The Path of the Sword (29 page)

Slowly, he pulled out his possessions and laid them all out on his cot. When he was finished, he stared at the meager pile: a few articles of clothing, a smooth rock with colorful stria he had picked up at the pond one day when he was twelve, and the small purse Galbin had given him still containing a couple of silver pieces and a few coppers, were all he had to remind him of his life up to that point. He thought about the sword still hidden under his mattress and decided that, after the previous night, he wanted nothing more to do with it. He left it where it was.

Meager pile though it was, he could not carry it all in his hands.

“
Aye, lad,” Daved responded to Jurel's question without looking up from his writing. “I've still got my pack from my army days. It's under my cot. Use that.”

After finding the sack, Jurel hastily stuffed all of his things inside, and cinched it shut with the drawstring. Perhaps worse than the pathetic sight of how little he owned was how little what he owned weighed. It was all he had. No choice for it but to make do with it and move on.

Tossing the feather light bag to the bottom of the ladder, he jumped down and stood staring at the main room, the living space, the place where he had for all intents and purposes grown up under the strict eye of Daved Histane. Like the loft, he was certain that he would never again see this room. Wistfully, incongruously, he recalled the episode with the frog that had jumped out of his pocket—how old had he been? Eight? Nine? It had jumped right up on the table while Jurel frantically tried to catch the slippery little creature, and right into Daved's bowl of soup. Jurel had thought it was quite a funny thing but Daved had been less than impressed.

Setting down his pencil, Daved looked up at Jurel to see him staring off in the distance. He folded his little piece of paper carefully and rose to face his son. “Well, lad. Are you almost ready?” He asked unenthusiastically. Snapping out of his daydream, Jurel focused on his father.

“
I'm sorry father,” he muttered sheepishly. “I was lost there for a moment. What did you say?” Daved rolled his eyes but his voice was more gentle when he asked again.

“
I asked if you were ready. Do you have everything?” He indicated the pack Jurel had dropped to the floor. Jurel shrugged with a glance at the pathetic little lump of burlap on the floor.

“
I suppose I do.”

Daved eyed the sack and, unsatisfied, scanned the room around them. “Where's your sword?” He asked suspiciously.

Jurel looked about as if surprised. “Gosh, father. I don't know. I don't see it anywhere,” he responded with far too much feigned innocence.

Daved's glare brought a small smile to Jurel's face until Daved snorted disdainfully.

“
Boy, you think that everyone you meet'll want to be your friend? There are people who, believe it or not, will accost someone like you just because you look helpless. Take your sword. You've not let me teach you much more than the very basics of swordcraft but just having it might make the difference. I don't want to find out you're feeding the worms in some ditch.”

Jurel sighed. No choices, it seemed, were his to make.

“
Fine, father. I'll bring the bloody thing with me,” he grumbled, and went to fetch the wretched thing from its hiding spot.

When he returned, he gazed at Daved. The time to leave was upon him, but he could not. He had to say something to his father, but for the life of him, he could not figure out what it was. So he stared stupidly, sorrowfully at the man he called father and the only thing that came to his throat was a lump. Daved, for his part, did not say anything either, but also stood staring at his son. Jurel thought back on all he knew of this man before him. Hard as oak, as quick to anger as a cornered badger, this man had taken care of him, giving up everything he had in his life so that Jurel could be happy—or at least safe. He knew that Daved truly considered him his son. And he knew he loved him.

It was Daved who finally broke the long, uncomfortable silence. With a harrumph, he picked up two items from the table behind him: one was a purse that jingled as he handed it to Jurel. It contained a few silver pieces interspersed with a handful of coppers. The other was the piece of parchment he had been writing on, neatly folded and with one word carefully printed on the back. Jurel gaped as he scrutinized the word, for he saw in Daved's careful block letters, 'KURIN'.

“
I don't understand. Kurin?”

“
Aye,” Daved chuckled sourly. “I don't much like him, but he's the only living soul you know outside this farm. Take that to him in Tack Town and perhaps he'll be able to give you aid.”

Jurel carefully deposited the paper in his shirt pocket, oddly comforted by it. As Daved had always done, he gave Jurel a sense of direction, something to aim for. He would go to Tack Town and see Kurin. He did not think of what would come after. Such things mattered not one whit. It would have been like closing the barn door before the horse was home. Reaching under the table, Daved produced one more package: wax paper, folded neatly, wrapped a small bundle.

“
Take this too, lad,” Daved ordered. “You'll need something to eat while you're on the road.”

“
Thank you father. I...” And there he stopped for he could not continue. The lump in his throat grew and he felt he must explode from the pressure. Daved gripped his son's massive shoulders, and wrapped him in a rough embrace.

“
I love you, boy. I'm proud of you,” Daved gruffed between choked tears of his own. “I expect you to take care of yourself and to remember your old man. Visit once in a while, will you?” He pushed Jurel away, glaring into his eyes to stress his command.

Jurel nodded, mumbling his promise yet in the back of his mind, he was unsure that he would ever fulfill that promise. Not while Valik owned the farm.

He threaded the sword through the rough leather thong that served for a belt and picked up his little bag. Thinking of one last thing that needed to be said, he turned to Daved.

“
Father, will you do one last thing for me?” Jurel asked, and when Daved nodded, he said, “Please tell Erin what I told you of my encounter with Valik last night. I would not want her to think ill of me. Tell her,” he faltered, “Tell her I'm sorry and I wish things could have been different.”

Daved said nothing, just nodded to his son.

“
I love you father. I'm sorry.”

With those last words, he turned from Daved and left the little timber cabin he had called home for so long, knowing somehow that he would never see it again, and stepped into the teeth of the cold morning air.

Chapter 21

He scanned the area around him, in part to firmly etch his last view of the farm in his memory and in part to see if anyone was about to waylay him as he skulked off like a thief in the night. The sun was out, reflecting from the fresh snow, giving everything a sharp edge like newly honed and polished blades. Through the glare, he saw no one. Satisfied, he went around the far side of Daved's cabin, the side away from the main house, slogging through the knee deep snow which crunched like semi-stale crackers at every laborious step, and worked his way toward the road leading to Tack Town.

He would have missed it completely if not for the borders created by the top of the fence that seemed to hover just a couple of hand spans over the white landscape and the dense, haunted forest; seldom traveled in the first place, no one had dared the road yet that day. His heart sank. He was strong, fit, a large man in the prime of his life, but the thought of pushing his way through deep snow for the better part of the day was not a pleasant one.

He trudged past Galbin's house, small in the distance at the end of the path and that too he etched firmly in his mind—Valik's now, but to him it would always be Galbin's. After that, he walked with his head down, not bothering to register any more of the sights that slowly flowed by shrouded by the mist of his hard breathing until an idea struck him. The trees marking the border of the primeval forest to the south of the road would have given some shelter from the storm. It was supposed to be a haunted place and dangerous. He had heard the stories often enough. If he walked just inside the tree line, would he be safe? He angled his way to the other side of the road where he could inspect the edge of the trees and found he was right. The snow looked much shallower under the dense web of branches. He continued to walk, deliberating as he searched the shadowed recesses under the roof of intertwined branches. The tales of ghosts and bogeymen were children's tales, he told himself. Tales for indolent evenings spent sitting at the fire and sipping warm milk. There would be no danger, especially if he kept within sight of the road and it would make his journey a hundred times less exhaustive. Deciding, he stepped between the trees with a mixture of relief and trepidation, into the much shallower snow and the deeper shadows. Only sinking to his ankles, he was able to pick up his pace.

From inside the trees, he found the forest to be less forbidding. It looked just like the wood he had played in as a child on the farm, only bigger, and after a mile or so his relief began to overshadow his fear. No evil things snatched at him, threatened him, or took him away—at least not yet. No horrible sights met his eyes and no horrible sounds assaulted his ears. As a matter of fact, the forest was winter-dead, silent save for the constant
crruuk, crruuk
of his steps. He spotted animal tracks: there a rabbit had hopped its way to where ever it was that rabbits went; up ahead, the feather-light padding of a winter fox had barely left a mark—probably hunting rabbit, Jurel surmised. Animals were not stupid. They knew where danger was and they knew how to avoid it. If animals walked this forest without fear, then it stood to reason that Jurel could as well. This was the train of thought he used to convince himself, and it was successful. Mostly.

Buoyed by his discovery, he walked and when midday came, he cleared snow from a log laying on the ground, and sat to eat the rations Daved had provided. There was not much. A roll, slathered in butter, a slab of turkey from the last night's feast, and an apple. No, not much at all for a man of Jurel's size, but at least he would not starve. He had not brought a water skin, but that did not bother him too much. There was plenty of fresh snow to slake his thirst.

It was perhaps that rest that saved his life.

Somewhere behind him, from the way he had come, he heard the familiar, faint sound of footfalls emanate between the spaces in the trees. His eyes snapped up, he scanned the path, following the trail of his own footsteps. The trees left little in the way of visibility but that sound, that was clear enough. Jurel wondered who was approaching. His instincts told him he did not really want to know.

Gathering himself, he resumed his walk, hoping to outdistance whoever it was. He cursed himself for a fool. Surely, it was just another traveler, he told himself, nothing to be concerned about, but a niggling doubt remained. The forest flowed past, a silent witness to his flight. Trees barred his way, trying to slow his every step and when he skirted them, they reached their wooden fingers out, snagging his coat, his hair, anything they could get a hold of. The white ground, already a treacherous foe for shouting evidence of his passage, tried to trip him, slip him up and dump him to the ground. Somewhere in the corner of his mind, in the dark recesses where anything was possible, especially all things superstitious and dangerous, children's stories taunted him with malicious, childlike glee.

I should have kept to the road.
I should not have come into this cursed wood.

No matter how hard he tried, how quickly he pushed himself, the sound of footsteps behind him got closer. Close enough, in fact, that he could hear them now over his own stumbling steps and rasping breaths.

“
Jurel!” a familiar, hearty voice, called out. “What's your hurry?”

Jurel staggered to a halt, shocked to recognize his pursuer. What was Merlit doing out here? An impure relief flooded him; he chided himself for his superstitious fears even if the reality did not seem much better. Jurel waited, scanning the trees, trying to catch sight of his pursuer. He wondered if he should hide. He did not believe for a heartbeat that Merlit was there for social pleasantries. When Merlit did step out from behind a tree, Jurel noticed his right hand was hidden in his coat.

“
What do you want?” Jurel asked.

“
Oh, nothing. I just want to talk,” Merlit responded mildly enough.

“
About what?” Stupid question. Jurel knew it as soon as it was out of his mouth. He tried to cover. “What does Valik want?”

Stepping toward him, Merlit smiled. It was a greasy smile. He had seen that kind of smile before, the kind of smile that a merchant paints on his face when he's trying to sell something rotten to an unsuspecting boob.

“
Valik? Nothing, really. Nothing. He just wants an apology. That's all.” He approached Jurel, still smiling, all friendly and casual.

“
Fine. He has it,” Jurel said. He backed up a step. His heart was hammering in his chest; something felt...wrong.

“
He'll be happy to hear that. Why don't we head back to the farm together and talk about it?”

“
I don't think so, Merlit. Just tell him that I'm terribly sorry for last night and I feel that I should leave the farm for my foolish behavior.”

Merlit's eyes flashed, indecipherable yet unpleasant.