“Heavens, no,” Clive said. “I’m not a leader. I’m a supporter. I know exactly what the men need, and I’m a decent tactician on the battlefield, but I do not wish to become the Warlord. I just need a man I can stand behind.”
“Anyone in mind?”
Clive shook his head as he stared into the fire. “Not a single one. I can think of one or two who will try, but with the death of Fredrick Merk, I may have destroyed what held the Renegades together. He was good at keeping what he had, but terrible at gaining more. He became lazy. Truth is, we’re pretty sure Fredrick Merk was bought off by the president. That was the biggest reason he had to go. He has kept us from growing because he chose money over his principles.” Clive huffed and tossed a small pebble into the coals. “In any case, I’ve done the best I can.”
“Was this idea yours or was it a collective decision?”
“What does it matter?” Clive lifted an eyebrow.
“Because if it was your decision to kill the Warlord and no one else played a part, don’t you think the others will be a little angry? Don’t you think they will kill us?”
“Do you take me for a fool?”
Joe shrugged. “I don’t reckon I take you for anything yet. Crazy, maybe.”
“I’ve been thinking of a story, and it’s simple. We were ambushed on the road by the Crimson Army. You and I were the only ones to get away. I saw the Warlord die.”
“Fine, but what about me?”
“What about you?”
“Some people in the camp know I was a prisoner.”
“And you helped me escape,” Clive said. “You fought gallantly and killed a few of the president’s soldiers yourself.”
“And they will take your word for it?”
“I was the Warlord’s right hand man. They will believe me. I have an influence over these men. In a way, I will be their leadership until we decide on a new Warlord. They won’t harm you if I call you a friend.”
It took a few silent moments and a lot of thinking, but finally Joe decided to accept this. He felt he was as good as dead out in these woods without some help and direction. It wasn’t like he would find his brother in Galamore. Not yet, anyway.
Joe had learned so much information from Clive that his head hurt. Clive had told him all about The Ancient Books—more specifically The Book of Time. He learned what the relic keys were and how the whole world of Galamore seemed to work. Clive had even tried to explain elves, gray elves, ravagers, and gnomes but Joe couldn’t make heads or tails of it. One group of people he could wrap his head around were the dwarves, but when Clive explained them, they weren’t what Joe had in mind.
“A bit shorter than us, but stocky and very hairy,” Clive had told him. “Never met a tougher bunch in battle, nor a friendlier companion if they take a liking to you. I’d have a dwarf by my side any day of the week because they don’t back down easily.”
Joe eventually stopped trying to imagine what all of these people groups looked like and figured that between now and six years from now, he’d grasp a better understanding.
But that was another thing that baffled Joe. This whole issue with The Book of Time was eating away at him. But could he really deny the magic out of hand? Back in Texas, Joe would have written Clive off as a lunatic, but because of some magical book, he was sitting in a completely different world with a man talking about elves and traveling through time. Joe hadn’t ever thought of time as being something to travel through either. He’d just thought it had to do with when the sun came up and when it went down. Time was breakfast time, dinner time, and supper time. He almost didn’t want to think of what it meant that he had somehow visited Clive before he’d ever really met Clive.
“The Book of Time is probably the most special book of the three,” Clive told him. “And possibly the most dangerous.”
“Why do you say that?”
Clive shook his head. “There’s no way to know for sure, because until now there’s been no proof that anyone has ever opened it. But the Sentinels have told us that opening The Book of Time can affect our world greatly.” He smiled when Joe stared at him with a confused look and then continued as if he hadn’t noticed. “To open The Book of Time, one can go back into any point of Galamore’s history.”
“To change it?”
“That’s the fear. Naturally the point would be to gain the relic key.” He threw up his hands. “But who would know where in history to look for it? The Author has gone to such great lengths to keep someone from writing the end of our story that it seems it will never end.”
“But isn’t that a good thing?” Joe asked. “It’s not like you want the world to end.”
“But that’s just it, Joe. To end the story doesn’t necessarily mean the world will end. It depends upon the one who ends it. It depends on the Keeper of the books.”
“The Keeper?”
“The one to gain all the relic keys,” Clive answered. “Only he or she can write the ending. It could be a good one. It could be a bad one. It could end our world.”
“How do you know so much about all this? Is it just common knowledge?”
Clive smiled and shook his head. “No it isn’t. Most people don’t know much about the books of power. The knowledge of their existence has been handed down through the centuries, but they would be so hard to obtain that they’re barely in the backs of people’s minds. A lot of myth and legend surrounds the books. But in answer to your question, I know so much because the Renegades conspired to gain the books in our early days. We even had possession of The Book of Life, but were unable to obtain its relic key. Men volunteered to go into the book and get the key, but none of them ever came back. We simply assumed that they died. Before we could make any progress, we were attacked by a group of ravagers and the book was stolen from us. It is rumored that the Sentinels took it back from the ravagers and hid it somewhere among the gnomes, but there is no way to know.”
“So, what were you planning?” Joe asked. “If you had gotten the relic key, what would that have meant?”
“It would have meant that one of the Renegades would be the Keeper of the books. We would have then set out on a quest to obtain the other books, but I doubt we would have gotten very far. There are rumors of books in different places. I’ve heard that The Book of Time is in Gray Elf Country and I’ve heard it’s under the president’s mattress. The Book of Death is rumored to not even exist—that no one has ever seen it.”
At best, all of this sounded surreal to Joe. A thought then struck him about his friend’s intentions. “What ending were you and the Warlord planning to write should you have succeeded?”
“We were far from succeeding,” he answered. “We never even got to the point of figuring out what we would have written. All we knew was that we would have written President Jacob DalGaard out of our story altogether. We would have destroyed him. Apart from that, I couldn’t tell you.”
“You don’t think the Warlord would have written himself in as president? Or a king perhaps?”
Clive bit his lip as his eyebrows went forward. “I don’t think so. He was never the most charismatic man. He didn’t want fame or power. He had certain ideals a long time ago that started our group, and I think once upon a time he would have tried to write a peaceful ending.”
The one thing that was comforting to Joe about all of this was that Clive seemed to desire peace. Joe wanted to eventually get a good grasp on why the president was so bad before it was assumed he would just join with the Renegades. For all Joe knew, time travel was an elaborate lie made up by Clive, though Joe couldn’t figure why he would make all this up. And he knew there was no way he could have known about Nate if there had not been some truth to his words.
“If you feel uneasy about all of this,” Clive said, “believe me, it’s just as bad for me. I don’t particularly like being visited by a man six years from now to tell me that you and I are going to be friends.”
“I said we’re friends?” Joe asked with a r
aised eyebrow.
“Yeah, well, let’s see how we do with the rest of the Renegades first. Then I’ll let you know if we’re friends.”
Returning to the Renegade camp didn’t take nearly as long as leaving it, and after Joe thought about it, he couldn’t believe he had already been in Galamore for five days. When he had first awoken in the dirt of the ruins of the small battle, he had thought he would find a way back to the cabin where they had been cornered by Levi Thompson and the sheriff. They would be long gone by now, Joe thought. Multiple times he wondered if he and Nate should have just tried to fight off the two men who had been after them. Joe was a great shot and Nate was a decent one. He had been surprised when Nate hadn’t wanted to fight back and decided to go Montgomery’s way. There had been something in Nate’s eyes—something about Levi Thompson. Had he been afraid to die? No that couldn’t have been it. Joe had never seen Nate afraid. He had thought about this extensively over the last few years, and he had come to the conclusion that Nate felt an overwhelming sense of guilt about Levi Thompson, about their history. But Joe never brought it up. And he never would.
It was late afternoon when the jostling wagon came within view of the camp. Clive said it would only be moments before they were seen by the lookouts. Joe could already smell the fires cooking the meat for supper. The camp was nestled into the side of the Sunset Woods. Some of the tents were out in the open prairie while others were pitched within the trees. It had a nomadic feeling about it as if everything within the camp could be torn down and packed up at a moment’s notice—a wildness that bore no interest in permanence.
Clive pulled up on the reins and the horse came to a stop. Joe could see that they had already been noticed by the guards at the edge of the camp who were fast approaching. Clive glanced at Joe with a stern look on his thin face.
“Remember,” he said, “let me do the talking. You know our story, so if they split us up, we will give the same account.” He seemed to notice Joe’s uneasy look, so his face softened. “They won’t kill you with me in charge. I promise.”
What was he doing here? Why had he agreed to come along with Clive? Because Clive claimed a future version of Joe visited him and told Clive to help him? He couldn’t betray Joe. If Clive was going to place the blame on him, then he would have kept his bindings on and forced Joe to look like a prisoner. In fact, he would have probably just kept Joe as a prisoner instead of trying to befriend him. It was all a guessing game. Joe just hoped he hadn’t guessed wrong.
The guards who came up to the wagon recognized Clive as soon as their eyes could see him clearly. One man, a stocky, shirtless figure with a belly the size of a barrel stepped forward ahead of the rest. He held onto a lever action rifle and was all but pointing it at them. His voice was deep and gravelly like he had smoke in his lungs.
“Clive,” he said. “We’re pleased to see you.” He didn’t seem too pleased. He still gripped his rifle as if he was ready for a fight.
“Stand down, Birk,” Clive said. “We’re just coming back to the camp.”
Birk’s eyes darted toward Joe and back to Clive. “You left with a lot more men than you have now. Where’s the Warlord?”
“Dead, Birk,” Clive answered coolly.
Birk’s grip on his rifle tightened, his knuckles turning white. “What do you mean he’s dead?”
“We were ambushed by the Crimson Army,” Clive answered. “Me and Joe here were the only survivors.”
“Ain’t he that prisoner who went out with you?”
“The very same, Birk. But he was a good fighter and nearly saved the Warlord’s life. He saved mine, at least.”
Joe wondered what these men would do to him if Clive said Joe had killed the Warlord. Death would be inevitable but what torture would be involved? Were they the type of men to tear him to pieces? Would they throw him into a cage of starving, ravenous dogs? His eyes floated to the fires lit all around the camp. They would probably burn him to a crisp. Though Clive didn’t seem the sort, these other men did.
“I need to give my report to the commanders before word gets around about what happened,” Clive said. “We need to avoid a panic.”
Birk squinted at Clive and bit his lower lip, sucking on it grotesquely as he stared. Joe didn’t know whether he was going to shoot them or let them through.
“I am in charge in the event of the Warlord’s death,” Clive said. “You should do as I command or I’ll have you dragged through the Sunset Woods by a donkey.”
Birk let out a huff and nodded for the other guards to step aside and let them through to the camp. Joe tried not to let his relief show as Clive slapped the reins and the horse pulled them forward. As they rode through the camp, Joe could feel all eyes from each of the Renegades staring them down. He dared not look one of them in the eye for fear that they might jump the wagon and maim him.
Running with Nate, Joe had been around some rough types, but these men seemed wilder than he was used to. What clothes they wore were skinned from the animals they had killed. Some of them wore red and black paint on their faces, darkening their eyes and glistening their cheeks with the color of blood. The weapons they carried were of various types. Some carried rifles of different calibers and lengths. Almost everyone carried a blade of some sort, whether it be a rusty ax or a half-broken dagger. These men seemed vicious enough to intimidate any enemy, but Joe surmised that a well-equipped opposition would be the end of them. That must have been why they were on the move so often. For a group like this, staying in one place for too long would mean suicide.
The wagon came to a stop next to the tree line of the forest. In front of them was a large tent made up of what looked to be buffalo hides.
There were more soldiers to meet them but not before Clive gave Joe a final word of affirmation. “Hard part is over. You might be locked up for the time being but I’ll make sure you’re taken care of.”
Joe didn’t like the end of his sentence. Taken care of had more than one kind of meaning. If this was the same Clive that was sitting with Joe in the saloon in Vandikhan, then Joe would be all right. If this was a different Clive who no longer needed Joe and didn’t care about time traveling and going after mystical books, then Joe was as good as dead already.
The men who came out of the tent weren’t quite as wild looking as the guards who had met them or the soldiers camped along the forest edge. There were four of them. Their weapons seemed a little shinier, their furs a bit warmer. These were the commanders.
At the sight of Clive, they seemed relieved, but when their eyes turned to Joe, all four of them pulled pistols from their belts and pointed them at him. In reaction, Joe reached a hand to his side for his gun but hesitated when they pulled their hammers back. He knew the moment his gun left its holster he would be riddled with bullets.
Clive already had his feet on the ground when the guns came up, his hands in the air, trying to set up a wall between Joe and the commanders. “Hold your fire! Hold your fire!” He winced as he moved forward, his bullet wounds letting out a little blood.
“What’s he doing back here?” one of the commanders asked. “He’s supposed to be dead.”
Joe lifted an eyebrow at this for it confirmed what their intentions had been regardless of whether he showed them a stash of weapons or not. He guessed he shouldn’t have been surprised.
“There’s a lot we need to discuss,” Clive said. He was breathing hard, his arms still in the air. To Joe, he didn’t seem as confident as he had been just a few seconds ago. “There are going to be some changes around here,” Clive continued. “Joe here is to be commended, not executed. Please, just let us into the tent and we’ll discuss.”
The commander closest to the wagon took a step forward. “Hand over your pistol,” he said, reaching a hand out to Joe while keeping his weapon steadily aimed. “Nice and slow.”
Joe looked at Clive but was only offered a nod to tell him to comply with the commander. Joe snarled as he pulled out the pistol. He thought about
bringing it up to the commander’s head and letting a bullet fly, but he decided against it. He was a killer now, but he wasn’t stupid. He was a good shot, but he wasn’t reckless. He twirled the gun on his finger, letting the handle face the commander. The man snatched it away from him quickly. With his pistol, he motioned for Joe to move.
“Get down here,” he said.
With hands in the air, Joe did as he was told.
The man looked at Clive and shook his head. “You’ve got a lot of explaining to do, Clive.” He turned back to Joe. “But ain’t welcomed in the tent.”
Before Joe could respond, the man’s arm was propelled toward his head at an alarming speed. Joe felt the impact of the pistol butt slam against his head for only a split second. Then, sleep.
Joe woke with a start. The sunlight was fading behind him and the familiar ache of his wrists tied against a tree had returned. He felt cold and his head pounded. Whoever had hit him in the head had practiced the move before. He was undoubtedly bruised and he could feel the now dried and crusted stream of blood against his cheek. How long had he been out?
He looked around the camp and saw soldiers walking, talking, sitting by their fires, and getting ready for the night ahead of them. From the base of the tree, he could see the main tent clearly. Clive was probably in there trying to talk some sense into the other commanders. Or maybe he was begging for his own life. Joe didn’t know how these people worked. Maybe they blamed him for the Warlord’s death and were planning both of their executions.
He cursed himself as he pulled helplessly against the ropes. It had been foolish to come back with Clive. He had been offered a chance to go out on his own and leave the Renegades behind forever. But instead, he had become distracted with the idea of time travel and the fact that he wouldn’t see his brother for another six years. Now he started to think that Clive was either crazy or a liar. Or both. But if he was telling the truth and he wasn’t insane, then that meant Joe was going to survive the night. Yet that didn’t stop the growing fear inside him. Such concepts were very new to him. For all he knew, it didn’t matter if he existed in the future. Can’t the future change based on decisions? What if his decision to come back and talk to Clive altered what Joe was supposed to do?
Keeper of the Books (Keeper of the Books, Book 1) Page 21