The Destroyer

by Michael-Scott Earle

  "This is horrible," Jessmei said in shock. "Did he kill all of them? Even the servants? Why would he kill servants?" The Princess of Nia probably hadn't even seen blood before and must have been terrified.

  "I stand by my earlier decision. You have made a terrible mistake. This man is going to ruin us all. He is as crazy as a sober man on the King's Birthday. Look at him over there kissing those horses, like he doesn't even notice the bodies." Greykin was practically spitting at Nadea. Her almond shaped eyes narrowed at the big man. The power of her beauty struck my chest and drove out the feelings of fear.

  "Let's go talk to him Paug," Nadea said as she touched my arm. I was afraid to move, but the second tug from her strong hand forced me.

  He didn't notice us approach. His attention was focused on the largest animal of the group and his coo-like whispers were a stark contrast to the bloodshed around us. The animal nuzzled him appreciatively, as if it understood his words.

  "Hello," I conjured as much bravado in my voice as I could.

  "I like horses," he said as he looked at me. His wild, shaggy beard went down past his chest and to his stomach, yet I saw the huge smile of white teeth beneath the dark hair.

  "Horses are nice." I tried to remember the words. He looked puzzled for a second and then nodded as he looked away from me and started to inspect each horse's shoes.

  "What do you want me to say?" I asked Nadea. Greykin and Jessmei approached now that it appeared that the man wasn't going to kill us. Iarin disappeared into one of the tents.

  "Ask him if he killed these men."

  I reached for my book. I thought I knew how to say the words, but his accent and pronunciation was altered. Finally, I croaked it out.

  "Yes," he said, and nodded as he moved to the next horse.

  "Ask him why," Nadea pressed. I asked him.

  "They were going to kill us. I kill them first," he said. At that point he seemed to realize that we were upset. He stopped caressing one of the horses, a large black one, and looked between Nadea and me.

  "Why? I wrong? No kill?" He did seem concerned. I translated for everyone.

  "Hey. I had this guy all wrong. Anyone who wants to kill Vanlourn soldiers because he thinks, rightfully so, that they want to kill us, is okay with me!" Greykin let out a deep laugh. The man frowned for a second but he smiled when he realized that the Old Bear was pleased.

  "We go home?" the man asked me with an eyebrow raised. "Take horses? I like them."

  I nodded.

  "He likes horses. He wants to go back with us, and asked to take them," I told Nadea.

  "Perfect!" she said with enthusiasm. "This will be easier than I expected. I thought he might run away. Can you ask him why he left? Also, ask if he knows he killed servants."

  I was getting better at the translations. He moved away from the horses toward us as he answered our questions. I found myself shuffling back away from his advancing walk and I noticed that the two women and big axe man retreated as well.

  "He said that he intended to find us after he got some clothes. He believed that their base camp was nearby because they didn't carry rations or a lot of water. He said that he didn't realize they were servants but it wouldn't have mattered to him anyway. He didn't want anyone to report our presence." I noticed the man study my mouth as I spoke. Once I finished he looked at Nadea. She nodded instead of saying anything.

  "Okay. Ask him if he can find some clothes that will fit him. Our own horses are a few hours walk north of here."

  He nodded as I relayed the message.

  The man began to walk around the camp, ducking into tents and emerging with sacks or chests, then dumping them in the middle of the camp without opening them. During all the commotion Iarin emerged from the first tent with some packs and he put them on the pile.

  "We should bury the bodies,” Nadea said, as she took a shovel from the heap.

  "Burn them. Put their weapons, boots, and any armor that isn't damaged in a separate pile first," the man commanded me. I translated to Nadea.

  "There might be more of them in the jungle. They will see the smoke and attack us," Nadea asked me to translate.

  "Let them come. We might as well kill all of them," the man said, without looking at her. He had discovered a shaving mirror, razor, and other tools in a small pack.

  "No. We aren't going to burn them. We don't need the heat, or the smoke, or the possibility of it attracting more attention," I translated to the man, worried that Nadea would argue with him like she often did with Greykin.

  The strange man didn’t seem to care anymore about the conversation. He was looking at himself with the small shaving mirror. He stared in amazement as he slowly touched his face and beard. We looked at him and then at each other. The tension rose between us as we anticipated some sort of breakdown.

  "Paug, hot water," he said, as he set the mirror down and inspected the shaving razor. The fire in the center of the camp was still bright with embers. I spotted various piles of wood and pots nearby. I added some twigs, larger pieces of wood, and blew on the fire to get it going again.

  "What are you doing?" Nadea asked, as I prepared the flame.

  "He wants hot water. I think he wants to shave." I looked over my shoulder at the man and saw him examining a pair of hair shears. He put them up to his face and began to awkwardly cut his beard shorter. Before he could get a second snip in, Iarin stepped near him and offered his hand. The man flipped the shears over and placed them in Iarin's palm.

  Iarin went to work, cutting the man's beard as close as he dared with the shears. I poured a water skin into one of the pots and set it by the fire to heat.

  "If they aren't going to burn or bury the bodies, ask Nadea and Greykin to gather weapons," the man said. Nadea and Greykin turned to look back at me with questions on their faces when they heard their names. We had all been watching Iarin trim the man's beard with a strange fascination.

  "He wants you to gather weapons from the bodies," I said.

  "Let's do it," Nadea said as she moved to a corpse. Greykin grunted and joined her.

  After a few minutes the man's beard was uniformly trimmed an inch from his face.

  "Ask him to cut my hair please." The man tugged on his long mane. I didn't need to translate, Iarin got the point and then moved back and began cutting.

  "Let me do that," Jessmei said as she stood up from a rock where she had perched. "I used to cut my brother's hair and sometimes cut my handmaiden’s when they wished."

  "Don't get near him!" Greykin shouted as he turned from his task. "We still have no idea what he is capable of."

  "Actually, we have a pretty good idea of what he is capable of," Iarin said with a laugh. "If he wanted to kill her, or any of us he would have done it by now. He wants to go with us. Besides, if the princess cuts his hair, maybe he will be less likely to want to hurt her."

  "Don't worry Greykin. He won't hurt me. Iarin is right, he would have already if he wanted. Even you could not stop him," Jessmei said.

  "Bullshit I couldn't stop him! I am Captain of the Royal Household Guard. I've been in more borderland skirmishes, onslaughts, and raids than any other man in this kingdom. I swore a blood oath to your father that I would protect his line when I was younger than you. And I've been living with that task for the last fifty years. I don't care if this man is who you all think he is. If he harms a hair on your head, I will rip his head from his shoulders and drink the blood that gushes from his neck."

  Jessmei froze mid-step like a caught rabbit. Everyone seemed surprised by the big man's sudden outburst. The princess looked back at her protector and seemed about to burst into tears.

  "No kill. No hurt," the man said as he smiled at Greykin and waved across the fire pit.

  "Did he just speak our language?" Nadea said in amazement.

  "He has been listening to how I have been translating." I tried not to smile.

  "Is the water warm?" the man asked me.

  "Almost." He looked confused. "Soo
n," I said instead, and he nodded. Jessmei ran her fingers through his tangled hair in an attempt to smooth it out.

  "Is there a comb in that pile?" Jessmei asked. The man bent down and pulled out a large bone comb and handed it over his shoulder to her.

  "Tell him to sit down. He is too tall," Jessmei asked me to translate but the man sunk down smoothly and kneeled on the dirt. It was a weird position, balancing on his shins and the balls of his feet, but he didn't seem to be in pain.

  "I think he is able to understand us. Is that possible?" Nadea asked me. She threw some sheathed swords, crossbows, and daggers into a pile.

  "I don't know. It seems that the Ancient language and ours have a few things in common. But theirs is more complicated. Our language is subject, verb, and then object. So we would say: 'I am drinking water.' The Ancient language has a different order depending on if it is the past, present, or future tense. The alphabet and sounds are also more complicated. There are forty more sounds their language makes. And it looks like I got most of them wrong."

  "You're doing fine, Paug. You got him to want to come with us!" Nadea couldn't hide her excitement. Both she and her father believed that the O'Baarni would help us against the Ancient race. The legends said that the O'Baarni nearly annihilated all life on our world, but Nadea had found proof that someone, or some group, had changed the documented history. It was probably an easy task, considering that the Ancients lived over two thousand years ago and most of their art, writing, and creations were destroyed.

  We sat back around the fire and watched Jessmei cut the man's hair.

  "How short do you think he wants it?" she asked as she combed and cut small pieces of thick hair.

  "As short. I am not allowed to have long hair," the man said to me as I finished translating. I looked at him in confusion and saw his expression looked lost. He was remembering something.

  "He wants it short," I told Jessmei. She nodded and cut larger pieces off of his wild mane. Her hands did seem to know their way around shears and hair.

  After ten minutes she had cut off most of the long hair and began working around his ears. The dark cuttings fell over his gray robe and face like discarded autumn leaves. I realized that I hadn't checked on the water in a while. It was almost boiling, so I moved it away from the fire. The man saw me move the water and nodded.

  Jessmei moved in front of the man and appraised her work, brushing the tips of her fingers over his face to dust off hair, and running the comb through the top to make sure it lay evenly. The man glanced at her before staring into the fire. I looked over at Greykin, surprised that he hadn't given a yell of outrage at her being so close. Nadea had finished gathering the weapons around us and stood with her arms crossed over her chest. A look of annoyance was plain on her face but I couldn't guess why.

  "I think that looks great!" Jessmei said, and I agreed. His hair was a few inches long on all sides, more organized, and he looked less like a crazy beggar. He motioned for me to bring the pot closer as he grabbed the razor and a piece of soap.

  "I never thought it was that interesting to watch a man shave, but I am enthralled," Iarin murmured as he sat next to me. The O’Baarni splashed warm water on his face from the bucket, dunked the soap in, and then worked a lather with it on his face. Then he began to shave with the mirror in his right hand and the razor in his left.

  After a few minutes he finished cutting the beard and set down the mirror and blade. He splashed his face with water to remove the soap and the hair. Then he raised the mirror again and studied himself. I could not guess if he was handsome or not. It looked like he might be two days from death through starvation, a skeleton covered in translucent bleached paper, with dark violet lines running down his neck and face. The veins were so apparent through his gaunt skin that I almost believed that they were on the outside of his body.

  "I am thin," he said to me.

  "Yes," I said back. "You should eat something before we leave."

  "I remember my name," he stopped and touched the mirror, then his face, then the mirror again. "I am Kaiyer. I was a stable boy. I served the Elven tribe of Laxile. My father's name was Kai."

  I sat stunned for a brief second before excitement made me vault to my feet. "Are you the O'Baarni? Did you destroy the Ancients?" I realized that my hands were clenched.

  He looked at me sadly as he set down the mirror. In a smooth movement he went from kneeling to standing. Jessmei stood closest to him and she shuffled back a few steps from him in surprise.

  "I remember being a stable boy. Washing horses, fixing shoes, shoveling manure. I remember standing in an army. I remember a red flag and a black skull. I heard wind and cheering. I don't remember more."

  He turned away from me and started to sort through the clothes.

  I quickly translated to my companions.

  "A stable boy? I don't know if I can believe that." Nadea seemed disappointed. "What stable boy fights like that? How did he become imprisoned if he is just a stable boy? It doesn't make any sense."

  "It could just be that he doesn't remember yet. I have trouble remembering what I ate for dinner when I wake up in the morning. If he slept for over fifteen hundred years, I can imagine that he might forget what happened during his life. It will just take time," Iarin tried to ease Nadea's worries, but she seemed pretty devastated.

  "That doesn't look like the body of a stable boy," Greykin muttered to us as he pointed back at Kaiyer. We all looked over and gasped. He had taken off his robe and stood naked. His body was painfully thin, with ribs protruding so far I might grab one through his skin. I even thought that I saw his heart beating in his chest.

  His skin was covered in countless scars, long, thin cuts that could have come from swords or whips, wide circular scars from an arrow or crossbow, burns, and rips. I hadn't noticed it before, but his left hand looked like it had been burned down to the mid forearm. He may have dipped the limb into a scalding pot of water or oil at one time. He found a pair of dark brown pants that he struggled to put on. His penis hung from his body and bounced as he maneuvered into the garment.

  "Turn around and give the man his privacy ladies," Greykin commanded and the girls did. Jessmei's face looked bright red and her eyes opened in amazement before she turned her back to us. She was a bit older than me and may have never seen a naked man.

  "He spoke of an army. He mentioned a red flag and a black skull," I said, suddenly remembering what Kaiyer told me in the ruins.

  "Did he say anything else? No records indicate what design his banner carried. Did he say if he was a commander or the actual O'Baarni?" Nadea was grasping for anything that proved he was our savior. I shook my head.

  "One thing's for sure. The boy needs food. Let's get out of this blasted jungle and back to our camp before nightfall," Greykin said.

  I turned back to see that the thin man had put on socks and had already tied one boot on. It only took him another few moments to put on the other boot and slide into a cream-colored tunic. The clothes suited him, but he didn't seem happy until he had tied a few of the sword belts from the pile around his waist and studied the blades.

  "Looks like we finally agree," Nadea said to Greykin with a smile. "And I think our friend is ready to go."

  Chapter 3-The O'Baarni

  She always waited for her trainers to leave before she spoke to me.

  "Human," she would say with a smirk, her face beautiful and mischievous, "come here."

  I would stop whatever I was doing in the stable. Today I was about to rub down her horse after she had ridden it halfway to death. Now the horse would have to wait. When she asked me to come to her, I had to obey.

  She was the eldest daughter of the chieftain and therefore benefited from special privileges, including full access to the stables, as well as riding, archery, combat, and military strategy trainers. I guessed horses were her favorite pastime since she rode every morning before the sun awoke.

  This morning, in particular, seemed different than all the
other times she harassed me. I had just finished taking off the saddle and led her horse, a beautiful chestnut Destrier that stood eighteen hands high, into his pen.

  I closed the stall door and turned to her. She sat delicately on one of the shipping crates we kept full of oats. Her long legs dangled and swung off the ledge like olive branches in the wind.

  "Now," she said as her smile turned into a flat line. Her hand gripped the side of the crate where she perched. The wood cracked under her awesome strength and tore easily in her hand. The meaning was clear; she could have crushed my skull with far less effort.

  "Sorry Mistress," I apologized as I scurried over to her, wiping my dirty hands on my slightly less dirty pants.

  "Take off my boots, human," she said as she lifted her right foot and pointed her toe at my chest. The boots were of the finest leather and ran up past her knees in a wrap of flower embroidery. I carefully grabbed the heel and pulled. She sighed when the boot came free.

  "The other," she said as she lifted her left leg. I tried not to look up at her, but I could never help myself. The woman's skin almost matched the color of fresh snow, and her almond-shaped eyes reflected blue and silver like a cloudy sky. Her hair was the color of the setting sun and fell down in all directions, ending at her thin waist. As she looked at me, one of her fingers spun through the golden hair. The movement created a ring around her finger that most of her kind would have paid a handsome sum to possess. The tips of her ears came out from behind her tresses and made sharp, dainty points. She brushed her hair back over them when she saw me staring at her. Then she pointed to the boots.

  "Polish them." I nodded and ran to get my oil and brush. I could polish a mirror-like shine in her saddle and it would take me a few minutes to get the boots looking the same. I doubted that would be all that she wanted with me today.