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I'm a mule.
Savara 7th, 1125 Dom.
The cows and the horses and the chickens slept and the sun was still submerged somewhere in the western front, so that all across, around all farm instruments and fauna and people all I could see was the thin blue-colored outline of morning dark. Instruments - allow me to describe these - like axes and hoes and watering cans leaned over their rusted mouths, stuffed in sheds or out in the open on overgrown grass lands where the fencing had done little to control, well, anything really. A barn outdated and abandoned, hospitable only to stray and wild animals too skinny to be raised and too sickly to be eaten. A barn and half an acre of land (I guessed) between us and the forest line and beyond that, them - the Maelisaurs.
Which honestly was a pretty stupid name for a damn bunch of bulls.
“You sure they’ll come from this angle?” I asked Kal, hand pointed out towards the row of trees past the barn.
“That’s the direction they’ll all be coming from, straight down that tree line. We won’t get a lot, most of them are heading north.” He said.
“And we’ll get the stragglers.”
I rubbed my hands together and started out, jumping over a fence with chicken string and jagged knotted metal fragments lining every few feet. Something ripped when I landed.
"You've got a hole in the back now." Kal said with his dull face. Neither eye brow raised nor eye widened.
"Thank you, I know that." I said and turned my shirt the other way around so instead of having a hole on my back I had it on my belly. Oh, boy. It was like everything was going bad already and it was just this early. And why was I here? I asked myself that the whole time because as far as I was concerned, I'd already done my job. I gave these poor and homeless the warriors they wanted so's why was I still in the game? Why wasn't I miles far into the forest heading towards Lao Lu?
Because I had no money.
Because I had to see it through.
Grass was stepped on, behind me. Close, too close. I jumped.
"You actually woke up." Sylas said.
“How do you do that?” Turning, stepping a bit away from Sylas. “That sneaking trick.”
“I don’t know what you mean.” He said. “But I’ve got to say, I’m impressed you’re up this early.”
I rested my palm on my chest and my heart settled. One deep breath after another.
"Dad always told me to get the job early." At least, he told me that when I wasn't getting wasted or hung up on women. "Punctuality is up there with holiness."
"Your father sounds like a bore." He said.
My eye twitched.
“How about we talk about the relevant stuff? Why am I here? I thought you guys were supposed to handle everything. Ya know.” I said.
"We’ve got a few days left and we’ll need every bit of help we can get, period. Go get that ax." Sylas pointed towards the red shed to the side of the barn, one with a low hung ceiling drooping from one side. A piece of wood off the top fell to the side as we looked. A little ways off from that, close to the wall, where brittle kindling wood lay lumped in a clutter was the ax buried somewhere beneath. "You too Kal. There’s one in the shed. I want you both to cut logs. Say…” He widened his arms until they were almost completely horizontal. “About yay tall.” God damn. It looked like four, maybe five feet long.
“That forest is far.” Kal said. Which wasn’t wrong. The forest was visible, far but visible and over a little hill.
“Then use the barn.”
“Whatever’s inside?” I asked.
“No. Literally, strip the barn if you have to.” Sylas said. “Planks. Logs. Wood. Whatever, just give me big pieces.
"Alright." My shoulders slumped. Alrighty…
We went to work around the barn. My body working slow to get the ax up my shoulder and down on the planks already fallen around the shed and barn. I grabbed one such piece of kindling, or what looked to be unfinished kindling and started measuring it with my hands. The ax went up. My arms wobbled. Down. The ax impaled itself into the wood, hands letting go almost immediately and my body losing balance too, immediately. Almost hit my face against the chopping block. I stood myself up, rubbing my wrists.
This is the shit you pay other people to do. The shit that costs about minimum wage and has people running in line to do. It wasn't for people like me, the Harvard type. So what if I dropped out? I still got accepted
To my side the thumping noise came with machine gun pace. Kal with piston arms just tearing wood into pieces. One by one, clean cuts across the dark wooden boards. They fell behind his cutting board. Show off. Just looking at him made me massaging my arms. I got near, not too near, the shavings were flying left and right.
"Uh. Uh huh. So’s…How long you been here for? Ya know, with the Flock?"
“A few months. I joined after you.”
“So’s why haven’t you gotten in with one of the uh, squads or whatever.”
He stopped and looked at me.
“You know why.”
“No. I don’t. I’m pretty new to everything, ya know.” I said. “Barely got a hold of the language, honest.”
His tongue rolled in his mouth, his eyes looked away to their corners.
“Sometimes people don’t like you for things you can’t even control.” Kal said.
“Oh. I’ve got you, I understand. It’s like me.,” I said. “People just love starting fights with me and I don’t get it. I have such a friendly personality, too.”
“No. You don’t get it. And I don’t think we’re anything alike.” He turned, shoulder to me. He reached down and picked up a flat plank and laid it across two uneven stumps of wood. He raised his ax and chopped. So’s I was left there standing in the cold, looking down at him work.
"What’re you standing around for? Get on to it!" Sylas screamed said behind the fence line. I sighed, arms already tired and leaning down a bit. Behind the little barn I heard the small cluck of a critter, a wobbling white chicken that reared it’s head around the corner. One of its sides was overgrown, so it leaned to it’s left and walked clumsy like across the graveled dirt. But it traveled, a little beyond me, pecking away at the floor.
I came back to Mudd road with both hands slumped forward and my face drooping, drained and melting away underneath the warping heat of the sun. Going inside the cover of the tavern, where small holes in the ceiling had allowed some of the heat to wander in as small bright pillars.
“Did as much as I could.” I said.
“Which isn’t much.” Sylas sat on top of a barrel of wine, a little ways inside the back room of the ruined tavern. He had his set of knives on a table in front of him, small ones that he polished and sharpened against a leather band.
"More than you.” I stepped to the side a bit, onto a chair and almost fell over when I put my weight on its left side. The children looked at me googly eyed, then went back to running around and smiling and playing. Made me feel disgusting knowing people were enjoying themselves while I sat there, ruined. Ruined.
“We’re just going to wait here then? That it?”
“Yes.” Sylas slicked his small throwing knife downward, against the white-marked leather.
“We’re going to spend the night here, aren’t we? In this dump?”
Hey! I heard a child scream out, in the far back of the room.
“Yes. The attack can and will happen in the next few days. What’s important is that we know it’s coming and with that knowledge, ought to be able to respond at the ready.”
"Alright, but why am I here?" I leaned against the wall. "I can barely hold a sword."
“I’ve seen that. Yes.” Sylas said. “But someone needs to keep cutting wood and making traps.”
Conrad moved in between halls, smiling brief as he lugged around giant sheets of leather and threading that roped down his crossed arms. His belly held all his stuff like an inflatable raft. Barley kept the children playing in the open floor, making them run circles and tag each other and throw flower pedals into the air or whatever the hell children did to play here. My arm slumped over the broken spine of a chair, my neck leaned back into the cool shade with eyes closed.
“I didn’t think things would turn out this way, honest.” I said. “I just want to go home.”
“You could have left.”
“Should have.” I said. “Now I’ve got no money and I’m not shameless enough to ask. Anyway you could-”
“You’re not getting a discount on my services.” Sylas smiled.
“Right.”
Shlick. Shlick. Footsteps peeling away from the hot and cold, shaded or lighted, brick floor. My body fell into the deep slump of a good feeling tired, hard day of work. Like I was falling with the sun, and the air was cooling too. I’d closed my eyes and time would pass and every now and then I’d see Conrad or Kal. But Sylas remained there, in the corner of the room, working his knives with gentle and careful patience.
“Can I ask you something?” I wiped the drool off the side of my mouth.
“You can. I might not answer though.”
“What are you doing with the flock? How is it that you get to stick with ‘em without joining a squad?”
“That’s two questions.” He put down a knife and looked at me. “I think I answered one of them before, too. I remain with the flock because they’re a steady source of income.”
“Alright? But why do they tolerate you? I’m guessing the Vicentius isn’t too happy about a free agent coming and going.”
“It’s his reputation.” Kal said, coming through the door frame with some wood underneath his armpit, walking in between us and towards the children where another, even bigger pile of wood was.
“There you go.” Sylas pointed at Kal with his knife. “They allow me to stay because of my reputation.”
“So you’re not just an old prick?” I asked.
Sylas laughed and the scars and creases on his flesh stretched out wide and white against his brown complexion, like a dirty zebra flexing itself.
“How about a question for you, youngblood.”
Youngblood, that me?
“Shoot.”
“If home was so important to you, why didn’t you go on an giddy? You had two hundred silver, didn’t you?”
“I lost some of it.”
“You had a hundred sixty, that was still good enough.” Sylas said. “Everyone knows you had the money, lord knows that Soveros couldn’t shut up about it.”
The children looked at me, Conrad peeked his head. Kal turned.
“Why are you helping?”
“I don’t know.” I looked away.
“You’re really bad about talking about yourself when the stuff matters, ain’t ya?” He said.
I felt my blood heat up. Like he didn’t know how hard it was, to want something so badly and have it right there, right then and…to have something else. Another pull, not necessarily a want but a need. A need to wash myself. Yeah.
I looked at the kids.
“I just needed to see this through. Next question.” I said.
“We all had bets, you know? Those who thought you’d git up and leave the first day and those that didn’t.” He raised his face and his thick throat expanded with each booming laugh. “I reckon a lot of people lost money in your being here.”
“Good.” I said. “They already hate me anyway. Let ‘em hate me more, I like that.”
“They definite hate you. That they do, youngblood. That they do.” He wiggled the blade as he pointed at me.
The smell of a fresh loaf off in the corner and the smell of apple-wood burning lifted me from the chair and had me taking wandering steps towards the backroom. The children all sat on their hams, staring at the fire Kal stoked and strange pot that he put in bread, and took out bread with the delicious magic that made me wonder what magician he had learned his strange art from. I wandered out a bit and looked to my side, at Sylas.
“How’s this for a question.” I said. “What are you famous for exactly?”
He stopped his blade midway on the leather, his head slowly coming out. Two thin eyes, made thinner as he narrowed them. But he wasn’t looking at me, nor the wall, nor the barrels of sludge-wine behind me. He stared beyond; it reminded me of Vicentius. The old, far off look of places past and far. Places you might never step on, places you might never return to.
Or worse, places that are always there. Waiting.
“Go eat, youngblood.” His voice low, rattled almost.
I didn’t want to stop. But boy he looked pissed, and I was too tired and hungry to fight with this old man. I stepped out of the shadows, my body coming in and out light from the holes in the roof, colors of warm red and and orange, towards the delicious smelling bread and now bubbling stew. Children came, poor stragglers entered the openings in the walls and all around the group of us; old and young, poor and less-poor all convened at the make-shift oven that had been cooking food for the last half-hour. All of us, tired to some capacity. We sat huddled, me next to some toothless-smiling old woman with half her white hair shaved to the sides. I smiled back. She seemed impress at the full set of teeth.
Behind me though, Sylas remained, licking his blade against the leather in the cover of darkness. His form barely visible, but the noise there and very real. The noise of sharpened steel.
