When Pel emerged running from his cornfield, an old wooden hoe in hand, he found them kneeling in the dust and dirt holding each other. Cor’s mother sobbed loudly, her arms wrapped around her son with fistfuls of his tunic in each hand, afraid to release him in the case that he wasn’t really there. The hoe fell from his hand as he approached the pair, slowing with each progressive step until he stopped hovering over them. His shadow fell across them, and Cor looked up into his father’s face.
“You’re back?” Pel asked.
“Yes father. I’ve come home. I have a lot to talk about.”
“Later, after supper. I still have work to do,” Pel said gruffly. He turned and walked back to his field, retrieving his hoe in the process. Cor could only stare after his father.
“It’s been hard on him,” his mother said, wiping her eyes. “It’s been hard on us both, but your father loves you. It’ll be fine. Come inside. I was just beginning to make supper.”
His mother listened dutifully as Cor spoke of sailing the Narrow Sea and of the places he had seen. He spoke of the water and the duties and dangers of sailing a vessel. He spoke of the differences between Western and Tigolean ships and the people as well. He conveniently left out stories of battle, blood and killing, including his own part in killing a man. He also hadn’t mentioned the Loszian lord that clearly wanted him for some design, but he knew he would have to approach it eventually.
“Quite an adventure for a young farmboy,” Pel said from behind him. Cor was so wrapped up in his story, he had not heard Pel come in, but he did hear the sardonic tone in his father’s voice.
“I guess farming wasn’t good enough for you? And what is this?” Pel asked, tapping his boot against the longsword attached to Cor’s belt, and Cor’s hand shot to the hilt. He had honestly forgotten about the weapon, so used he was to carrying it; it was the same sword with which he had killed a man a few months ago. Naran had thought it a fit parting gift.
“Sorry father,” Cor said, suddenly feeling guilty. “Sometimes one must defend themselves.”
“I assume you know how to use it?” his father asked, receiving a slow nod in answer. “Put it in the barn. I will not have it in my home. How long are you staying?”
Cor hadn’t expected such a question and as such had no idea what the answer was. “We have things to talk about father. About me,” he said.
“Tomorrow around midday it will be too hot to work for awhile. We can talk then. Let us enjoy supper in peace,” Pel answered.
Throughout the night, Cor started to understand just what he had done to his parents, and guilt came to him with heavy weight. He felt it pressing on him as if he were caught under a huge granite stone like those used to build the massive protective walls found around the large Western cities. Every time he looked at her face, he could see the hurt and the need to understand what she had done to deserve it. There was so much he wanted to say, but he had no way to say it. She looked tired and drawn, and Cor feared he would have to hurt her more before too long.
Pel, Cor’s father, showed no such emotion, no signs of how he felt. He remained as impassive as an old statue.
Cor slept in his old room that night, and it felt huge compared to the veritable closet he’d used on board Naran’s ship. His mother kept the room exactly as it was when he had left; it seemed she had even straightened the bedclothes that morning and never again touched anything in the room. Most everything , a bureau, old toys and small table next to the bed was covered with a fine, thick layer of dust. It made him sad, and he wondered if he could ever make it up to his parents.
Cor woke just before the sun broke the horizon, its rays already turning the sky from black to hues of blue. He found his parents already awake, his father out in the fields and his mother milking cows in the barn. Little was said, but he did what he could to help, taking on whatever chores his mother would ask of him. Cor didn’t know how to say how sorry he felt, so instead focused on making himself as useful as possible as if his actions would be their own apology.
Though it was still morning, the day grew hot; Pel had left his fields, and busied himself with repairing a damaged fence near the road with the help of his wife. Cor worked in the barn at his mother’s request, his father having refused his help; they had spoken few words to each other all morning. Cor stood at the barn’s entrance, taking a momentary break and watched his parents work a rotted fencepost out of its hole several hundred feet away.
A man approached, walking the road from the direction of the village. He had the dark brown hair of a Westerner; long and unwashed, it partially hung over his face. He was fairly tall at roughly six feet in height with a lanky build, his arms and legs disproportionately long for his height. The man wore black breeches and soft black boots, both covered in dust from the road, and a gray cotton tunic. Seeing Cor’s parents, he walked leisurely toward them, his thumbs hooked into a leather belt. Cor was some distance away, but he could clearly see the man’s hands with its abnormally long fingers.
Feeling sudden alarm, Cor frantically retrieved his sword and charged out the door, hoping he could cross the distance in time. His father had stopped his work and turned to talk to the stranger.
“What do you need, neighbor?” asked Pel.
“I’m trying to find a farmer by the name of Pel,” responded the man, in a curious accent.
“You have found him, but I’m not hiring hands for a full two months yet.”
“Oh fortunately, I’m not looking for employment; I’ve got that. Farmer Pel, I don’t actually seek you, but the boy with gray skin who is your son,” said the stranger with his accent that seemed to emphasize words differently. “I see him approaching now. Thank you.”
“Go on your way. I’ve had enough of men troubling my son,” Cor’s father said, pointing back the way the man had come.
“I’ll go about my way once I have the boy.”
Pel made to move toward the stranger, his mouth open with a forthcoming threat. The man barely flicked his wrist, followed by a gleam of steel flying through the air. Cor skidded to a halt in the dust just in time to catch his father as he fell backward, making a horrific gargling sound. A steel point protruded from the back of Pel’s neck, and the steel handle of a small dagger jutted from his throat. His eyes were wide with surprise or fright as he choked and drown on his own blood that flowed in rivers onto Cor’s tunic. Cor fell slowly to his knees, lowering his father to the ground, Pel’s head finding his wife’s cradling embrace.
“Well, I gave him a chance. But look - he left me a fine woman as well as his son. Too bad I really don’t have time to enjoy her,” the man said as he slowly came toward them.
Cor leapt to his feet, sword in hand, determined to hack this new foe into bits. He roared unintelligibly as he rushed to the attack. The man reacted with another quick flick of his right hand, and Cor saw the sun glinting off steel just before it impacted his forehead. His forward momentum stopped, and he lost all sense of what was happening, as the man stepped up to him with a clenched fist and knocked him hard to the ground with a punch to the jaw.
Cor lay on the ground, conscious but unable to act, his vision black and purple around its edges. His mother, tears running down her face, took her eyes off of her dead husband, first meeting Cor’s and then looking up into the sunlight at the blinding outline of their attacker. The man took a fistful of his mother’s hair in one hand while running a cruel looking curved knife across her throat. Cor watched a great gout of blood pour from his mother’s neck, coloring the ground and the stranger’s boots red as it mixed with her dead husband’s. It all happened so slowly, but too fast for Cor to will his limbs to move.
“Enough foolishness. You know, I didn’t have to kill them. People are just stupid. They don’t understand when they don’t have a choice,” the murderer said, picking up Cor’s legs by his ankles to drag him to the barn.
“Let him go Loszian!” boomed a voice. The man looked up and saw a gray faced warrior on a black stal
lion. He had a longsword in one hand and in the other a shield with a fist sized blue stone set directly in the middle.
“Ah, my master warned me that there may be another!” exulted the man. “Let’s make this easy. Come with me. My master would reward me greatly if I delivered not only the boy, but a true Dahken as well. No doubt, you would live like a king in the Loszian Empire. Ride with me.”
“The Dahken serve neither your empire, nor the West. We choose our own path,” Dahken Rael replied, steel in his voice.
“What we?” the man asked derisively as he dropped Cor’s legs and held his arms out from his sides. “Your people are broken. How many of you are left? The West believes you wiped out completely.”
“The boy is leaving with me,” Rael said, unfazed.
“I don’t think so.” He whipped a throwing dagger at Rael in a much practiced maneuver, the same with which he had killed Cor’s father.
Unsurprised by the attack, Rael easily batted away the weapon with his shield. He jumped his horse forward, bringing his sword across, parallel with the ground as he passed his adversary. The man deftly ducked the attack just in time, feeling locks of his hair cut free. He turned with his own dagger only to find Rael’s sword neatly skewering him from Rael’s backhanded thrust. Rael yanked his sword free of the man’s belly and brought the sword around to cleave the man’s head off. The body tumbled to the ground right next to Cor, blood pouring from the stump of a neck.
Cor struggled onto his side and then to all fours. His head cleared slowly, though it pounded and every sound raged in his ears. It was similar to the hangover he endured the day he left Hichima for the last time, but far less fun. He touched his fingertips to his forehead, half expecting to find the handle of a dagger, but instead finding only a massive painful knot that was only beginning to form.
“The Loszian threw an iron sap at you. It is a nasty way to stun those who do not protect their head. Are you well?”
Cor tried to stand, but found his legs to unstable. He fell back onto his ass, his vision almost clear. He looked around at the bodies of his parents, murdered, their blood merging with the dust and dirt to form red mud. He looked at the headless body of their murderer and felt satisfaction for a moment, replaced by anger that he was not the killer.
“What is your name?” a voice asked him. Cor looked up blinking as if from a dream to see his savior cleaning blood off of his sword.
“Cor, after my mother’s father,” he replied.
“Cor, I am Dahken Rael, and I am here to protect you and teach you about yourself. This man,” Rael pointed at the corpse with his sword, “was a Loszian, an agent of someone who would control you and use you for his own purposes.”
“I’ve seen a Loszian Dahken Rael,” Cor replied. “He did not look like this man.”
“There are Loszians, and then there are Loszians,” Rael answered.
Rael dismounted and bent over the body of the Loszian. He pulled from his belt a small utility knife and cut the man’s left shirtsleeve clear up to the neck. On the left shoulder was an intricate tattoo, a symbol. Rael carved into the flesh of the shoulder, removing a large flap of skin with the tattoo on it, and he placed it into a saddlebag. He then retrieved Cor’s fallen sword and remounted his stallion.
Cor crawled to his parents’ bodies, their blood staining his breeches, and sat back on his haunches. He was very careful to keep his eyes on their faces. His father, eyes once wide, had apparently died with them closed, and he looked at peace. His mother’s eyes were still open and stared unblinking into the sky. Cor softly wept as he reached to her face, closing her eyelids; he didn’t know why he did it. It just felt right.
“You must come with me for others will follow him,” came Rael’s voice. “I will protect you and teach you how to find your own path. Boy, you must trust me. Look at my hands and my face. See that we are of the same blood and that I only wish to protect you.”
Cor stood and turned to stare quietly at this armored man. He looked at the Dahken’s hand for a long moment and then placed his own within it. Rael’s hand was about the same size as Cor’s, and they were nearly indistinguishable from each other. Cor had sailed for over two years and never seen anyone who’s skin tone matched his so perfectly that their clasped hands seemed to blend together. It was a sudden and inexplicable feeling that all was as it should be that led Cor to firmly grasp Dahken Rael’s hand and climb onto the stallion. In so doing, he caught glimpse of his mother, lying dead..
“My parents,” Cor said numbly.
“There is nothing they can do for you or you for them. Your first lesson as a Dahken is that you must embrace death. It comes to everyone eventually, sometimes even the gods.” Rael turned his horse around and headed away from Cor’s old home, away from the village.
6.
They rode throughout the day, stopping briefly around midday to eat jerky and somewhat stale bread. In the afternoon, they turned off the road and headed cross country to the south, and they continued until the sun disappeared over the horizon, which was late this time of year. Cor was certain they had traveled a good many miles, and he had of course never seen this part of Aquis. They made their camp near a small stream and dined on yet more jerky and stale bread. Rael refused to make a fire for cooking, saying that they didn’t need the warmth at night this far south, but Cor somehow thought he had other reasons.
The next day, they hadn’t yet stopped for lunch when Cor finally felt the impact of what happened. He had seen violence and blood, and he’d killed a man not too long ago. But never had Cor imagined to see those he loved so brutally slain before his eyes, and he was powerless to prevent it. He began to cry.
“What is wrong?” Rael asked without even looking at him.
“I want to go home,” sobbed Cor in response.
“At points in life, we all want to go home. It is not possible for you,” Rael said, making no apologies.
Cor quieted and forced his weeping to stop, but it blended into a coughing attack, one of the worst he had had in a long time. The mix of coughing and crying kept him from talking anymore, and he bent over in the saddle, coughing blood into his hand. Rael put a hand on Cor’s shoulder to steady him. Eventually, the coughing passed as it always did.
“I remember you,” Cor said after some time. “You came to our home a few years ago.”
“Yes, and that night you ran away,” Rael responded. “I realized too late that you had left, and I tried to follow you, but I was too far behind.”
“I saw you at the docks when Naran’s ship sailed out.”
“Cor, I am taking you somewhere safe,” Rael said, “and I will teach you how to use the power in your blood. When you are ready, you may go where you wish, return home and become a farmer should you decide.”
“Who sent the man who killed my parents?” Cor asked.
“I do not know, but the mark I removed from his shoulder is the mark of the Loszian lord he serves. I will find out, but one must be careful with such inquiries. What will you do when I find out?” he asked Cor.
“I’ll kill him,” he replied quietly.
“I am sure. Vengeance is normal, human, but it is also dangerous.”
“The priests told me vengeance is a sin,” said Cor, “that Garod doesn’t recognize revenge against those who have wronged you.”
“And yet,” answered Rael, “they think nothing of waging war with Losz and slaying its people. Would you have killed that Loszian?”
“Yes,” Cor replied quietly.
“Have you ever killed a man?” Rael asked.
“Yes, a few months ago. My captain took us to Katan’Nosh. I saw a Loszian there, and he saw me. He sent another ship to chase us down, to take me back to him. We fought.”
“You should assume that the man who murdered your parents was an agent of the same Loszian. If he is a lord, he is also a sorcerer,” Rael said, his voice somewhat distant as he thought. “So your travels across the Narrow Sea has made you a man of action, but
it is more important that you are educated so that you know what action you should take.”
“The Loszian sorcerers are charlatans, worshipping evil and untrue gods, aren’t they?” asked Cor after a few minutes of silence.
“What you believe is what most Westerners are taught to believe. The truth is there are no charlatans, no untrue gods. All of the gods exist, some are evil, some are good, but they all exist. When we reach Sanctum, I will teach you all of these things.”
“Is Sanctum a city?” asked Cor.
“No, at least not anymore,” answered Rael, “but it is where I live. It is where you will live while you come to understand who you are. Beyond that, your path is your own choice.”
They did not stop for lunch; on their way, they passed a grove of wild apple trees, and Rael picked a good number of the fruits. They ate while continuing to ride. They rode for two more days, and Cor began detect the familiar scent of the sea on the air. Gulls and other birds swept through the air, making their familiar cries. The land here seemed somewhat rocky, and the dirt had a sandy quality to it. They topped a hill, and Rael pointed into the distance.
“Sanctum,” he said.
Cor looked in the direction indicated and saw a crumbling stone edifice eclipsing the setting summer sun. It was a small castle, gray with age, with a crumbling outer wall that was completely breached at one point, and the keep and tower did not seem to be in much better condition. The castle had no wall on two sides, as it was perched on a rocky promontory overlooking a cliff. Beyond the cliff stretched the Narrow Sea.
As they approached, they joined a disused road that came from the north and lead straight to the castle. Cor could hear the sound of great splashes of water in the distance as they climbed the steep hill leading to the castle’s gate. A rusted portcullis lay to one side just past the portal; it was so ancient and weather beaten that the iron bars seemed to be literally dissolving. They dismounted inside the curtain wall, and Rael led his horse to one side to let the animal graze while he filled a trough with water from a well. The buildings inside the wall looked very little different from the outside; they were mostly stone and dilapidated, and none of them had intact doors.
Blood and Steel Page 5