King Callie: Callie's Saga, Book One (6 page)

“Your chief hasn’t the stomach to watch his champion be slaughtered,” he said, seething with anger. “Let he who fights me step forward. Show me my enemy!”

Kells decided it was time. He stood up, slowly, and watched Valric clench his jaw. The Prince stared hate at him as Kells stepped over the rope, and into the kalwa. “You?” Valric said, surprised – disgusted, even. “They have a horrid sense of humor.”

“It’s worse than you think, your Highness,” Kells said, calmly, as he stretched an arm across his chest; then, the other. The wind blew stronger, and the acrid smells of home filled Kells’ nose. “Far, far worse.” He rolled his neck around, until he heard the cracks. Even with the wind, he still felt the sun beating down on his back. He wondered what the weapons would be – probably the long-blade, the laskat, if anything. Something Valric would have little experience with.

“You can’t fight me,” the Prince said, incredulous – but nervous, all the same. Kells saw it in Valric’s posture; there was none of his easy, confident gait. The Prince’s shoulders were hunched forward, and his body was tense; he watched Kells with wary eyes. “What are they playing at?”

“I have to fight you,” Kells said, even-voiced, low, and full of regret. “They’re my people. And as much as they want you dead, they want to see me struggle.”

“Struggle?” Valric said, shaking his head, barely stifling his laughter. “There won’t be a struggle. I’ll cut you end from end, Kells. I don’t care if your children grow up fatherless; my father will live, and I’ll be there to see it.”

So you think
, Kells told himself. He looked to the side, where two men waited with the sweeping, curved laskats - the blades the Erimeni were best known for. Kells gave the men a nod, and the laskats were tossed into the square, mere feet away from where he and Valric stood. Both landed staggered; one was closer to Valric, and a momentary advantage. Kells glanced back at the men, who wore wicked grins. It was on purpose, then; they wished to test the reputation of a son of Joral. “If you live, your highness,” Kells said, “Remember to listen if a man shares his wisdom. If you had, we’d all have lived.”

For all his grand-standing, a brief flash of doubt clouded Valric’s expression. The Prince took a step closer to the sword, never letting his eyes fall from Kells; Kells mirrored his move, from the opposite end of the square. A second later, Valric leapt forward, and snatched the sword from the ground. Kells darted to the left, and barely dodged the first of Valric’s attacks – the prince dropped to his opposite knee, and brought the blade upward for a slice that missed. The crowd cheered, but it hardly made a difference to Kells. Valric was a poor hand with an unknown blade, but he still had one. Kells had nothing.

Valric gripped the laskat’s handle with his other hand, came up to his feet, and brought the blade down at an angle; Kells saw it coming, and stepped backward with his left foot, and tilted his body such that the blade passed him, towards the ground. With his free foot, Kells threw a swift kick into Valric’s sides, sending him staggering; it cleared the path to his own laskat, and Kells took the advantage while he had it.

Kells ran to the sword, legs pumping, but not fast enough; he heard Valric shout, and felt the bite of steel across his back. His body arched backward, and he clenched his teeth; the pain was sharp, and fresh. But he pushed on. He couldn’t let that be the end of it – not when his sword was so close at hand. Sharp agony flashed across his shoulder blades as he ran two more steps, and ducked down to pick up the sword; Kells saw movement from the corner of his eye, and rolled out of the way, dodging a stab. He winced as small grains of dust found their way into the wound; even the earth itself was against him.

Kells quickly scrambled to his feet, and breathed a little harder. Kells hadn’t underestimated Valric in the least; the Prince was young, he was aggressive, and his reflexes were excellent. Valric was on his feet again, and held the sword a bit higher than he should have, close to the hilt; a crucial mistake. He’d assumed it was like a Barrish blade. But Erimeni blades were meant to be held close to the end of the handle. It wouldn’t matter much, without one to counter it, but that was the trick; Valric wouldn’t give up the advantage easily.
I’ll have to trick him into it
, Kells thought.

“They want a show, you know,” Kells said, as he started to circle to his right – to see how quickly Valric would block him from the laskat that was still lodged into the earth. “It’s not often they find someone stupid enough to draw a child’s blood.” He saw Valric’s steps quicken to intercept him, and the flash of the blade; he stepped back, and dodged it. The wind picked up around them; it howled, and tousled Valric’s hair like a thousand brown banners.

“I don’t care about shows,” Valric said, as he thrust his sword ahead, grazing Kells’ gut – and in the process, doing exactly what Kells wanted him to do. Kells grabbed and pulled on Valric’s arm, yanking the Prince off-balance, and delivered a sharp knee to the Prince’s stomach; it wasn’t high enough to hit the best spot, right below the ribs, but it was enough to loosen Valric’s grip on his sword. Kells followed it up with an elbow to the Prince’s upper back, quick and fierce. It flattened Valric, and sent him to the ground; the sword dropped, and fell inches away.

The Erimeni around Kells cheered at the display, and his heart thrummed with excitement. Here was the chance for the killing stroke; all he needed to do was kick Valric in the head, take the sword, and part him at the neck – or through the back, piercing his heart through the ribs – and yet, Kells resisted. Something inside him stayed his hand. It wasn’t the want for a show; he hadn’t won yet. And it’d been so long since he’d fought between the kelwa’s corners.

Kells walked away from the fallen Valric, towards the laskat that had fallen free of Valric’s hands. He ignored the boos that came at him, from all corners. They wanted blood. They would get it, but not yet. He stepped over the laskat, turned around, and wedged a toe under the handle; he kicked it up into the air, and it fell just inches shy of Valric’s hands. “I don’t care for shows, either,” Kells said, as he watched Valric struggle to get up. First the right leg, then the left; the Prince had a dazed look in his eye. “I want to kill you on your feet, with your sword in hand. So take it.”

“Thank you, for your foolishness,” Valric hissed, as he finally lifted himself up of the ground. Kells walked over to the other laskat - the one lodged in the dirt - and pulled it out. It was well-balanced, and good steel; he swung it through the air, and was satisfied. It would cut nicely.

“Yom watch over me,” Kells said, as he lowered his hands on the sword’s handle, brought the blade down towards his hip, and stepped into a laskat stance he hadn’t needed in a decade - Bitter Wind. His left leg was forward, his right leg drawn back, and he rested his left hand on the pommel of the blade. He nodded to the laskat on the ground. “When you’re ready, Highness.”

Valric bent down, and picked up his sword; he held it high, again, near the hilt, as if it were a Barrish great-sword.
First mistake,
Kells thought. Valric said nothing, at first, but he darted forward, to test Kells; nothing happened. Kells stood firm, and his sword didn’t budge. It waited. Valric moved to the right, and circled Kells, who kept his sword still and patient – waiting for the right moment. Valric attacked suddenly, and flashed forward with a great downward chop; Kells’ blade was there to meet it, but he didn’t provide full resistance. He simply blocked it, and let the blade slide down. It scored his shoulder on the way, but it was a wound Kells was willing to live with. He needed to, for his next maneuver to work.

As Valric’s blade slid down the length of Kells’ sword, and toward the ground, Kells twirled around, and brought his laskat as close to his body as he could, for mere seconds; then he opened his grip, and lashed his arms out as he spun. By the time Valric could react, the sword sliced through the air, and bit at the Prince’s neck. It cut deep enough for blood, but not enough to kill.

Valric’s left hand flew to his neck, to cover it; his face registered shock. He tried to swing the long blade with one hand, but Kells capitalized on that moment of weakness; the Erimeni blade ducked under the wild strike, and pierced Valric’s chest. The young prince gasped; Kells drew out his sword and plunged it into Valric’s stomach. “You should have listened,” Kells said, as the Prince’s body gave out on him; the strength escaped his royal legs, and he fell to the dirt with a blade in his gut, surprised beyond measure.

“No,” Valric simply said, panicked and wild-eyed, speaking the word over and over, red bubbling out of his mouth until at last he said nothing. Kells pulled his soaked blade free from Valric’s chest, and knelt down to the Prince’s body. He made the sign of the Circle, and whispered a brief prayer to Yom. “May your ancestors look more kindly on you,” Kells muttered, “And may you have a few thousand years to think on what you’ve done.”

As may I
, Kells thought, as he got to his feet. He turned to look at the fourth side, where his soldiers sat; the Chief had joined them, and had taken his place on his throne of broken spears. He wore a delighted expression as he clapped for Kells. The imprisoned soldiers, however, glared at their captain. He knew well enough what their eyes held for him; for the time being, he ignored it.

“Well fought, mixed man,” the Chief said, in Erimeni, with a broad smile full of browned teeth, “I knew you still had the four virtues in your heart. That,” he said, gesturing proudly to Valric’s fallen body, “Was renmit beyond measure. Your people are very proud of you.”

“Half of them are, and I thank them,” Kells replied, subdued. “The other half will not be, but they are my concern. Not yours, Chief.” Kells looked around for Valric’s things, and didn’t see them; it struck him as odd. “What of the gift-bearers?” he asked.

The Chief shouted in Erimeni, and three young men came running; Kells’ heart ached lightly as he saw them bearing Valric’s things – his armor, his sword, and his dagger. Only one was fit for a Chief; the others would be returned to his family. The three young men came to a stop in front of Kells, and faced him. He looked at each of the items for a time, before selecting the dagger – a gold-encrusted hilt, featuring polished emeralds and a bear’s head on the pommel. He took it up, bent both knees before the Chief, and offered it to him.

“I give this gift as a token of the blood I’ve shed for you, and our friendship,” Kells said. “Keep it, and only let me reclaim it if I need you to shed blood for our children.”

The Chief smiled, and accepted the knife with a bowed head. “My tent is always open to you, friend,” he said, finishing the ritual. “I look forward to fighting alongside you, someday.” Kells knew, however, that there was one more favor he needed to ask.

“Before we leave,” Kells said, “I will need a pouch of Naeb’s Coil, like your children were picking. The prince needed it to cure his father’s ailments.” The anxiety burned in his gut; he couldn’t leave without the flower. The Prince was dead, but if Valric was right, the King needed to live.

The Chief’s brows furrowed. “Naeb’s Coil?” he asked, confused. “How?”

Kells was momentarily stunned. He had expected the chief to say
yes
, or perhaps
why
… but
how
was disconcerting. “What do you mean?” Kells asked.

“When we find it, we powder it, boil it with water, and drink it before a difficult sayta,” the Chief said, using the Erimeni word for
task
, that also meant
kill
. “For luck, and for speed.” The Chief shook his head, and raised his eyebrows. “It has never cured any ailment I know of, except for difficult tasks. You never drank it, in your Father’s tribe?”

The words had gutted him in a way that he hadn’t thought possible. “No,” he said, quietly; he was no small man, but it felt as if he was shrinking. His eyes darted away from the Chief, and looked down at Valric’s armor, still laying in one boy’s arms. “We’d never seen it.” His Father’s tribe had spent time in south, near the Ariaci border of the Freelands - before they were absorbed in a war between tribes, and his father left them for guard’s work in Barra. They took new names with their new lives; Joral became Gael. Rawa became Kells. And in all his time in his father’s tribe, he had never laid eyes on the plant, or even heard its name.

“It’s uncommon, with these past winters…” the Chief said, before stopping; his tone changed, and he spoke to Kells in a gentler voice. “Are you feeling isbaht, friend?” he asked, using a word known to Kells, but until then, poorly understood; misery, wrapped in abominable, hopeless failure.

“Yes,” Kells said, dejected, staring at his prince’s armor, focused on the relief of a bear that was molded into the chest. “A great deal of it.”

The Prince’s body was clothed again in his armor, and loaded onto the back of Kells’ horse; the guards were given their armor back, and their swords, but told not to draw them again. Looped around the hilts were small red cords. As a soldier began to tug it off, Kells shouted at him, wide-eyed. “Don’t! Not yet!” he said. The soldier stopped, to stare at him.

“It’s the sign of an oath of friendship,” Kells said. “Keep it on until we reach our borders, at least. If we find another tribe on the way home, they’ll give us safe passage.”

The soldier stared at him harder. “Is that the truth?” he asked, bitter. “Or are you going to slit my throat, too?”

Kells’s hands snapped outward, and gripped the soldier by the front of his armor. “He died, or we all died,” Kells said, as his knuckles grew white. “Remember that. And burn it into your mind that the flower we came all this way to find was worthless.”