Paths of Damnation 5 - (Billenius)

There is beauty to a desert sunrise, one that belies the brutal day to come, but still makes it something to enjoy. The clouds, usually high feathery ones, tend to glow orange or gold as the sun begins his daily voyage, after his underworld passing the legends tell of. Then the light blooms across the landscape, turning the nighttime grays to gold or shadowy black. Sandstones blaze their redness like torches as the buttes to our west caught the sun before the ground below them. And the dust raised by the various folks using the coolest part of the day to travel the Sands were like silver bushes on the horizon around me. Shiny silver to the west and south, blue to the north and east.

I took a deep breath, having rode hard for three days across the Riparian Neck, which is a tongue of the desert that extends east between the rivers of the land. It was north we sought, as we left Radixium further behind us with every turning of the horas. This long neck of sands and desert between the rivers was not as deadly as the rest of the desert we would face later, but still worse than the gentle lands near the Amnis Radix along the foot of the Last Mountains. We had rode east, not out of need, the faster path was due north, along the edge of the eastern most of the Grey Mesas. But one had paid a price I had avoided in my fight in the city of the foothills.

Quintas Marinius Varamadis, a distant cousin from these lands, had met my foe before the duel. Despite knowing the fate he would face, he had confronted the assassin. Marinius job with us here was as the local Castrorum Preafectus, the one charged with ensuring the supplies to the outposts and one of only five animas trusted with delivering payrolls to our posts every third hebdoma. So I had one last job as a Custos, one I had been trusted with several times before of late, due to my record of service. One I did more for a lost relative than duty, and to aid out my former colleagues, then from allegiance to the Custos.

So we had ridden the river's valley for two days, before turning north again up the Valles Favillae, the long brush filled series of draws as the land climbed up to the small volcano in the center of the Callix. We were halfway up it, the point where the dense briers gave way to scattered cactus and sage, with some scrub oak and other trees. At least it was not a place loaded with fire grass, which I would have hated. Not to mention having to dig into the supplies I had for the desert crossing to come yet. We had at least six or seven leagues of sand, depending upon the winds and recent eruptions of the volcano, to ride over. And those would be hard milles to make in one day.

But for now the worst of it all was the four extra pack animals. Marinius had no skill at choosing animals, and these four tried my patience at every stop or turn of the draws. Skittish, mean tempered, and if Pater thought Turbator kicked too often, he should try to shoe these beasts. Not that shoes were needed on a vartengi. Their clawed feet had thick pads of tough scaled leather. Claws that Marinius never had covered with blunt sheaths, but at least we had muzzles so they could not bite us.

Yes, us. Didius Lorcius was with me, as he had promised. Thankfully. These beasts were more than I could handle, for my doni was not of calming animals. Barely pack broken and every night they looked over my onagers with hungry eyes, ready to leap into their dinner, or chase it down. While the pack beast was one they scared, Turbator just gave them the look only a stallion of his kind can. The one that says "I can out run you, and come back and kick you into a pulp". When we had mounted up before first light, the Triari kept me from letting Turbator have his go at all four at once, and help me fix my left boot as we rode. One of the vargenti had stepped on it and tore the outer leathers to shreds. As well as the linings, and my socks.

Luckily I had a concoction from a alchemist in Vepresium, who had noted the beasts. It was a reddish liquid he said prevented wounds from becoming gangrenous. It smelled awful and hurt like the fires of hell, so I was fairly sure it was real medicine for a change, not some snake-oil unguent. Then again, some said snakes were put on the world to aid in cures and healing. People that believe that way should be tossed into a pit of snakes, and see how they feel afterwards. I admit to using the oil, venoms and even shed skins in the field to preserve a life, but not to the point of worshiping the legless lizards.

As we rode, I noted that despite my own skills at leather working, developed by trial and error over my decadi here doing my own repairs, Didius was better. The touch of the Lorcius was swift and deft. Fine little stitches of his repair, almost perfect as new, gave the boots a new life beyond the next town. Pulling them on, I barely noted any tightness. It made me wonder where the Triari had learned such a skill, or if my own fumbling would improve with age as his must have.

This left me worried again about why he was with me. He had not again brought up the subject, but I knew he felt that the call of the gods was upon me to return to Jai’ and serve them in the temples. Not just any temple, he had mentioned the imperial ones, up above the desert, further north from my home ranges. Jugosium was a place I had gone to only by need, carrying messages, taking my oath. The city of hills and broken dreams, some called it, others called it the fog bound island town it once had been.

Regardless, it was not my intention. The Desert and the Plains were for me, not an island on an inland sea of fresh water. Folks on islands eat more fish than I care to taste. What can I say, not all folks like all foods. To each is a taste that is unique to them when it comes to foods. I knew my family would have horrors at my love of dwarven pastries. But the Pumillo's made such wonderful ones. That more than anything else I would miss during the journey. The ovens and special cookers for making such could not be transported easily, nor used very much in a desert with little fuel, save that which could rage into a wildfire around one in the space of a sneeze.

Two days of struggling up draw, the ground began to shake from time to time, with sounds accompanying the motions I knew too well from some anni spent upon the patrols of the edge of the Rima Magna, that great cliff that was the boundary between my home plains and this desert far to the north. Cracks and booms of rocks breaking. The beasts were jittery, I was worried. Even Didius seemed to have lines of concern around his eyes, but that could just have been the fumes that were filling the draw.

The winds came from the west most of the time in the desert, but this was a rare calm spell, when the air had only faint and erratic motion in it. That could just be from being below the vast flats of the desert as we climbed into its realm, or something more dangerous. One thing I knew for sure, this draw would fill with the fumes of the volcano, for that smoke did not just rise, but more often sunk into low places around the portals to the Realms of Fire and Lava. Fumes that formed clouds and fogs known to kill entire civilizations in the past. We needed to be up on the hard-pan of the desert, where we could move as needed to avoid the rage of the volcano. If the gods allowed it.

East and West there were draws, Didius was too busy keeping the vargenti under control to speak, so I would have to make the decision. East lay the Head of the Sands, the Callix, a dangerous area of shifting dunes, known to be filled with dangers. To the west was hard-pan of the Shallow Sand Arm, a place where only a few dunes and little sand accumulated, reaching to Amnis Radix to the south in a narrow plain between this valley and the Campi Fornax used by the desperate herders when they dared the fire-grass to feed their beasts. It widened as it met the Neck, but the Arm was my best choice. In this season the winds most commonly blew west to east, so passing west of the Favilus Vulcan was the safest.

Unless I was wrong. Much depended upon my choice, but I made it.

"Sinistra, Triari! We have to get out of here." I shouted, but it was already too late.

A cloud of hot ash rushed around the bend above us, telling me we were statistics, as my cousin and companion of my youth Norbanus would say. That was a tomb maker coming towards us. I had helped dig out hamlets and caravans from a hot ash avalanche before, it was not survivable, nor was it pretty in its aftermath. Such a blast could be confined to the draw we were in, or spread across the whole of the area if the mountain was viscious. I could ask the gods, or my donum of foresight, but these were things I was not eager to try. The gods were fickle, and my doni were untrained.

The vargenti needed no encouragement to leave the draw, just herding to keep them from spreading out into every gulley out of the place. Lorcius raced by me, disappearing into the first stinging wall of the ash-flow. Driving the lizards and back beasts before us, Turbator and I entered it next. Thankfully this was a light one, but a darkness to the north and east boded ill for the next part, as the eruption continued. Inside the ash fog I was reminded of the great wildfire my cousins and I had caused in our younger days. Cinders burned into my flesh, the tang of iron was in the air, which was not a good thing. There were many villages of my folk nearby who could die if exposed, or suffer long illnesses. Turbator hated dust storms, and was trying to race ahead of the others, which I could not do, lest the pack beasts turn back down the washout.  As we rose up the gully to its head wall, luckily one all the beasts could leap up. There I yelled into to air, driving the beasts west from the lower ground we had left.

It was a good choice, as the wind rose at last. Or so I thought as we broke out of the cloud. Only to find that Didius was not stopping, but urging the beasts further towards the west, looking back in fear every few beats of a heart. Looking towards Favillus, I knew my own fear. We had been lucky, already the earth shook more, as a pillar of fire, ash, and ruined mountain climbed into the sky. This was not a small blast, and already i could see the outer edges of the column of destruction falling back to the ground around whatever would be left of Favillus.

The distant buttes to our west and north marked the cliff above the Campi Fornax were suddenly very inviting, I just hoped that the devastation did not reach Statiheranae and the rest of the hamlets scattered around the Callix and the few safe havens within it. We would have to detour north and mak a longer crossing than I had hoped. But the Desert never co-operated with the plans of any save the gods, and some say it fought even them.

Turbator bunched under me, then showed his strides

Paths of Damnation 3 (Billenius)

Its disconcerting when your plans go awry right from the beginning.

 Half a hebdoma's delay was not something I had planned upon. But it had taken that long to recover from the poisoning, and face the inquest. The latter had been just a formality, Urbania crushing any attempts by her staff to make the charges of murder stick, which the poisoning had made mute anyway by law. Assassins and their ilk are as damned in our legal codes as in most others. That the fool from the islands had made it one of the old formal duels, but broken many of the codes his gens claimed to support, had made it easy to quash. The verdict of {nolo culpa} had cleared me of any fault, but still, it bothered me that only a few of the folks in town stood up to speak about this one.

Yes, assassins tend to be silent, but this one had not been, and the few who spoke for me had stated he had bragged of his commission, and tried to intimidate those he spoke with to silence. Still, one could not fault folks for fearing the threats of an assassin of retribution if they spoke of him.

As I broke down the tent the night before, and loaded it up onto my pack onagera, I noted that Didius was loading a similar beast's packs, balancing them as carefully as we of the Custos did. This was not a skill one expected of a man known as a foot soldier and temple guard, but then again, logistics is the lifeline of an army, and several times over his lifetime, Lorcius had commanded such gatherings, not to mention unknown smaller groups of men.

Each time I looked at him, he was looking back, smiling softly. Only the old man was packing, others were helping him, getting last instructions, and the like. The longer it went on, the more it became apparent, he had come here just to settle in these members here for some reason. Now he was headed to some other place, to check the needs of the guardians of the temples, or just the temples themselves to see if they had needs they did not voice to their superiors. That was the job of the Triarium, to care for the needs of the priests, who were too often focused on the spiritual and forgot the physical needs and comforts that made one more able to perform one's tasks.

Like me, he unloaded his onager after getting the load made even, so he could run free one last night to find sage and grass to eat before the long run of grains with little fiber to come. Turbator, my mount just sent from home a few weeks before was upset. Another stallion in the area was a challenge to his self importance. And one thing I did not need as I balanced his packs. Luckily, the pack beast of the Triari was older, more sedate, and far too interested in grass over the mare I had for a pack animal to cross the Sands with. He wandered off into the twilight, seeking some of that sweet blue sage that grew in the riparian areas of the desert's edge.

It did not make my troublesome steed any less ornery. Turbator was full of energy, mainly kicking a lot, and with six legs that made saddling and balancing a load on him a chore. But his line had been my pride for most of my life. Pater had other ideas about the lineage, which he said was too mean-spirited. But I preferred spirit to a broken nag.

As the night closed in, I sighed and let loose a simple prayer to Fortuna that Didius was headed any direction but west. That fickle goddess answered swiftly for a change, and my luck had turned. As I settled down to some tea and grilled beef and peppers, the head of the Triarium walked over.

"May I join you, Augur?" My back went up at that appellation. Among my folk there are special ranks of the priests, and an Augur is very special among the various flamenis. They are the voices of the gods, whom they speak through to give us their ruling and our fates. And with my gift for foresight of things to come, the priests had thought I would instantly bond to a temple as such a conduit of the gods. I was tempted to turn him away, just for the naming of me, as he had during the aftermath of the duel, as one who served the gods.

My parents had raised me better, not to mention the manners my avia had pounded into my head. "Very well, but leave the talk of auguries alone. I have rarely had dreams from the gods or sight of the future that any would care to hear. And I think we both can agree an augur would not have gotten into the mess I did this hebdoma."

Didius took up the other log, where the other riders used to sit until the day I said my time was over here, and they began to choose who would now be their leader, conscience and confessor. All jobs too close to the priestly ones that the Triari was hinting I should have chosen. He opened a roll of cloth within which lay something far different from my dinner, yet similar. Skewered tomatoes, baby peppers, and a white meat that dripped grease even before being cooked. It had to be Vartengi, the local horse sized, two legged lizards used as mounts by so many here on the southern desert, where beasts of thunder oft crossed the lower passes in the heat of summer, seeking more food or a nesting ground.

Vartengi is technically forbidden in the dietary laws of our kind. Beyond forbidden, even, as its meat has toxins it that can kill a Numen. I shuddered at the thought of the great warrior eating such a food. I had never dreamed of him being suicidal, or wanting to die. I looked at his face, as he chuckled. My face had given away my thoughts, something I had thought my years in the circuits here had sealed away.

"Relax, Billenius. This is for one who will join us in a few minutes. And try not to be too upset. He is coming to speak with us of something we, or more precisely you, need to know." He set them over the fire from the skewer hooks on the tripod I used to keep my teapot over the pile of coals. "I came here on a rumor, that one blessed with the gift of foresight was marked for death. This one who will join us has the details of the contract the fool you faced took."  He took out a collapsing brass cup, and pulled it open, the segments singing the bell tones of their metal that was one of the few our kind was not allergic to.

I sat in silence. There was nothing I wanted to say, I was not an augur, the gods did not talk to me, I merely had that touch of the foresight so many had, just a little clearer than the population at large. But the visions sent by the gods, brought to one by the Parcae, I had seen one in the throes of such a vision once. And she had died from the Truths she had been forced to see and give to the world in the end.

I was glad the smoke from the fire was blowing away from my gear, even the grease of the soot of such meat could contaminate my gear had it crossed it. But then, being of a more stable and polite generation, he had noted the wind, the fire's location, and been polite enough to let me see the food before laying it on my fire. He had even pulled out the coals to cook it over to allow them to not be part of the main fire, and thus my responsibility to cleanse afterwards.

The Triari poured some of my hot water into the cup, and set a steeping ball for his tea in it. The aroma was of the stronger leaves of the actual plant the dwarves call cha. I shuddered at the thought of not sleeping for a week. But Didius was used to such I was sure, having served in the Legions. But still the smell of the lizard wafted to me from time to time, roiling my stomach. I tried to think of who could have information they would dare share with others about an assassination. If it was an amateur job, there was the chance that the assassin or his employers would try to eliminate those who could tell the tale. Professional job, even more frightening to me, and we could all be dead in seconds, with no warning.

I knew a professional assassin, back a few years before. One that had walked from the shadows for a while, not to escape, but as research on how to get closer to his prey. I had tried to stop him, turn him from his path. But we had both come to a point where only our own views of the target had mattered. Or so I had thought. When I found out why the assassination needed to happen, I had stood aside, something I still regretted. And yet, I could never bring to justice one such has that monster of a person had been.

That made me remember I had other donum, ones that would let me be safer, even if I had not used them for years. Oh, the sense of knowing a falsehood I had used, and the sensing of danger near me was not a thing I could easily lock away. But the other sight from the third eye, that I had locked away for ages, as too disturbing to me. Knowing the real self of those around me, seeing the inner flames of their anima tell me the truth as they tell my eyes and ears lies. That had been too much to see, for me at least. But there were times I opened that eye, to save lives, or gain knowledge. Shutting it was something else, an effort best described as heroic, or by some as self abuse.

Lack of use can atrophy an ability, and thus it is with me. What I had fought so hard to sequester away proved as hard to awaken, and hiding that effort from one I had earlier denied using such to was more difficult. But something deep in my own anima was stirring me to do such a thing. That prickling of the hairs on the back of ones neck feeling, the one that says danger is near. The one that failed the great warrior in that moment, just as my inner vision slowly was awakened and focused.
There was a darkness around us, but to that vision, the world is lit up even at night. The glow of all that lives, has lived or is touched by the elements and magic glow with the power within them. That glow blurs within a short distance, one of a constant blue haze like the sky to my way of perceiving it. But against it, behind the gold fire that was Didius life force, was a dark area of coal black flecked with orange and red spots of heat of life. And a familiar feeling to that darkness.

It was worth it, to be taking that calm sip of tea as the veteran of many wars next to me suddenly leapt to his feet in startled rage as he felt the cold of steel against his arm. Steel that burned him, as it affects all our kind, save a few blessed by the gods with the tolerance of iron. Didius has some such protection, but not enough to not be burned by the metal we find so deadly. Smoke curled off his arm as the poison burned the flesh it had touched, grabbing the spear from the spot he had spiked it to push out at...nothing.

Already the one that had attacked him was beside me, and finding Specula's point at his abdomen. "Hello Jinatozu. It has been a few years, has it not?" I kept my voice and blade steady, the training of many years in a dangerous profession being useful at moments like this one.

The rough chuckle, like the burble of a stream over rocks came from our guest. He sheathed his blade slowly, leaning out to take the meal that Didius had made for him. This one was small, barely a gradus and a half in height, grey skinned, with darker patches under his onyx eyes, and scars of stark silver on his arms and face. Some looking as if they were newer, still tainted with the red of his blood showing through them. A red so unlike the olive green we Numeni have coursing through our veins.

"The joys of being one of the best at your job is you get more information if you do not pick up a blade offered you." This was a daring insight into the world of the assassins' guild. Daring for him to even mention how a job is offered to one of their guild. Such an admission would bring death to the speaker if word made it back to his masters.

Didius settled back upon his seat, still wary of the one who had joined us. Nor was I any less alert. My acinias lay unsheathed across my thighs, my sinister hand near her hilt at all times. This was not a friend we sat with, just an acquaintance, and one I still was not sure of where his true loyalties would lie. I stayed silent for a long time, still sipping the tea from the large mug made for me by a friend long ago as payment for saving her children. A mug of carved silver and simple amethyst inlays in the pattern of the symbol of my gens. It held great value to me, despite being of simple crafting.

We sat there quietly, each enjoying something, as Jinatozu ate, I drank and Didius filled a pipe he had produced from his belt pouch. Soon the air was filled with the aroma of fine tobacco burning slowly in a intricately carved briar. It was something that I rarely dared in this dry place, but it had rained two days before and the winds had been light with coolness of the mountains in the air this evening. It was a strange thing, this cold spell we were in. Some would call it an omen. I called it weather, and ignored the climate one would normally expect from the desert.

When he spoke again, it was softly, the rough voice strangely like silk with the words it delivered. "There is a dagger issued on your life, Billenius. Few will take it, for if you wait and the masters tell you of who bought it, it comes from the west. The Queen of Flame has some fear of you." He let the words settle over my mind like a kerchief of the fabric they had sounded like. Another long pause in the words in this deepening night of suddenly revealed intrigue.

My own voice spoke to him then. "I recognized the mark on the blade, before someone stole it. But enough folk had seen the blade, the red of its hilt and blade, and those markings. The mark for my gens and profession at the blade end of the hilt, the center mark the flame wreathed crown of the Queen of Flames, and the hilt mark of the single black onyx inlaid dagger. Even I could read some of that code, the draka had bought a blade to take my life, one try only, by one person.

But I knew there was far more in those symbols on the hilt, a code I would never know in this lifetime, unless I betrayed the way I had been raised and turned to murder to support myself. Not that I would, but sometimes, I found myself curious as to what the other side of my profession did. Curious, not driven.

I puzzled over the implications of this threat. I had no love for the Queen of Flame, the draka of fire who sat above Pelori, and had brought so many of the creatures of her element into this world, and thus by her proximity to my homeland, my native grounds. But I had never seen her as a foe I would be able to face. I know that the draoconis have the ability to see into the future with greater accuracy than even my doni allowed. That meant she saw some threat coming from me, one that made her fear facing me directly, or allowing me to reach her territory. What that threat could be was beyond my comprehension at the moment.

"I know this, Jinatozu. I saw the dagger that fool bore." My words were soft and paced, delivered with a cup of tea between my face and his. I was testing for another knowledge, for this one never moved at loud noises, so I had a theory he was deaf or hard of hearing.

A theory dashed by the rapid answer and chuckle. "I have heard that you have seen, and also your latest theory of my ability to ignore noises, Varus. Not a bad thought, wrong, but it would have explained things."

We shared a smile, and I began to realize there were those involved in the criminal activities who had honor and ethics enough to become a friend, or at least deserve my admiration. He was here, breaking rules, as he felt rules were being broken in the attempt on my life. A quiet settled over our fire for a spell as Didius thought, and I considered getting out a deck of cards and the board to try once again to catch the sleight of hand that had tipped me to Jinotazu's profession that fateful night.

Typical of the general he had been and still acted as for the temples, Didius had questions he needed answered. As he broke the silence to get them, I absorbed which ones were and were not answered as best I could. Which was not as well I would have preferred, but still better than others could do I hoped. It seemed strange to me that she would fear me right after I left the Custos, not before. Was it that I was assigned east and her territory the west of the desert? Or something more dangerous to me, that something had changed in the Fates recently.

The two others began a conversation, one that seemed to be conducted upon two levels, as if they were trying to either hide from me or any other ears that might hear their words. I did my own thinking as they talked, listening with one ear, as the saying goes, and using the other to listen to my inner voice tell me what it was figuring out.

At last something was said that I partially caught, yet rang in my head. "What was that, the bit about the prophecies of the Wyrm?"

Didius shifted uncomfortably. He obviously had hoped I was not paying attention to what had been said. "Nothing," was his terse answer.

Nothing that meant something, I could tell. I leaned into the fire, and started a fresh pot of water for my tea. The warmth of the fire was not painful, at least not normally, but suddenly I feared fire. A fear that came not from the reasoning part of my mind, or the survival part, but deeper, in the mystical portion I tried so hard to keep walled up in a corner. The place that now screamed for my attention like an alarm bell on the walls of a city. There was more here than either of these people wanted me to know of.

Something I needed to know. I dug in my memories to see if I could roust out what had reacted to those words. Which is not something I would normally do. I had been a Numen of action for so long, turning into one of thought was not my style. Or had not been since I and my deformed and outcast cousin had parted ways half a century gone by now.

Then I found the thought, and pinned it like an eel had to be pinned in the river not far away, when one hunted eels for their skin or other organs that had so many magical and other uses. Those creatures are slippery, elusive, and very hard to get to land without ruining the very things you are after. And sometimes my thoughts are like that as well.

I focused on the thoughts of the tales I had heard of from Umbradinor, and the books in Avia and Amita's libraries where I had studied as a youth. There was a set of scrolls made ages ago of the dreams of the last of the Lords of the Arbitrations, Tragrilom the Black-hearted, that foretold the future. And key to those prophecies was the coming of the one called Bahai-Luthna-Naish, "Sees without eyes", who would herald the coming of the new draconic gods and the next Lord of the Arbitrations. None were sure who those would be, but every time the omens seemed right, every dragon in the world would see itself as the next god or Arbitrator, which is the goal of them all deep down it seems.

I laid down my own scoffing at the prophecies. "There are many who have eyes and still cannot see, so I am not sure how the words of some ancient prophecy could mean anything several ages of the world later."

This got me a chuckle from the assassin. The head of the guardians of the temples was silent. The disapproving kind of silence, long and filled with a meaning not needing words to be conveyed, as his face told me all I needed to know  The Triari felt I should not mock the words of warnings from the gods to mortals. But that was part of his charge, to protect the image as well as the personages and relics of the temples.

We spent the night sitting there, talking of many other things, and I found the insights of both of these individuals to be enlightening. As well as entertaining once the tension from my earlier skepticism had passed. I was learning still many things, one of which is tact, something that may take centuries to develop, according to my father's mother. Avia has always had a low opine of my learning curve.

Perchance, deservedly so.

***

With the rising of the sun came the moment I had waited for many turning of the seasons. I rode west, not alone as I had intended, as the Triari was with me. But it was west, to my love, my home, my future. I had a pouch of messages from the outpost for the various places in the west, and Turbator was anxious to move on, He could sense we were not coming back, and being an exploratory sort, was ready for new places to roam, new grasses to taste, and more important to him I was sure, new herds to take over.

The trail was dusty, the long ago laid down ashes of distant volcanoes trying to climb again into the sky, casting an ominous paleness to the dawn, and that redness of which sailors fear, as the gods gave the warning in the sky of rough weather to come. We should have heeded the sky, but both of us had schedules to meet, I with my last duty to the order of the Custodi, the Triari to the temples, and our steeds to the their own desires.

Someday, perchance, I shall explain why we all should have known better from our own pasts, but that is a tale for another evening around a comfortable fire with friends.

Paths of Damnation 2 (Kragyevozar)

Why I and my axe brothers were here in Tyrosht is something of a long tale, and one I have told elsewhere. It is good enough to say we have reasons to be here, each of us different yet similar. And all under the same bans of exile. Condemned to walk Zagroneichnie, without the borders of the homelands. It is an awful fate, to be denied the homeland, denied succor in any land from danger by others still within the borders of the Zhakon.

It would have been more dangerous, but we were accompanied by those who had chosen the path of ezgnaneiye with us. Among them two of great standing in the land, the Runabrost Grimdarzog, and the rising star of the diplomatic corps, Zefdarfan. That they had chosen to ride away from the gate of the exiles with us had left avalanche of turmoil behind us, And the crossing of the sea of treachery to this port had stirred so much ill-will against us all I was sure the bans would never be lifted now.

Here in the port of the Council I found the attitudes still against us. That we had faced pirates, beasts, undead and more crossing the sea, to reach this place mattered not to those here. I was known, not just as Keilroi of the Mountains, but as an  ezgnanst now. Outcast. Unlawful to speak with. I ignored the catcalls from the dwarven quay we had been denied the right to tie the ship to, though some of my companions felt the sting in their souls from the words. Words which ended when I uncovered my prisoner's head to the master of arms at the Gate of the Docks.

"I believe you have an offer of some coins for this one's head...how much for his whole body?" I was arrogant, cold and mean as I knocked the pirate LeGiles to the ground on his knees before the soldier. A soldier whose eyes lit up with a fire like that of a forge well stoked.

"There is only one corsair of these seas I would rather see here in chains before me. But Muirgant has disappeared yet again at the word of a hunter of pirates so fierce." The old man's smile was warm. The first warm smile I had seen. "What name shall I take to the Council to issue the coins unto?" The query was normal, but my answer would shock him.

"I am Keilroi, these are my friends and companions. We give you the pirate, his surviving crew, and their vessel. One less pirate clan to raid the sea." I let the name spread across the stone road and up the quays behind us. It was known to the Karleekie. It was known to all. My exploits in my youth still were told, and here I was, wearing the brand of exile on my forehead, the chain of a penitent and dragging in wanted men like a bounty hunter.

The gasps from the dwarven quay told me the name had struck home. The Keilroi had come to the west. As he came, he brought the Zhakon of the seas with him, still acting to enforce the Laws, not disruption and chaos as most did. The catcalls at us died, and instead the cheers for a hero began. With a few catcalls for the pirates as they began to be unloaded from the hold of the sailing vessel we had taken. Keilroi was still Keilroi to the dwarves. Someone to hope to see, not fear seeing. Unless one walked the path of the NyeZhakonst, then one had better still fear me.

I felt the hand of my old mentor, 'Darzog, on my shoulder. "Less grim, smile some malchik. Keilroi is a happy Karlykn, remember that. It does not hurt to smile from time to time."

And with those words, I was again just a malchik, being chided gently by his mentor to proper behavior. Some things never change, and never should.

/***

Three days it took to get the coins from the Council, but I begrudged them not a bit of that time, for they were being more than fair, we got the bounties on each pirate, coins from the sale of the ship, and rewards from those whose stolen cargoes were identified in the holds. We had enough for most adventurers to retire on,  but as we still had further to go, to reach the lands of the Lorsan Coast, where so many of our kindred who were also exiles had settled over the ages.

During those three days, as the others were treated to drinks and food, I sat at our inn thinking, making lists of things we would need, and meeting with the local liaison from the Knights of the Grey Sands to arrange joining a caravan on the northern route west, around the desert they patrolled and kept peace in. If one could call a life of danger peace. It was time well spent, even if I would have preferred to sit before the ochags and drink like the others.

In the darkness of the nights I sat and drank alone, if I could avoid 'Darzog and Dyadya Jaochim. Which was becoming more difficult of late. They meant well, but it still bothered me that they felt my isolation was wrong. I needed to think, and not about the past, but the future. We had made it this far by luck, not planning, and while I was not a great believer in plans, I knew we had to have at least a skeleton of one, or be caught with our shtani around our knees.

This night, had they known, they would have worried at the lack of vodka at my table, not the presence of it. Downstairs in the main area there were many revelers, but here in the balcony area around the main open room, there were few. Our crew and axe brethren were enjoying some of the spoils of our war on the way here, the younger ones learning the ways of the myrmidons we now were.

But I sat in the gloomy booth, recessed away enough to break some of the noise, thinking, and staring at the map before me. The Lorsan Coast, and Kelevfalashch, were still a long ways to go, and after our experience on the waves of the Veleky Vod, we had no desire to continue travel by sea. But there were only two routes west left from this island, three if one wished to take the more dangerous path across the heart of the Grey Desert. That one had no water that one could guarantee. The south caravan path had water in abundance, running down from the great gorya that rimmed the Rift of Dihn and the dry basin of the pustinya. But that meant crossing the lands of the Byezborodnei, and we had already been warned of a rough reception by those folk from some of the Alfs here.

We all had some experience with wastelands, and the problems of finding vod safe to consume, from our own adventures in our youth around the lands of the Lead Hills and the vast wastelands around them, or entering the Krasny Styepzei to hunt the great beasts or Vyeleikan-Ludoyed, the tusked giants of those prairies. The northern road was the one controlled by the Knights of the Sands, and open to all for its whole length. It was fraught with many dangers, from dragons to orcs and the lamia of the central desert who from time to time came out to raid the caravans.

But it was the only option, in a sense for us. Which meant our enemies, both from the homeland and here Zagroneichnie, would know our path. As Karleekie marked for death by some of our kin, no true caravan would let us join them, I was sure. Even without asking the Knights or any of the merchants or caravan. Few would want to add to the dangers of their own crossing of that part of the world.

As I sat there sipping the strong kophye that came from Rahab, thick with cream to take out the bitter blades from the taste, I pondered ways to cross the distance. Normally I drank mine without cream, but the syrupy brew made in this place was so strong and bitter, cream was a necessity. As so many times before, I had so much of mind focused on the problem on my table, someone was able to approach me unnoticed. I was lucky that I did not spill the pot or cup at hand when I started when my visitor cleared his throat.

He was an older karlykn, one I knew from my few times in court. He acted as the head of the local members of our race here and in the lands ruled by the Council. Some said he was even an advisor to that assembly on things related to our kind. His face was worn with the marks of worry I myself had begun to carve in my own face with the frowns of concentration. It was a deep brown, an unusual color for our kind, but it was the warm brown of the sun baking his flesh, not rot or some malady of the skin. They called him Gyevard Blednei, for the white hair he had since his youth. It was like a snowy mane on a lion from the north. His eyes were solid black marbles, glittering with humor and joy, despite his stern mime. He reminded me of ‘Darzog in that way, with the stern outer shell hiding the warm person inside.

“Poklonei, my kniaz.” The voice was not the rough one of most of our folk, but a softer one, filled with a sound more like the descent of water in a cascade in the mountains, not the rougher rock tones of my homeland.

I grunted. “I have no claim to that title anymore, Gyevard. Sit, take a cup of this foul brew.”

He smiled wider, and slid into the bench opposite me. “Spacebo, tovarishch. It is rare to find one who drinks Kophe in the evening, but I appreciate it. As I grow older, I find that vodka and veiskei do not sit well on my stomach afterwards.” He poured a cup of the syrupy brew straight, making my own stomach wonder at the iron lining his must have despite his claims otherwise.

“What brings you here, Glava.” I used the old term for chief of several clans, not the more modern appellation of boyar. He chuckled at the term, which meant he was in a good mood.

He sipped his tea, eyes turned to the few on the balcony, waiting patiently for all around to have their attention turn from a meeting of lords to the entertainments below. Such patience he used left me wondering if I could ever have such a calm attitude of waiting for the right moment. His eyes seemed calm, but he leaned back and they never stopped scanning those near and far. It was a gaze I remembered well from my bodyguards of my youth. One that weighed the threats of each it rested on in that single glance, marking the dangerous, the safe and the unknowns for when trouble would break out.

But this night there was no such tussles, the merriment at best were a few wrestling matches, but they were the good natured kind. I could see Joachim below at the end of the bar from which the drinks were served, he was sipping cha, and watching us. There was a look on his face I rarely had seen of late, since he had left his own children behind in his own exile for having spoken for me before the Dvoryets, the assembly of my folks governing councils. It was the smile of relaxation amid friends. But then, 'Darzog had told me once that Joachim was the kind of karlykn who could be happy anywhere, as long as he had friends or family around him.

I waited, trying to match the patience of the dwarf across from me. But I fidgeted to much for it to seem the same. My hands kept seeking the map, tracing the northern caravan route, trying to visualize the path to come in my head. As I did my companion sat nearly perfectly still save the slow oscillation of his head, as he continued to watch as life went on around us.

When at last he spoke, it was softly, so quiet I almost missed the words. "There is word among those who walk the shadowy paths beyond the Zhakon that your life has a new threat to its continuance, young man. There are whispers that the ubeiyotsyei have let a blade be made for you."

The room was no longer warm. It seemed as cold as a windswept peak of the (iron mountains) in the middle of winter. Ubeiyotsyei was a word rarely spoken among our kind, save in talking of the affairs of the other folk of the world. Assassins were rare in our people's doings, we who lived mostly within the Zhakon. For one to be unleashed on us even more infrequent, as any slain, even an exile, was likely to be avenged by his friends and family.

I felt my eyebrows seeking my hairline, as I tried to silently convey both my curiosity as to whom would try such a foolish action and the way this word had leaked from a tsyech as secretive as theirs. Their guild was known for killing those that spoke of its inner workings, or even rumors of its clients or contracts. That Gyevard had heard such, and lived to speak of it to the target told me something of the internal war going on inside that gathering of professionals we called a tsyech. A war within that guild would cause chaos everywhere, as contracts were taken against the codes of their rules. Not that rules were as strong a control as the Zhakon, the Law we Karleekie lived by.

He said no more, still watching, with the eyes of a warrior on guard duty, no longer the lazy gaze, but a more intense one. And his eyes were on one person, an alf, one of the byezborodnei, who leaned against the far balcony wall with an air of arrogance one could only find among the worst of that race. The arrogance of one not afraid of even the gods. I had seen many of his kind in the past half century, those who had walked away from gods and ethics in pursuit of power and wealth. They were no longer the people of honor they had been even just before my birth. Too many had taken upon themselves prejudices against others, feeling superior to the rest of the world.

This one, though, was more dangerous, he had weapons in evidence on his body, including a strange knife. One with a red lacquered handle. Even I had heard in my sheltered life, of the blades that marked one of the ubeiyotsyei on a mission. The way the elder with me was focused on him suddenly told me this was the threat I had to pass in this place to move on. But the alf's focus was not me, but the bar. He watched me from time to time, but it was Dyadya he was targeting.

I reached down and touched the topor leaning against the bench between me and the wall. I found the cold steel reassuring, knowing that even the slightest touch of it on this foe's flesh would pain him dearly. This was my only advantage, for while I was a warrior, this one specialized in leaving his blade between the shoulder blades of unsuspecting recipients of his skill. I needed to get up and move about, yet a simple hand gesture kept me in my seat for a few moments longer, as Gyevard motioned me to hold.

"Not yet, let his arrogance grow some more, and he will be apt to make mistakes." The words came from a mouth that barely moved, and was in the yazik, the speech of our people, but a dialect rarely heard outside the hills I had grown up in. The tongue of the Choelm was one few outside the clans of the hills knew, and thus safer to use for such a warning.

So I tried to learn a warrior's patience. To find the moment to strike that would turn the battle we now would be engaged in. I kept my face towards my companion, speaking of the trail to come, trying to keep my face from showing any hint of my observation of this foe. A fighter's mime is very difficult to maintain, I learned that day. Doing so while spying was harder yet.

As we sat, the alf became used to us there, relaxed even, yet it was the relaxation of a lion on the hunt, the disinterested act that belies his purpose in walking or standing in some place near the prey. There was a look of bored his face, but the eyes carried his hatred of all around him. Occasionally he scratched various places where it was obvious to a person familiar with carrying weapons that some deadly tool rested there, and he was more interested in checking to see they were there and ready to use.

I found myself doing much the same, with my axe beside me, not to mention knives and other toys I had learned of late. As well as finding my hand touching the kurok on the table before us in passing. Discharge of such a weapon in this town was forbidden, but I knew that if they were forced to choose between the hell to come of Jaochim's death or injury and my firing the kurok's small lead projectile, the latter would be more easily dealt with. But it would let someone know that one of our guns was able to come past the gates of the docks, compromising a vast smuggling empire, and ruining the ability to have our folk trade here.

There had to be a way to mess up this one's plans. Plans or the ruining of them, were the meat and potatoes of my own history. Keilroi was known all over as the wrecker of plans, hence LeGiles impending appointment with a noose at the docks. I felt my face scrunch up, remembering the words the pirate when I took him, that he would never be hung. This was a diversion, and if the Council had half a brain, they would not respond to any call for the guard here. There had never been a breakout from the tyurma here, but there was always a first time for everything. And as I realized this was just a diversion, that old wicked smile came to my face, as my eyebrows began to dance up and down with mirth at a plan that came to me. Weapon dancing is often associated among my kind with merriment and celebrations like we were in here. And few save the forge lords danced with a hammer. My hand sought out my own hammer, the great heavy thing with the arshen and a hand haft. It was heavy, with a large block of metal, topped with a spike.

"Excuse me a moment, I think I should join the merriment." I stood, leaving my axe, but picking up my hammer. "It seems a bit dead here, perhaps a hammer dance?"

The look of shock on Gyevard's face was a joy. He was a warrior of the careful school, but I had been raised and trained amid the wild hill clans of the Choelm. And they tended to have a different feeling about battle, it was something to enter into with a recklessness to shatter the enemies will, and break their courage with the wild battle rages. I knew better now, knowing that they did plan their battles, as carefully as the other warriors, they just refused to use formations in combat. Or to have inflexible plans, the way some did.

There would be a fight here soon, so the best way to deal with it was to take the initiative, in a way the enemy would least expect. I spun my hammer twice in front of me, and leaped to the broad banister on the balcony's edge. Just the motion caught the eyes of many below. But I needed all eyes on me, so the fool would think his time had come to strike. The malot crafted  on the Heart's Forge began to leave a trail of steely blue in a ring as I began to swirl it with a purpose to my right side. That ring was of the magics from the Forge, and a touch of red for the heart's blood I had shed in its making.

"Let us celebrate the victory over piracy! Give me a beat, tovarishchie! Let us dance the hammer's beat!" And with that I began to shuffle seemingly without care along the railing, to the beat of the many hands and suddenly produced hammers on the tables below. I paced my steps to the beat, letting the rhythm claim me as I went. It is an old dance, the forge dance, that I tried to do, and not suited to the rail, obviously so. And this let me jump to the stairs nearby and dance down them, gently tapping the louder strikes on the banister as I descended. I could not help but smile, and it was one that Steffan and Zeffan knew well as I reached the main floor. I saw their looks of shock, they could tell I was up to something, but had not noticed the lurker above yet.

The hammer was swirled above my head, as the beat picked up to the steady forge tapping of a smith at his task. I no longer had to entice the beat, but still took the hammer on metal strike with gentle force on the supports of the balconies above. Each step seemed unplanned, but was made with a goal in mind. At last the whole of the bar was singing the forging song, the Pyesnya Kovalnya, that we had all heard some time in the past, at festival or sung as an item was crafted over anvils all round the world. At last I stepped out of the ubeintsya's sight for a moment, and laid into the support holding up his perch with all my might.

The reward was not all I wanted, the wood was not as solid as I had thought, old and dried out, it shattered easily, splinters sailing throughout the bar like the shards of a ship struck by the ball from a cannon. He had already started his move when his footing had been taken from him, stepping forward to leap down to our level. I was out of position by luck of the rotted column of wood, spinning under the might of my own miscalculation wildly, as the hammer came back towards the center of the building, it rang on metal, and something red danced up to ricochet off the falling balcony back to my foe, equally off balance from the unexpected fall. The alf was face down on a table, stunned, as his own crimson blade found his buttocks. His shriek was of fear and hate, mixed with shame as he tried to reach back to remove it. The song died as the balcony  finished its slow descent, and blocked my view.

It was only a few beats of my heart later that I was free of the mess I had made, my hands finding Dyada and 'Darzog's arms to guide them to safety. I found there was no more threat, only the shambles I had made of a place I found suddenly I liked more than I had before. The old runabrost stopped me firmly, and pointed at the bloody blade, still embedded in the seat of the assassin, whose body was twitching as only a poisoned man could do.

"Malchik, there is no threat left, this kind acts alone." His voice though soft, carried through the suddenly silent hall. "The marks on those blades are said to tell the tale for all to know."
I walked over to the body, looking carefully, my hammer firmly held at my side, ready to block a blow if needed. He was dead by the time I got there, even though the blow could not have been fatal. Save for the coating on that damned blade.

Poison, the mark of the deadliest of the assassins, and the colored blade said it all. This was meant for someone feared by some other. Some coward who did not wish to face their foe fairly, but desired their death by any means money could buy.

As 'Darzog said, there were three marks on the hilt, at the blade was the crest of my family, marked with the bar sinister. I had been the target. Not Joachim, not the runabrost. Me.

The next one I did not recognize, it was a crown wreathed in flames, but that was the mark of the foe who wanted me dead. I would have to puzzle this mark out, to understand who my real foe was. Last was a single dagger, with a drop hanging from its tip. Assassination by poison, one attempt. I would face no others, for now. But my grip on my hammer tightened rather than loosening. Someone wanted me dead, and it was not those in Ovozyest. This boded ill for me.

I reached to my belt and carefully took out my gloves donning them, but never letting my hammer leave my hands. I had been sent a message, and the gods had protected me against the death this blade had promised. But now, there was only one thing left to do. The symbol for my foe burned like the flames that were part of it into my mind, as I removed the dagger, set it on the floor and struck it with my hammer, which was enchanted to break weapons safely. No shard flew, no other paid a price, yet, for this action. But now the assassins would know their alf had failed. And I was alert to the threat.

When I met the eyes of my companions, they were all filled with worry. Zefdarfan wanted to say something, but I motioned him to silence. I needed to think about this, and deeply. There was no more celebrations that night, as we made the repairs to the balcony and sought a new support for it, and several others. All this and more we did in silence, as we each thought hard on the message I had been sent.

Paths of Damnation 1

Enough was enough. It was bad enough that the Imperatrix had allowed the Insulae to return to the fold after many ages, but to place many of those bigoted fools into places of power within the Empire, even to this distant outpost of her power, was idiocy, plain and simple. And the one she sent to take over here in Amoeni Terrai was a total incompetent. We sat there, at the table, Antonius and I, drinking our wine, and complaining about the new boss, who was nothing like the old one.

At least Urbania had known her limits in relation to her knowledge of the terrain when she came here. The fool from the Hantius gens walked in and told us we did not need to have water delivered to the outposts in the sands, there was water enough there. Even in the wettest years, the gullies in the hard clay badlands below the sandy plateau ran dry over half the year, and the tanks and oasis were dry for the same in dry years. But you cannot convince a Decurius of anything, short of doing it at blade point. The sad part was that the fool we had been sent was also related to my drinking companion, a fact Antonius kept apologizing for, buying bottles of our vintage, and cussing his father's clan.

Galenia Hantia was a moron, to think that we should summon water by spell to a place where even the greatest of mages had never even tried. But nothing we said here would matter. Unless it got back to her, in which case we could expect the worst jobs, the crummiest assignments, and no thanks for doing them. I had a luxury Antonius did not, I was at the end of my current enlistment in the Legion of the Custodians. If I chose, at the end of the season, only days away, I could walk away. Tony had to stay another three turnings of the seasons. Three long years of torture, unless the Hantia took a ride into the deserts with her attitude, and did not come back.

Corvinius, the master of our thousand, rarely sent idiots to the edge of the Grey Desert. That he was doing so this time worried me as to what was the conditions back home. Antonius seemed concerned as well, being from the islands, where the council of elders of the Ten Families ruled now with an iron fist. The same council that was attempting to suborn those who sat in the Forum with their lies and subversion of the freedoms we Numeni so fiercely defend normally.

I poured another goblet of wine for each of us, and smiled at my rival and friend. "I might as well be drunk when I resign. That way Corvinius cannot have an excuse to come gather me back to the fold." I lifted my drink to eye level, staring at Tony across the rim. "To the Imperatrix, long may she live."

While my companion was of the Insualae, his loyalty to the realm was still there. "Indeed. I may not agree with her or her policies, but they are better than the fools trying to remove her have." We drank swiftly, and set the goblets down to relax a bit more. Tony was thinking his way through things still, as in how to deal with what he would be left with.

I broke the silence, not to rub things in, but to keep others from joining us. When we were talking, everyone kept their distance from us for fear of the fight to come, when we drank silently, they came over to find out who had passed on to their next life.

"Well, luckily, Nonia is free too, and out west, at Pelori. I will cross the desert and maybe even ask her to take me to the Matriarch of her clan for approval." That got a startled move and then a laugh.

"Perfidio! Bill, you and Nonia have danced around it long enough, get married, boy. Hell, I have leave still, so I may come just to arrange the parties!" I winced as the bar exploded in cheers of our fellow Custos and those we often guarded of the caravans. I do not remember much more of the night, save that the fight Tony and I had was one of who could out drink who, which explains the memory loss...I hope.

Gods, please don't let Nonia hear about this before I can explain it to her.

I awoke in a damp bedroll in the tent I had pitched outside of town two nights before. The moisture was not rain or a flood, but the sweat of fear. I had hoped the nights of dreams of futures fraught with dangers where over. They were not. The nights dreams had been dark, so ominous I wanted to forget them, but could not.

This was not the first time I had been visited by the dark goddesses who deliver the Fates and Omens. The Parcae, we call them. Furies is what some call them. I tend to curse them as evil bitches who exist solely to ruin my sleep. When these dreams came to me, normally I would seek some priest to tell them to. But we had no member of the temples here in this place at the moment, all being out on rounds to the smaller communities before the fall turned to the season of dust storms.

I gathered myself as best I could and dressed simply, donning the leather pants and wool tunic for one last time. Specula, my saber, I wore in a backsheath today, being in town and not needing to ride anywhere. I donned several other weapons with my clothes, but I will not speak of them. Not that they are unimportant, but someone not so friendly to me may read this someday, and damned if I will tell them where I hide the blade or other tool of death I may need to draw against them.

My mind was still upset over the dreams of the night before, as I exited the tent. And discovered I had not been alone out here on the edge of the desert the night before. There were five tents there now, surrounded by a troop of temple guards, the Triarium, the spearmen of the third rank. Elves of such skill at war that they were recruited by the priesthood to protect the temples of our folk, in all their scattered places. Soldiers of the gods, who protected the priests of the lands they served in. That they had camped near me was not something I was comfortable with, having denied the callings of the gods twice already.

One of them was taller and older than the others. Very old, yet still very vigorous, even for our folk. I knew him, most folks knew of him, but I had met him before. Didius Lorcius. The leader of the Triarium. He smiled and waved at me, approaching carefully as mornings were the time of sunning serpents and scorpions in this place. One warming before sleeping the other warming to hunt the day.

"Ave. Billenius, is it not?" His voice was still firm, no crack of age in it. His hair was white as snow, and unlike most of our kind, he actually had some whiskers on his chin.

"Ave, Triari Didius. Yes, and I remember you well, old warrior." My voice was rough in comparison, not with age or weakness, just the effects of the hangover.

"Yes, and I you and your words to the priests. But last night I had my sleep interrupted by something that tells me the gods again call you to their service. You cannot deny the gods forever, young man. Sooner or later they get what they want. Better you accept their calling, for I have seen those the drag to their service, and the prices they had to pay." It was not a sermon, despite the wording. I could tell by his face and eyes, it was a plea. He had tears in those deep grey eyes.

"Just drinking dreams, last night of service drink off..."

His laugh cut me off. "Oh, those are great nights indeed. The dreams of the vine are indeed to be feared." Then a chill entered his voice. "But young Varus, know this. What I heard last night were the dreams brought by the Parcae. You cannot deny those dreams or what they mean for you forever, Varus. Sooner or later, those goddesses will pull you into their web of weavings."

I laughed, not at his words or sincerity, but the image he had created in my mind of the spiders weaving the Fates for the Parcae to deliver. "I am sure the spiders will have me some day, Didius. But until they capture me, I will stay my own man, and flit about like the flies and bees, tasting of this earth."

I waved to him as I walked off. "But the dreams of last night are sending me west, where I want to go anyhow, Triari, so for now, I must officially tender my resignation from the Custos and gain th freedom to head to the setting sun, and the smoke and fires that filled those dreams."

Behind me I heard the great old warrior hiss in surprise. For two reasons, my doni of foresight is well known among my folk, and so too is the word that I rarely share any of what I see, to prevent others from coming to hate me. I crossed the ashes of many ages of volcanic rains of the gritty materials that covered the desert to the west, and even this distant land with their pall.

It is amazing how courage at the bar evaporates by daylight's blazing heat. Especially under the desert sun of summer. I straightened my tunic before entering the offices of the Custos detachment, trying to find that resolve of the night before. The only thing keeping me going right now was the thought of being there when Nonia finished her time in the western desert detachment.

Inside I could hear the screaming that had come to mark the tenure of Urbania. Who she was tearing into did not matter anymore. It merely was the final log on the pyre of my career here. This is not how you treat folks who lay their lives on the line for others. Maybe the new ones, still learning, but to scream about the state of the uniform of a veteran, well that was intolerable. Henrius had been in the service for longer than she had lived, and was only a line worker by choice. Some of us had long ago called him the real leader of the troop here.

I walked in, and decided to let my last act be one of courage and respect. "Only a fool criticizes one with more experience than she has. And more brains, I might add, Optio Hantia." Where this courage was coming from still eludes me. Years later I thought it over, when asked, and still cannot answer with more than I have a low tolerance for fools.

"Yes, but that experienced rider was drunk when he reported for duty, and now I have no one to bear the messages to the west." Urbania's voice is not one made to soothe a soul. In fact one could say her voice is the grit used in sanding the wood used in furniture, or more appropriately, marble table tops.
Fortuna was smiling upon me, I could do her a favor as I left the service. "I am headed west, where do the messages need to go?" The eyes of cold green met mine, and it did make me realize she may not turn out to be as big a fool as we thought. There was a deep intelligence behind those irises. One I had not thought of the night before when complaining about her.

"Pelori, the capital, Cisburni, you name it." She recognized me at last moment. "Ah, Varus Billenius. You are sure you will not stay on?"

"Sorry, I extended for five years here twice already. there is no reason to hold me for more than thirty years on a twenty year enlistment. You need to find someone else to replace me, and I did bring in six more members for you this spring. I have a life to get on with, and that is not here on the edge of nowhere." My voice was even, and I tried to keep it friendly. Earlier this week she had invoked the extreme measure of preventing discharges of several first term folk. By mentioning the previous extensions, I was reminding her that no one could be forced to serve more than half again their initial enlistment.

Her face showed her distaste, but she knew I would not only fight any extension, but had a connection to the Imperatrix through my family I could use to end the action if needed. "Very well. Which batch will you take?" I was surprised at her lack of a fight. She might survive this place after all.

"Pelori and any messages for the Knights of the Sands. I have to head up that way to visit home and get some things I have there." I took the two saddlebags offered, and stayed a moment longer. Looking around, I saw the real problem, she had brought all her old staff with her, folks from the islands, from the wet western coast, and other places where the problem was too much water, not too little.
"You might want to talk to Loricius. He is out on the edge of town, where I camp. He can explain the water thing to you." The start told me everything. She had just signed the papers on that spell thing.

She'd never read it.

"What water thing?" Her voice was sharp, but she did not look at me, but her staff. I began to wonder if they were hers, or rejects shuffled off with her. There was hope, if Loricius could set her straight.
I walked out of the yelling match that erupted moments later with a smile, looking up at the noon sun, then off the to distant west. Unlike my dreams, it was not filled with smoke, fire and death. It rang of hope and Nonia.

As I wandered around town that day, settling my debts, and gathering supplies, I had that awful feeling between my shoulder blades, the one I have learned to never ignore. It made bartering and trading difficult, as I tried to both catch sight of my stalker, and yet not let this person know I was aware of being watched. This much I can say, the merchants knew I was distracted, and took advantage of the situation somewhat. To say my purse and pouch of gems was lighter than it should have been was an understatement. I really needed to have a talk with this person, they had cost me at least three sapphires, and a dozen topazes, not to mention the garnets when I almost picked him or her out to the crowd.

It was at the stables, as I gathered in Turbator for a quick loosen up ride that I realized there was more than one watching me. As we rode out for the short ride after the normal argument over being saddled, I tagged one, a fellow member of my race. One from the islands to the west, by his clothing, which was not suited to the desert.

One bearing more weapons than needed when walking in a town. There was an arrogance in his stride, as he walked to the stables. I knew what was to come. A challenge, in the old, very formal style. I rode off slowly, letting my mount stretch muscles rarely used the last hebdoma. It was good for him, and let me think over how to deal with him. I had Specula with me, and that was all, not even a knife. I was not sure an enchanted blade would be accepted by him, in fact, I was willing to lay coins on that. His folk felt only pure unenchanted chablys was acceptable in a duel. But I would trust no blade brought by one from the islands.

I made one decision fast, and headed leisurely to the west of town, where there was a broad bench just feet above the river that would give us good footing for the fight to come. He took up a distant following pattern, so I waited until we were at least one mil from the buildings before letting my mount try his paces. Turbator sensed we were going to a fight, and seemed to have the same place in his limited mind. The race like pace he took up was beyond belief, and the cloud of dust we left behind was an ugly arrow to the west.

He slowed as we came to the spot we had both chosen somehow. He paced around the broad stretch of flood deposited silts and sands, stirring up the dust still, pawing the ground even before the other stallion arrived. I waited until he calmed a bit before dismounting. Once on the ground I stepped away quickly, to avoid catching a hoof, but for a change my six-legged friend seemed to be content with just nipping at my sleeve.

He knew, as well as I did, that we both needed to be fit for combat. Somehow, this beast from a distant place of grasses also sensed we were leaving the lands of sage and ash. I was still amazed at the doni that had given me the ability to make friends and understand beings others called beasts. I could sense their thoughts, and contrary to the claims of many, they did have them. Right now, Turbator was thinking of chasing off a stallion, to show who was dominant.

I could feel the rider and his determination as he came up to us, even with my back turned. My donum were flaring up again, and after so long of only having the sense of danger or occasional hints of things to come, it was disconcerting. Once the flamens had sought me, as the Triari had said, for those gifts from the gods, but I had denied them. Yet the gods can be patient, to a point. I began to wonder if there would be a day they would gather me into their fold, whether I willed it or not.
The sound of two feet landing heavily on the ground brought me out of the dreaming I had walked the edge of for that moment. Reality was intruding, and the gods and their plots would have to wait and see if I could walk away from this place to do their bidding.

"Quintas Billenius Varus, you have been marked for death by the Allegiance of the Blades. As a member in good standing, I have taken coin and weapon to slay you. But as you are of the blood of the ancient lineages, I grant you the honor of dancing with me in the old formulas." Somehow I knew he would have a voice others would call angelic, not knowing what he was inside.

With a simple turn, I drew Specula from her sheath, letting the light she was imbued with flare out for the moment. "There is no honor in taking coin to kill others of our kind. In fact, it was forbidden by the gods ages ago, in the earliest of days you claim to be here to represent, fool." My voice was low, and had that edge it too oft did in such times. But in the end, all that mattered was not the appearance or perceptions of others, but who stood for right and who committed wrongs.

"You and those of the plains left honor behind when you left the islands, servus. Now, be a good boy, and die like the dog you are." His blade came out, stained red with an iron based poison. The merest touch of that blade on me, even some of the stuff dropping on my skin would be deadly, I was sure.

"Poison? This is your honor?" My taunt struck a chord in his anima, one he seemed surprised to still have.

"I am an assassin, stultus, what did you expect of me? Dueling swords and seconds?" His blade still dipped to the ground, offering quarter.

I smiled and saluted him with my acinias. "No, you are all I thought would come for me. As is your second out there in the sage watching us. Signal him to back off, and stay out of this. His kind is not ours, and this is not about the money, is it?"

One thing I have learned over the years is that the eyes often speak even with the rest of a person are still as stone. Pupils constricted, then opened in the response of fear. He had not known he was followed, nor could he think who was out there, waiting for this fight to be over. And now he would not be able to stop thinking of that one.

I let my inner eye open for the slightest of moments, sensing the flows of life forces around the me. There was a smoldering pile of ashen color out there, with only hints of the fires of life in it. It was not the dying fires of the undead, nor was it the smolder of one of the living who is dead inside. It was one who tried to bend the stuff of shadows around himself, with a skill that was remarkable, but still nothing compared to artistry of my old friend Umbradinor's. This one was still learning the path of crafting shadows, young, unskilled, yet showing promise. I knew this one, I was sure.

In my musings, I was vulnerable, and the fool made his first attack. My saber is fast luckily, and with a flick of my arm, the first clash of chablys on his bronze blade. From this moment, all was the battle, none on other things. I laid my mind upon this foe, and watched everything he did, noting the slightest of clues, the tension of muscles I could see under his skin, the way he shifted his weight to a side, forward or back, all was important.

The dance began in earnest, as we began a slow circling series of feints, attacks, blocks and movements. With each move, one of us stepped closer to death, the other to life, and for the first few fingers of sand dropping from the upper to lower ends of the horus, neither of us was sure who was moving which direction. Then the moment came, he launched a series of attacks that were part of the standard saber dance, predictable to a point I blocked them without thinking of the blocks, but turned my eyes to the step he would take next or beyond.

In the saber dances of the islands, the aggressor always wins, but in reality, it is the person who realizes a fight is not a dance who wins. Specula touched him gently several times as I used her tip to test his mindset and skill, and found both lacking. How the assassins had allowed such a fool into their midst, I could not know, and probably never would. One thing was for sure, this fight was not one I had sought, nor desired.

Turbator had declared his own war, as we had danced, with the huffing and screams only the equines can make, be they horse, mule or onager. The other stallion was younger, and took the challenge eagerly. Hooves and teeth were clashing at the river side, as we danced, two battles of one single war. I tried not to let more than where their fight was at, it being far more mobile than ours, as it raged along the length of the bench. If that battle crashed into ours, all sorts of new problems would erupt.

My nameless foe, which was strange given his attitude to the traditional style of dueling, had yet to touch me once with his blade, but now wore the green badge of combat in seven separate spots now on his body. None were deep, nor did any slow him a bit, but I had the touches, and now we both knew he was not as skilled with the blade as I was. My acinias danced in and out of his defenses as lightning would in the clouds of a storm. This was not part of the enchantments cast upon that chablys. It was all training, determination to live, and way too much experience in real world fighting.

At last he managed to turn away from the formula of the island dance, and tried to lock blades between us, but years in the saddle and working in the fields beside those I protected had given me greater strength than his years of impractical forms had done for him by practice. With a simple push off, I ended the match, as the edge of his blade dug into his face. I gave him his spin at the end, like in the saber dance. Despite his sudden knowledge of being dead, he still tried to block it. Specula shattered his saber, and I winced as he at last drew blood with a sliver of bronze that broke the skin of my forearm.

Behind me, the younger onager fled at last, but Turbator stood his ground neighing loudly in triumph, not pursuing the vanquished. Which was good for a change. I felt the first throbs of the poison of iron in my arm, thinking I should bandage it, when a strong arm took my good one.

"Augur, you make it very difficult to protect you." Didius voice, not angry, but not happy.

Nor was I happy with what the treatment for the poison was. Leave it to say, it is not very palatable, nor were the after effects anything I would care to share. Also, I hate tourniquets with a passion, they make your fingers numb for days later.

Journey to Freedom - 10th draft of chapter 1, better or worse?

Talons tore the air above me, as I dove to recover my saber. Pain danced along my right arm, victim just heartbeats before to the same claws. Whistling marked Gyevo to my left, as his hammer swung to cover the retreat the others were beating.

"Billenius! Stay down!" Nonia's spear drove over me, seeking the softer belly scales on our foe.
Rolling away, Specula in my hand again, my lungs labored after the flames unleashed by a dying salamander moments before. Cilixia's corpse, victim of that conflagration, still smoked just beyond the main trail. Flickering auras drove past my mental controls, as the strain of the fight was testing the limits those restraints kept upon my donum. Over her burnt  flesh wisps hinted her anima still hovered, trying to aid us from beyond death.

Steffan or Zeffan, I still could not tell them apart, grabbed my arm, pulling me up. "We have to run, Bill!"

"We retreat, she'll just ambush us again downhill." Growling, I shook off his hand.

"And here, on ground she chose, is any different?" The karlykn shook his head, stout frame shifting to avoid the swipe of the Flame Queen's tail, as she lifted again into the air, seeking her next victim.
Admitting he was right had to wait, as the beat of her wings staggered us both back a bit, further from the fight. Nonia's strike had failed, leaving my current companion's twin our  hope, the only one with any missiles left. The distinct buzz of his bolt echoed strangely, almost as if from the past, not present.

Above me, the red and gold scaled beast roared her fury,  a handful of her fiery minions answering her command. Better than the scores we faced earlier. Too many now lay on this battlefield as steaming cinder pile, their ashes tossed about by her rising up for another attack. The Paths of Damnation were living up to their name, condemning us for daring to tread them. Aradlisa cursed from over her lover's remains, soft words that worried me, even as she parried off a pitchfork of the afreet bound inside a serpent's flesh.

Beyond her, Norbanus gathered around him our few still living companions. Rents in his tarnished chest-plate attested to how strong a dragon is, able to crease and tear apart that elven steel easily. Stavros and Nonia both flanked him, backs to his, as more of the burning reptiles drove towards them, rising from where the evoked flood Cilixia died calling down tossed them.

Around them all, the auras bloomed brighter. Or darker, as shadows and darker flames tore about their frames. Trembling, I fought to regain control of my donum. Last time I neared this level, two friends nearly perished when I could not break free of the visions the Parcae tossed at me through them.

Beyezid rose up, limping, to join the three still standing, as Gyevo collapsed, leg pinned to stone by one of those burning prongs. I shifted fast, unleashing Specula's power, allowing a single blast of stored sunlight free of her chablys blade against that salamander. The last such blast left.  The fires of creation such light is born of evaporated the prison of earth, freeing the afreet. One less to worry about, as once released, it fled.

Checking our foe, my third eye opened again, showing many things, not just her aura, for some reason. Each of the few wounds dealt her so far glowed in a purple flame so deep it bordered upon black. An internal conflagration that sickened my stomach. I hate necromancy, and that Cilixia's death fueled her healing hurt more. More was revealed at her left fore-claw, where a strange glow of blue and smoke grey formed something like a 'C' mark the Centuria used to mark their status as elite warriors of my kindred.

Fighting the visions was too much, so I focused on them, binding their flows. I needed some hint for a way to save my remaining friends. A hint of verdigris around one of her fangs told me where to strike next, given the chance. I knew of such tools, made ages ago to bind the children of the fires to one's will amid prisons of sinews and bones.

"Billenius, this is hopeless. We must flee." Gyevo pulled along Nonia, limping beside him. The left leg of her trews torn off, along with a dangerous amount of her thigh. She still struggled to fight, though.

"Varus, we get out of this, I am either killing you, or marrying you." She snarled.

Laughing, despite my pains, I she shrugged. "Let me know which."

Turbator's whinny warned me our enemy was approaching. The onager danced away from his attacker, silver horn of his headdress twisting as my mount, the only not fled or dead, drove it into the draka's side. The old enmity of onageri and dragons proving provident for us.

"Distract her for me. If I can get a strike at her maw, we have a chance." My voice choked on the ashes stirred moments ago.

"Damned crazy alf." The Karlykn snarled, gesturing to the skies. "How. We cannot see her."

He was right. The clouds now cloaked the mountain side, streamers lifting up the canyons and draws, cloaking her movements, as the vapors wrapped around Granshal's Knob, before enfolding us as well.

"Perfidio." My whispered curse about damnation seemed appropriate. Biting my upper lip, my mind wrestled with my equally cursed third eye. As in the Grey Mesas three decades ago, it rebelled from any control, showing me everything but what I needed. Auras of our foe's minions, flares of the other fire spirits dancing amid the molten rock rivers flowing off the broken cones of Anyarinth, the throne of the Flame Queen. But her distinct aura, known from previous battles against her, hid away from my inner vision.

Pushing things, seeking the emanations her powers would stir in the Aether of the world left me retching in several heartbeats. Something out there crafted necromantic spells, consuming the lives of every beast and plant on the mountain-side. I could feel the deaths despite raising every mental barrier at my disposal.

"Dammit. Bill's down, people." Nonia towered over me. Her anger lighting her blaze up just enough to block that foul aura of death a bit.

"Just sickened by what she's doing, girl." I gasped. "Have 'Lisa shield us, fast. Death spell."

A shocked silence fell amid a lull, as the salamanders retreated in fear of their own destruction at their mistress's claw.  They could not believe even the Queen of Flame would slay her own to win. I knew now just how desperate our drive up the Paths had her. And why so few came back from the Paths.

"Aradlisa! Shield!" I hollered, moving towards our companions, taking Nonia from Gyevo, so she was not so stooped over. Gyevo's alright, just short, even for a dwarf.
Our friend's eyes were still wild with her hate, but that cry at least shook her from seeking her own death.

Until that death found her anyway.

Red and gold scales erupted from the fogs, one claw pinning down Aradlisa, talons breaking ribs as they peirced her chest. The other caught Stravos's leg, severing it. Their last screams echoed through the saddle we fought in, even as the vast head of our foe descended upon us, nearly a dozen spear lengths away. I knew what was coming, thrusting Nonia away, even as the flames seared from that mouth, strangely cold, not hot.

She screamed, as the fore-claw descended, catching her. Her Hastia fell near me, even as the crimson and gold skull turned away from me. Truly, a skull, and the colors shifting, red fading to blue, gold falling away to reveal the blackened bone under them. Behind, three spears rose to strike, blocked by someone's left hand.

As the flames came near, I stooped, screaming with rage, as  Nonia disappeared in that conflagration. Her spear came to my hand, just as the head swiveled back at me, the last blast sweeping my face, chest and leg, before dying. Such flames take a price, but anger rules me, I drive in, lungs searing under the last licks of fires I no longer see.

But the eyes are the window of the soul, where the fires burn the brightest. Deep inside my own skull, my third eye came into a last moment of clarity. The deep crimson hatred lay before me, calling me to death, and Nonia's spear in my hand to that aura.

* * *

Rising up, a weight falls upon my chest, driving me back to the cot, where seconds before ground lay.

"Dammit, Augur, stay still. You will dump me out this window!"

A voice I know. One who was not on the Paths of Damnation this night... that night.

Awareness comes slow, the cold air flowing over me, ashes turned to snow, wet and cool upon the parts of my face still able to feel things.

"Rico?" I groaned, trying to roll free of him.

"Bill, seriously, stay still, let me get the weapons in here first." Rattles, familiar ones from better days, metal and wood moving against each other. Punctuated by a lance of pain, as Didius Loricus' greaves dug into my ribs, still sore from a spearing just a few hebdoma before.

My cries of agony brought a cool hand to my forehead, one gentle yet rough with calluses. "Perfidio. Rico, off him, now. They have done more than beat him." Her voice barely cut through the ache and sudden flaring of visions, as my third eye again opened.

"I'll gut Sticchius and that damned Cato for that."

I saw, despite my blindness, a thousand spears tossed aside by a tarnished gladius, held in a blue skinned left hand. Yet, that despite the dire future that portended, the avalanche unleashed of the window ledge when Rico moved triggered another, stronger prescience across my sight. One where a hoard of those swords scattered and shattered under the onslaught of a blizzard, whose winds drove the spear true to targets.

I must have spoken such amid my agony, for the room fell silent, save the breaths of several in it.
"The Parcae still touch him." Matertera muttered. "We'd be foolish as my son to take him out into this storm, Loricus."

"Well, I have no say over the weather, nor do any in our little cabal, Antonia." Rico snarled.

"No." She laughed weakly. "But I know one who does, even if we forgot him. You called out for one, to save the other. Trust me, the bond these boys share, there was no way he would not hear of it, and kick aside all of Infernus to be part of this brawl of yours."

Hands moved Rico off my chest, guiding me towards the edge near the head of my wooden bed. Along the way, hisses came from my aunt, as her fingers noted many wounds, quite a few from the severe beating Sticchius dealt me the night before.

Above me, the old elf laughed. "Billenius is tougher than you think, 'Nia. And we had him under the protection of commitae I have full faith in."

"Broken arm, a spear in the side. You call this being under the hands of trusted friends, Rico?" Matertera snapped, her anger boiling up enough to drive the flames of her aura past the visions the goddesses of fates tossed into my view. "Which beast impersonating an elf dared do this to him."

From my door, another known voice, tinted with humor spoke up. "The spear is all his fault, 'Nia. And from the same hand that always gets him there."

My aunt merely scoffed at that. "I knew I should have let my clan or his mother's take him, not you two drunken fools."

Again, Nonia stood above me, scarlet feathered hair flying as she lunged forward, face twisted with rage above that crimson dyed leather breastplate, as the spear sought my chest. Not accidentally, this time, unlike the many before.

"Nonia." I gasped, trying to reach out and block her hasta from sinking into my chest. My arm reminded me with daggers under the skin, that this was a dream, though of the recent past, not the present.

"Gods, they broke his arm again." Matertera groaned, grasping my bicep firmly, to curl the arm in. "I'll need my kit, and splint material. Nonia is dead, Billenius." Her voice turned firm, the healer side of her barking orders and giving advice.

"Reborn." I muttered, focusing on the licks of orange anger in her soft golden aura. "North. Cardenelis. Stabbed me again."

Tickles of confusion's soft blue slithered into that copper hued blaze. I despised the third vision so long, my perceptions of what it showed me of the world were not as others, having eschewed any training in their use.

"Cethegor? What is this nonsense...."

"He's right, 'Nia. Trust your old commites. It was Nonia, reborn. And she seemed mighty irked this time around, when Bill tried to make up for failing her on the Paths." Keth's rough voice, nearly as rugged as his face in my memories, grated after the others softer tones. "Rico, bad news. The Cato is marching across the causeway to the temple, and he has a legion pushed the five maniples of Left Handers he hides behind."

"Which Legion?" Rico grunts, shifting another load of weapons in the window.

"Ninth. And it's commander is in chains, being dragged along by that islander bully." Keth stated, as I felt his eyes on the ruin I'd become. "Damnio, Bill. If I'd known Sticchius intended to thrash you that much, we'd have moved last night. You look terrible."

"Still better looking than you." I moaned, as Matertera's hands sought other issues, such as the leaking wounds under my eye-wraps, where empty sockets still wept pus, a century after my orbs were boiled away. Amid the auras, slowly brightening, I still saw things that already occurred dancing between images more shadowy, of things that might happen.

Gusts of cold winds racing in the window announce the storm outside worsening. From beyond, curses came from the elf handing in the weapons. If memory serves, that ledge is very narrow, made more treacherous by the polished marble the temple was crafted from in the old days.

"This storm is not natural." Rico opined, carrying in the last load. "Get off the ledge, Bana, head into town, secure us some mounts. Fastest you can find."

Another voice I knew well answered, to my surprise. The lilting touch of Insular accent marking her as one that I never suspected would ally with my kith and kin. "The hastae shall be raised, Triari."

The mention of that rank evokes more memories for me to battle, not pleasant ones. Rico lost one of the items being brought in, which settled against my thigh, even as I remembered his own rise to Triari, leader of the Ordo Triarium, the spearmen guardians of the temples. Ignoring my aunt's protestations, my left hand reached over to shift that item off my thigh, only to find something I long thought lost. A hilt that settled into my hand perfectly, despite the gnarled knuckles from the many beatings I'd suffered of late. Soft sand-shark skin wraps gave slightly under my grip.

"Specula. You brought my acinias." I murmured, even as Matertera tried to take her from me.

"Rico, a blind person with a blade is a bad idea." She snapped.

"Even blind, Billenius would be better than many." Cethegor reached in, helping me slide my saber across my lap, out of her way. "And, if I remember, you taught him to use this blade as a focus, Antonia. Right now, we need him focused, not walking amid dreams from the drugs slipped past me and the Parcae."

Sighing, Matertera relented. "Fine. Just keep him out of fights, he's in no shape to swing Specula, let alone be able to see his opponents."

I know better than to argue that point. The damage to my shins argued that standing, let alone walking, would prove impossible. "So, this is a jail break?"

Even my aunt chuckled at that. "Possibly. Those things tend to go awry easily into mass internments, in my experience." She whispered. "Billenius, at least let Specula go long enough for me to splint this arm."

"Not happening, Matertera." I groaned, easing the blade off my lap, and marginally out of her way.
"Point me at that overbearing Islander lapdog, after you get me bandaged. I want a rematch."

Keth's laugh echoed in the small room. "My last twelve vittles on Bill taking him."

Aunt Antonia snorted, even as Rico laughingly chided his old comrade. "Thought you gave everything already to the cause."

"Ran into another friend in the halls who owed me some coins." Keth's light tone left me puzzled. Of all here, only he seemed light-hearted. "Something about a onager race down Pelori way, he reminded me."

I straightened at that, and the pain as Matertera bound my ribs up, still waiting for the splint. "Drinius." I gasped. Things began to clear in my head, despite the pain.

"Peace. Let me work on him." Antonia snapped. I heard the slosh of water when her hands left my side. Followed by a sharp smack, distinct shattering of ceramic vase, and her hiss. "The wound needs cleaned, Cethegor."

"Not with rust laced waters, 'Nia. That is why everyone is ill here. I kept those I could safe from iron fever, but some still makes it in." Cethegor's voice held an edge.

"Gods. Find me something safe then." She muttered curses and discussed the ancestry of others under her breath, in several languages. My aunt has a way with such insults that leaves me in awe. Enough to distract me from the pain.

* * *

Once Matertera had me bound up enough to move, I settled my acinias back across my lap, trusting none with her. Fingers sought out that bundle Rico'd dropped by me during the bandaging. Soft, worn leather met that touch, leaving me trying to smile. Not the silk or wool robes of a priest, but the working clothes of a Custos, the guardians of the borders. My set.

"Must be a bad time if you have to call me back to serve in the catervae, Rico." I commented.
"Just what will keep you alive out there. Robes are not made for fleeing in blizzards." Rico snarled back. "Keth, get them moving, I need to collect Doma Velina, and let her know the Triarium have risen from the ashes." That chilled me, too close to something I'd once said myself, years before being blinded.

"At least you have honor, boy. Better a blind elf that knows his limits, than what the Decuria dumped into the riders of late." Cethegor answered heatedly, helping me up. "Besides, the mount Drinius chose from your string of mounts will take a Custos to ride."

I tried laughing, despite the grimness in his voice. "Which one?"

"An unnamed onagera." Matertera said, scoffingly. "Fool's choice, that one. Unbroken, untrained, barely of safe age to use as a casual mount, let alone in fights and flights. Kicks too much already."

Sucking in air, I leaned back my head, images of this onagera's ultimate sire in my mind. "Turbator's line. Sired by Corfuego upon Zephyria." I whispered. The two best lines in my stable, in one mount. Something in it stirred my visions again, granting me glimpses of a long, brutal ride, and the flare of lightnings off a silver fork. But we'd bred horns out of the onagers ages before, leaving only them to use only ones on barding of a type I'd disdained before.

"Yes. Your parents wish to have words with you about this mingling, and this filly." Matertera spoke solemnly. "She is an anachrnonism, child. Deformed in the head."

"Just spirited, I'm sure." I chuckled. "Pater fails to realize how useful kicking is in mounted combat. Besides, I'm sure she's not a true unicornis."

The silence after that stirred my darkest premonitions. Something was wrong here.

When the quiet, even in the halls suddenly broke, it was at Keth's rough voice. "Bicornis, boy. Two horn nubs, wide skull, and she's gray, like a mortisia's mount."

I shivered, suddenly cold. That ride was coming, one more dangerous than my foray on her great sire's back into the heart of the Dunes, and out the other side in my old life. "Dieum." My whisper at least told me I'd made them aware of wariness. "Long hard rides ahead of me, I guess."

"She needs to be put down, Billenius." Matertera snapped. "She's an abomination. Born with silver hooves, those horns, and hates lizards."

I grinned, fighting off the pain such stirred on my scarred face. "Perfect mount to take on the Paths for another rematch I'd like to have." That set Keth to coughing, trying to cover his laughter.

My aunt grasped my arm. "Billenius..."

"I've seen her, Matertera. Not just in my mind as I bred the line, but in my dreams of late." That stilled them fast, save muttered curses from Cethegor. "Like the pegasae of old, she will challenge any of the draconis. Or save them, if she deems them worthy."

They let it drop, for now. This would be a long, nasty argument over the next few fortnights we call a hebdoma. They would want her destroyed, but I needed her, I knew it, not just in my heart, but my anima.

Rico's voice at the doorway stalled the fight, thankfully. "Well, Velina is being as stubborn with me as she was with Bento. But, at least she is willing to meet us in the great hall."

Keth let his ragged laughter out again. "Better than we hoped. She claims her death is nigh, though."
"I pray not, Cethegor. Bento will not forgive me if she dies here today." Rico's voice held a dark tone, one I knew well from working with him in the past.

"Don't let me slow down the meeting. I'm sure Matertera wants to scold me some more." I grunted, ribs aching as I bent the bit allowed by the tight cotton cloths wrapping them. My fingers lifted up my pants. "Besides, I want to be dressed when I meet the Cato and his rabid lapdog."

That left the air still. Which saved me from their mirth at my struggling to dress in clothes I could not see, and barely remembered how to secure onto my thinner than their cut frame.