Call of the Wolf (The Kohrinju Tai Saga)

by Nelson, J P

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  After my first day with Ames in the cooking tent, I learned that Jared was not happy. Dharl was a complainer and a troublemaker. That wasn’t unusual for newbies, but Jared and I had worked together from the beginning. We had our own way of doing things and Dharl tended to slack.

  When we were back at the point Jared told me, “You know? I got really worried there. But everyone in the camp was rooting for you. You should have seen the look in the Stag’s eyes when you got back up. Sed, if you ever look at me that way I’ll just lay down and die.”

  I looked at him and he was just shaking his head and grinning.

  “I know why you got up. And I don’t hold it against you one bit. But damn, Sed, you’ve got more nerve than anyone I’ve ever seen. It scared the piss out of me when you got up that last time.”

  “Nerve?” I asked. I gave a dry chuckle. “More like stupid,” I said, “I should have stayed down. He beat the crap out of me.”

  I was re-teamed with Jared after two weeks, but that didn’t make it good for Geoff who was due for a new partner. Jared just looked at me and said, “They deserve each other.”

  That team lasted for only one week. They were on top one day and Dharl started a scuffle. The best we could figure was that he wouldn’t keep rhythm with Geoff in swinging the picks.

  A shoving match began and the guards began yelling. One of them lost their balance and Dharl fell off the ledge. The chain connecting their ankles pulled Geoff down but he fought to hold on. Jared and I were closest and tried to make a grab for Geoff’s hand, but he lost grip and the two of them fell thirty feet. Geoff landed with his head under his back and Dharl was impaled on a pick.

  I’ll not forget the brief look in Geoff’s eyes just before he fell. It made me shutter. He was afraid of heights, and so was I.

  Chapter 13

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  THERE WAS NO time to mourn for Geoff; we had been falling behind schedule and he wasn’t popular to begin with. He was always complaining. But what a waste, I thought. I had looked into his eyes. The eyes of someone completely defeated in life. Shouldn’t a person leave something behind? Then I thought about myself. What would I leave behind, my hatred of humans? There should be something more, but what?

  Jared and I had been working the point just over nine years, when they brought a tall fellow with black hair worn in a single braid down to his waist. As he was processed in, we noticed he had points on his ears; elvin blood, but not pure. He was almost six feet tall, rare for an elf and taller than most humans, and had the dark hair common among the Abaishulek Elves. His name was Uven and he sure enough heralded from Dahruban.

  “Someone for you to talk to, Sed,” Hoscoe told me with a wry smile. “Careful though, he was caught trying to steal from the Temple of Eayah over in Xenias. Bad choice,” he said while slowly shaking his head.

  The word was that anyone going up against anything protected by the western regions High Priest of Eayah, a human called Logan, was begging for trouble. Supposedly he could command undead.

  “They say he is pretty handy with a blade, though,” Hoscoe continued, “and he has a pretty high opinion of himself.”

  I looked at Hoscoe, “He doesn’t look much older than me.”

  “Yes, he is young,” Hoscoe replied, “but he has been around. They say he is something of an accomplished rogue and he is known in Stafford.”

  “Stafford?” I had heard there had once been a big bridge spanning the Phabeon River, just south of its origin from the Alburin Sea. The bridge was wide and was the single best way to cross, unless you wanted to travel south for 60-70 miles.

  People began setting up shops on each end, then along the sides, finally an actual city had grown up around and over the bridge. It was considered a depraved and wicked place.

  “You have never seen it, have you?” Hoscoe asked.

  “Nuh-uh,” I responded, “Gevard, around the Jutte Horn and here.”

  He looked at me for a minute and said, “Did you hear the Chancellor was assassinated?”

  “Really?” It was the first I had heard anything about my birthplace. I wasn’t sure I cared, but I had to admit I was curious. “What happened?” I asked.

  Hoscoe thought a minute and replied, “Seems there is trouble among the dukes. One of them wants to declare himself king. A fellow named Chazon. I hear several of the dukes are in support of him, too. It is a mess.”

  Someone called for Hoscoe and I had to join my fellows on the wagon to head for the point and a day's work. So, there was turmoil in Gevard’s government. I couldn’t help but wonder what Lord Herrol’s involvement would be, if any. Well, the goings on in Gevard no longer affected me … or did it?

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  Uven’s manner was insolent and even in chains he acted like he was totally in control of everything, like it was all some kind of a joke. But he never seemed to cause any trouble and did as he was supposed to. Sometimes he would look in my direction in an almost amused way, but we never communicated other than a nod of acknowledgement at evening chow. We were never in the same work areas, and it wasn’t long before he was moved to a different camp.

  After three weeks, Uven was moved into the same shack as the one occupied by Hamges. It seemed Hamges had made Uven an offer the night he moved in. The next morning Hamges was found dead in his bunk. No blood, so signs of struggle. No one saw anything. It was as if he had just stopped breathing. The word went around that Hamges’s face was contorted as if he had died of fright.

  Two days later someone at Uven’s work site suddenly screamed in fear of something nobody else saw. The chaingo jumped from a twenty-six feet height in a panic, taking his chain buddy with him. Both died from the fall. Not much was said, but Uven was moved to a different camp where he was shackled to a debris cart.

  The next year we finished breaking through the final ridge to allow us access to the Sahnuck River country. For months we looked at it as we worked our way through the ridge.

  I’ll never forget the expression on Jared’s face when we first looked down into the river itself.

  Where breaking through the ridge would make way to a flat which would make for a road, the river itself came from up the mountain and then cut around a bend to flow parallel to the upcoming road. From where we first stood on the ridge you could look straight down. And I mean straight down. From the flat it was fifty feet down to the rapids that made my stomach roll.

  “C’mon, Sed, look at it. It’s beautiful,” Jared said in awe.

  “Yeah …” That was all I could say at the moment. It was beautiful. But it was way down there. If you fell … I was thinking of our conversations about escape. Would he want to jump into that? With our chains on we would drown for sure. They only came off when we rejoined camp and were under mass guard.

  He looked at me again and then back at the white water. I should have been more joyful with my friend. This was something he had been looking forward to.

  I looked at him for a long moment, then into the churning froth of angry water splashing into this rock and that. I couldn’t see how a fish could survive, let alone a person. I asked point blank, “Would you actually jump into that?” It was probably a dumb question.

  He took his time in answering. Then he looked at me with a strange look in his eyes. “Yes, Sed, I would.”

  We only had a moment to observe the grandeur, and then we had to set up for work. I saw hope shine brightly in my friend’s eyes. Unbidden, I felt a fear rise up within my soul. A fear of what, I couldn’t explain. But it was there. Was Jared really going to go for it? What would I do?

  A bit more than ten years from the day Jared and I were paired as a work team, a bitter wind cut into the home camp. It was late summer but it could snow at nearly any given time of the year where we were working. Our task of ridge cutting was almost completed and the point team was smoothing the floor so to speak.

  Stagus had come to camp with
a new bunch of slaves to start the next stage of development. He had with him the boy he had been housing since discarding Hamges. He said nothing to me directly but when he walked by I heard that puppy dog whistle. An icy cold wave ran up my spine.

  I was now thirty-four years old and could be compared to most fifteen or sixteen year old human males. I was already taller than most elves at around eight inches over five feet tall, something I must have gotten from my human blood. Most Fel’Caden males ran close to six feet, if not more. My shoulders were broad, packed with muscle, and I could put almost twice my one hundred and thirty-five pounds over my head with an extreme effort.

  Jared was twenty-four and an easy five feet and ten inches tall. He was one of only a couple of fellows who were stronger than me, but he was a lot stronger and could out wrestle any of the fellows at the point. Me, I never wrestled with anyone, including Jared. That was his thing, that and his constant dream of escape. He was always planning, always thinking about a farm somewhere.

  Glancing at Jared I thought about the river, his belief in his dream, and I felt fear. Jared caught my attention and we made eye contact for a long moment. He knew my thoughts and gave me the slightest nod.

  It had been a long while since the last time I noticed an animal paying me close attention, and I was trying hard to not notice, if that makes any sense. As we were riding the wagons early in the morning transit to our work site, a large golden bird flew low to our wagon and circled it a couple of times. Jared just looked at me and I returned the look. What could that possibly mean, and why just our wagon?

  The bird was a Saukeir, the largest bird of prey in the entire Sahrjiun Mountain range. Said to be capable of flying off with a small sheep, stories of them were used as a scare tactic to keep children in the house at night. Solitary creatures, unless they had a mate, they were powerful raptures built to soar and had claws said to be able to crush a human skull.

  Saukeirs never came anywhere near humans, let alone circle a wagon full of them surrounded by mounted guards. The wagons behind us noticed the action as well and started yelling at the bird. Its presence scared the mules, so big and flying so low. It was beautiful, all copper and golden colored by traces of green in its wing feathers, and what must have been an eighteen or twenty foot wingspan.

  Was I mistaken, or did it look directly at me as it made a sharp arc upward.

  Something else was wrong, though. The mules were really acting up and becoming hard to manage and it wasn’t just the Saukeir.

  We now had a working trail through the Sahnuck Pass. The trail was somewhat curvy as it made more sense to open a bigger route through the one which existed, rather than cut a new one from scratch. But even though it was at least sixteen to seventeen feet wide, often the sides went way up and for nearly five hundred rods of the trail it was downright claustrophobic.

  Five wagons of four teams each were to focus on breaking rocks on the riverside of the pass. As it was right then, we had to drive through an opening eight feet wide between the final outcroppings of rock, just barely wide enough to get on wagon through. We had taken to calling this The Gateway, for once this opening had been widened and cleared we could say we had finished cutting our way through the mountains. It was truly an historic time.

  One wagon was ahead of Jared’s and my wagon, and just as it started through the pass that Saukeir dived down over the front wagon and toward our driver, its mouth open wide as it let out a shrill call that echoed eerily all about the rock formations. Our driver ducked but as I looked up I saw the bird flexing its claws into my way. The driver wasn’t the target, I was.

  What was going on?

  A guard tried a shot at the bird, but missed, and our driver, seeing the way clear in front, whipped the team through the windy pass in a panic. As our driver took us through the far side of the opening we almost ran into the back of the first wagon, which was stopped as their driver was trying to handle his team of terrified mules. In an attempt to keep from collision, our driver tried to skirt past the first wagon when a blood curdling, high-pitched scream came from above. All of the mules bolted and a huge gout of flame hit the wagon in front of us. Our driver leaped up and fell into the wagon bed on top of Jared and me.

  Something came from the sky and a large reptilian set of jaws seized the driver between Jared and me and lifted up hard, smashing down on the wagon with its fore claws. The man was in the drake’s mouth, but so was the connecting chain around our feet. Jared and I hung from the sides of its mouth. The drake swung its head violently as the man in its mouth screamed.

  The drake’s jaws had severed the chain and I went flying through the air, landing thirty feet away from the riverside cliff. Beside me was an arm that had to have belonged to the driver.

  I could hear Jared’s voice yelling for me and with a white face I realized his yell was coming from over the cliff. The mules and our wagon careened over the side and I saw Ghyd scrambling to keep a hold on the wagon sides as someone else fell out of the back.

  Fear and shock held me frozen to where I had landed and I couldn’t seem to move.

  The drake had turned its attention to the goings on in the pass and it let loose with another gout of flame, the stench of burning flesh reeked in my nostrils. Human screams and the death cries of animals were loud in my ears. The whistling thwip of a crossbow quarrel flew past, missing me by only a few feet. Please don’t tell me someone was shooting at me with a drake attacking us. It had to have been a miss aimed at the big, hairy lizard. For only an instant it registered on me, a hairy lizard? I though all dragons had scales. No time to think of that.

  Adrenaline took charge of my actions and I made my way quickly to the cliff side, down below about twenty feet was Jared. He was clinging to a root protruding from the side but he was slipping. I saw him look down, then back at me. The drake screamed as Jared tried to say something to me. I thought he was yelling at me to jump.

  ‘Jump?!’ I thought? ‘Oh shit!’

  He then planted his feet on the side of the bank, looked at me once more and this time for sure I heard him yell, “Let’s go Sed, now, do it …” and he pushed off and out into the rapids.

  Fear ran through me as I looked below and hesitated for an instant. The best friend I ever had, my partner of the chain, sweat and blood was making his bid for freedom. Looking at my leg I saw the iron around my ankle and the loose piece of chain, the chain that had bound Jared to me was now broken …

  He hit the foaming water with an uncontrolled splash and I just knew my friend was dead. How could he … I saw him surface from the rapids maybe eighty or ninety feet away and grab a piece of the broken wagon and get caught in the current. He was waving at me frantically and I stood there, half crouched on the edge of the cliff. Terrified, I tried to muster the nerve to make the jump when something hit me hard in the back of the head and everything went black.

  When I awakened my hands were bound behind me with ropes. I was in the back of a wagon with thirteen others including one of my bunkmates, a burly human named Thad. What surprised me was that seven of our guardsmen were also in the pile. Someone I had never seen before was driving us back to our main camp.

  Our captures spoke Quandellish, which is one of the languages I had learned from Jared. It turned out this incident with the drake had been planned by dragon hunters, and we had been used as bait. The hunter in charge was tracking down the drake, and he had someone with him armed with a special drake-slaying weapon and a wizard.

  A band of brigands, lead by a known outlaw named Mahrq, had been hired as warriors and apparently were on another side mission even as we were being driven back to the point camp.

  I thought of Stagus and his men. And I thought of my friend Jared. The last thing I saw was him escaping to freedom. My hope, my prayer … if anyone existed out there or was listening … was that he made it. That would be my belief until I learned different. I had to believe that. I needed to believe that.

  If I hadn’t hesitated, I thought
, I would be there with him, maybe, if I survived the jump, let alone those deadly rapids. But what would I do? He at least had skills. He had something to look forward to. He wanted a family and a home, maybe a farm somewhere; I had only my hate. If nothing else, I hoped Jared had his five minutes of freedom … and then a whole lifetime more.

  When we got back to the camp everything was destroyed. The shacks were burning and the tents torn down. A group of people were tied to a fence poles and my heart skipped a beat. In that row was Stagus. Stagus himself had been captured. We were all collected together as Mahrq came and looked us over. There were a total of twenty-eight of us in all. That included slaves, guards, and Stagus. What was going on, I did not yet know. But now Stagus and I were on common ground.

  My hands still bound, I found myself standing right in front of Stagus. I caught his eye and a cold fury began to build up within me. Don’t let your emotions control you … I reminded myself.

  I stared incredulously at this vermin, this filth who only this morning had whistled at me like a dog. And here he stood, himself tied with the bonds of a prisoner. I saw the scorn within my manner register deep within this human pig.

  In a deep, hissing tone I said to him with a snarl, “I would piss inside your throat.” Where the words came from I don’t know, but they were there and came treated with acid.

  Stagus’s face twisted and he lurched toward me but his bonds jerked him to, as he was tied to a fence rail. His own pride had been hit hard, as he had been out thought, defeated and captured. Now the puppy he meant to conquer had hurled him defiance. I returned the lunge and felt the rage in me rise to the top.

  “Don’t let your emotions control you. You control your emotions,” Ames had said. I focused on the heat within me and let it burn.

  Hands grabbed me from behind and kept me from getting to my former owner. Mahrq was yelling at his men to bring both of us to him.