An Army for Reur

Reur was back in Githengol, his hometown.

People packed the streets, a thousand strong, laughing and shoving against each other as the fair prepared itself for the day. Happily plump women in gaily colored clothes held baskets for their fresh produce as they chatted amiably to each other, faces red from giggles and round from joy. Straight-backed and clean-shaven men wore vests of brilliant colors and carried on the important conversations of wagering odds or knife purchases. No one was left out. No one was alone.

Yet Reur felt strangely distant. People wove by him as though ignoring him. No voices hailed him. While around him, as the gates opened and people swarmed in, the crowd jostled each other in a low hum of excitement. All elbows seemed to miss the Kalkoraean returned home. All comely bodies, brushing with no care to other bodies, seemed to find ways around him.

He would not be an explorer if he did not test against this trial, and so he approached one woman and, grasping her shoulder in a twist that sent fire up his arm and into his brain, he wheeled her about.

He stared into the face of Raven, which quickly dissolved into another person's.

He tried another woman. The same thing happened. He tried three more. They all vanished, into amorphous people. He turned, searching for the real Raven, telling himself she is here. His eyes caught a glimpse of spiky golden hair and his heart lifted, but when he touched this woman's shoulder, she turned into a strange man. He jerked his hand back, upset. He leapt to the top of the gate.

"Raven!" Reur called out, and no one turned.

"Raven!" he called again, watching the crowd. No one stopped to stare at him, but dark shapes formed at the edge of the crowd. The guards, he thought, keepers of the peace.

"Raven!" he called one more time, then the guards caught him.

"Reur," one of them said, shaking him. "Reur, wake up."

"I am awake!" he cried, as he sat bolt upright in the chilly wet swamp of the new land.

Tread stared at him, his face strangely white in the darkness. Reur stared back, his heartbeat slowing, his muscles relaxing, his whole body pushing fear from his system.

"Oh, name a god for me to swear to right now," he said.

"Vagal," Tread said. "You were shouting Raven's name. It's a wonder she didn't wake up."

"Oh, by Vagal, I dreamt I was home," he said. Tread's face was uncomprehending. "Home, back in Githengol on the island I came from. I dreamt no one welcomed me back, that everyone treated me like a stranger with a deathly disease. I dreamt ..." He hesitated.

He knew of Tread's strange feelings for their kidnaped raptor keeper. He though Mucker felt the same. Reur wasn't about to admit he had any feelings for her, but he could consider how him talking about dreams of her would make his friend jealous. He looked at Tread again. Concern painted the Totanbeni's face.

He does know, Reur thought. I shouted her name.

He said, "I dreamt Raven had been stolen from us." It was a poor lie, or a good interpretation. Either way, Tread's head turned to where the woman lay, snoring slightly louder than Mucker in the darkness.

The Totanbeni apprentice turned his head back. "You are afraid of our home," he said.

"No," Reur said. "You are taking me to your home."

Tread nodded. "Our talk of home reminds you of your home, so you dream of it. But you don't know how you will be received." The man crouched lower, strangely conspiratorial. "I tell you, you will be a hero among the Totanbeni! They will listen to your teachings. They will learn everything you wish to tell. And they will tell you everything about them. The Send, the Vagal, they were mere drops compared to the Totanbeni."

Reur kept his thoughts to himself. The Vagal were scary enough; the Send had confused him enough to offer himself in sacrifice. What strange challenge would await him in a civilization he knew through Tread and Mucker?

He clasped his companion's shoulder. "I am well now. We should sleep."

Tread reached out and touch him in turn. "Sleep. Tomorrow we reach the river."

Reur lay back down as Tread crept away and stared out into the darkness away from the dim fire.

What lies ahead? What culture would make ships of bone that explode? Or murder their masters?

********

Late the next day, they walked in high spirits through the fens that had begun their adventures so long ago. At least, Tread and Mucker did.

The two Totanbeni had gained in excitement with each passing day, and now spoke quickly to each other in a thick dialect Reur could barely understand. Despite his capacity to speak and understand their tongue now, he still talked slowly, and he needed sentences carefully pronounced for him to completely understand them.

Raven held her raptor on her arm proudly, but Reur had learned that she rose in pride the more difficult the situation seemed to be, and right now she snapped at every small thing. She was the only thing that would dimple Tread's home-in-sight fever, and he bounced back more quickly than she regained her composure.

Reur's fear — he knew enough about the Totanbeni to wonder how he would be treated, even with Tread and Mucker to vouch for him — battled with his own excitement. A new realm, a new culture, more flora and fauna to note. He wondered about their magical level, what kind of homes they would live in, if they smelted ore or relied heavily on the strange, light stones he frequently stubbed his toes against in the fens. What did they chiefly eat? Who did they make their chief? At what age were children considered adults? Did they have elders and guiders, like the Vagal? Obviously they had guiders; but did they all get murdered by their apprentices? So many questions!

He was musing over a long, stick-like insect he had found during their mid-afternoon break when a commotion disturbed the insect into sufficient movement to wander off.

Reur turned to see Tread squared off against a monster of a man who wore a strange cap covered in short, brown spikes. Mucker stood to one side, half-motioning as though he too would step in against this man, and Raven waited rigidly some distance behind Tread, her entire stance indicating a strange mix of amusement and rage.

"Stay away from us, savage," Tread said, weaving his recently crafted stone-tipped spear.

"I have come to take Raven from you Totanbeni barbarians eat her heart," the man said. He held no weapon, but Reur felt he needed none against the much smaller Tread. Now, Mucker against this guy — if Mucker was trained to fight.

"She's ours!" Tread said, his voice raising a bit.

The man grimaced under his cap. Reur stepped into the midst of this stand-off, reached up and tapped one of the spikes.

"Beaks?" he said. "And what protection do these offer?"

The man jerked back as soon as Reur touched him, caught off-guard by Reur's random, brazen approach. As his balance shifted, Reur's foot lashed out accompanied by some power leeched from his tablet — what good a scholar who couldn't jury-rig the books into the lights? — and sent him sprawling off their little dry island and into the water.

"Now you've done it," Raven said sternly, and Reur couldn't tell what she meant.

"Reur, watch out!" Tread called, and tossed the spear at Reur, who dodged it. He did not dodge the oncoming stranger though, who barreled into him and knocked the wind out of him. The giant raised Reur above his head to smash him to the ground when Reur, gasping, felt himself lifted out of the giant's hands.

Mucker dropped Reur — not exactly helpful, the mapmaker thought — in time to grapple with the big man. The stranger and Mucker were comparable in size, but the stranger's training was painfully obvious as he bent Mucker to the ground.

"Stop!" Raven commanded, and the stranger let go, causing Mucker to fall sprawling and panting to the wet earth.

"Hornbeak," she went on. "I was wondering when you'd show your face. Did Pinion send you?"

"You know this man?" Reur said.

"You know him?" Tread said more loudly from where he retrieved his spear. "You knew he was following? You ... you ..." He trailed off under her icy stare.

"Hornbeak?" she prompted the Vagal with the bird mouths on his head.

"Pinion didn't send me," Hornbeak said. "I followed to save you from this man with the Totanbeni dialect, and I saw you were with these people who are obviously of the tribe. I didn't show myself when you went into that other town because they seemed to be able to see everyone. And now, you have crossed into Totanbeni territory, unknowingly perhaps, and I must save you."

"Not unknowingly," Tread said sullenly. "We're going home."

"You don't need to take her with you."

Reur saw Raven's face flicker through a few emotions before it resumed its rage. Reur focused his attention on the giant Vagal again. He rubbed his nose dispiritedly.

"You could have taken her in the night," Reur said aloud, eventually. Tread and Hornbeak, focused only on each other, started.

"What?" Hornbeak said.

"Huh?" Tread said.

"Hornbeak, you could have taken her as we slept. You two could have run off quietly. I wonder why you did not do that. You're severely outnumbered now." He paused, then said gently, "You would have stood a chance while we slept."

"I have watched you for the past weeks," Hornbeak said slowly, his brow furrowed as his brain worked harder than it had in his life. "I thought, Raven will try to escape. You kept no bonds on her. And when she did, I would be there to guide her back home. She never tried to escape," he accused her.

Raven shrugged, and Reur spoke. "Why, Hornbeak, do you suppose she never tried to escape?" He raised his hand as Hornbeak's eyes nearly crossed under his delta of forehead. "I'll tell you. Because she wants to be with us."

"Lies!" Hornbeak shouted. "She wants to be home, with the Vagal."

"Where Pinion treated me like a prisoner and put that unwholesome fledgling Red Feather in charge?" Raven finally snapped, stepping up next to Reur. She reached out for Hornbeak. "Bah! I was lifeless there. Since then, I have had many choices." Her eyes flicked from Reur to Tread and then to Hornbeak. She smiled suddenly. "You must remain with us, Hornbeak."

"What?" he said, his voice keening a bit. Events were moving too quickly, Reur thought.

"After he fought with us?" Tread shouted, raising his spear as though to cast it.

"Didn't I fight with you?" Reur asked. He knew Tread and Mucker had blocked a lot of their initial meeting out of their heads. Probably because they killed their master there. They had never said why. I guess we all have damnens of our own making ahead of us.

"We should find a drier spot," Mucker said suddenly, showing some of his own ponderous wisdom.

"Yes," Reur said, and Raven nodded. "We must discuss a few things, not the least of which, Tread and Mucker, is what will happen to three strangers in the Totanbeni lands."

"I have told you ..." Tread began, but Raven waved a hand for silence.

"When we have made camp," she said.

********

Reur criticized the previous conversation in his head. How different would it have been if Hornbeak had been Pinion? Or the person named Talon whom Raven spoke of rarely and often with dark looks toward the Kalkoraean Mede? What if Raven hadn't stopped the fight? What if, as Reur had suggested, Hornbeak had stolen Raven in the middle of the night?

What good is it to replay the past? he thought. I cannot change it, no matter how much sense it seemed to make. People think how they think; they make decisions based on random things.

They had dug up peat and set it to dry around the small fire they had made from gathered wood over the course of the past few days of travel. Now they sat around it, Tread and Mucker close to each other, Mucker closer to Reur, Raven and Hornbeak practically on the other side of the fire. There was enough distance between Raven and Hornbeak, though, that Reur didn't consider them a true alliance.

"Well?" Reur said brightly, to break the silence.

"Well what?" Tread said glumly, eyes darting between the fire, Raven and Hornbeak. Hornbeak's eyes never moved from Tread's face.

"Tread, how will two members of the Vagal clan and one complete stranger be taken in Totanbeni lands? What will they do to us?"

"I have told you," Tread said exasperatedly. "You will be a hero, Reur. The chief of chiefs, the chief of guiders, and all of our generals will welcome you and want to learn everything of you that they can."

"And what of Raven?"

Tread hesitated.

"They will want to kill her," Mucker said.

Hornbeak leapt to his feet. "Raven, we must go."

"Sit down," she snapped.

Tread was also on his feet. "But I will vouch for her. If she is killed, I will be killed."

Mucker gasped. "But ..."

"I would do the same for any ..." Tread stared at Hornbeak. "Almost any man here."

Raven waited until the two sat back down before she spoke. "As gracious as that is, Tread, what standing will you have — runaway apprentices — when you return?"

Tread hesitated again, and again Mucker spoke up, tears in his voice and eyes. "They will want to kill us, too."

Reur patted the big man's back. "So I will need to protect all of you," he said matter-of-factly.

"Why are we going home?" Mucker almost wailed.

"Why are you going back there?" Hornbeak said angrily. "What good will it do any of us?"

"Because it's our home!" Tread said. "We are not welcome anywhere else!"

"Anyway we go, we die!" Mucker shook with sobs.

"I am staying until I hear this out," Raven said stubbornly.

Reur took a deep breath. It did seem strange, stupid even, to head back to the Totanbeni empire. His cowardly side told him so. But his growing heroic side, which had aided him with the Vagal and the Send, asked him how much tougher could this one be? And his scholarly side, which he almost always deferred to, insisted that he go.

"I'm just an ... ambassador," he said, using the Kalkoraean word.

"Ambassador?" Raven repeated it. She was the only one who tried to learn his language.

"Tread and Mucker ..." he paused, feeling his way through a set of unbelievable lies, "Guided me. I pressed them into my service." He rose to his feet, leaning into the firelight. "They taught me enough to be able to communicate with the chief of chiefs, the chief of guiders, and generals, so that I may impart my knowledge to them. I am a great hero, Tread can say, look at what prizes I have gained in my travels!" He held out a hand to Raven. "A Vagal woman! Tall and beautiful! A raptor chick! To grow strong and hunt for us!"

He could feel a fire, a motivation, rise in the people. Tread sat straighter, trying to pat himself on the back. Mucker's sobs subsided, and he grinned fiercely at Reur. Raven held her poise, but preened a bit when he mentioned the chick.

Reur looked at Hornbeak. "I'll work you in," he said, "if you want to come. If things get really out of control, it would be helpful to have you to help us escape."

The Vagal removed his cap and bowed. "I will do this, for you show great respect for our own culture."

Reur shrugged. Whatever. "It will be most important that the Totanbeni realize that all of you belong to me. After all, I am the only one they do not want to kill."

Copyright 2005-2007 Eric Zawadzki and Matthew Schick. All Rights Reserved.
This site has features best viewed in Mozilla Firefox. Download today!