by J. C. Hendee
Fiáh’our’s resolve began to falter.
“Enough,” he whispered, and then louder, “Enough for today and…”
Karras’ face went white, like some sudden horror overtook him. “No!”
He came head on, one foot slamming the floor with thunder. In the following step, he struck out from that planted foot.
Fiáh’our easily caught the blow, his long cudgel raised crosswise in both hands. There was no chance he could be struck, and he let the blow’s force pass through his bones into the floor—into the earth—as it should. That he had felt the force pass at all meant…
Well, something he almost dared not hope for—something missing since the beginning.
Fury’s fire was in Karras’ face—in his eyes. What mattered more was what the kitten had remembered without knowing amid desperation. Fiáh’our took a fleeting glance down.
Karras had foolishly thrown his entire weight into the strike. To do so, his rear foot had remained planted, unlike his weaving about for the last moon. That was not all there was to it for a right-thinking rughìr, but had the kitten stumbled into a bit of en’nag?
“Did you feel that?” Fiáh’our whispered.
The fury faltered in Karras’ eyes.
Fiáh’our felt through their locked weapons the part that Karras had gotten wrong. That would come in time, and he looked aside.
Gän’gehtin stared wide-eyed at the kitten, and perhaps the shirvêsh finally saw the problem.
Fiáh’our smiled, which made Karras blink, and he sharply twisted his cudgel, turning it on the very force of Karras’ over-weighted weapon. The kitten’s eyes snapped fully open too late.
The butt end of Fiáh’our’s cudgel swept down into Karras’ empty front leg and then up. Karras nearly landed on his head as he came down. Fiáh’our clunked the cudgel’s butt end on the floor and leaned over the dazed kitten.
“Enough for today,” he said. “But when I return, you can try again, if you like. Until you strike me even once, you are not going anywhere.”
Fiáh’our looked up to find Gän’gehtin still staring at a now prone and dazed kitten. The blank and astonished look on the young shirvêsh’s face was a bit too satisfying. Fiáh’our now had two students to instruct.
“See the problem, do you?” he snapped, and Gän’gehtin looked up at him with a start. “Are you smart enough to know it is something that should not be… should not have to be taught to any rughìr, except maybe him? Think you can do better?”
Fiáh’our tossed the great sparring cudgel, and Gän’gehtin caught it in a back-step.
“Then get to it,” Fiáh’our ordered. “I have a barter to finish. And while I am gone, perhaps teach him a lesson that you learned the hard way… and forgot so recently.”
With that, Fiáh’our left behind a dumb little kitten and a dumbfounded upstart of a shirvêsh.
· · · · ·
Karras sat up with his head spinning and his chest aching from the impact. He barely caught sight of Fiáh’our storming off down the passage, and then that bane of his life was beyond his reach. When he looked about, he found Gän’gehtin staring after the old man as well.
“Where… where is he… going now?” he barely got out.
Gän’gehtin shook his head slowly; then he stepped near and reached down a hand. Karras took hold and the shirvêsh pulled him up.
“I do not know,” Gän’gehtin answered. He looked Karras up and down, shook his head again, and then frowned as he whispered to himself, “I should have seen it.”
In exhaustion and frustration, Karras just stared. “Seen what?”
Only then did the shirvêsh look him in the eyes, and Gän’gehtin’s expression turned utterly sad.
“How long ago did you become a seafarer?” Gän’gehtin asked.
After a baffled moment, Karras answered, “I took my place on the family ship in the summer of my seventeenth year.”
“And before that, were you at home?”
“No. By the time I could barely stand, I was always off with my father or mother in their trading.”
That was not as early as with humans, for it could take up to three years before a rughìr child could stand. Before that, they were pudgy little bulks that rolled and flailed around, and were hauled about and guarded mindfully by their parents.
Gän’gehtin slapped a hand over his face, drawing it down with a groan.
“What?” Karras demanded.
“Do you even know what you felt… half-felt… when you struck at Fiáh’our that final time?”
Karras was completely lost and too downfallen to care.
“What did you feel in your rear foot… which was not there in your front foot?”
“I do not know! I simply wanted—hoped—to get through and bash him.”
“And you failed!” Gän’gehtin shot back, shaking his head again, this time in visible disgust. “You felt nothing, did you? You have no sense of earth and stone at all!”
Karras was exhausted, but not enough to put up with any more. “What are you talking about? If there is something I am supposed to know, then someone should have taught it to me. Not that I care if—”
“It is not taught!” Gän’gehtin wailed in exasperation. “It is known—felt—in our first steps as a child. We grow up with it inside our very bones. To teach it means you would think about it, at best like a human. As a warrior, even that sliver of a pause could get you killed—or worse, someone else for your hesitation. You should feel it in every…”
Gän’gehtin’s tirade faltered as he looked Karras over once more, down to his booted feet.
“…in every step upon the earth,” the shirvêsh finished in a whisper. “Your parents have done you great harm.”
At that, Karras’ fury at Fiáh’our and his frustration with all this came together. He might hate what his parents would do to him with a traditional marriage, but no ignorant shirvêsh was going to insult them. And he balled up his fists.
Gän’gehtin quickly held up his hand.
“I mean no disrespect,” he explained. “For their chosen way of life, they could not have known what they did in taking you to sea so young, on a ship, unlike other children of our kind. But you must overcome this. Until you do, you will never strike Fiáh’our… never be free of him or the barter he made with your father.”
Karras did not understand even half of what the shirvêsh was talking about.
“Now go,” Gän’gehtin said. “Recover from this morning, and I… I will try to find some way to help you, to show you what you have never felt.”
At a loss, Karras wearily headed for the southern arch, but a hand latched upon his shoulder, stopping him.
“One more thing,” Gän’gehtin said.
Karras half turned to find the shirvêsh staring blankly down the passage beyond him. When he glanced that way, no one was there. The thänæ was long gone to who knew where, and stranger still, when Karras looked back… Gän’gehtin hung his head.
The shirvêsh paled, staring at the floor beams, and swallowed hard.
For an instant, it was as if some unknown shame made it hard for Gän’gehtin to look up again. When he did, he took his hand from Karras’ shoulder, clenched it slowly, and pressed that fist against Karras’ chest.
“This is where fury belongs, in the heart,” he said. “It fuels a warrior like the heat in the depths toward the world’s core, where only the deep smiths go. For that, they live shorter lives than the rest of us to ply the hidden secrets of earth and stone that serve our people. But if that heat, that fire, ever erupts upward, it not only destroys the peak where it spouts but everything around it.”
Gän’gehtin stepped in close, looking Karras firmly in the eyes.
“Keep your mind as clear and crisp as the air around the highest peak. Do this, and if you can find earth and stone as well, I promise you will strike Fiáh’our… as I once did.”
8. To Stand, Hold, and Read
The next day when
Karras returned, Fiáh’our was not there… or on the next day or the next after that. There was no chance to strike the old man, and instead, Gän’gehtin took him out of the temple each day to the highest point along the switchback street of Chemarré.
At the street’s top end was a landing, possibly a place to go where anyone could see far out over the land and the ocean and up to the people’s great peak above. And there, all day for three days, Karras literally just stood.
“If I have to press you right into the stone beneath your feet,” Gän’gehtin explained, “I will make you feel it somehow.”
Somehow turned out to be something worse. Somehow, the shirvêsh had arranged for a boulder about the width of Karras’ shoulders to be brought up. And there Karras stood with that boulder held high over his head.
He was forced to face the mountainside instead of the view, and he stayed that way until his arms weakened too much. As the boulder finally touched the top of his head the first day…
“Enough,” Gän’gehtin declared.
Karras’ hands were so sweaty by then that he nearly dropped the boulder on his foot. When he looked about, a bit dizzy as well as weary, a few other people had come up for the view. They stood off to one side, gawking at him instead. When he gauged the time of day, he had not been there for even a full morning.
“Again tomorrow, come here straight away,” Gän’gehtin instructed.
“Are we going train at all?” Karras asked.
“You are training… to become a real rughìr.”
Gän’gehtin stepped in and slammed the flat of his hand against Karras’ chest.
Karras stumbled back, flailing his arms as he quickly shifted his feet, but he did not fall.
“When you can stand and hold,” Gän’gehtin said, “I will let you pick up a weapon again.”
So it went for two more days, always ending with a sudden strike from the shirvêsh, and still Karras could not keep his place under that force. On the fourth day, with the boulder held high and Gän’gehtin leaning on the retaining wall to one side with his eyes half closed, Karras heard heavy footfalls behind him.
“Interesting,” rumbled a deep voice.
Karras scowled at the mountainside in hearing Fiáh’our behind him.
Gän’gehtin’s eyes opened a bit more, though he said nothing.
Karras would have preferred to spin around and drop the boulder on the old boar’s foot. But whatever all of this was about, he would not disobey the shirvêsh.
On the fifth day, he stood there without yielding until almost noon. This time when Gän’gehtin struck, Karras barely shifted one foot. The midday’s bell rang out over the mountain as he staggered down the road beside the shirvêsh.
“To the hall tomorrow,” Gän’gehtin said.
Karras only nodded as he wearily headed on toward the clan réhanâkst, but he still did not understand Gän’gehtin’s badgering about the feel of stone and earth. In the morning, he returned to what he wanted most: the chance to learn enough so that he could strike Fiáh’our just once and be done with all of this.
Halfway through the ninth day, Fiáh’our returned again while Karras was sparring with Gän’gehtin. The old man said nothing and only stood nearby with a frown, which ended up distracting Karras a bit too much. Suddenly, Gän’gehtin’s cudgel slammed down on his right boot.
“Pay attention!” the shirvêsh snapped.
With a yelp, Karras dropped the half cudgel tossed at him too many days ago and hopped about in pain.
Fiáh’our let out an audible groan. “So, did your trick do any good?”
Karras did not know who that question was for as he limped back to pick up his sparring weapon.
“He has become… more stable,” Gän’gehtin replied halfheartedly.
“And do you know why your method did not take him all the way to stone?” Fiáh’our asked.
Gän’gehtin scowled and blinked several times before turning to stare at Karras. The shirvêsh stood there in a visibly frustrated silence.
“Give it to me,” Fiáh’our commanded.
Karras watched as the old man closed on the shirvêsh with one hand held out. Gän’gehtin glowered as he handed over his sparring cudgel, and Karras tensed and backed up a step.
“Care to have another try?” Fiáh’our mocked.
Tired as Karras was, he did. In the match that followed, when he finally saw a chance to strike through at Fiáh’our and did so, again the old man’s cudgel whipped across his forward leg, but he did not go down. His forward foot slid half a hand’s width.
Karras wobbled as pain shot up his calf into his knee.
Fiáh’our suddenly jerked his weapon away under the press of Karras’ half-cudgel. And then Karras went down on his face. He had barely scrambled up when Fiáh’our chucked the cudgel and Gän’gehtin caught it.
“Stop treating him like a toddler!” the old man barked. “Even if he has less sense than one. There is one way to take him to where you want him to be, all the way to stone… and that is when he has nowhere else to go.”
“And you!” Fiáh’our shouted, turning on Karras. “This is not some ship rolling about on the waves. Stop weaving like you are on a deck, if you expect to strike me. I have earth and stone under me, my ally at all times. Until you have that, you might as well try to topple the mountain.”
Fiáh’our left once more, and things got even worse after that. Gän’gehtin became as cruel as the old blusterer.
Too many times over the following day after day, the shirvêsh somehow spun that cudgel and cracked Karras over the top of his helmet. Only a few of those times did Karras catch a flinch in Gän’gehtin’s eyes just before the impact.
Karras did not go down under those blows, though his head rang so much that half of the time a following strike to his legs put him on his back. There came a point when he had had enough, and he made a different kind of mistake.
Gän’gehtin clipped Karras’ shoulder, knocking his weapon arm aside, but this time, when the cudgel spun and its butt end came up overhead…
Karras dropped his weapon and reached up.
He caught the cudgel coming down with all of the shirvêsh’s force. His hand stung and his arm shuddered at the impact. But he stopped that weapon instantly, and the shudder passed through all of him with an ache.
“Stop doing that!” he snarled.
Then Karras realized his mistake.
Gän’gehtin, with a sudden scowl, instantly slid one hand down the cudgel to bring its heavy end in and low… but he never did.
The shirvêsh froze and looked about. For an instant, Karras was baffled and then…
Was that a low rumble he heard in the hall?
Gan’gehtin remained silent, though his gaze quickly dropped, looking down between the two of them.
“Did you feel it this time?”
Upon hearing that gruff voice, Gän’gehtin looked away, and Karras followed the shirvêsh’s gaze.
Fiáh’our stood in the southern archway.
How long had the old man been there? When had he returned?
Fiáh’our had some strange, long, and bulky bundle of canvas gripped in one hand.
The very low rumble like thunder was already fading in the hall, like the type heard at a distance that made one look all about for where a storm was approaching.
The cudgel suddenly jerked out of Karras’ grip as Gän’gehtin took it from him, but all Karras could do was stare between the old man and the shirvêsh.
“What are you talking about?” he snapped.
Fiáh’our rolled his eyes.
“Did you at least hear it?” Gän’gehtin whispered at first. “That is why a training hall’s floor is made from wooden beams… and not just for your backside!”
Karras looked down at the floor. It was made of beams… so?
“Time for another change,” Fiáh’our grumbled.
Karras watched the thänæ step to the nearest bench in the hall, set down his burden, a
nd flip the canvas wrap open with one large hand. There lay something that Karras did not recognize at first.
Quickly enough he remembered the first time Fiáh’our had left the temple, when Karras himself had failed in shadowing the old braggart. He could not help but step closer to the bench… to that weapon.
It was as long as the half cudgel he had dropped, though not made of wood, even for its haft. Nearly all of it was burnished iron, and at one end was a thicker part. That cylinder was longer than a fist’s width and twice the circumference of the haft. From that head sprouted five unsharpened and overly thick blades. They were nearly the same height as those on Fiáh’our’s axe but no wider of blade than Karras’ palm. Instead of being part of the cylinder head, they were riveted on with straps of steel.
At the bottom end was a thick butt spike set in an even thicker cuff, as Gän’gehtin had originally suggested. The spike was no longer than Karras’ thumb. Both the spike’s cuff and the five blades appeared engraved with etched patterns.
“Start him on that,” Fiáh’our told Gän’gehtin. “I leave in three days, and he comes with me.”
“No,” the shirvêsh countered. “It is too soon… he is not ready.”
“The rest he will have to learn along the way, as I have delayed too long. The season is nearly over.”
“Then leave him behind, and I will train him further.”
“He is apprenticed to me!” Fiáh’our snapped. “It is not your say, no matter that I accepted your offer to assist. Training in the hall is finished… and I take him where I see fit.”
“What about our barter?” Karras demanded.
Fiáh’our turned, suddenly disturbingly calm. “You have had your chances to strike me. Soon enough, you may have something more worthy to attack.”
Karras took a step at the old man.
“Now read your new weapon… by the feel of it first,” Fiáh’our added. “One has to read everything to understand it and its worth in the world and in any moment. And prepare to leave in three days.”