Sellsword- the Amoral Hero

by Logan Jacobs

  They weren’t taking Theo.

  The horned Savajun seated atop Theo cocked his head and surveyed me. He must have seen something in my eyes that made him think twice about trying to ride off on my horse. But on the other hand, he couldn’t make himself look so weak in front of his warriors as to back down and give Theo back to me, who was apparently helpless and surrounded. I stared back at him unblinkingly and awaited his decision.

  “We will take you and the horse,” he said finally. “We will bring you to our chief.”

  Hmm. I guessed that was acceptable. Either Theo and I would find an opportunity to escape on the way to their main camp, or once we were there, or maybe the chief would even be sympathetic to my sorcerer-killing cause and lend me warriors for the purpose. Worst-case scenario, my fight to the death would be postponed for a little while.

  The other Savajuns bound my hands with rope, then tied the other end to Theo’s saddle. They took my sword away for safekeeping. At least, I hoped it was just for safekeeping, since their horned captain had seemingly agreed to let me keep it before. Then we headed off, no longer headed in the direction of Fairhollow, but deeper into the woods, away from the route designated by my map.

  Chapter 11

  We didn’t walk that fast most of the time, since the headman was the only one who was mounted, and Theo stubbornly ignored any commands to speed up to anything more than a comfortable human pace.

  As we walked, I watched the Savajuns with fascination, because I’d always marveled at how they just seemed to make less noise than anyone else moving through the woods. I thought that maybe it had a bit to do with the fact that they all went barefoot and the soles of their feet were blackened and leathery. Maybe also the fact that they seemed to walk slightly duckfooted, with their toes pointing outward. But I didn’t know. Overall, they just had an air of effortless grace. They didn’t look like they were boldly forging their way through the wilderness. They looked like they were strolling about a parlor where they had already memorized all the furniture.

  My feet started to get sore and blistered after a few miles. My boots weren’t made for walking, they were made for riding and ranchwork. But I was grateful that we were under cover of the woods, not out in the open exposed to the merciless sun. I didn’t know how far we went. All I knew was one step after another. I started to play mind games with myself, like telling myself that the Savajun camp must be just over the crest of the next hill, with every hill that we approached.

  Then, eventually, it was.

  The camp was just as big as Richcreek or Bluegarden or any other moderately prosperous frontier town. And although some Savajuns lived in tents built of skins draped over wooden poles, this particular tribe had solidly built log cabins. If not for all the brown-skinned, painted, half-naked people scurrying around, I would have assumed it was just another settlers’ town.

  As my captors led me through their camp, other Savajuns, mostly women and children since I suppose the men were probably off hunting or raiding, gathered around to stare. They commented on me openly, having of course no idea that I could more or less understand them.

  Mostly they just excitedly urged each other to “Look at the paleface,” but they also argued about whether I was handsome or looked like a bear for having a bit of a beard on my face, which none of their men did. They also speculated on why I had been brought back to camp.

  “Maybe he will be ransomed?” one woman guessed.

  “Or they brought him back here to be a slave,” another suggested.

  “Your husband will not let you keep him as a slave,” her friend giggled.

  “Too bad. He looks fun to ride.”

  “The horse must be his. I have never seen one so big and so black!”

  “I would like to ride him.”

  “The horse?”

  “Either, but the paleface more so.”

  The children didn’t have as much to say about me, but one little boy grabbed up a handful of small rocks and started to pelt me with them as he laughed with glee, until his mother ran over and smacked him.

  “But he is a paleface!” the boy protested.

  “He is a prisoner, you do not attack prisoners,” she explained.

  My captors brought me to the largest of the log houses, tethered Theo to a post, and led me inside. Theo and I exchanged glances as I passed him. I tried to warn him nonverbally to be patient, and assure him that I would get us out of this mess, even though I didn’t know how yet. I hoped he understood me.

  Inside the log house, at the back of the building, a man and a woman were seated on wooden chairs intricately carved to look as though they were made of the bodies of living animals all twined together. He sat on the back of a bear and rested his arm between the antlers of a stag, while a hawk perched behind his shoulder. She sat between the outstretched wings of a swan, rested her hand on the back of a long-eared hare, and leaned back against a howling coyote.

  Four other women were lounging on cushions around the couple’s feet. They all looked to be in their late teens or twenties, and had a bored, restless air. They all wore their black hair in symmetrical braids that trailed down their plump bare breasts. They were clothed only in skirts of woven grass or furs, and red beads that adorned their necks, wrists, and ankles. They were attractive enough girls, for the vitality of their youth more than anything special about their features, but I couldn’t help comparing them to Vera. She looked dangerous even before you knew what she was. Her features were sharp and chiseled. These girls were round-faced, and their life experiences were probably as blank as their smooth, unmarked brown skin. They looked like soft and spoiled children compared to the wicked half-Savajun sorceress.

  The seated man was probably fifty, and the seated woman probably forty. She was old enough to be the mother of the girls, but somehow I didn’t think that was the case. She was more clothed than they were, in hides that were intricately stitched with beaded patterns and edged with fringe, but she wore the same red beaded jewelry that they did, in addition to jewelry made of seashells. Her male counterpart was dressed similarly, with only slightly less jewelry.

  “Chief Buffalo Rider, we bring to you a paleface found in the woods, who says that he will fight the dark sorcerer,” the horned captain announced as he gestured at me.

  The chief stared at me. “What does he know about the dark sorcerer?”

  In Savajun, since the raiders who had captured me were already aware that I could speak their language and I could no longer avoid questions about that, I narrated to the assembled what the ranchers at Izzy’s saloon in Bluegarden had told me about the fate of Fairhollow and its people.

  “I want to liberate them,” I said. “And… er… rid the world of him.”

  “How will you do that?” Chief Buffalo Rider asked me.

  “With my sword, my magic, and my horse,” I said. I wanted to make it clear to them that Theo was a vital part of the equation. Hopefully the chief would decree that he be given back to me.

  “How do you know our tongue?” he asked.

  That question kept coming up. On the one hand, it was inconvenient trying to avoid mentioning Vera. On the other hand, if I hadn’t been able to speak Savajun, the raiders might never have paused to chat with me about my sorcerer-killing ambitions before they killed me in my sleep and stole all my shit.

  “Trading with your people,” I said.

  He stared at me for a long minute. Then he asked, “Strange warrior, is your heart true?”

  I didn’t know how I was supposed to answer that, truthfully or otherwise. I wasn’t even really sure what the question meant. I guessed any knight would have answered yes. And any bandit, unless he was pretending not to be a bandit, would have answered no. But I was something in between. I was true to my own code, though: I’d kill anyone or anything for money, I needed to get paid up front, and I always left town right after. Or at least, right after I was done with whichever local beauty offered me herself as an extra reward.

&
nbsp; “Yes,” I said finally.

  The chief just stared at me without acknowledging that answer for another minute, and I wondered if that meant he thought I was lying. I didn’t even know whether I was lying, since I currently was acting a bit outside of the parameters of code number two.

  Then he directed the raiders who had brought me in. “Take him to Walks with Spirits and let him be tested to see if his heart is true.”

  I didn’t know if I liked the sound of that. Possibly, this Walks with Spirits character just wanted to have a nice cozy chat and get to know me over a cup of tea. Equally possibly, Walks with Spirits was currently sharpening a rusty knife with the intention of carving my heart out of my chest and diligently inspecting the organ quality.

  I didn’t have any chance to ask the chief to clarify the plan though, because as soon as he said that, the raiders pulled me out by the rope around my wrists. As we left the room, I saw one of the chief’s women stretch like a cat and yawn.

  On the way out, I passed Theo again and managed to raise my bound hands to give him a pat on the rump as we walked by. He whipped his head around to see who had touched him, and his ears flicked when he saw that it was me. His eyes were wide and fearful, and his mouth looked angry. I didn’t know any other horse whose mouth could look angry, but Theo’s could.

  Not too much longer, my friend, I thought and willed him to understand. The Savajuns didn’t seem overtly hostile anymore. Palefaces, especially armed ones, in their neck of the woods were a threat, but not as much of a threat, it seemed, as this dark sorcerer who liked to call himself Lord Gorander.

  The raiders led me over to another log house, this one smaller and towards the edge of the settlement. Gray smoke rose high into the sky from the chimney. Inside, the rafters were hung with herbs and charms carved from bone. The walls were hung with skins that had charcoal designs etched in them, some of them seemed to represent people and animals or constellations, but others were symbols that I couldn’t decipher at all.

  At the far end of the small room, there was an old woman standing by the fire and tending to the cauldron that was hung over it. Her hair was white, no longer black, and braided in one long, wispy braid that hung down her hunched back. Then when she heard us enter, she turned, and I saw that her entire face was etched with runes.

  She was the tribe’s sorceress.

  “Get out,” she said to the raiders who had accompanied me in, and they quickly let go of my rope and backed out, presumably to take up guard positions right outside the log house.

  That left me alone inside the dim, smoky, herbal-smelling room with the old sorceress.

  “Good health to you, Grandmother,” I said in Savajun.

  She was the only one who didn’t blink at my use of her language.

  “Come here,” she said.

  I walked up to her, and she reached up and took my chin in one of her weathered hands and squinted at my face. I didn’t know what she was looking for exactly, but somehow I didn’t think my beard interested her as much as it had the other women of the village.

  After she had evidently completed her inspection to her satisfaction, she drew a knife from the robe of skins that she wore, took hold of one of my wrists to raise up my bound hands, and slashed through the rope.

  “Thank you for your trust,” I said.

  “I do not trust you, but I do not fear you,” she replied. She gestured at the dirt floor, just as a lady might gesture politely at the best chair in the house. “Sit.”

  I sat.

  She brought over a tub of water. It shimmered strangely almost as if there was oil on the surface. Or as if it had a flowing current, or some creature lurked beneath the surface, although it was transparent, and you could tell that there was nothing inside the tub except for the liquid itself. She set down this tub in front of me.

  Then as I blinked at her, unsure what to do next, she started chanting under her breath and making signs with her fingers over my head. I didn’t understand any of the words she was speaking. It wasn’t the Savajun common tongue, but something else, something more arcane, probably derived from the same traditions that had created the most secret of the runes tattooed on Vera’s body. I hoped she didn’t intend to turn me into a toad. If Vera were there, she would have been able to recognize the woman’s intentions and explain the rite to me.

  There was something hypnotic about the guttural sounds that the aged sorceress was making. The thoughts in my head gradually quieted, and I could feel myself starting to slide into a bit of a trance as I listened to her chanting and even stopped wondering what it meant. I did wonder a bit if that was the real purpose. Did she want me docile and unprepared for when she stabbed me with that knife of hers? Surely the warriors wouldn’t assign their dirty work to a little old lady. Well, regardless, she’d find that even if my mind was lulled by her chant, my reflexes weren’t asleep. And that I wasn’t above killing an old woman. Not if the price was right, and certainly not if it was a matter of self-defense.

  Then suddenly she reached into the tub and with a flick of her fingers, she splashed some of the water across my face. I thought maybe she’d thought that I was dozing off and decided she needed to wake me back up, but then I decided that it was probably a part of whatever rite she was trying to perform as she abruptly stopped chanting and instructed me,

  “Look into the water.”

  I looked, but all I could see was my reflection.

  The old woman came up behind me to stare into the water. Her reflection didn’t join mine though, it was just a wavering version of my face isolated in the tub.

  I don’t know what she saw, but it must have been significantly more interesting than what I saw, because she continued to stare for about three or four minutes straight while I started to run out of patience and considered interrupting her. And if she had just wanted to admire my face, well then the real version with full detail was right there for the gazing.

  Then she stepped out from behind me, knelt on the opposite side of the tub, and very solemnly stirred the water’s surface twice clockwise with her finger. My reflection was scattered and then vanished altogether.

  Walks with Spirits pushed the tub aside. Then she stared straight into my eyes and said,

  “Prince Casifer of Delorne. You have wandered far from home.”

  I was speechless.

  The old woman’s tattooed face crinkled into a smile.

  “The west is my home now,” I answered finally. I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of asking how it was possible that she could have known that.

  “You have no home,” she retorted. “Not anymore, and not yet. Maybe not ever. Unless they find you.”

  I didn’t know how to reply. Whatever scrying art she’d just used was different from anything I had seen Vera do. Sorcerers and sorceresses had a more versatile range of abilities than natural magic users did, but they still all had their individual specialties. Vera’s two areas of expertise tended to be glamors and weaponry.

  And if Walks with Spirits had seen into my past, what else had she seen? Surely she knew about my current occupation as a sellsword. My intentions to raid the sorcerer’s treasures and hopefully collect payment from the people that I would free from his clutches. That my motives were straightforward and honest in their own way, but far from selfless and noble. Surely she knew that I wasn’t the kind of hero that Savajuns would revere. I was just another frontiersman out to make a living.

  I wondered if the sorceress had seen Vera, too. I wondered if Walks with Spirits had always accepted the role that Savajun tribes assigned to their sorcerers, or if she had ever resented it. Outsiders they were, as distrusted and maligned as they were respected and relied upon. The sheepdogs that guarded the flock, but also regarded as being defective and suspect for not being sheep themselves.

  “But your heart is true,” the old Savajun woman stated. Her words broke me out of my thoughts. I stared at her with a puzzled expression on my face. I still wasn’t sure w
hat she had even meant by that, and whether it was an accurate judgment, but somehow it felt good when she said it.

  “So you’ll tell them to let me and my horse go?” I asked.

  “That is not my decision to make,” she said. “I cannot see into the future. I don’t know what the outcome will be if we let you go. But I know that you mean to do what you say you will and try to kill the dark sorcerer.”

  “I’m not… the same person that I have been in the past,” I said hesitantly. “I don’t know what you saw, but… ”

  “I saw everything that I needed to see,” she said. “I don’t know whether you are the person destined to defeat Gorander, but you have a better chance than any of our warriors do. And I will improve that chance.”

  Before I could ask how, she went over to the cauldron that she had been stirring when I walked in, ladled some of the glop into a small wooden bowl, and handed me the bowl.

  I looked down at the bowl, and the scent of its contents wafted into my face and I cannot say that the prospect was very appealing. But under the circumstances, I felt that the only sensible thing to do was drink it, so I did. It tasted like rancid meat and seaweed and ashes in my mouth, but I forced myself to swallow.

  I felt an abrupt urge to vomit, but didn’t. Then my insides twisted, my vision started to fade, and as if from a distance I observed my body toppling over onto the ground. I felt a sensation of floating. Then my consciousness winked out.

  When I woke up, I was sweaty and panting as if I had just run a great distance, and I felt desperately thirsty. I could see cloves of garlic and some kind of ugly purple flower that I didn’t recognize dangling a few feet above my head. I had no idea where I was.

  Then a weathered hand with strange designs inked onto it reached out and set a wooden cup of clear water to my lips, and I remembered the exchange that had preceded my blackout.