Call of the Wolf (The Kohrinju Tai Saga)

by Nelson, J P

  Each day each paired team was rotated in their function. Basically, on day one a given team would perform work which involved pushing and pressing motions. On day two the same team would rotate to perform work involving pulling motions. Every day each team was constantly rotated to keep the muscles fresh and rested from the previous day’s type of work. Every seventh day each team rested. There were several teams and work went on seven days a week. The whole program worked like a well oiled machine.

  Stagus would often come and check on the progress and make sure things were going according to schedule. And of course he was interested in me and how I was holding up. I had no intention of being sent back and didn’t care how dangerous this part of the country was. Jared and I excelled together and became one of the top three teams in the whole outfit.

  Luckily, production was Stagus’s main concern, and since Jared and I produced so well, we were left as a team. The two of us were thankful for that, but that wasn’t all. Remember, we were both kids … the youngest kids … at the most forward camp of prisoners, many who were rough and of the lowest human standards, and human standards can get pretty low.

  Well, every camp has a top dog, or what is sometimes called the Lead Bull. At the Point Camp, Sym was the Lead Bull, and even though he didn’t control everything that went on in the slave cabins, he controlled what went down in his own, and if he said leave so-and-so alone, that person was left alone. Let’s just say our cabin didn’t have a Pecking Order Initiation.

  The story was when he first came to camp, the current Bull confronted Sym and ordered him on his knees. Without a word, Sym poked his forefinger into the soft spot above the Bull’s belly. The Bull’s eyes bugged out and he bent over holding his stomach like he had been speared with the business end of a shovel. Sym reached up and with his thumb poked the Bull in the throat, and then reached up behind his head and grabbed his hair. With a twist he threw the man to the ground. They said he was dead when he hit the ground and Sym became the new Bull from day one.

  Jared and I were in Sym’s cabin, and he had a problem with what he called child abuse. As the new boys we scrubbed more than our own clothes for a while, but that was much better than the alternative. For what it’s worth, our cabin also had the top performers in the Point Camp; actually, we were the top performers on the whole road project.

  For the next several years I worked at the point. My muscles thrived at the labor and I became hard and unusually strong for my size. Elves and most of those with half-blood mixes don’t swell up with huge muscle mass. That lends to the misconception that we are small, but, while I’ve never been one to go around flexing my muscles to get attention, when my shirt was off you couldn’t help but notice the definition and symmetry of my physique.

  Thanks to Jared I learned four new languages thoroughly. In turn I taught him the elvin dialect of my momma’s people. He would recite poetry and I would recite some of the songs my momma would sing. But I wouldn’t sing. I couldn’t do it.

  “Come on, Sed. I know you can carry a tune. You can’t stay bottled up forever,” Jared would often say.

  I would look at him from under my brow and give him the kind of warning, yet mildly tolerant glare that true friends might flash at each other. And he had truly become my friend, my first real friend. “If I sing, I would have to kill you,” I would respond in dry undertones.

  He would then roll his eyes into the heavens and say, “Riiigghhht.” He would then flex his biceps. “I’m still stronger than you.”

  And in truth, Jared had grown strong. I mean really strong. His dark and unruly hair was tied into a permanent ponytail and draped an incredibly powerful body. He could even out arm wrestle Slade, a big brute of a man who was brought in during our sixth year.

  “That …” I would continue dryly, “… Is because you haven’t had a bath in two months.” And so it would go.

  Often I would think of my twin and my sister. Who were they? Where were they? Did they know anything about me? Were there other brothers and sisters of mine out there? Somehow just the thought that I had family out there gave me a good feeling. Like, maybe I wasn’t alone.

  Sure, I hadn’t been raised with them, wouldn’t know any of them if I saw them, but I had kinfolks. Then the thought of my little brother would cross my mind and I would close my eyes in anguish. There was nothing I could do; he was being raised by filth, and for what?

  Sometimes Jared would say, “You know? I don’t know much about elves, but Sed, you think more like a human all the time.”

  I would look at him with an expression that asked, ‘Is that supposed to be an insult?’

  He would laugh, but it was a thing between us. Often he seemed to know what I was thinking without my saying a word. And it isn’t that I was easy to read. “You can do the stone face thing and talk with your eyes to everyone else … but I know you bro.” He was the only one to ever call me that. Only how much could he really know? So many times I wanted to sit down and just talk with him about things, things I had experienced. I wanted to know what it was like to have a father, a real family. But I could never get myself around to do it.

  After all, there could always be tomorrow.

  One of my regrets is that I can’t tell you of fun times, even moments that we had. Our life was simply work, sleep, eating, and more work. Sometimes there was a little rest, like on our seventh day, but the only recreation was wrestling and watching Sym do his slow-moving breath exercises. Most of the time we were too tired to do much but sleep in.

  As the years rolled by, though, I noticed differences between Jared and I that caught me unexpectedly. Jared grew up; I, on the other hand, stayed small, or more like an adolescent. I was older than him by nearly ten years, but it became like I was his younger brother. He never treated me any less, but it was something I thought about a lot.

  “Hey …” he backhanded me on the arm and got serious one night. “Do you ever think seriously about escape? No, don’t look at me that way. I mean, really?”

  I looked at him a moment in the darkness, because escape isn’t something you discuss in earshot of others, and then chewed on a blade of grass thoughtfully, “Who hasn’t?” I looked deep into the night.

  “Come on, Sed, really. Look, we are almost at the last ridge into the Sahnuck Pass country. If we could somehow make a run for the river …”

  “First off, it’s been tried what, eight or nine times in the last couple of years? None of ‘em made it. And there is that wizard, Donnely. He found that one fellow last year just by looking in the water barrel and saying a few words.

  “Second, it’s wild country out there. Let’s assume we made the river. They say it’s all rapids, you know? We have chains connecting our feet when we are on the rock, in case you have forgotten.

  “And then there are the beasts. You heard about the hunting party who met up with that bear. They said he was seventeen feet tall and took out all of them except the one who got away.

  “And then there’s the drake that’s supposed …”

  “You see? That’s your problem.” Jared said, “You’re always so damned pessimistic. I would rather live five minutes free than five hundred years as a slave. I would take that chance. And Donnely has left for the season. He won’t be back for another five or six months.”

  I sat there chewing my stem of grass, thinking. Yes, he would, he had courage. But me? I thought about it. I wanted revenge, but to be free? I couldn’t comprehend it. Here, as long as I worked hard I wasn’t ever bothered. The food was great and I had clothes to wear and shelter from the weather. On the other hand, there was the looming presence of Stagus; it was something I was going to have to deal with some how, some way.

  Then I looked at him and raised my left eyebrow and squinted my right, “Jared …” I said slowly and emphatically, “you won’t live to be five hundred. You’re human.”

  He looked at me for a second, then gave me a ‘duh, you know what I meant’ look, “One day, Sed, one day …” W
e were sitting on a log outside the shack. Any guard could see us, but keeping our voices low they couldn’t hear.

  Jared had been quiet a lot lately, thinking a lot. He was well into his twenties now; a big, powerful, grown man who could not be compared to the lanky youngster I first met. Always quick with humor and wit, smart, well liked by everyone including the guards; his olive skin and flashing smile, mixed with that lean and well muscled physique and his charm would grab the attention of probably any lady who saw him. Most fellows would probably be intimidated by him.

  Then all at once I worked it out.

  It takes me a while sometimes and I figured it just as he turned to me and said, “I … I want to do something,” he looked at his hands, “to do something with these besides break rocks or take orders. We’re chaingos, Sed, slaves bound by chain to do menial labor. I want my own farm, or maybe a shop, or start a school, something.” I saw a far-away pain in his eyes as he added, “I want to take a wife and have a family, Sed, but look at me … look at us … you’re going to live practically forever, but I’m, I’m …”

  Beside me was my friend, and he was hurting. I had been born into slavery but he had been a captive. He knew what it was like to go and do what you want, when you want, the way you want to do it. And while I wasn’t going to live forever, he was right, he was aging so fast, so much like what he was, a human.

  “Life is, it’s passing me by, Sed.” He looked off toward Sahnuck Pass and I saw the same yearning, wistful look I had seen so many times in my momma’s eyes. It’s something I honestly couldn’t understand.

  What was my problem? Weren’t elves supposed to want to be free, to be one with nature and talk to the birds and all that nonsense? What would it mean to truly be free?

  Were freedom and oneness with nature the same? I couldn’t see it. It’s like I could walk on the ground but to me it was just ground. But sometimes … sometimes it was as if I could hear something in the woods. Something … no, someone … someone seemed to be calling out to me, but who?

  Jared turned to me as if hoping I had something to say, but I didn’t. We sat there for a moment longer and then with a last look to the mountains, Jared looked down and then putting hands on his knees, he got up and went inside to bed.

  Sitting there I lamented over what I could have said, but what?

  Gazing into the murky darkness, all I could hear was the far away sound of a lonely wolf calling into the night.

  Chapter 12

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  EVERY ONCE IN a while it seemed an animal would stop next to me and look my way. Rodents in the shacks did it, squirrels, every now and then a bird, once a snow fox, all kinds of creatures. It didn’t happen all of the time, but occasionally.

  A huge deer just seemed to appear from the rocks one day where we were working. It had apparently grazed out from the forest and was checking out the ridge. Jared and I were in front that day and we were downwind of the deer. He was magnificent and had eight points on his rack. When he came face to face with me it startled us both. But when he saw me he suddenly stopped, gazed directly into my eyes and tilted his head ever so slightly. I could have sworn he was trying to talk to me in deer talk. Then I felt the nearby whipping of a crossbow bolt through the air and the deer was dead.

  “Damn, Sedrick. That was a stroke of luck.” One of the guards yelled while climbing the rock, “Saved us from having to go out hunting.” He said proudly.

  I couldn’t help but feel sick at my stomach and I wasn’t sure why. Stupid deer didn’t have to walk right up like that. Why didn’t he run when he had the chance?

  I tried to avoid animals after that. And if I thought they were looking at me I would think angry thoughts at them. Shael’s if they wouldn’t turn and run, or at least leave me alone.

  When the deer was killed Jared just looked at me.

  One night he asked me, “Sed? Do you ever wonder about the little things you can do? I mean, I know you don’t like talking about it. But I think there is something special about you.”

  “I have elf-blood. I know little tricks. But they never do any good when it counts. I wish I didn’t have them.”

  He was quiet for a long while. “Sed … my pap knew elves, and most are no different than anyone else. They just have pointed ears and live a long time. Besides, it counted when my leg was busted.”

  “Your pap knew tame elves,” I said, “elves who forsook their natural ways to blend into human society. And I don’t want to talk about it.” It’s one of the few times I ever got angry with him, but it wasn’t his fault, he was only trying to be helpful. With an afterthought I added, “Your leg was an accident and I still don’t know how I did it.”

  Jared usually was jovial. He believed one day he would regain his freedom and he lived with hope. I had no hope. But I wondered if being chained to me would hold him back one day. To help him get his freedom would I try to escape with him? I didn’t say a word and like always kept my emotions pent up inside.

  Getting up, I made for the shack to turn in.

  “You can’t hide from what you are, bro. You can run, but you can’t hide.”

  Jared got up, brushed his pants off with a touch of anger and said, “Forget it. Just run from who you are, who you could be.” He poked his fingers at his own chest and said, “Me? I want to do something, anything, not just waste away here.”

  His face was intense as he cut into me sharp and pointedly, “So WHAT, you had some bad times as a child? You won’t talk about it, but I know there were dark years. I KNOW you lost your momma, and I never heard you mention your papa, but that is past.”

  He shoved me with his fingers as he said, “But what about YOU? YOU’RE alive! Do you LIKE being a slave?” Jared just stood and looked at me with a challenge. What could I say? I had no idea. In all our years together as partners I had never seen him like that, nor had never talked to me in such a way. Again, I had no idea what to say. For a second, there, I thought he was going to whap me one.

  The next morning before breakfast he came to me and said, “Bro, about last night …” there was a hesitation as he looked around for the right words, then said, “… I was out a’line. I shouldn’t have thrown a shovel down your groove. It’s just, it’s just …” Jared looked out of place and it was so awkward. He looked down, then back at me and added, “I’m sorry.”

  I grabbed his forearm and in as awkward a voice said, “I’m sorry too, I understand.” Only, truth to tell, I didn’t, not really.

  The subject never came up again.

  ___________________________

  When most of the others would relax, I began to spend time with Sym. Jared really got into wrestling, and he had learned it from his father, who had been a master grappler, but I wanted to learn Sym’s meditation ways and all I could of his touching and healing art; they reminded me of my momma’s own healing ability.

  “I will teach you, young Sed. But you must learn to be patient and to breathe. This will be your greatest challenge. You have the gift of healing within your being. But fire courses your veins. It must be tempered with water. You must learn the essence of the nine elements … and you must give yourself time to learn.”

  Time was all I had. So I made a commitment to learn. I thought a lot about the fire and water thing. It didn’t make a lot of sense to me at the time, but I wanted to understand. What I really wanted to know was how this Family Secret thing worked.

  Sym taught me seated meditation, stretching, breathing, all that kind of stuff. After a couple of years he started teaching me this thing called Tai’Jhi. We were able to practice it even in front of the guards because it was slow and looked more like a dance.

  “They do not understand,” he would say, “they do not understand that this is an ancient form of combat. The applications are hidden within the movements. Remember … the Form is not the Art. The Art is within the Form.”

  Well, the combat was hidden from me as well. But it gave me something to do besides w
aste time on games during down time.

  One day Sym told me “You fight within yourself, young Sed. You carry anger that you should not bear. When you release the anger you will find your way. Then you shall find peace.”

  That pissed me off. I didn’t retort back, but my momma had been murdered and everything she believed in dashed into the cistern. Sym was telling me I shouldn’t be angry? I had a right to be angry. I wanted to do something about it.

  I didn’t want peace, I wanted a piece of … a piece of some human hide. I wanted …

  “The day will come, young Sed. The day will come when you shall understand. Then you must make a choice. This choice will determine what path you shall always follow. I have taught you all that you are ready to learn. You have the blood of elves, but you think like a human.”

  Now that messed with my mind. He was human too. Okay, a different kind of human. But he talked like something else. I never got to discuss it with him anymore because the next morning he was taken away. Stagus had a need for him in another camp, as he occasionally did.

  Two weeks later we learned that camp number four had been attacked by goblinoids hunting food. Their favored food was human meat, then horse. Sym was there and had been one of four slaves and two guards captured.

  By the time reinforcements arrived and a search made they were long gone.

  ___________________________

  In the decade we worked the point, our camp endured sixty-seven attacks from either brigands or goblinoid denizens of the surrounding regions. Being at the front we were considered at greatest risk. As a rule our guards fared well. But sometimes there were heavy casualties. And of course with casualties there must be replacements.