In all it showed him that he was overly relying on the one spell he had scribed on his body. He reached over his shoulder and gingerly touched his back; The only spell he knew how to use. From the small amounts he was able to figure out from his meditations, the spell on his back required enormous amounts of power. He was afraid to try it out without knowing more. Given the situation of how he got it and the damage he did to the room he was in, it was entirely possible he could break something or someone testing it out.
Endrance pulled out the hydra hide book that Kaelob had written. He felt a part of his mind go back to that night with the hydra now, and he pushed the thought from his mind. He opened the cover of the book, and began studying his master’s notes on the barbarians he would be working for.
Most of the barbarian lands were snowy plains and mountains. The barbarians gathered in tribal towns, each group of them trading and fighting with the others around them. Many tribes lived in cities or townships scattered throughout the barbarian lands. Their biggest city was called Balator, and there the largest and most powerful barbarian tribe resided. Ruled by a strong king, and with armies of warrior men and women, Balator was the established capitol of the Barbarian people. The people of Balator were the essence of what most civilized people thought of when someone used the term ‘barbarian’.
Balator was currently ruled by a powerful king, a giant of a man named Kalenden. He had taken power when his father died two decades prior, while Joven was just a child. The strongest tribe in the barbarian lands by right gains control of Balator, and over the last three generations it had been held by Kalenden’s lineage.
Endrance had not seen much of the barbarian culture personally, but from what he saw in Joven he was having some of his perceptions altered. His bodyguard was strong and definitely a huge man, but he also had the intelligence and a sense of justice that was stronger than some of the ‘civilized’ people Endrance had met. He saw things as they were, and made decisions about things he observed concisely and he accepted the consequences of his choices without hesitation.
Altogether, he hoped the bulk of the people he would be meeting would be like that. He could see by watching the farming community they were staying at that they were normal people like those who lived further south. This northern part of the continent was large, but wreathed in winter for all but three months of the year and was considered scarcely inhabitable by ‘civilized’ society. Even Ironsoul, the kingdom closest to the barbarian lands, kept only an outpost-fortress there and that was it.
From Kaelob’s notes, the people were incredibly superstitious and many of the common folk followed many strange rites and observed many strange taboos. Endrance noted one of Kaelob’s cases where he found a man working a field with a large mouthed bass tied to the top of his head via twine. The young mage was going to have to learn to be more open minded about what people thought made a difference in magic. He was just glad that Balator actually had healers with real experience healing, instead of some kind of superstitious medical practice. He would not want to have a trout on his head on top of a cold.
Endrance was interrupted by a knock on the door. He closed the book and cleared his throat. “Come in.” he said, shifting in his lighter clothes. His winter gear was getting scrubbed clean, after having worn it for weeks on end it had been in bad shape. Even the hide of supernatural creatures could get filthy if you wore it for long enough.
An old woman edged into the room. She was the mother of the family that lived in this house, and her wizened and wrinkled form was proof that she had worked a great many years of her life at the farm. She looked at him and bobbed her head. “I drew a bath for you, poor dear. You still look chilled to the bone.” She said, ushering the young man up and out the room. “Come, the water is nice and hot!” She all but shoved him out the room. He tossed his book on the chair, and let her push him out mostly because he found he really enjoyed the idea of a hot bath. As she was moving him, her hand touched the back of his shirt, and he felt the meridians on his back tingled and itched at the same time. Endrance walked jerkily as the contact both tickled and felt incredibly strange to him.
The woman must have felt something, because she let out a short hoot and addressed him again. “Oh dear,” the old woman said, “Who did that to you?” she asked.
Endrance shrugged, wriggling his shoulders, trying to get her to stop touching the circle on his back. “I kind of did it to myself… could you please stop poking it?” he said, glancing at her. “It tickles a lot.”
The old woman laughed as she turned him back around. “Youngsters these days, so eager to earn their battle scars.” She shook her head as she continued on. “There’s no honor in self inflicted wounds, dear.”
She pulled open a door to a room in the center of the farmer’s house. The center of which had a stone bath which was about eight feet across inside. The bathing room had a fire in a fireplace nearby, and the wooden planks around the bath had splashes of water across them. A large wooden bucket was nearby, set aside and empty. There was a shelf on the wall holding a few sparse cleaning soaps.
The old lady let Endrance in and then said. “Go ahead and get soaked, dear. Your boyfriend will be here in a few minutes.” She smiled kindly at him and started backing out of the room. Endrance turned to her as she was shutting the door.
“Excuse me, but I’m not a girl!” he exclaimed, worried.
“Whatever you say, dear.” The old woman continued smiling as she closed the bathroom door, leaving the young mage alone.
“Great.” Endrance muttered as he pulled his shirt off and folded it up. He set it on an empty shelf nearby. “The old woman thinks I’m a girl.” He kicked off his shoes, setting them on the shelf as well. “Fantastic.”
He stripped down, and stepped into the bath. The water rose as he sank in, the edges of which lapped at the wooden planks around the bath. Quickly his agitation faded as he felt the cold melting away from him. He had been out in the cold weather for so long that he had been chilled to the core, and even though he had slept in the warm room last night he still hadn’t warmed up all the way through. He let out a sigh of relief as he could feel himself starting to relax.
He had closed his eyes for a few moments, and heard the door open behind him. He looked up to see Joven walk into the room. The barbarian glanced down at the young man in the bath. He quirked an eyebrow at Endrance, “How’s the water?” he asked. The big man was wearing light winter furs, which he was already in the process of stripping out of.
Endrance looked at the big man, then the bathtub. “Uhh…” he stammered, “The water is hot, but I don’t know how I feel about sharing the bath.” He looked away from the barbarian as pants were shed. “The old lady already thinks I’m a girl.” He finished.
“Oh?” Joven said, climbing into the bath. The water welled out over the floorboards. As he settled in he floated a bar of soap over to the young mage. “That will likely happen a couple more times before we get to the capitol.”
Endrance carefully glanced at the barbarian out of the corner of his eye. The angle of the water and the poor light from the fireplace obscured him seeing anything immediately offensive, though he felt incredibly uncomfortable in the situation. “I… don’t know how to feel about taking a bath with you, Joven.” He said, grabbing the soap and gingerly washing his injured hand. “I’ve bathed alone since I was a little kid.”
Joven shrugged, rubbing his shoulders and neck with a bar of soap. “Too wasteful out here. Drawing and heating water takes time and work, better used if it gets more than one person clean you know.” He scrubbed his underarms, and nonchalantly interjected “I had to bathe with my three brothers all the time when I was young, then with the men I trained with in Balator as I grew older.”
Endrance began carefully cleaning himself. He was sitting half tuned away from his bodyguard in the water, and was trying to scrub his shoulders when he realized just how much they ached. “Ouch!” he exclaimed rubbing at his own s
houlders. “I really need to get a good look at the spell on my back.” He admitted.
Endrance had finished bathing and was stepping out of the tub when the old woman entered the bathing room. She stopped and stared at Endrance’s naked tattooed form as he froze when she entered. She stared at the markings on his back in silence, and his embarrassment drove him to cover up.
“Uhh…” Endrance said, reaching out and grabbing a towel off the peg it hung on with an awkward smile. “I guess I’m done with the bath.” He concluded lamely as he quickly covered his decency with the towel. He looked up and remembered his tattoos. He laughed nervously. “I’ll… just be going back to my room. Ok?” he said, grabbing his clothes and boots and squeezed past the stunned old woman. After he left, she turned to look at the barbarian who remained comfortably in the bath. He looked up at her and shrugged. “Kids these days.” He said with a smile. “Always so decent, you know?”
Endrance quickly dried off and dressed in his room, and sat in the chair again while he tried to think of a way that the situation didn’t feel horribly awkward for him. That night when they sat down with the family for dinner, he could feel them staring at him the whole time they ate. While he silently ate his meal, he thought about what had happened. The woman had been shocked not just by the way his body was marked, but he had seen recognition in her eyes as he had passed her leaving the bath.
While the barbarians didn’t condone their people practicing magic, that didn’t mean they weren’t ever born with the latent ability to become mages. She was likely someone who would have been a possible apprentice when she was young. This could work for him.
As dinner was finishing up, he turned to the old lady. “Ma’am,” He started. “I need to talk to you in private after dinner.”
“Oh no, dear.” The old woman objected. “I have much to do cleaning after the meal.”
Endrance looked at Joven pleadingly. Joven looked the woman in the eyes and frowned only slightly.
“But my daughters can take care of that tonight.” The old lady corrected. “If a son of Rothel insists that I talk with you.”
Endrance talked to her for a while, and eventually got her to agree to help him. In one of the rooms Endrance sat facing the back of the chair, his shirt off. The woman sat at a table behind him, several sheets of parchment set across the surface. She had one of his quills and a bottle of black ink. He dozed half asleep and comfortably full and warm for the first time in weeks as she fastidiously copied every line and mark of the circle on his back over four pages of parchment.
He had chosen her to help because she was the only one in the household who had the ability to write and draw, as well as her latent ability meant that the arcane script wasn’t as likely to shift or squirm under her eyes. While she didn’t have the education to understand it, her natural connection to magic would help her grasp the image of the language of power enough to copy it down.
After she was done and the ink had dried, he carefully examined the script. It was intact, and quite legible. For being an old lady she had remarkably steady hands. He thanked her and offered her another silver piece, which she only reluctantly took before scurrying away to her family.
The next day Endrance mounted up with bleary eyes and sluggish movements. He had been up studying the symbology later than he intended, and was unhappy to have to get moving so soon. He was able to systematically identify some of the properties of the spell, but he was not finished yet. All he had garnered was that it took a steady supply of energy from his aura to do… something.
Together they rode in a odd silence, having now spent enough time around each other to not feel awkward not saying anything but the occasional word to each other. Endrance had started to look to Joven not just as a bodyguard, but as a true friend to him. Over their journey they had spent some time before sleeping talking with each other about whatever it was that came to mind at the time, and Endrance really started to feel that he had made a connection with his bodyguard.
Several more days passed, and many of them were much more comfortable than their trip through the border territories. They occasionally got to sleep at a village or outpost along the way, and Endrance got to see more of the barbarian people and their culture. He was surprised that it was in fact true that many men were nearly as large as Joven. Even some of the elderly barbarians who had lost quite a bit of mass to age were larger and of bigger build than Endrance knew he himself ever could be.
He noticed however whenever he entered an outpost that he never saw any women among their rank and file. Endrance, after having waited until they were quite a ways away from any possible eavesdroppers asked “Joven, you said that even the women are trained to fight. How come there aren’t any women in the troops?”
Joven shrugged and patted Endrance on the back, nearly knocking him off his horse. “Well Endrance, the womenfolk are trained to fight by their fathers and brothers, but only men join the military. Women do enough duty to our people by producing strong sons and fighting to defend their homes when we’re attacked.” He winked at the wizard. “We do have a company of all female volunteers though, and they are a sight to behold.” He grinned. “Beautiful warrior women, clad in armor and bearing the swords of their fathers or lost loved ones. If that isn’t the ideal woman, I don’t want to know what is.”
Endrance realized then that even though Joven had basically said that women were really only good for raising children and keeping a home, that the women living in Balator were given more rights than most ever had in other cities. Their people considered it enough of a service to their people that they bear their children and keep their homes, while other societies would think that those tasks were the only things they were good at. It made sense then if a woman had the might of arms to prove that she could fight then she should be allowed to. At least here they could pursue those things without drawing discrimination, and if Joven’s distant far off look was indication, gathering some admiration as well.
“But what if the women really want to serve in the regular military?” he asked. “Can they?”
Joven nodded. “It’s uncommon, but it happens. You may see one or two occasionally in Balator itself. However you should be careful not to aggravate the ones with red hair. They are cursed women and must be avoided.”
Endrance knew that the people of Balator were incredibly superstitious, but that seemed extreme even for them. He had read about many places that shunned others who had certain traits that they found either unappealing or were signs of being evil or cursed.
“So,” Endrance began “Because someone has red hair they are cursed? That seems very hardhearted of your people.”
Joven blinked in surprise, looking as if he was confused about what Endrance had just said. “What, you haven’t seen a redhead before?” Joven asked. “They are indeed cursed.”
“I have seen people with red hair before… and they were completely normal.” Endrance countered, gesturing with a hand at a farmer in a nearby field as an example. One of the older men had a head of copper colored hair. “Like that man there. Is he cursed, just because he had red hair?” he asked. The man, realizing that people were talking about him kept glancing over his shoulder at them as the distance between him and the two lengthened.
Joven glanced over his shoulder at the farmer, winked as he caught the older man’s eye, who quickly turned his attention back to the field in front of him. Turning back, Joven scoffed as he jerked his thumb back over his shoulder. “That man? That’s not red hair. Sure it’s kind of red, but I mean color of a man’s-fresh-blood red hair.” He said, “You run into a woman with hair that red, you very well will be in need of a god’s help should you anger her.”
Endrance was still puzzled. “Do they have a temper then? Is that it?”
The barbarian looked at him sternly as he spoke, “Those folk, with hair as red as a dying man’s blood, be cursed with a terrible rage.” His face was unusually serious. “They’re cursed by the Furie, a spirit of
anger and rage. When they lose their temper, they become like wild animals, with the strength of demons.” He explained. “I thought everyone knew that.”
The young mage knowing that Joven was being quite serious, decided not to press the matter anymore than he had already. He had seen during their skirmish with the wolfmen what Joven’s rage was like, and it was terrible enough that he would never want a barbarian’s anger directed at him. However the idea that a malevolent spirit enhanced certain people’s rage so that it became a force that even monsters feared gave shivers down his spine.
They continued on through barbarian territory, and though the trek got colder and colder they had increasingly sparse encounters with anything threatening. When they started running low on supplies Joven showed him how to make snare traps as well as hunt smaller game. To Endrance’s relief Joven did not in fact hunt rabbits with his great sword, instead using a sling with stones.
The entire while they traveled they needn’t worry about their direction; the mountain of Balator was visible in the distance. It took them another couple of weeks traveling to get close. They were able to find relatively safe territory to rest at, excepting for one blizzard that kept them holed up in a shelter for two nights. They had traveled wandering paths through the mountains, careful to stick to the road even though the snow made finding their way through the rocky terrain dangerous.
They came through the last mountain pass to see the mountain of Balator was finally within reach. They arrived at the gates of Balator at mid afternoon, and were able to see the greatness of the city that lay before them. The lowermost bowl of the city was in fact only half a bowl. A half-circle carved out of the mountainside, the first bowl had the largest diameter. Ten miles across, the first bowl was entirely farmlands. There they grew cold weather vegetables and kept cattle and other farm animals. Pigs were seen commonly wandering around the farmlands, and fences kept them away from the crops. The mountain streams were frozen, so though they had access to pure freshwater all year round they did not traffic in fish except during the summer thaws.
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