The Path of the Sword (11 page)

Flash!

His father sagged into the arms of the laughing soldiers and let out a rattling exhalation. A red rose bloomed around the hilt of the sword that protruded from his father's usually spotless white apron. Even as they laughed, they released him, dumping him to the ground like garbage. Jurel bit his lip, squeezed his eyes shut. He had promised, after all, to be a good boy. To be quiet no matter what.

Flash!

The two worlds collided like titans at war, melding past and present, fusing them so he could no longer tell the difference. He was running through grasses that were verdant and pungent with the new spring, made bright by the afternoon sun, or perhaps he ran down a cobbled street in the darkness of night, through billowing walls of smoke and past body-shaped lumps on the ground.

He hurdled the rough wooden fence that snaked its way around Galbin's farm, a fence that could
also have been a burning cart, its driver leaning back and staring at the sky, with two shafts sticking out
of his chest.

He saw the main barn where the livestock was kept, solid and tidy, the way Galbin liked things. He saw the general store that Gram frequented for supplies, its windows broken, its door missing so it looked like a hungry demon watched him pass.

There were farmers herding chickens back to the coop securing them before the end of the day, there were soldiers hacking and slashing.

He careened past Galbin's house, certain he heard Daved call out, certain that at any second the dirty men with nasty swords would catch him and cut him, club him, kill him.

Near the well or maybe it was the horse trough outside the tavern, he stumbled, lost his footing. Distant pain flared in his hands and knees as he rolled and slid to a stop. The ringing bells were torturing him, demanding that he...that he...
what?
That he what? What was he supposed to do?

He screamed. The world rolled and hiccuped around him like a ship on stormy seas. He stared at the sun of that beautiful spring day and he stared at the smoke shrouded moon of that terrible autumn night. He stared and he screamed an animal scream. If his senses had not deserted him, he would have seen the terror in Daved's face.

Pain wracked him, roared through him like molten lava, engulfing him and searing everything away, distilling him until all that remained was terror and sorrow.

He saw a familiar figure then, appearing out of the darkness like the silhouette of an angel. A figure that was both soldier and farmer. The figure knelt beside him and gathered him up gently in strong arms. Was that someone calling to him? He could have sworn that someone called his name. But how could he hear it? His hands were covering his ears. Could they not hear the bells that sounded like a hundred deranged blacksmiths going wild with their hammers?

He saw the sun wavering like it was under water. Or maybe he was the one looking up from his drowning death. He saw silhouettes, like specters, surround him, close in, stifling. He saw his father, terror-stricken, anxious. He saw...he saw...

He saw blackness.

Chapter 9

The still air was arid under the punishing sun. It was so dry that puffs of dust kicked up by his horse hung in the air like smoke, and coated his hair so that it seemed light blond instead of its usual ashy gray. A fine layer of the stuff covered the robe over his thin figure—some might have called him emaciated, though they would be quickly disillusioned if they saw the wiry muscle underneath. It tickled his nose, made him sneeze. It could have been worse he supposed. If the sun were not so scorching, his sweat would not dissipate so quickly, leeched from his skin by air that seemed as thirsty as he was. Instead of a fine layer of dust, he could have been covered in salty, stinking mud. It could have been worse, but it was bad enough.

The grasses along the side of the road were yellow, parched and brittle as baled hay. The trees were wilted so they looked sad, run down by the heat, and the ground ahead was shimmering like an ocean ahead of him instead of more dust.

He cursed himself for an old fool, though he did it silently; even if he'd had the spit for it, he did not have the energy to speak, or even to grumble. His thighs and back ached and his shoulders were slumped in imitation of the trees. What in blazes was he doing out here in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the worst drought he could remember? His horse was not in much better shape. The poor old girl was so spent, her nose nearly dragged along the ground and her steps were slow and deliberate as if each one was a labor.

Even as he felt sorry for himself, so too was there a sense of excitement. It was like an over-taut lute string hummed deep in his bones. Dulled by the oppressive heat certainly, but there nonetheless. Something drew him this way. Something fathomless. Something intangible. He knew the feeling. It was what he had dedicated his life to. This feeling of pulling, a vague indescribable longing, had taken him before and each time he had approached with the same sense of excitement.

Of course, he had been wrong those previous times. It had never panned out; he never found the one he sought. But somehow, this time was different. There was an underlying certainty that he had not felt before, like an achy joint that announced the imminent arrival of a storm.

So he rode his weary horse, somewhere in the middle of the vast kingdom of plains and forests that was Threimes, and he set his crystal blue eyes, clouded from the heat, to the dusty, shimmering road ahead, and taking a sip from his nearly empty water skin, he smiled.

Chapter 10

The farm wallowed in the blistering heat of drought, seeming to hunker down on itself like an injured animal in the dust. The fields that so often rang with the gleeful peals of the children's laughter were silent. No one played in the rough yellow grasses; it was too harsh on their skins, and the sun was too unforgiving to stay out long unprotected, and protection came at a cost: more layers, more heat. Even the pond had receded noticeably. Where before the water was ringed with a thin track of mud and emerald grasses, now there were several feet of baked, cracked dirt, covered in sere, skeletal weeds and furry gray scum so the pond seemed ringed by a feverish infection.

The crops had suffered in kind, scorched by the raging inferno from above, and they were beginning to wither away to dust in the fields. Galbin and Daved had reacted with their usual pragmatism. The smith and the carpenter had been conscripted to build stacks of buckets to supplement those that were excavated from the mounds of storage in the smaller barns and a score of hands, armed with these buckets were making endless round trips from the pond to the starving crops. Another score of men were digging out the irrigation trenches, unused for years, that ran from the pond to the fields.

So it was that Jurel found himself endlessly trudging the beaten path from field to water and back, feeling no small amount of empathy for the plight of a pig roasting over a fire. But, as little as he liked his bucket carrying duties, he understood Daved's reasoning for setting him to the task.

He was big for his age due largely to a growth spurt that had started just the last autumn. So big in fact, that if a stranger had seen him, he might have been mistaken for a grown man even though he was still a boy of twelve. His father had replaced his wardrobe three times since he had begun growing like a well watered weed and even so, his newest shirts, barely a month old, failed to cover his wrists anymore. Thankfully his wardrobe was humble and did not cost very much but Daved had begun griping incessantly that if he did not stop growing, they would have to eat the clothes to keep from starving.

His incongruous size made the task of carrying buckets quite sensible and as much as he disliked it, he trudged his payload of four full buckets tied to a pole across his shoulders—bare chested; the issue of his shrinking sleeves was not an issue that day—toward the fields for what felt like the thousandth time since sunrise while his shoulders burned under the hellfire. His throat burned as badly as his shoulders; he was sweating profusely but the air was so arid that water seemed to leap from his skin.

The irony was not lost on him and he smiled sourly, wryly, with cracking lips. Here he was, parched and burning up, carrying four buckets of sweet, sweet water and he could not drink. Why? Because it would be dumped on the ground. He reminded himself again for what must have been the thousandth time since sunrise (at least once per trip, it seemed) that it could have been worse. At least he was not digging trenches.

His destination was a check point of sorts, a predetermined spot where the carriers left their laden buckets in one line and picked up empties from another. Carefully, he set down his precious cargo and straightened with a grunt. He had been making these trips since right after breakfast and his back ached fiercely. Stretching out the kinks with a groan, he scanned the dusty fields where the men hunched miserably over, emptying buckets along the lines of crops, scuttling here and there, bent over like the Dwarfenn of ancient stories who worked their stone. Darren and Trig were among them, and even Wag was out there somewhere; everyone had been conscripted in the effort to avert the disaster of the drought.

With a new pole and four empty buckets slung over his shoulder, he plodded back the way he had come. With nothing else to occupy his thoughts—except the monotonous walk, back and forth, back and forth—he thought of his friends. Though perhaps, he mused with a pang of regret that
friend
might be a little strong a word these days. Ever since that stupid fight a couple of years back when those stupid boys from the other stupid farm had given his friends a good thumping. That was when it happened. They never kept him from joining them in their games but they also never called on him anymore. When he did join them, they treated him politely like he was a house guest that was right on the verge of overstaying his welcome. He kicked a stone, sending it skittering across the ground and scowled. Valik, of course, only treated him worse. Oh, not so overtly as before to be sure. Galbin had commanded Valik to leave him be and when Galbin watched, Valik was nothing if not coolly polite. As soon as Galbin turned his back—even for a heartbeat—Valik took every opportunity to torment him, right down to a new nickname: the crazy coward. Not particularly imaginative but somehow it stuck. The worst of it was that though Trig and Darren never cheered Valik on, they did nothing to defend him anymore.

At least they no longer saw the other boys anymore. After berating them for their extreme lack of good sense, Galbin and Daved had gone to the neighboring farm and apparently had a chat with the boys's fathers. After the boys had been escorted—dragged by their ears—to Galbin's farm and had apologized for their behavior, a gruff, surly, and completely unconvincing performance, Jurel had never seen them at the pond again. Indeed, he had never seen them anywhere. That was something at least.

Of the fight itself, Jurel remembered only fragments, like looking at himself in the shards of a shattered mirror, and he was pretty certain that he preferred to keep it that way. It had been weeks before he was able to eat a decent meal and months for him to stop jumping at every little noise like a spooked horse. As he shuffled his way along the sun-parched dust, he recoiled from thinking too strongly of that day. The terror was still there, lurking like a troll, ready to leap out and devour him if he took a step onto that bridge, though for the life of him, he could not seem to recall exactly what caused that terror. All that was left was the impression of running for his life.

Immersed in gloomy thought, he decided to detour from the direct route along the fence line in
favor of a trek through the woods slightly north. Following the newly re-excavated trench, he made his way to the tree line and heaved an immense sigh of relief at the first touch of shade. The heat was still
stifling, grinding at him until he thought he might join the dust at his feet, but at least the relentless sun was off his back.

Setting foot on a game trail, he slowed, letting the scene unfold before him, letting the peacefulness wash over him and wipe away his dark mood. The woods were old, ancient. Great oaks, so wide around their boles that he would not be able to reach half way around, towered above him, surrounding him like giants from another era, their branches intertwining and meshing so that the forest seemed to have an endless green blanket to protect the fragile life on the ground. Shafts of sunlight penetrated small gaps in the canopy dappling the underbrush, and motes of dust and pollen danced and sparkled in the golden bars like pixies. As he walked, his feet snapped twigs and rustled the dry leaves left over from past autumns and it seemed that he could smell the long gone smells of damp pre-winter in the musty, musky dryness, mixed in with the scent of sweet sap and of the tiny wildflowers that spotted the ground polka-dot white and blue. Birdsong, robins and sparrows, jays and even a cardinal, accompanied the chitter-skitter of squirrels calling to each other, perhaps to stake their individual claims on some bountiful cache of nuts or a particularly homey hole in one of the trees. Combined, it was a natural symphony that eased and comforted him, and he felt renewed. It was not as soothing as a cup of cold water, but it helped.

Too soon, he began to hear other sounds. Sounds that were discordant, that went contrary to the natural order of the tranquil woodland. Shovels rasped into dirt, and men called to each other. One fellow was singing a song, though not well and even if Jurel had wanted to try, he could never have named it. Frankly, his song sounded more like the grunts of a wounded goat. Peering ahead through a break in the trees, he caught a glimpse of farmhands digging in the trench, trying to coax the all-important pond water to the crops more quickly than a few men carrying buckets ever could. Galbin was there hard at work with his own spade and when he caught sight of Jurel approaching, he smiled.