by Nelson, J P
“Oh, really? Why didn’t he have it transported by boat?”
“Because … I am the merchant who brings them, and I don’t travel by water.”
Searching the wagon I found four such bundles and I took them. “How much of this is Uven’s?”
He hesitated and I added while shaking my head, “You … aren’t the bad guy,” I smiled, “I am. Do you want me to disembowel you for withholding information?
“The whole wagon is his.”
I found a couple more bundles I liked, a burlap sack to put them in, and carefully put them to the side. But not before I opened one and savored the smell. It had been a long time since I had tasted a fine cigar, or even a cheap one, for that matter. Of course, in our day and time, most anyone who took the time to roll a cigar took the time to do it right.
Finding several flasks of lamp oil, these people watched as I doused the wagon with all but one flask. This one I tucked a long strip of cloth into and set it on the ground for all to see.
Again Uven’s merchant spoke, “You are making a big mistake.”
“No,” I said, “he did, when he tried to set me up. You make sure he knows who did this, and tell him any wagon I ever find hauling his merchandise will get the same treatment.” I winked at him, “I sunk his ship as well.”
Ignoring the man I casually walked to one of Franko’s four males and said, “Hello. Do you remember me?” I grabbed him by the hair and punched his face, then in front of everyone, I flipped him over, pulled his pants down and castrated him. Holding his parts in front of him to see, I then tossed them into the woods, wiped my hands in his hair, and carried him to the wagon where I placed him on top of the cargo.
“These men,” I casually spoke so everyone could hear, “raped my lady … at the command of this piece of shit over here,” I said indicating the sweating and trembling Franko. The next three screamed and begged for mercy, apologized, and threatened to kill me all at once as I slowly repeated the process. All four I piled on top of the soaked wagon. Nonchalantly I asked, “How does it feel, fellows?”
From all around the camp I heard reprisals and condemnations, “Damn, man, that’s enough ... You’ll hang for this … By the gods, this isn’t humane … They will hunt you down and …”
At the last I hissed my words, “Oh! I hope so, please. Hunt me down … and you be one of them.” I grabbed a crossbow and flipped a shot at the speaker; the bolt buried itself between the crotch of his breeches and into the ground. With a sneer I asked, “You want me to do it again, only six inches higher?” I sneered, “I can scratch a rat’s ass at a hundred rods with this.
“If I see your bird man coming after me I’ll put him out of the air and tear his feathers out.
“Humane?” I asked, “You pay to watch me do worse.” I paced among my captives and looked into their faces, “I thought you might like to wonder what it’s like up close in the front seat.” With a slant in my eye I looked around and looked one of them in the eye, “Oh … are you afraid you might be next?”
Franko was squirming, trying to get away but his feet were bound tightly by my own hand. I walked to my sack, reached into the opened package and savored a fine cigar, and then bit the end and rolled it in my mouth. To the owner of the oil soaked wagon I remarked, “You can tell Uven I didn’t realize cowards had such good taste.” Reaching into my boot top, I pulled out my firebox, hidden all of these years, flipped it open and lit my cigar, and then the cloth of the remaining oil flask.
Picking the flask up and puffing my cigar, I walked around and said, “I fully planned to kill all of you, but instead I want you to watch, watch and see what happens to yellow bellied cowards that I catch. You think you are safe behind your rules of society, you ignore what happens to innocents … just as long as it doesn’t happen to you.” I walked up to one man who sat there giving me the dirty eye, and I spat on him, “May each one of you hypocrites see your family raped, sold or slain before your eyes … and you, yourself sold into the pit.” To another I leaned down and said, “Or else, by Zaeghun’s Lair do something about it.”
I was done speech making. I was no orator, and I figured nothing I said to those men would make a difference anyway. But I said what I wanted to say and into living ears. Should I make a delivery to a group of dignitaries I would take the time to prepare something eloquent, this had been on the fly and unrehearsed, yet I realized it was what I felt at the core of my being. Someone should look after the ones who couldn’t help themselves. Someone should guard the light in the lives of the innocents.
I halted in my tracks and thought, ‘Guardian of Light, that’s what my name meant in the Elvish, my name, my elvin name, Komain.’ Suddenly a chill ran up and down my spine.
Taking my flask of oil, I tossed it onto the wagon. Turning and walking to slowly kneel in front of Franko, I blew some smoke into his face and asked so that the camp could hear above the screams of the four, “Did you know the human body can live without its skin?”
Chapter 57
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WHEN I ARRIVED at the river, some sixty-five miles south of Stafford, I had been riding hard. There was still no time to waste and I figured within the next couple of days I might have Ahjokus in the air hunting for me. It wasn’t a sure bet he would, but I didn’t want to take any chances. My talk against him at the merchant’s camp was bold, but I had no delusions and wasn’t wasting any time.
There was a small settlement where I could catch a boat down river, or get someone to take me across, and that was where I was headed first.
Selling my stock and surplus gear, I hitched a ride down river to Ambler. There I purchased berth on a nice vessel headed to Teamon, all the way across the Phabeon Sea. I loaded up in the room, but before she cast off I found a way in the shadows to *Blend* and get off ship. Before leaving I laid hands on the door jam and made the wood warp and squeeze shut, just in case anyone got worried about me not coming out during the journey and tried to force the door. It was a big boat, almost a barge, that handled a lot of passengers, and I thought it would be easier to lose myself that way.
Ambler was on the far side of the river, which worked perfect for me, and I hid in the back of a small merchant’s cart as he left for a village to the south. When he stopped a couple of times, I easy rolled out and *Blended* myself until he got back in his cart to take off. The merchant knew his cart and could tell the weight was off, but unless he grew special eyes I would be alright.
As he got near the village I rolled out and struck a path off into the country. I really wanted a horse, but I didn’t want any kind of visual connection with anybody, so that began my trek into the Kohntia Mountains by way of the roughest country I could find. With my handkerchief empty, I could load it with all kinds of dried meat, tea, coffee and of course my huge stash of cigars. I found anything I put into the handkerchief would be in exactly the same state it was in when I put it in there no matter how long it was folded up.
There was nothing in Gevard for me, short of the revenge I wanted but wasn’t ready for, and I saw no point in returning to Keoghnariu. At some point I knew I wanted to return for Hoscoe’s sword, but I had a good blade and at the moment I just didn’t want to go down there.
I wasn’t changing my name again so I didn’t want to go where I might be recognized, therefore I thought to aim my nose into the wilds and see what happened.
Five days into the Boshtero Range of the Western Kohntia’s I was traipsing through the dense forest when I saw a shadow cross overhead. Living life on the run puts zest into your step and caution in your every action. I had yet to let my guard down and was making mileage as fast and carefully as I could.
Keeping to thick cover and staying away from anything that might leave marks of passage, even though my boots left nearly no mark, I wasn’t intending to leave anything to chance. But that shadow was of a very large critter with wings. Freezing in place, I chanced an ever so small gesture to look up, and sure enough it was that A
hjokus bastard scoping the ground from the sky.
Movement is the surest giveaway, and even *Blending* I took no unnecessary chances. I did it real slow and hoped he couldn’t see things invisible. I was mid-stride and right under some thick branches, so I was hoping against hope he hadn’t seen me.
Several more times I saw him cross over, once he dropped down real low where I could see him clear. You want to talk about discipline? I stayed right there for hours, I didn’t even leave my mid-stride position until I was sure he had glided off across the hill-line. I was straightening out behind that tree when he came back across.
It was nighttime when I took the chance to keep going, but as cool as it was up there I was sweating something fierce. If I had any doubt of how deep I was going into the mountains, it was gone now … I was headed as deep as I could go.
Ahjokus didn’t happen that way by chance … he knew, he knew I had gone off in that direction. And if he could follow me that closely, well, he had something going for him and I didn’t know what, and wasn’t prepared to deal with it right at the moment.
The next morning I was still behind that tree, afraid to move, and every bit of my body was aching from the position I spent the night in. And then, of all things, a bird came to rest in the branch above me. Sure enough, he made a mess in my head, but I wasn’t moving.
It dawned on me to do *S’Fahn Muir* with my new hairdresser. According to the bird, the flying person had been gone for hours. I lit a shuck, I mean, I got out of there fast.
For about four years I wandered the vast expanse of the Kohntia Mountains with no real direction, but the country I saw was breath taking. Finding water was no problem, I knew how to find edible plants and roots, learned to fish with a spear and ate a lot of trout, and for red meat I would hunt deer and mountain sheep. After that first trout, however, I really got into that and ate it in preference to everything else.
Those mountain sheep, though, they were no such thing. They were deer, every bit the size of the ones I saw in the Ahnagohr’s, only with curved horns instead of antlers and long hair. Probably a human named them mountain sheep. And the deer were different, too. They absolutely dwarfed the mountain sheep. I figure they dressed out to as much as three hundred and fifty to four hundred pounds, on the average.
True to what my momma had taught me, when I made a kill I did it with respect and a word of thanks to the animal’s spirit. All of the creature’s flesh and skin was used, and when I harvested the carcass I would point the head in the direction of the rising sun.
The crossbow I wanted to replace, or at least supplement, remembering Kispahrti and my despair at the time it took to reload. It took several tries before I built a bow that was functional, and then later I built one that was fairly nice. A deerskin quiver held several arrows I made with metal tips, but I kept a few with wooden tips only. I also found a couple of two-foot long pieces of wood to carry on my back as fighting batons.
A path perhaps unused in hundreds of years led to an old stone ruin on the edge of a crystal clear pond fed by a waterfall. I practiced fishing with my bow for weeks and let the essence of the mountains seep into my being. While there I took time to make two flutes, each in a different key, a recorder, a set of what my momma called Celtic Pipes, and another possible pouch.
The possible pouch I made in the same way as I made my boots so long ago. On a whim, I thought to use an entire deerskin, *Channeling* and *Pushing* my energy into the material every step of the way. The end result was a nice cross-shoulder sling pouch, but on the inside were two extra pouches you would have to look for on the sides. Each seemed to tap into some magical space and would hold one square foot of volume, completely undetectable from just looking at it. I was drained every time I worked on it, and it took quite some time, but I was pleased. This possible pouch was fireproof.
More than once I found ruins from ancient times, and one not so ancient. Way up in a beautiful clearing I found a well built log cabin. It hadn’t seen use in many years, but when I went inside I found four neatly made chairs, a table, and a second room with a homemade bed. There were pans, pots, some cups and a carefully built fireplace which was laid for a fire.
I was hesitant to make the fire, and looking at the wood it was really old. So I lingered for a couple of days, cleared out the fireplace and laid it with fresh wood. Using a broom I found I swept the cabin down and here and there touched the wood to restore it. The thought of the place falling apart after caring hands had worked so hard did not set well in my heart.
While I was replacing the woodpile and walking the forest, I found three graves. One was full sized and the other two were smaller. Rotten crosses were erected at the head of each grave, and I revitalized them as well. From the crude inscription, this was a man’s wife and two children. The date was decades old. He must have left and just never returned. I planted some flowers on the graves in honor of their memory. Why it mattered at all to me at that time in my life is still a mystery to me, but I did it.
Well into my fourth year I was working my way through a meadow when I heard a noise that just didn’t sound right. Walking into that direction, I stepped under a tree branch and right into another world. I mean one moment I was in the forest with nothing around but trees and a meadow covered in blue flowers, and the next I was looking at several rows of vegetables, a rock building on the side of a hill, and an old man feeding squirrels.
Doing a double take and shaking my head to ensure clarity, I stared at this man who looked up at me and, without skipping a beat, said, “Come on in young feller, ‘tis supper time.”
As much from stunned curiosity as anything else, I thought, ‘What the kahdjit’; sensing nothing sinister, I walked on up. Inside, the dwelling looked many times larger than the outside. Sure enough, at a formally set supper table he had place settings for two people. Looking around, I carefully removed my rucksack and sword, then washed my hands at a crystal laver he indicated.
This whole thing seemed creepy. But he struck me as being a lonely old man who had lost the string off of his crossbow. He began talking to me like he had known me for years, so I just played along. It was when the first course came in through the door that I was really taken aback. When I say the course came in through the door, that’s just what I meant. Two silver covered bowls floated in and placed themselves where they were supposed to be.
The old man asked what kind of soup I liked and I heard myself say, “Um, I really like onion and mushroom with chicken and parsley.” He waved his hand and smiled with pleasure, and the polished lid rose up and before me was a bowl of onion and mushroom soup with chicken and parsley.
I pinched my leg to see if I was dreaming and he said, “No, no … don’t bother yourself to see. I can quite assure you, you are not in slumber.” He giggled and began to sup his own soup and then asked me, “How is your grand pa-pa”
Caught even further off guard I said, “Sir, I have no idea.”
“Of course, of course … I’m sure he is doing well. I hope he doesn’t catch cold, it’s that time of the year you know?” The old man just giggled and seemed happy as a lark. We had several courses including fish, beef, chicken, something he called pasta and a variety of vegetables. And they were all exceptional. When the meal was over he had me walk through his dwelling with him as he began to water flowers, flowers which were all but dead.
Some of these plants, I mused, had no business being here. Several were tropical, I was sure, and this was far from the tropics. As he went on rambling about what’s in the news and how his son, Albert who lived on the hill, won’t come to see him anymore, I found myself evaluating each plant and touching them, flushing them with new life. He had finished the watering when he turned and looked at his plants.
The old man then gave me the saddest expression I think I have ever seen and became very serious. He said with an abandoned smile, “Thank you … my good sir.” He fumbled for a few moments as if straining to remember something, “You have shown kindnes
s to an old, forgotten man.” His hand quivered badly, but he put it on my arm as he looked me up and down. He asked, “Don’t I know you?”
Tilting my head I said, “No sir. I don’t think we have ever met.”
He fumbled some more and seemed to be intent in his thoughts. Then he asked, “Is there anything I can do for you?”
‘What could he do for me,’ I mused … It was then I saw the chessboard; a beautiful piece of clear and blue crystal with matching pieces. “Sir,” I asked, “would you play a game of chess with me?”
His face beamed, and we sat and played the longest game I had ever played. He said nothing, but as we played he would grin and smile so big. I thought I was good, but he pulled some kind of strategy and beat me when I thought I had him licked. And then he said in a pleased voice, “You are very good. I actually had to work to defeat you.”
The old man looked kind of down cast, but then he looked up and said, “I guess it is time for you to go. Thank you for spending a day with me.”
I wasn’t sure what to say, but when he escorted me to his door I said, “Thank you sir for your hospitality, and I don’t even know your name.” It was strange to me I had not thought to ask him before.
Again he smiled a large, warm, ancient smile, “My name is Howell, but you can call me Edgar. I am Edgar.”
We grasped forearms and I said, “And I am called Timber Wolf, it is my distinct pleasure, sir.”
With that he tilted his head and I thought he believed I was someone else. He wasn’t disappointed, but it was clear he thought he knew who I was.
Gathering my rucksack and gear, I walked away in wonder of my afternoon. As if my mind had been in a dim fog, it suddenly dawned upon me to go back and see if I could assist with any chores. But when I turned back, the house and garden was gone.
I don’t mean they just vanished or became invisible, I mean the landscape itself was different. And my meadow of flowers … I couldn’t find it anywhere. If not for successfully cross-triangulating myself by land marks, I would have thought I had walked into a totally different place. But I hadn’t. In fact, I found the place where I had made camp the night before, but no meadow and no house … creepy.