by Guy Antibes
He ran the events of his life over and over in his mind from the time he had left Greenbrook. Even despite the fact that he learned well and everyone told him he had great power, what had it gotten him? A death sentence at the hands of Colcanans in Bitrium? Now, the Toryans were pulling at him to do their will.
Was the trip to Bennin a device to get him out of the way? But why him? He shuddered again when a hand grasped his shoulder.
“Get up!” Neel said. Trak flinched at the harshness in his father’s voice. “Just exactly what are you doing?”
Trak couldn’t move or respond. Neel pulled him up to a sitting position and pushed him against the rock. Trak pulled his wet sleeve from his eyes. He had been crying and didn’t even know it.
“I don’t know!” Trak said. “I’m afraid, I guess.”
“Afraid? Why would you, out of anybody, be afraid?” Neel’s voice was softening.
“I feel like I’m a blasted pawn. I killed people in the last two days. I didn’t feel like they were enemies, but I killed them anyway. I’ve done it before, but—”
“The swath of lightning? Honor told me about it. Cutting bandit foreheads? She told me about that, too, and you did that rather than take their lives. We live in perilous times, and before it’s over, you’ll be doing much worse, my son.” He knelt down and pulled Trak’s head to his chest and hugged him. “You might not believe me, but I can relate to your situation. I’m a different person than you, though. I was banished from Colcan, just like you, for showing off my skills; and that’s where I’m different from you. I was hated in Torya and in Colcan and rebelled against it. I began to hate everyone and everything when I left.”
“I know,” Trak said. He tried to keep from sniffling, but didn’t succeed.
“You don’t know. You’ve been a good-natured kid from the start.” He ruffled Trak’s hair. “Too good. When you had troubles, you’d go out and work on the vegetables or cut wood or prune Able’s orchard. I never could work out my emotions physically.”
“Maybe that’s why I’m so upset. I’m too good, and when I do bad things it makes me guilty.”
Neel leaned his head back and laughed. “You’re more right than you think, but it’s not because you are doing bad things. You are doing unpleasant things. Not like cleaning the privies or scrubbing Able’s common room until everything gleams. No, really unpalatable things, like ending people’s lives who want to end your own. Like going on quests even if you don’t want to, because it is the best alternative.”
“But I’m just a tool.”
“So are we all. You think I act independently? I didn’t want to risk my life fighting for a free Pestle. But I had to. Duty to others is a vicious thing. It can force us to act in ways that make us feel unpleasant. You know I am responsible for the death of a man I have never seen, Prince Nez of the Ferezan, son to King Marom?”
Trak left his father’s embrace and stared at him. How could Neel do that? “You are?”
Neel nodded. “I played an awful trick on him, saying I was from an outside power and that I’d put him on the throne of Warish if he’d kill his father.”
“He believed you?”
“He did. I didn’t expect him to, but my contact in Balbaam knew the prince well enough to think the ploy might work. It did. King Marom caught his son trying to assassinate him and killed him on the spot.”
Trak shivered. “You—”
“I didn’t like myself very much after I had done it. No exultation there, but Pestle would have been ruled by a truly awful person, so any measure, no matter how desperate, had to be employed.” Neel shrugged. “I don’t think King Harl will rule in Pestle for long. Who knows what kind of thug the King will use as his puppet ruler in our country?”
“Asem? I like Asem. He is furtive, but I trust him,” Trak said.
“You know the reason he traveled to Santasia?”
“To meet me so he could control me, like everyone else.” Trak said. “Asem was very honest with me.”
“If he could, he would take you to Balbaam and use you. He is honorable in his own way…as I am,” Neel said smiling. He looked off into the woods. “I wish that Galinda and I could have raised you in Greenbrook as a simple family, but it was not to be. So you and I are here fighting for people who would rather we were somewhere else.”
“But the commander complimented us.”
Neel shook his head and looked up at the trees. “We did help him out…a lot. But he also knows we will be a different commander’s problem soon.”
“I’m still confused,” Trak said, feeling much less emotional. “I’m still being used,” he raised his hand to stop Neel’s reply, “as are we all.”
“But we can rise above the expectations of those around us and do extraordinary things. I want you to talk to Ben some more about this. He’s got more perspective on these things than I do. Can you promise me that? Talking will help you. It didn’t help me much until I met your mother, but we are different, you and I.”
Trak could only nod.
“One other thing. Have Tembul teach you Toryan. I could make out most of what the commander said today and Tembul didn’t quite translate it right. He took all of the insults out and I only caught a few of them.”
“He did?”
“Yes, but the last two days have wrung you out more than any of us realized. Get lots of rest when we travel north. Father’s orders.”
~
Tembul responded eagerly to Trak’s request to teach him the Toryan language. He started with nouns and began to point out things as they traveled, especially when they stopped at night. He asked Lenis to help at one point, and the Toryan declined with a grunt.
They had three nights of learning before they reached the southern edges of the Northern Toryan forces. “I will go ahead and send messengers to the commander,” Tembul said. “That way, as we move north we won’t be challenged every time we stop.”
They stayed at a hastily-built camp. They had passed over Toryan villages, but Tembul thought it would be better and more predictable to stay away from them. Neel continued to teach Trak elements of the Toryan language well into the night while they waited for Tembul to return.
“I’m picking this up, well enough,” Trak said.
“Toryan isn’t a hard language to speak. It has less nuance than Pestlan and isn’t as flowery as Santasian,” Neel said. “Still, there are plenty of terms you’ll never know unless you spend years with Toryan speakers. I remember the basics, but I still only picked up a fraction of what the Southern commander said.”
“A little is better than none,” Trak said.
Neel nodded in the light of the fire. Trak looked around him and heard a rustling in the bushes. He stood up at the same time as Neel, with his sword, unsheathed in his hand. Tembul was pushed into the clearing. His face was bruised and bleeding.
He knelt at Neel’s feet and said in Pestlan, “Kandannans.”
Immediately, fifteen men, swords at the ready, jumped into their clearing. Trak ran the few steps to a flyer and took it up high into the air. He looked down and made out Neel throwing his sword down. The other men roused Lenis, Ben, Able, Honor and Rasia from their slumber. They were roughly shoved out of the clearing and out of view beneath the forest canopy.
Trak didn’t know what to do. He stood on the flyer high above the empty camp. He couldn’t fight the captors by himself. Even with his poses and his magic, he doubted he could free his friends without putting them in peril. The panic he felt seemed to cloud his mind. He gazed off to the north and decided to warn the Northern commander that there were Kandannans in the woods to the south of them.
He sped northward looking for watch fires below. Finally he saw specks to his left, further towards the mountains. There were other groupings of fires, but this seemed to be the largest. He set the flyer down and hoped someone spoke Pestlan or Santasian.
He stepped off the flyer close by the largest fire in the camp. Many more than the fifteen swords h
e had faced earlier in the night were pointed at him.
“Does anyone speak Santasian?” For the most part his words were met with uncomprehending glares. “Pestlan?”
“Speak Pestlan,” an officer stepped up, putting his thumb and forefinger close together.
Trak smiled. “Speak Toryan,” he said and made the same sign. “Tembul caught by Kandannans.” Trak used the Toryan term for Kandanna. “Others, too. We came from the south after helping the Toryan army close the Dianza Pass.”
“Pass closed?” the officer said.
Trak nodded. “We did it.”
“How many with Tembul?” the officer said.
Trak sighed. How long would it take to get his point across? He held up six fingers. The man would understand that well enough.
“A Pestlan in my camp?” A short man walked up, buttoning up a uniform blouse. He spoke it rather well.
Trak sighed again. “Tembul, a Toryan—“
The man waved away mention of Tembul. “I know him well enough. You were with him?”
“We cut off the Dianza Pass five days ago and headed up here to help you do the same. Just south of here, maybe a league or so, a band of Kandannans captured us. I managed to make it to one of our flyers and escape.”
The commander’s face nearly turned into a sneer. “You are an outsider. Why would you help us?”
“My father is half-Toryan, so Toryan blood runs through my veins, as well.”
The man grunted. “Any other Toryans with you?”
“A man a bit older than I named Lenis. The rest of us are Pestlans or Colcanans.”
“Lenis, you say?”
“About this tall.” Trak held up his hand. “Fancies himself a great swordsman.”
“My nephew! Where were they taken captive?”
Trak felt a bit bewildered and had to turn around. “South and East. We were in a clearing. I could find it in daylight, but…” His eyes shifted to the fire. “If our campfire wasn’t put out, I can find it. Tembul said we were at the edge of the forces.”
The commander nodded and noticed the flyer.
“What is this?”
“I use it to fly.”
The man’s eyes goggled. “Fly?”
“You have your floaters, right?”
The commander nodded.
“We just use a different pose to lift it higher into the air and a wind pose to move around.”
“I’ll send a unit south east immediately. Can you carry many men on that?”
“Five or so,” Trak said. He thought he could move that many, but using that much wind would drain him.
“Take three scouts. They will track the Kandannans, and one of my officers, who knows a bit of Santasian, will escort you there and back.”
Trak couldn’t hope for any more. He nodded to the commander and let the men board.
“Don’t move around,” Trak said.
A few of the men looked very anxious. He took them up ten stories and thought that would be high enough to get them over the surrounding trees. When they rose up, one of the men wailed.
“Don’t let him fall!” Trak said. The men grabbed the panicked scout and held him tight while Trak got his bearings from the waning moon and raised the flyer up to another level and took off towards where he imagined their camp to be.
They passed over small groups of fires until Trak had gone about as far south as he could and began to go back and forth over the forest. He found a lonely fire and lowered the flyer to the ground. The other two flyers sat undisturbed.
“Here it is,” Trak said while the scouts conferred for a few moments and then disappeared into the forest.
Trak put more wood on the fire to mark the spot and the officer helped him gather everyone’s belongings onto the flyer, and then they flew back to the commander.
“I can ferry more men to the camp,” Trak said. “I’d also like to accompany your troops to save my friends.”
“Go ahead. There were fifteen men, you say? Can you get twenty-five to your camp and move from there? The scouts should have some information by then.”
“I will. Please gather your men quickly,” Trak said. “Our group wasn’t killed out of hand, but who knows what will happen.”
Trak made five more trips to the camp and when he set the last of the men down, he collapsed to the ground. “Give me a few moments to recover,” he said. Taking the five loads of men had drained him more than expected.
He dozed for a bit, until wakened by the officer who had accompanied him on the first trip. “A scout has returned. Time to go,” the officer said, helping Trak to his feet.
The tiny bit of sleep had done him a lot of good, and Trak had no problem tagging along as the company jogged out of the clearing and into the night. As they continued to move, none of them said a word until the sky began to lighten up and they could better see their way.
The scout slowed them down. He made signs for them to sit.
Trak fidgeted with the pommel of his sword while the other soldiers whispered in Toryan. He sat apart with the officer, who had assumed an impassive face. The other two scouts came and all three of the men joined the officer and began jabbering in Toryan. Trak picked up a word or two, but had no idea what the men had said.
“There is a light force of between thirty and forty men ahead. That’s more than we can handle. I’m sorry,” the officer said.
Trak sat back and pulled his sword out a few inches and let it fall back into the scabbard a few times. “We have enough.” He clamped his lips together before he continued. His two fathers, Honor and Ben were out there. He didn’t really care about Lenis, but he couldn’t save the others and leave him behind. He took a deep breath, not wanting to use his magic to kill others.
“I am a powerful magician. Very powerful. If they are all together, I can defeat them. If we present a united front and they mass, then don’t worry.”
“But didn’t you use all of your magic up bringing us to your camp?”
“I’ll work until my power is gone.”
The officer shot a dubious look at Trak. Obviously, the scouts didn’t understand a word of Santasian, so the officer translated. The scouts gave him their own doubtful looks, but nodded their heads in agreement with whatever the officer said.
“My forces will not fight to the last man. If it looks like we will be overpowered, we will retreat into the woods. Understood? We all want to fight another day.”
Trak had no choice but to accept the officer’s terms. The scouts led them away from their current path. They left the column after conferring with the officer.
“They will take out the sentries. There are four of them. If you hear anyone cry out, then we will attack. The camp is that direction.” The officer pointed in a line perpendicular to the path that they were on.
After long moments, one of the scouts returned. Trak looked at the officer after he reported.
“We can proceed. You lead, since you are the magician.”
Trak pulled out his sword.
“You know how to use that?” the officer said.
“I am proficient enough. You’ll see,” Trak said.
They crept closer. Trak sensed a whiff of smoke combined with the aroma of meat. Bacon? He was so nervous that he couldn’t tell. Suddenly as they made it through more underbrush, tents began to appear through the trees.
He needed a clear shot to use the lightning bolts that he had practiced in Bitrium. But then he had another idea. Trak held up his hand. He could afford to experiment from a little closer in. Only a few trees separated the soldiers from the Kandannans.
Trak assumed a pose and began to say the power word ‘paranon’ as his sword swept the camp. The Kandannan soldiers in sight began to fall. A soldier yelled out an alarm before he crumbled to the ground. Trak took more steps closer. His spell didn’t penetrate trees or even tents as more men began to emerge. The Kandannan soldiers milled around in the center of camp since they must have thought the enemy surrounded them.
The officer surged forward and pressed with the remaining enemy. The shocked Kandannans dropped their blades while scouts and soldiers scoured the camp.
Trak continued to put the surrendered soldiers to sleep until only a few remained standing, and then he plunged into the tents to find his friends. He went from tent to tent, but they were all empty.
He knelt on the ground. Had they already been executed? Had they passed their bodies on their way to the camp? He put his head in his hands until the officer shook his shoulder.
“Your friends were taken to a larger camp just after daybreak, probably while we were on our way here. If we hurry we can catch them before they reach their destination. What do we do with the dead soldiers?”
“They aren’t dead. I put them to sleep. Tie them up and wait until they wake up, then you can march them to your main camp.”
The officer smiled. “I’ll do that, but I can’t go with you. Take two of the scouts. They are in better shape than my soldiers.”
Trak brushed his knees off as he rose. “Thank you,” he said as relief flooded through him. “We will bring them to your camp.”
The two scouts met Trak on the western side of the camp, and used hand signs to move out. Trak followed the scouts as best he could. He hadn’t had a lot of practice running through a forest since he left Greenbrook for Pestle. The loping style of running he had used then suddenly came back to him, and his movements were smoother.
The scouts followed the trail west and then veered to the southwest. They signaled Trak to slow up and began to walk. A scout turned around and put his finger to his lips for silence. Trak understood. As they sped up to a brisk walk, Trak heard voices up ahead in what must have been Kandannan.
He could tell from the expression of the voices that the soldiers must have been cursing his friends. Hopefully there were all just ahead of them and intact.
The scouts crouched down and Trak did the same. Not too far ahead, he made out the last of a column. He saw Rasia walking with a thick stick or a tree bough behind her back, immobilizing her arms. He couldn’t recall any poses that were close to that or Ben might have gotten them free. Trak suspected that Ben knew the most, but at this point, it didn’t matter.