. You've raised me well. I'm certain I'll find somewhere to fit in and make a good living. With a bit of luck, it won't ev
en be very far from here.”

  Daved snorted but said nothing as he turned and went out into the cool morning air.

  “How did you know where to find me?” Jurel asked. The question had been nagging at him, picking at the back of his thoughts, whispering insistently to be heard, but with everything else he had to think about, it had not seemed very important. His curiosity won out in the end.

  “As you said, I raised you. I know you, Jurel. I know you far better than you know yourself,” he said over his shoulder, not slowing their quick march to the cabin. “Though I admit you surprised the living shit out of me today. Come on now lad. We need to get you packed. I'm sure there are others on the farm who might like to get their hands on you.”

  They arrived at the cabin without seeing a soul. “They've already been here,” Daved said. “Been and gone. Good thing there's no soldiers hereabouts. Otherwise, they might have been smart enough to set a guard.”

  Daved told Jurel to go pack what he wanted. Daved himself pulled out a single sheet of parchment and a stub of lead, and sat at their little table to write. Without argument, Jurel climbed the ladder. Now that he must leave, Jurel gazed about, dismayed that this was probably the last time he would ever stand in this room.

  Nothing had changed in the loft for as long as he could remember. His cot, far too small for his massive frame, was as it had always been, still neatly made from the morning before, with the gray wool blanket tucked neatly, hiding the tattered edges as his father had taught him. Across the loft, Daved's own slightly larger cot, a twin to Jurel's in all other ways. On the far wall, their humble chest of possessions hunkered with the familiar chunk torn out of one corner caused when Daved and Galbin dropped it while getting it up the ladder the day Galbin told Daved the cabin was his. Even the plain white porcelain chamber pot with all its chips and scratches seemed to be a part of this place as if its absence for whatever reason would be strange, would make the place incomplete.

  Slowly, he pulled out his possessions and laid them all out on his cot. When he was finished, he stared at the meager pile: a few articles of clothing, a smooth rock with colorful stria he had picked up at the pond one day when he was twelve, and the small purse Galbin had given him still containing a couple of silver pieces and a few coppers, were all he had to remind him of his life up to that point. He thought about the sword still hidden under his mattress and decided that, after the previous night, he wanted nothing more to do with it. He left it where it was.

  Meager pile though it was, he could not carry it all in his hands.

  “Aye, lad,” Daved responded to Jurel's question without looking up from his writing. “I've still got my pack from my army days. It's under my cot. Use that.”

  After finding the sack, Jurel hastily stuffed all of his things inside, and cinched it shut with the drawstring. Perhaps worse than the pathetic sight of how little he owned was how little what he owned weighed. It was all he had. No choice for it but to make do with it and move on.

  Tossing the feather light bag to the bottom of the ladder, he jumped down and stood staring at the main room, the living space, the place where he had for all intents and purposes grown up under the strict eye of Daved Histane. Like the loft, he was certain that he would never again see this room. Wistfully, incongruously, he recalled the episode with the frog that had jumped out of his pocket—how old had he been? Eight? Nine? It had jumped right up on the table while Jurel frantically tried to catch the slippery little creature, and right into Daved's bowl of soup. Jurel had thought it was quite a funny thing but Daved had been less than impressed.

  Setting down his pencil, Daved looked up at Jurel to see him staring off in the distance. He folded his little piece of paper carefully and rose to face his son. “Well, lad. Are you almost ready?” He asked unenthusiastically. Snapping out of his daydream, Jurel focused on his father.

  “I'm sorry father,” he muttered sheepishly. “I was lost there for a moment. What did you say?” Daved rolled his eyes but his voice was more gentle when he asked again.

  “I asked if you were ready. Do you have everything?” He indicated the pack Jurel had dropped to the floor. Jurel shrugged with a glance at the pathetic little lump of burlap on the floor.

  “I suppose I do.”

  Daved eyed the sack and, unsatisfied, scanned the room around them. “Where's your sword?” He asked suspiciously.

  Jurel looked about as if surprised. “Gosh, father. I don't know. I don't see it anywhere,” he responded with far too much feigned innocence.

  Daved's glare brought a small smile to Jurel's face until Daved snorted disdainfully.

  “Boy, you think that everyone you meet'll want to be your friend? There are people who, believe it or not, will accost someone like you just because you look helpless. Take your sword. You've not let me teach you much more than the very basics of swordcraft but just having it might make the difference. I don't want to find out you're feeding the worms in some ditch.”

  Jurel sighed. No choices, it seemed, were his to make.

  “Fine, father. I'll bring the bloody thing with me,” he grumbled, and went to fetch the wretched thing from its hiding spot.

  When he returned, he gazed at Daved. The time to leave was upon him, but he could not. He had to say something to his father, but for the life of him, he could not figure out what it was. So he stared stupidly, sorrowfully at the man he called father and the only thing that came to his throat was a lump. Daved, for his part, did not say anything either, but also stood staring at his son. Jurel thought back on all he knew of this man before him. Hard as oak, as quick to anger as a cornered badger, this man had taken care of him, giving up everything he had in his life so that Jurel could be happy—or at least safe. He knew that Daved truly considered him his son. And he knew he loved him.

  It was Daved who finally broke the long, uncomfortable silence. With a harrumph, he picked up two items from the table behind him: one was a purse that jingled as he handed it to Jurel. It contained a few silver pieces interspersed with a handful of coppers. The other was the piece of parchment he had been writing on, neatly folded and with one word carefully printed on the back. Jurel gaped as he scrutinized the word, for he saw in Daved's careful block letters, 'KURIN'.

  “I don't understand. Kurin?”

  “Aye,” Daved chuckled sourly. “I don't much like him, but he's the only living soul you know outside this farm. Take that to him in Tack Town and perhaps he'll be able to give you aid.”

  Jurel carefully deposited the paper in his shirt pocket, oddly comforted by it. As Daved had always done, he gave Jurel a sense of direction, something to aim for. He would go to Tack Town and see Kurin. He did not think of what would come after. Such things mattered not one whit. It would have been like closing the barn door before the horse was home. Reaching under the table, Daved produced one more package: wax paper, folded neatly, wrapped a small bundle.

  “Take this too, lad,” Daved ordered. “You'll need something to eat while you're on the road.”

  “Thank you father. I...” And there he stopped for he could not continue. The lump in his throat grew and he felt he must explode from the pressure. Daved gripped his son's massive shoulders, and wrapped him in a rough embrace.

  “I love you, boy. I'm proud of you,” Daved gruffed between choked tears of his own. “I expect you to take care of yourself and to remember your old man. Visit once in a while, will you?” He pushed Jurel away, glaring into his eyes to stress his command.

  Jurel nodded, mumbling his promise yet in the back of his mind, he was unsure that he would ever fulfill that promise. Not while Valik owned the farm.

  He threaded the sword through the rough leather thong that served for a belt and picked up his little bag. Thinking of one last thing that needed to be said, he turned to Daved.

  “Father, will you do one last thing for me?” Jurel asked, and when Daved nodded, he said, “Please tell Erin what I told you of my encounter with Valik last night. I would not
want her to think ill of me. Tell her,” he faltered, “Tell her I'm sorry and I wish things could have been different.”

  Daved said nothing, just nodded to his son.

  “I love you father. I'm sorry.”

  With those last words, he turned from Daved and left the little timber cabin he had called home for so long, knowing somehow that he would never see it again, and stepped into the teeth of the cold morning air.

  Chapter 21

  He scanned the area around him, in part to firmly etch his last view of the farm in his memory and in part to see if anyone was about to waylay him as he skulked off like a thief in the night. The sun was out, reflecting from the fresh snow, giving everything a sharp edge like newly honed and polished blades. Through the glare, he saw no one. Satisfied, he went around the far side of Daved's cabin, the side away from the main house, slogging through the knee deep snow which crunched like semi-stale crackers at every laborious step, and worked his way toward the road leading to Tack Town.

  He would have missed it completely if not for the borders created by the top of the fence that seemed to hover just a couple of hand spans over the white landscape and the dense, haunted forest; seldom traveled in the first place, no one had dared the road yet that day. His heart sank. He was strong, fit, a large man in the prime of his life, but the thought of pushing his way through deep snow for the better part of the day was not a pleasant one.

  He trudged past Galbin's house, small in the distance at the end of the path and that too he etched firmly in his mind—Valik's now, but to him it would always be Galbin's. After that, he walked with his head down, not bothering to register any more of the sights that slowly flowed by shrouded by the mist of his hard breathing until an idea struck him. The trees marking the border of the primeval forest to the south of the road would have given some shelter from the storm. It was supposed to be a haunted place and dangerous. He had heard the stories often enough. If he walked just inside the tree line, would he be safe? He angled his way to the other side of the road where he could inspect the edge of the trees and found he was right. The snow looked much shallower under the dense web of branches. He continued to walk, deliberating as he searched the shadowed recesses under the roof of intertwined branches. The tales of ghosts and bogeymen were children's tales, he told himself. Tales for indolent evenings spent sitting at the fire and sipping warm milk. There would be no danger, especially if he kept within sight of the road and it would make his journey a hundred times less exhaustive. Deciding, he stepped between the trees with a mixture of relief and trepidation, into the much shallower snow and the deeper shadows. Only sinking to his ankles, he was able to pick up his pace.