by Michael Mood
He felt himself becoming little more than a beast; thought replaced by instinct in the base desire to simply survive another day. He hadn't had a chance to find the red-sheathed sword yet, but it was a mission he now held dearer to himself than earning a spot on the Kingsguard.
He thought maybe that was a little sad.
He didn't care.
-2-
Ti'Shed was silent as they ate at the wooden table. Krothair sucked the meat out of a crayfish's body and tried to chew, his cheek wound pulling every time his teeth parted and met. It was almost time for Ti'Shed's nightly apology. He thought back to Forstina and her magic, and mused about his own path to power. Ti'Shed had not spoken another word about Servitors since the last time, and Krothair hadn't pressed it.
The sword master was rubbing at his forehead, looking as if he was just shaking off his daily drug dose, when large hooves thundered outside the small house, stopping just outside the door. The sound was so loud that Krothair jumped a little bit.
“Only one man I know rides a horse that sounds like that,” Ti'Shed said. Krothair couldn't tell if the old man was happy or dejected about that prospect, but either way Ti'Shed rose and went to the door. As he reached for the handle, whoever was on the other side must have decided to matters into his own hands, as it swung open with a mighty blast.
There, on the other side, stood the largest man Krothair had ever seen. Krothair had always been tall, but this man's head scraped the door frame as he came inside. His dark eyes were sunken deep into his completely bald head. Krothair's arms were strong, but this man's were like layers of rock, overlapping with muscles Krothair had never known existed. If Ti'Shed was old, this man was ancient. He was an oak tree brought to life.
And he wore the colors of the Kingsguard: purple and silver.
“Hawkethorn,” the giant grated in a voice slightly higher than Krothair would have expected. A thin smile crossed his lips.
Ti'Shed extended his hand. “Samsen,” he replied.
And then Krothair realized whose presence he was in: Samsen Bashram, more readily known as The Skull. I'm in the presence of a legend. Krothair was struck totally dumb to see a man like this standing so nonchalantly in Ti'Shed's house.
“God and Gustus, you two look like you've been through a fuckin' war,” Samsen said. “And I should know. This a new apprentice?” he asked, indicating Krothair.
“Yes,” Ti'Shed said.
“You haven't brought him to the training yard at the castle, yet,” the giant replied. “Haven't seen you at all around there lately. They ordered me to check on you, Ti'Shed. Is everything alright?”
“As well as it might be,” the old man said, running a hand over his balding head.
“What do you think, apprentice? What's your name?”
“As well as it might be,” Krothair agreed, not wanting to be contrary. “My name is . . . um . . .” He'd suddenly forgotten. “Uh . . . Krothair.”
The giant thought for a moment. “A name I have heard only once before, many years ago. Unique, not much used. There are so many damn Samsen's running around it's getting a little sickening.”
“Yes, sir,” Krothair said, not knowing quite how to respond.
“Looks like Ti'Shed's been rough on you. Looks like he needs his edge taken off. Hawkethorn, come with me. We're goin' drinkin'.” Samsen clapped his hands together as if approving his own plan. The sound was low and loud.
Ti'Shed let out a small laugh, as if he almost couldn't believe what was happening. “I can't leave here. We have much to learn if Krothair is going to survive on the Vapor.”
The giant smirked. “If you keep this up much longer, he isn't even going to survive his training. Come on, Hawkethorn. No man ever wins a battle if he gets killed before it even happens. Except maybe Trance.” Samsen laughed, a joyous sound that rattled the room.
“How are Telin and Kelin?” Ti'Shed asked.
“Still as uppity a couple of fucks as yer ever like to meet,” Samsen replied.
Ti'Shed smiled a bit at this. It seemed as if his rough exterior was being chipped away by this light talk with Samsen. “The outside world might do me some good,” he said after a brief silence. “Krothair and I have been holed up for too long. I . . . can't drink tonight, though I would like to go with you.”
“Why can't you drink?” Samsen asked, a mildly quizzical look on his face.
“I'd rather not discuss it,” Ti'Shed said. “Suffice it to say that you shall drink alone. I would welcome the company, though.”
“Why can't you drink?” the giant asked again. “What have you gone and done?”
“Only what I had to,” Ti'Shed answered in a tone that stopped further questioning cold, even from a man such as Samsen.
The Kingsguardian's left hand had never left the hilt of his sword, and it had seemed so natural there that Krothair hadn't even paid special attention to its placement; now he did. There was something in Samsen's eyes despite his friendliness. The giant knew something was wrong about this situation, and there was a current of dangerous caution running just beneath his exterior.
Just take him away so I can look for the sword, Krothair prayed. This was the opportunity he had been waiting for.
“You are too tense, old friend,” Samsen said.
“And you're too ugly.”
Samsen smiled and eased slightly. “Come, Ti'Shed. It has been too long.”
Ti'Shed looked back at Krothair and slowly nodded his head, the wounds of their training standing out oddly in the light of the candles and the moon.
Samsen nodded at Krothair, and without another word the two deadliest men Krothair had ever met departed.
Krothair sagged when their presence was gone, not knowing how nervous and intimidated he had truly been. His body felt weak and numb, and exhaustion fell onto him like a heavy blanket. But he had work to do while they were gone. How long would they be? It looked like it would take Samsen a very long time to get drunk, so at least Krothair had that working to his advantage.
-3-
The house wasn't fantastically large, but Krothair was shocked at all the places he found that he had never been. There was a cellar, for instance, that he hadn't known about at all, and there were even closets that surprised him. It was sad how little he had been able to explore, so set had he been in his routine of survival.
It had been several hours since Samsen and Ti'Shed had left, and Krothair was certain he would have to give up soon. It wasn't the search itself that took so long, it was making sure that he could leave everything as he had found it that made it so mind-numbingly slow. Ti'Shed – much as his surname suggested – had the eyes of a hawk and his attention to detail on the training field certainly could carry over into everyday life.
The last place Krothair went into was Ti'Shed's room.
He knew he should have looked there first but he had hoped to find the sword elsewhere so he could be spared the journey into the den of the beast.
He opened the door slowly and entered the darkness, carrying his candle before him to light the way. It smelled like death inside, not so heavily that Krothair choked, but strong enough that he was surprised he hadn't been able to smell it from the other side. Clothes hung all over the place, some soaked in blood, others in various other weird liquids. The whole place seemed like a sort of graveyard . . . or perhaps a grotesque shrine.
The wooden supporting poles of the room had been carved with symbols from bottom to top and it looked as if it had been recently done. The scars in the wood were a lighter, younger color than the rest of the beam, and the curly shavings were in heaps on the floor.
Krothair padded through the room, cautious as a mouse in a barn. His eyes scanned for likely hiding places and he began by gingerly opening the drawers of a nearby dresser. It contained nothing of interest. The floor creaked as he walked along it, but digging his fingers at the boards revealed no hidden cubby. He lay down to search under the bed, but there was nothing under there except filth.
His candle didn't give him a very big bubble of sight, but he held it aloft towards the rafters and there his eye caught the color he had wanted to see.
He needed to drag over a small stool to reach, but once he did he found the red-sheathed sword resting parallel on top of a ceiling beam. Small white flowers lay around the sword, each blossom in a different stage of aging. Ti'Shed must have picked one each day and laid it up there with the sword in some sort of ritual. Krothair had never seen that happen, however, and couldn't imagine when the sword master might have done such a thing each day.
He set his candle down on the beam and carefully – with shaking hands – took the sword from its resting place. It was a surprisingly light weapon, and he could almost sense its quality and balance, even through the sheath. He grabbed his candle again and descended from the stool, heart pounding almost audibly in his chest in the silent room.
He sat on the floor then and slowly unsheathed the weapon. It came out silently and the candle flame lit the blade in an orange glow that made it dance. It was as fine a weapon as Krothair had thought it would be, and for a moment he marveled. The blade had only one distinguishing mark on it; near the hilt was inscribed the image of a hawk in flight, his talons wrapped around a thorny vine.
Hawkethorn.
Why would Ti'Shed's own sword cause him so much grief? What had Ti'Shed done to lose this sword and how had its return devastated him? Was it some sort of a death threat? Krothair had heard of objects being delivered to people which represented a bounty on their head, but why was Ti'Shed seemingly worshiping this one with his strange shrines of carvings, flowers, and clothing?
Krothair felt he would get no more answers here tonight, but at least he had seen it. He had finally laid eyes on the thing that had caused his training to be nearly insufferable. This weapon had snapped something inside of Ti'Shed, and now that Krothair had seen it he felt as if he at least had some power again.
He stepped back up on the stool and replaced the sword atop the horizontal roof beam, being cautious not to crush or displace any of the white blossoms, even with his breath.
He returned the stool and looked about, careful to make sure everything was as he had found it. He closed the door silently and walked away, the smell of the room fading as he traversed the hallway. He extinguished the candle, went to his room, and laid down on the bed.
Ti'Shed had been sicker than he'd thought, keeping a secret world of grief shut up behind the door of his room.
Krothair's thoughts drifted as he lay there alone in the silence. His eyelids fell down and the exhaustion of his training took him to sleep well before he wanted it to.
-4-
Krothair felt his door open. There was a pressure change in the room that was so slight he doubted he would have felt it a month ago. Ti'Shed's training, though incredibly brutal, had brought about a state of heightened awareness in Krothair that he now carried constantly.
There was no moon now. The room was pitch black.
“So you found it,” Ti'Shed said in the utter darkness.
Krothair lay still in his bed, not wanting to respond or make any sound at all.
“I suppose I should have expected this,” the sword master continued. “It is really the only logical conclusion. If I hadn't been so blind I would have seen this coming . . . and now you've seen my room . . . that side of my life. You must be quiet and listen as I speak, although it is my belief that that is your plan already, so all the better for us here.
“The sword you found belonged to my son. He fought in the war and then on the Vaporgaard. I trained him myself. And now he is dead. You are young and so I don't expect you to fully understand, but he was born of a woman I actually loved. You may discover, in time, how rare that is. And I loved him as well. He was one of the best fighters I have ever known. They say sometimes that the student surpasses the teacher and that was certainly true in his case. The medals he earned during the war . . . well, if he had ever worn them all at once he would have been crushed under their weight. Then again, perhaps not. He was strength incarnate.”
Here Ti'Shed paused, his torrent of words pausing. Krothair couldn't smell any alcohol on the air, so could only assume that Ti'Shed had spoken truth to Samsen. The sword master was likely as sober as he had been since the first day Krothair had met him.
“They delivered his sword to me,” Ti'Shed continued, his voice choked, “to let me know that he had died. I have lost my only son, Krothair, and I did love him. And he did love me.” Ti'Shed paused to weep and Krothair still said nothing, praying this was all a dream.
Ti'Shed mastered himself. “By going into my room you have seen my weakness first-hand and I am embarrassed to my very core. You probably want to say something like 'don't be embarrassed' or 'it's perfectly understandable.' But I am . . . and it isn't. I know you listen there in the dark and now I am going to ask something of you that seems like the only course of action for either of us. And that is this: I don't want to wake up in the morning and find you here.”
Krothair blinked his drying eyes, now realizing he hadn't done that the entire time Ti'Shed had been talking. And something else dawned on him. Suddenly the frenzied method of his training became clear to him.
“You're banishing me because I can't replace your son,” the boy said in a whisper.
“I am banishing you because I was foolish to think that anyone could,” Ti'Shed said. “You are a talented fighter, but I do not want to see you in the morning. . . Because you are not my son.” The old man cleared his throat several times and then he was gone like a shadow in the night.
Krothair wept silently, sobs wracking his body as his flat pillow slowly soaked with his tears. He didn't stop until the sun threatened to peek over the horizon.
He quickly gathered what little he had, and slowly limped out of the place he had lived for the past month.
Krothair was on his own again.
But he was getting used to that.
-5-
He didn't want to go back to the Western Watch in his condition, so he had to choose somewhere else. A place he could recover from all he had just gone through. It took him a few nights of living in the town and sleeping in alleys before he found an attic in an abandoned house. He realized that he probably belonged in the slums anyway, with his dirty clothes and beaten body.
Krothair wondered idly if this was how he would live out the rest of his life. He struggled, ashamed and broken. Deep down - in some spark of his soul - he thought he could recover, he just wasn't sure when or how fully.
The attic was cold at night, but it didn't matter. The only things Krothair had taken from Ti'Shed's house had been his terrible Western Watch practice sword, his clothes, a blanket, and his Kingsguard paper still tucked in his pocket after all this time.
He had checked at the stables for the gray horse he had ridden in on, but he had neglected to keep track of it, and hadn't been paying, and now the horse was gone.
He thought of Forstina sometimes at night, thinking that maybe he could be inside that warm tent again and be told that everything was going to be alright. He knew the Sunburst Temple would take him in, but he didn't want to be a burden. His pride wouldn't let him.
Krothair lay on the floor this night, looking up at the cobwebby ceiling, feeling the pain in his body subsiding ever so slowly. He thought back to his brush with Katya and Zin, hoping he wouldn't run into them again, but knowing inside that they probably wouldn't bother to rob him in his current state.
Maybe one day I'll try to be something again, he thought.
There were plenty of places for him to go in the city to try and earn a living, but he didn't really know how to go about it. Perhaps he would just wander back out into the country. There were hermits weren't there? People who lived by themselves until they were old, dusty, and full of stories they had never experienced? Can't be a hermit your whole life if you don't start young, Krothair thought.
He turned to face the wall as he heard fig
hting outside. It didn't concern him and he listened to the yelling die out as someone received a beating.
The slums weren't the most peaceful place, but perhaps they were where he belonged: the boy who had wanted to have a family, and had paid dearly for that desire.
The weeks passed.
Chapter 20 – With Abandon
-1-
“We've been over this a hundred times,” Halimaldie explained for the hundredth time. “If you have doubts, remember my rule of thumb: doing something is almost always better than doing nothing.”
“You've gone to check on your operations before,” Tellurian pointed out. “Why do you need a surrogate this time? Don't you have a network of people? What about Tobbs? Jak? Harmen? Any of the other people I see bustling around this mansion all day? I have other matters to-”
“This is a very bad time for my operations to lack direct oversight,” Halimaldie interrupted. “What I want from you is just a bit of stability while I am away. You can surely provide me with that for crying out loud. You're my brother. People remember that. It's an important connection.”
“I don't know about this,” Tellurian said, shuffling through the thick stack of papers in front of him. He sat at Halimaldie's desk, looking very out of place at the helm of a trading empire. “See, Hal, this is why I gave this up long ago.”
“Bullshit, Tell. You're a D'Arvenant. It's still in your blood. I can't trust anyone else with this. You think I should let one of my competitors run my business in my stead?” He put his gloved hands on his brother's shoulders. “Mostly I'm doing this out of pity, you know that, right?” He smiled.