by Travis Kerr
"You're not as worthless as you might think," Garan said thoughtfully. "Granted, your attacks were slow and clumsy. You haven't even learned how to track an enemy yet, and your eyes lost sight of me. However, even though you couldn't see me, you paid attention to my attacks and attempted to form a strategy around what you've seen. You can already think ahead. I've seen quite a few guards and soldiers, all of them better swordsmen than you are now, that still haven't learned the basic concept of strategy. It's something to start with anyway."
Garan took back his sword and sheathed his weapon. "Alright, so you don't have any training in weapons. That's not necessarily a bad thing. At least you haven't learned any bad habits. I don't have to deal with poor training. You're a blank slate, so as long as you're learning properly you can be taught swordsmanship that much easier. Now let's test your strength. I've heard that sorvinians are exceptionally strong. Some say they might very well be the strongest of all the races when it comes to raw power. Prove it to me."
This was certainly something that Drom could do. He might not be as strong as his father, or most of the other sorvinians for that matter, but he knew he was much stronger than any of the human workers he had met on the farm.
He stepped over to the log the two of them had been sitting on, and with a heave and a grunt lifted one end. Sliding sideways to get along side of it, he carefully pulled until both sides were in the air. It was all he could do to keep the load balanced, but he was able to do it.
"Good," Garan said, smiling. "I would guess the weight of that log to be about five hundred pounds, give or take. The strength of most races are fairly comparable to humans, but I can see that the tales of sorvinian strength has not been exaggerated. You can put down the log now."
"Actually, most sorvinians are much stronger than I am," Drom admitted, replacing the log back in the same place where it had been before. "My human blood makes me weaker than I would be if I was a pure-blooded sorvinian. That log was about as much as I could lift, and it was all I could do to lift it. My father could have picked it up without any problem at all."
"The trog I killed would have had trouble moving that log. He certainly wouldn't have been able to lift it like you did, and they are considered a powerful race," Garan pointed out. "Power can be useful, however you shouldn't rely on it. The trog lost because he was slow and stupid. I goaded him into attacking without thinking. He expected his power to overwhelm me, but as you saw that didn't work.
"Which brings me to my next point. You are probably thinking that I only won because I was faster than my opponent, but that's not quite true either. What defeated that trog was something you didn't see. Let me ask you something, do you think that I really needed to fight that trog in order to kill him last night?"
Drom shrugged. "I don't know. You could have killed him some other way I suppose. You could have used a crossbow or a throwing dagger. Why didn't you?"
"I fought that trog because I like to try to challenge myself, although he was a bit of a disappointment in the end," Garan replied wiping some of the dirt off of the freshly turned log before sitting down again. "I've been doing this a long time, and if I don't test myself from time to time my skills could suffer because of it. Should I have to fight someone closer to my equal in speed and skill a failure to test myself regularly could be what kills me. So I sometimes make things harder on myself purposefully. That's what you saw in the bar last night. However, I was never really in any serious danger."
"That trog certainly seemed dangerous to me," Drom said skeptically. "How did you know he would be so easy to defeat?"
"I thought that would be obvious by now," Garan laughed. "I've spent the past two weeks studying everything I could learn about him. I knew everything I needed to know about him long before I took him out. He was strong, even for a trog, but for all his strength he was one of the slowest men I've ever had to fight. He favored his right, almost exclusively in fact, since he almost never needed to hit someone a second time. All trogs have a soft spot on the back of their heads, right above where the base of the skull meets the neck, so I already knew exactly where to hit him. Every race has their strengths and weaknesses. Knowing those will often be the difference between victory and defeat."
"These are things we will teach you, or at least some of it, depending on how long you travel with us," Raine told him, speaking up. "However, you can't learn everything today. For now we should all get a little rest. We should be leaving here by midday. It will take the city guards most of the day today to pick up our trail, but eventually they will. Garan knows how to hide his tracks, and I can walk without making any if I put a little effort into it, but they can still follow yours. They will also likely have horses, which we don't. We need at least a days head start if we want to avoid them."
As much as Drom wanted to know more, to learn as much as he could, he had to agree with her. He couldn't remember the last time he had felt so completely exhausted. He lay down on the ground with the log at his back, pulled his hard pack up under his head as an uncomfortable, makeshift pillow, and closed his eyes.
Chapter Three
Drom awoke to the feeling of someone none to gently kicking his lower legs to wake him up. Opening his eyes painfully in the bright midday sun, he looked down to find Raine standing over him. She stopped kicking him once she could see he was finally awake.
"Time to get up," she informed him. "It'll be easier traveling during the day, so we're going to be moving faster than we have been until nightfall. If you want to travel with us, you're going to have to keep up. We're leaving now."
Drom barely had time to get to his feet and rub the sleep out of his eyes before the group of them set off. Raine hadn't been lying about the speed they would be traveling at. Garan, who took the lead, walked about fifteen yards ahead of Raine and Drom, setting such a brutal pace Drom was hard pressed to keep up. Garan stayed ahead of the group for nearly three hours, leading them down a trail only he seemed to be able to see. By the confident way that Garan walked, Drom was certain that the man knew exactly where he was going. Trick, Garan's dragonling companion, was nowhere to be seen.
It seemed to Drom that they were going in the wrong direction. Garan had said they would be going south, but Drom was fairly certain that he was leading them more westward than south, deeper inland, away from the ocean. Drom wasn't quite certain where the trade city of Lando was located; he had never seen any real maps, but he had thought that Lando was almost directly south of Port Dayton.
Drom was still exhausted from the day before. He wasn’t certain how long he had slept for, but it was far from enough. He barely looked around him as he walked, keeping his eyes cast down toward his feet, only glancing up from time to time to make sure that he was still following Garan along the unseen path. After perhaps an hour of this, that seemed like an eternity to Drom, Garan paused ahead of them, waiting for them to catch up. Drom didn’t even notice, and nearly ran into the assassin where he waited.
They had come out of the wild brush onto a wide, open stretch of land running straight east to west, as if some giant scythe had swept across the land, clearing the trees in its path as it would thin stalks of wheat. Drom could see patches of dark grey along the ground that looked somewhat like rock, but different somehow, poking up along the stretch. It was obvious even to his untrained eye that there was something unnatural about this land.
"What is this?" Drom asked no one in particular.
"This was once a road, back in the Age of Technology," Garan answered him. "The ancients had some way of creating liquid rock, that they poured along the ground. Little more than grass grows on this path, but the ground is broken and uneven. A lot of the shadier traders and merchants still use it, along with anyone else that doesn't want to be seen on the guarded roads. We should stay together on this road. If I scout ahead like I have been doing it may be noticed, and the people who take this trail would turn us in for a couple of silvers if they knew the guard was looking for us, or some of th
em would anyway. The guards will have trouble getting their horses down that deer trail we used to get here, but if they have followed us this far they can make good time from here. We don't want to stand out to anyone who might see us."
Drom realized that Garan was only talking to him, teaching him. Raine would already know all of this, as would nearly anyone who had reason to avoid the city guard.
"Are we likely to run into any legitimate traders on the road? I would think that they would be more likely to turn us in if the guards questioned them, wouldn't they?"
"You would guess wrong actually," Garan replied. "Most merchants, both honest and dishonest ones, want to avoid the guard altogether. They don't want trouble with any armed men, and since quite a few of them cook the books to avoid taxes, they wouldn't want the guards to take too close a look. Besides, whatever technology the ancients used to make this road has long since been forgotten, so the road's not in very good shape. In some places it's almost completely fallen apart, and no one knows how to fix it, even if someone would have wanted to put the time and money into doing it. Traders who are obeying the laws and are willing to pay the heavy levies the mages place on everything will be using wagons; I'm sure you've seen them before at the farm where you said you grew up. They wouldn't want to take a wagon down a road in this state of disrepair if they can avoid it. We shouldn't see anyone, but if we do, watch yourself. It's thieves and cutthroats that take this road. Just like us."
"So we're to follow the road then?" Drom asked. "I thought you said we were heading to Lando, and you said that the trade city was due south, but we've been traveling further and further westward all day. Now you are taking us due west."
"You're right," Garan said, cutting in quickly. "I was not planning on going to Lando before we left with you. We were going out of our way to take you there. Now it seems you're thinking about coming with us. So we're heading to my original destination instead. I've done the job, now I get paid. In a way it has worked out. If we had gone on our original path we wouldn't reach this road for another two or three days."
"Where's that? I mean, where is it you are planning on going?" Drom asked.
"You'll see when we get there," Garan replied, and without another word started off down the road. Raine followed close behind.
Drom fell in step at the rear of the group, but made certain not to fall too far behind. Garan had said that he was staying with them. He had already been told that, but a part of him still couldn't quite believe it. Now, however, it seemed as if there was no longer any question. They wouldn't leave him behind. At least, not yet.
Drom heard a loud growling noise, and realized with some dismay that it was coming from his empty stomach. Raine must have heard it too. Drom noticed one of her sharp, pointed ears swivel in his direction at the sound, but she continued walking, saying nothing. The only thing that Drom had eaten in quite some time was the half a plate of greens he had eaten at the bar and the apple he had eaten that morning. He wasn't certain how many more of those apples Garan had in his pack, but the pack he wore didn't look overly full, nor was it very large. Surely it couldn't hold much.
Raine hadn't eaten anything at all as far as Drom had seen. It was possible that she might have eaten something while he had slept, she had said something about fishing, but he certainly hadn't seen any evidence of it.
Surely she must be starving, Drom thought. No wonder she didn’t have any sympathy for his growling belly.
The only member of their group Drom had seen eat regularly was Trick, the dragonling, who Garan kept sated with scraps of dried meat regularly fed to him while he occupied his space on Garan's shoulder. Drom wondered how it was that the man carried the thirty pound creature mile after mile, nearly half the total time they had walked, and yet didn't seem to tire in the slightest.
Even on this open path the pace Garan set was hard for Drom to keep, though it was easier than it had been trying to push through the thick brush they had gone through when they started their trek. It was nearly sundown before Garan finally came to a halt, leading the group off of the road for nearly half a mile before stopping completely. Drom was so tired it took him a moment to notice the smell of citrus in the air around him. He looked up into the fading light, noticing for the first time the ripe fruit hanging directly above his head. Garan had led them right into the middle of a wild orange grove.
Drom grabbed one of the oranges without thinking, pulling it off the tree and had already finished peeling it before the question came to his mind.
What if these oranges already belong to someone?
He had just assumed that they were wild. He knew that there were wild trees in some places. He also knew that it was equally possible that these trees belonged to some unknown farmer and he had just stolen the man's food. He could only imagine what his father would have done had someone wandered into his crops and started eating.
"Don't worry, no one owns this land," Garan said, as if reading Drom's thoughts. "These trees are wild. No one farms any of the lands this close to the road. Farmers don't want to have to associate with the types of men that travel it. These trees have been here since long before any of us were even born. Most likely they are the descendants from the time before the Mage War. There are plenty of places that are like that, land that had once been cultivated but has gone for possibly thousands of years without anyone making claim to it. Raine, could you get us a fire going?"
"I need to hunt," she growled back. She hadn't eaten in at least a full day, and they had been traveling hard.
"Drom and I will take care of the hunting tonight," Garan replied. "He's never going to be comfortable with the things we do until he starts getting his hands dirty. Just have the coals ready for us to cook on when we get back."
Raine gave Garan a hard look. Drom could see some silent message pass between them, as if they could somehow each see into the mind of the other. Drom had been told that it was sometimes that way between close friends who knew each other well, though he had never been close enough to anyone to have felt that sort of connection himself.
"Fine," Raine said finally, relenting. "Just don't let the kid screw it up. I need to eat something soon."
"No need to worry," Garan said, shining her his winning smile. "Even if he can't manage to take any game, you know I will."
"If his stomping around doesn't scare off every animal for five miles," she barked back, and began gathering sticks and twigs to use as kindling.
"She doesn't seem to like me much," Drom commented to Garan once the two of them were out of earshot.
"She likes you well enough," Garan said in answer. "She just hungry, and when she gets hungry she can be very peckish. About the only time she's worse is when she's in heat. I won't even come near her then. Thankfully the pheromones her body puts out don't affect me, so I can get away easily enough. Anyway Drom, have you ever been hunting before?"
Drom shook his head. Sorvinians didn't eat meat, and his mother had adopted their vegetarian ways. He had never had any need to hunt.
"Well then, this will be a new experience for you. Trick, hunt." At the command the dragonling at his shoulder promptly flew off, circling in the air just above the tops of the trees. Drom hadn't thought about it before, but now he realized that he should have guessed that the small creature could hunt for game. It was a carnivorous animal after all. Drom wondered how much meat it took to keep Trick sated.
"Where did you find Trick?" Drom asked suddenly. "I thought only the great mages had dragonling companions, but if you were a powerful mage you wouldn't be out here doing this I'm sure."
"Even mages have to eat," Garan answered humorously. "Though you're right, I'm not a great mage. What magic I have I rarely use. The mages rely too heavily on their magic, and few of them use that power responsibly. I found Trick when he was still just an egg, out in the deep swamps. I go there from time to time, whenever things are getting too hot in the cities. Look, Trick sees something."
Trick had stopped
circling and had landed on a branch a few hundred yards ahead of them. Drom could just barely make him out in the dim light, a splash of blue in a sea of green. Garan, however, seemed to have no problems seeing him. The assassin put a finger to his lips, motioning for silence.
"Whatever it is, it's too big for Trick to carry," Garan whispered. "Otherwise he would have taken it down himself. With luck it will be a small herd of deer. One of those would supply us with enough meat for a few days."
Garan bent down and took off his pack, pulling out a bundle just over a foot long wrapped in an oiled cloth. Unrolling the cloth he revealed two long metal bars, which he promptly connected to a steel center piece that held them together. The bars were notched on both ends, to which Garan quickly and expertly fitted a thick, strong cord, using his legs to pull back the metal bars far enough to fit the cord into place.
Drom recognized this weapon, from descriptions he had heard in some of the trader's stories. It was a collapsible steel bow. Smaller than the wooden long bows most men commonly used, these expensive alternatives were said to be incredibly powerful. The traders had spoken of them with awe. Never before had he met someone who could actually afford one.
"Walk as softly as you can, and only step where I step." Without looking at Drom, Garan headed in the direction his dragonling was indicating, his footfalls as silent as a ghost. Drom did exactly as he was told, though even to his ears his steps sounded horribly loud.
When they were within about fifty yards of the tree that Trick was sitting in Garan held up his hand, stopping Drom in his tracks. He once again put a finger to his lips to let Drom know not to talk, and, leaving Drom where he was, crept forward on his own. In moments Garan was out of his sight, and Drom was left in the woods, completely alone.
Nearly five minutes went by in complete silence. Drom was just starting to think that perhaps he had been left behind after all, lost in the woods to fend for himself, when something crashed through the brush only a few yards ahead of him. Standing before him, its wild eyes swirling in fear or rage, was the largest boar Drom had ever seen.