Hardt's Tale: A Mobious' Quest Novel

by Gwendolyn Druyor

  “With your first task being to protect Stray from the dragons, I will initially focus on the duties of the three top weaponsfolk in a wing.”

  Comparado pulled himself to his feet with the help of his cane. “Hold on, young man. We’re here to hear what you’re going to do about the dragons.”

  Getek waited for the rumble of approval and support from the assembled Stray to quiet down. “That is an interesting question. Here is your answer; I’m not going to do anything about the dragons.” He paused briefly for the uproar and went on before it quieted down. “You are an independent shale. In answer to your request for assistance, the kimoet have sent me to train your guarde. That guarde and your elders will decide what to do about the dragons. Frair here is outraged because you need nine fronts of seven people each to make up a proper wing and less than forty people have shown up to volunteer. Well, he can be outraged. It’s his shale. It is your shale. Your dragons are no concern of mine. I’ll train whoever shows up. Starting now. If you’re here to get involved, split into groups of three. If you’re here for the entertainment, please take your seats and step to the edges of the clearing.”

  While the variously insulted, amused, and inspired crowd dispersed itself, the near healer approached Getek.

  “Sir, my name is Gaerel.”

  “Call me Getek, Gaerel.”

  “Thank you, Getek. I just wanted to let you know that I want to be of help even though I can’t fight. I’m as close to a healer as we’ve got here so I’m going to come to as much of your training as I can to help out if someone gets hurt.”

  “I’m pleased you want to do your part but…”

  A few stragglers who’d chosen neither the audience nor the groups of three had overheard Gaerel and by consent, Talee, the girl who had found him in the creek his first morning in Stray, spoke up for them. “Getek, we want to help too, but we don’t like fighting.”

  The guardesman raised his eyebrows at those remaining in the clearing. He paced in front of them for a moment and reevaluated his plan. Some corner of his brain registered a familiar figure at the side of the clearing standing apart from the other curiosity seekers and as he rethought his approach to the Stray guarde he called out to the figure. “Hardt, you’re a fine tracker. Come play with us for a while. No commitment necessary.” He ran a hand down his bowed head while Hardt meandered over to stand with Gaerel, aware that everyone was waiting for the guardesman to speak. After a while he looked up and surveyed the would-be guardesfolk.

  “Does anyone know the components of a wing front?”

  Surprisingly, from amidst the murmuring Stray, one hand raised tentatively.

  “Come forward.”

  Noah stepped out of his threesome, face burning with embarrassment.

  “Noah, what do you believe is the makeup of a front?”

  “A front consists of a Lead or the Front numbered according to rank in the wing, a Partner, a Liaison, a Scout, Provident, Healer, and Runner.”

  Gaerel brightened as he heard the Healer named. Getek winked an eyebrow at him, then, abandoning his earlier organization, he gestured to the nearest group of three and assigned them. “So, you will be the first Front,” he put a hand on the first woman’s shoulder, “often called just ‘First.’ You make decisions for the front. You, Tirce nice to see you, are Partner. First must confer with you on all decisions. You must be able to look at her ideas from many different angles and provide her with intelligent advice. You plan how objectives will be accomplished and report all plans to the Liaison. Liaison, you must implement the plans. You also take point on all communications in and outside the guarde. You allow the front and partner to retain respect while making unpopular decisions. You are the bad guy for them. Hardt,” He gestured for the boy to join the group of three, “you will be Scout. On journeys you will do exactly as your title suggests. You will forge ahead of the front and prepare the way. In location, your job is to keep abreast of local feelings, doings, and the political atmosphere. You report to the Liaison. Noah, you are Provident. What the front needs for survival you acquire. Food, shelter, clothing, weapons, rope, scales, whatever is required you must provide. Gaerel, you are Healer. You must implement preventative as well as reactive healing. Talee, you will be our runner. You answer to everyone.”

  Getek split up and assigned the rest of the groups of three into two more groups of seven. Then, aware of the settlers’ need to be assured they would retain their autonomy, he began with component training rather than the more traditional first day interdependence exercises. He sent the three runners off to get a message from his son Ker, deliver it to Vyck, and then return to the clearing. He refused to answer their inquiries as to how to find Ker and Vyck and sent them on their way, successfully showing no interest in Hardt’s answers to their queries on Vyck’s location. Next he instructed the uncertain Gaerel to teach the other two Healers basic emergency care. Noah and the other Providents were told to get water, dinner, and a slingshot for all the volunteers.

  He intended for the Scouts to begin a map of the countryshale which would be necessary to any logical defense. “Hardt, run an hour due south, an hour west, and back to here. Record everything you encounter. Heigna, do the same to the…”

  Hardt interrupted him, “Getek, there’s not a whole lot of anything due south.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Due south is swampland and rivers. Since there are three of us, it would be better to do north, east, and west.”

  Getek smiled, surprised that the boy would speak up. “There are twenty-one of you so far and many more than four directions. You’ll learn something from due south. Off you go.”

  After sending the other scouts off east and northwest, Getek sat down with the top three of each front, the weaponsfolk of the wing, to discuss politics and conflict resolution. He sat them down near the edge of the clearing where most of the non-participants had set their chairs. The audience could learn, he felt, from listening even where they refused to participate. As the training progressed through the late afternoon, time and again he found Jaydee, mother of six, quick to absorb and apply the lessons but chose to use her bright eldest son as an example more often to ease his young pride. On towards evening, the elders sitting nearby started throwing in their observations on the problems Getek presented to the three groups and eventually Getek felt confident he wouldn’t be saddled with the youngest guarde ever assembled.

  The Providents’ had come by with water several times and were building a cooking fire on the remnants of the festival bonfire site as the sun hit the horizon. Getek wandered away from his weaponsfolk and the watchers to let the Providents know that they could use the runners when they returned from their latest assignment. He didn’t mention that it was clearly going to rain soon and they should provide a cover for the wing to eat under, knowing from firsthand experience that the strongest knowledge is gained from failure.

  Seeing the heated discussion continuing between Brower and a watcher he had failed to identify, Getek meandered over to where the scouts were trying to create a logical system for drawing all their findings on one map. Over dinner, away from the paper and as their scratchings in the dirt washed away, he would tell them how the guarde typically drew maps. It was standard procedure to let guarde struggle over solutions even if one was known, in hopes that always someone would find a better way. They would not remember his directions in toto the next day, but they would have an idea to work from.

  As he left the scouts to keep Brower and the elder from coming to blows, Talee returned from her third errand. Handing a bundle to Hardt as she passed, she crossed the clearing to Getek.

  “Message delivered sir. No reply.”

  “Call me Getek. If you get to calling people ma’am and sir, confusion arises as to whom you are speaking to or about. Pronouns and titles should be avoided. The only exceptions are sometimes the First, Second, and Third Fronts who may be called by their numbers in times of high order or respect.” He thought of the mes
sage he had had her deliver in response to Vyck’s request that he not use her for training any longer as she valued her privacy. “No response at all?”

  “Well, she did say that a reply would only give you an excuse to send another message.” Talee hesitated. “And she said that you were lying.”

  “She called me a liar?”

  “She said that from what she’d been told about you, you knew everybody’s name after hearing it only once.”

  He’d had Talee tell Vyck that he’d sent runners to her because hers was the only name he could remember. “Ah, so she doesn’t care for liars.”

  “Begging your pardon, Getek, she doesn’t care for adults. At least she’s asked about you.”

  He darted his eyes about the area, although he already knew no one else was near. “You remember what I taught you earlier?”

  “A runner should always forget everything she shouldn’t know unless the information is useful to the wing.”

  “Good. Go see the Providents.”

  “Getek.”

  “Yes, Talee?”

  “In Stray, you’ll soon learn, everything is useful.” The girl smiled and ran off to the cooking fires.

  Dinner that night was soggy. But the scouts’ map did not wash away. Hardt had asked Talee to fetch a hide when she went to see Vyck and he and the other scouts had set it up to protect their patch of dirt and papers. When others threatened to take it and raise a small shelter, the scouts took weapons and ate their dinner standing around the maps. They ate themselves in the rain rather than sacrifice their work to the storm.

  Through dinner, Getek moved from small miserable gathering to small miserable gathering hearing complaints, making suggestions, answering questions, and noting personalities. He thanked Gaerel for his compassionate manner in dealing with the one runner who collapsed and asked if he could come by the following morning to privately tutor the near healer in the treatment of injuries specific to weapons training. Tirce approached to let him know that she wouldn’t be at training the next couple of suns and to ask if there was anything she could do before she returned. Several others approached with the same issue, but they offered a few of the more intrigued watchers as replacements.

  Just before he released the guarde, he asked each front and their new substitute members to collect slings from their provident and prepare to work with them the next afternoon. They would not have time the next afternoon to work with slings, nor would they for a while, but every evening he would tell them so and every morning they would practice. By watching who they went to for help, he’d learn who the respected hunters were and who he could use later when weapons training really did begin. Although, he was reconsidering all the guarde training standards. It was commonly held that weapons training was better run by a fellow of the trainees, but Stray didn’t seem to be a very neighborly countryshale. The best fighters appeared to want nothing to do with their fellows.

  When he released the volunteers, few if any went off together. Frair, Marce, Gree, Noah, and Jaydee Mytree joined him as he gathered his soaking wet gear from where it had gone untouched throughout the day. He was staying in the one-room shack out back of the Mytree compound until he found time to build a cottage of his own. Gree had been one of the runners and he looked exhausted, but he was young and still found the rain refreshing. He and Marce took the bags of weapons from him, teasing the provident Noah who had had no idea that Getek had brought slings for sixty. The three ran on ahead arguing, with Frair practicing his newly acquired conflict resolution techniques as they went.

  “Getek.” Hardt looked comfortable in the downpour. Of course he cut his hair as short as Getek’s so he didn’t have hair plastered to his face like most of the others, but his clothes were also wicking much of the water off of him. They were well tanned and fit close to his body. As a result, he looked as though the wet was of little concern.

  “Yes, Hardt?”

  The boy scratched his adolescent stubble. “The south is interesting.”

  Getek chuckled. “It’s swampland and rivers. We won’t need to patrol the south.”

  “But it’s good to know what’s there, rather than assuming.”

  “Absolutely.” So the boy had figured out the lesson he’d been meant to learn. Mentally, Getek gave him more credit. “Thanks for starting it. You won’t have to go south again.”

  “I wouldn’t mind.” Hardt turned away from Jaydee and Getek, breaking into a jog for a few steps before he turned back and added, “You know what you did to the runners, right?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Vyck was headed up to a dragonbed today. They found her up past our stone shed the first time, half a megg out when Talee found her the second time.”

  Getek felt badly, but he slapped his chest with a hand and laughed out loud. Oh, those poor runners, they’d sleep well this night. And then he sighed. Why was Vyck running away? Quickly he justified this regret by thinking that from all he had seen and heard, she was likely the best weapons tutor he would find locally. Still he didn’t entirely fool himself.

  Four

  ∞

  The schizophrenic season of growth eventually gave way to a humid summer, occasioning, of course, a festival. During which Getek saw a new side of the cold settlers. He was dragged into the dancesquare by men and women who had formerly not had two words for him and enjoyed himself as he hadn’t in seasons. His son Ker joined the ranks of Vyck’s youthful admirers and climbed on her shamelessly. Getek kept his distance.

  He’d seen her at each of the full moon meetings and a couple of times he’d run into her hunting with Hardt. She never looked in his eyes and responded to him only when he asked if she minded his son’s attentions and then all she’d said was, “You get my nephew. I get your son.” Noah, of all people, was the one who told him the humiliating story of Brower’s courtship and warned that Getek’s broadcast interest would alienate both his liaison and Vyck. He suggested the guardesman step aside and let his son pave the way for him. So that is what Getek did.

  With the living season came new recruits. The success of Getek’s backwards training tempted formerly timid shalers from their routines. The original twenty-one had rotated through all of the positions of the front and were ready to move on to some strenuous physical training and lessons in teamwork. On the afternoon the new recruits joined training, Getek took Jaydee out of her position and assigned her to introduce the new twenty to the components of the wing. Meanwhile he took the position of First front and assigned the rest of the original guarde trainees to their semi-permanent positions in the first third of the new wing of Stray.

  In his own front, he took Frair as partner, Brower as liaison, Heigna as scout, Hardt as provident, Gaerel as healer, and as runner, Sirte, the girl who had collapsed the first afternoon and returned to push herself just as hard at every session since. After assigning the fronts and giving them a moment to discuss their placings, Getek announced that these three fronts would meet from now on at sunup and would be released at highsun. He gave each a leather thong to tie around one bicep. His ring of honor was clasped for the first time since he had arrived on his left arm. And so he began to introduce them to interdependence.

  “You must learn to follow me so quickly that you operate as smoothly with my thoughts as my right arm.”

  “You’re left-handed.” Heigna broke the newly banded guarde’s tension.

  Getek was ready for her. “I don’t expect too much of you.”

  He then taught them some of the formation variations he’d created for a wing of only three fronts and sent them off on a run. He put Sirte in lead to teach the guarde that each person was invaluable to the team and to humble Frair and Brower who would need some tamping down after such advantageous positioning. He gave Sirte the freedom to decide where she led them, but expected some reasoning for the path from her when they returned by three degrees past the highsun. Also, she was to periodically send a runner to update him on their progress.

&nb
sp; “You’ll be here at center?” she asked, not hopeful of an answer.

  “It is most likely I will be here, training up your three new fronts.”

  Unexpectedly his guarde mocked him.

  Canst, the Second front, started the razzing. “Good luck with them!”

  “Kinda old aren’t they?” Brower, one of the oldest of the first group, preempted the young folks’ thoughts.

  With one eye on Getek, Heigna remarked incredulously to Sirte over the rest of the insults. “And we’re the right arm?”

  “You work hard, Getek,” Sirte ended the barrage, “and I’m sure you’ll be able to collapse more than just one in your new arm.

  He was left where he was, shocked once again by the unpredictable Stray, as they jogged off to the east in a three line diamond formation.

  The second arm, privately referred to by the first three fronts as ‘lefties,’ performed well under Jaydee’s tutelage. They did most definitely have an older personality than the first arm, but this, Getek considered, was not a bad quality. He found that more of these Stray were unable to attend the training sessions regularly, but appreciated their sacrifice and substituted first arm guarde who needed or wanted more lessons.

  As with the slingshot training, many of the first arm searched the community for private tutors who could help them improve in their positions. Gaerel made a tour of the shale in his afternoons asking each person about their family remedies and specific occupational injuries. Gaerel was himself approached by Kalina, a provident, for help identifying medicinal plants and the two began exploring how Kaveg’s natural magics could be used in healing.

  Noah, as the third front’s healer, approached Vyck for training in finding and identifying medicinal and poisonous plants. She took him away for several days and taught him in exchange for help quarrying stone. She knew the payment was a much bigger sacrifice for him than it was a help to her and was unremorseful when he collapsed from pent-up terror on return to the shale. She stowed him in her own bed and left him to his dragon imaginings. For three days he stayed in her cottage. Hardt would report nothing of what went on there, but when the boy returned to training, he knew the poisonous plants and the medicinal and he’d learned a little something about psychology.