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The Jevlir Caravansary

Category: Fantasy Short Stories

  • The True Word is Withdrawn

    He couldn’t be more than four or five years old, thought the headman. He really should know, as this was the son of the resident priest at the little shrine on the north edge of town. But he really couldn’t remember.

    This is a work of fiction. All person’s, places, and events are products of the authors imagination.
    Copyright © 2012
    Henry E. Neufeld

    He’d wandered into the headman’s office and said he had a message from the gods. It was impossible to believe that the boy could think of the words he used. He’d condemned the headman for having one of the villagers executed on false evidence, and for stealing the property of others. The child had called the man, the elder, a liar, a thief, and a murderer. He said the gods were going to punish him.

    It was intolerable. The child had said the message was from the gods, but he knew it had to be from the child’s father. How the father had known the headman’s secrets, the headman had no idea. But there was only one answer. The priest had to go. And the child would have to go as well.

    “You lie,” said the headman. “Your father put you up to that message.”

    “No, it is from the gods,” said the body.

    “Liar,” shouted the headman. But the boy didn’t show the expected fear.

    “The true word is withdrawn,” he said. “The gods will no longer speak.”

    The headman laughed. “The gods will no longer speak,” he muttered. As if their speaking ever did any good. The priest brought regular messages, but they were either just general congratulations or they were so muddled nobody could figure out what they meant in any case. Who cared if the gods didn’t speak any more?

    A few days later the priest and his wife were arrested. Everyone suspected the charge of theft of public money was trumped up, but they weren’t sure, and besides, nobody went against the headman. As was the tradition, the boy was given his father’s place. Of course, he had to be cared for by someone, and the headman generously offered to give him a home until he was old enough to go live alone in the shrine.

    The years passed. As expected, the little boy grew up and became the priest of the shrine. And as was expected of him, he began to produce oracles from the gods. They were suitably difficult to interpret. Nobody could tell whether they were true or not, because nobody could be sure what they meant.

    Yet the headman’s luck seemed to have taken a turn for the worse. From time to time as he was lying in bed unable to sleep he’d start to believe it had started on the day that the little boy had told him the gods were going to punish him. Then he’d push it from his mind. It really had just been a trick pulled by the boy’s father. Good thing he hadn’t fallen for it.

    The boy, so far as the headman knew, didn’t even remember the incident. After all, the child had been very young.

    Then came the day when the baron called for the headman to bring troops. There was to be a great battle. The headman didn’t want to go. What he needed was an excuse to stay away and send someone else. In fact, he wanted to keep all of his cronies and supporters from having to go to war and send some of the others.

    The best way to do this was to have an oracle that told him (or could be construed to tell him) what he wanted to hear. That would justify him before the villagers, and reported (with suitable adjustments) in a letter to the baron, it would justify his sending someone else in response to the request—really an order—for support.

    He didn’t bother to say anything to the priest, who would doubtless produce something suitably incomprehensible which could be interpreted however he needed it to be.

    All the warriors gathered in the town square to hear the oracle before the chose those who would go to fight for the baron and those who would stay and defend the village.

    “Those who go will face great trials, but will return crowned with glory and honor. Those who stay will be surprised and will suffer dishonor.”

    It was suitably obscure, but how could he interpret it as direction from the gods that he should stay at home? He should have coached the priest as to what to say. Clearly the young man hadn’t realized his sponsor wanted to stay and had made the oracle too precise.

    So the headman led the small group of warriors off to support the baron. As would be expected, those who were his closest supporters chose to go with him. Who could resist returning crowned with glory and honor? Who could explain such a decision?

    It was unfortunate that the town elder left in charge was not a close associate of the headman. After all, the closest associates had headed off to war. He suspected the headman was stealing from the town. He suspected he had had innocent people imprisoned and killed. But he didn’t care.

    The elder began to talk to others in the town, and they decided they really didn’t need the headman. They decided they would kill the headman and any warriors who chose to support him when they returned. They thought the number of returning warriors would be diminished, and they would be surprised.

    It was an unsavory business. The rumors in the town were intense. Some said the interim headman was in bed with the real headman’s wife. Some said that it was the headman’s younger daughter. Everyone was talking about how the supposed caretaker was taking things for himself.

    Then one day the watchman shouted out the word. The warriors were returning.

    The men gathered near the gate, planning still to arrest the headman. What else could they do? Despite the chaos, there was no way they would survive if they let the headman take back power.

    But it was a sad procession that entered the town. The headman was lying on a wagon. His weapons around him. He had been presented with a wreath as a crown by the baron for his valor in battle. Though the wreath has withered, he was, indeed crowned with honor. He was also quite dead. And embalmed. It really was quite a surprise.

    But before everyone realized this a battle broke out between the warriors who had been left behind and the small number who had returned. Despite their small numbers, the returning soldiers did well, and killed most of their attackers. There was only one of the warriors who had stayed in the village left alive and unmaimed when the battle was over.

    He went to the temple and asked the priest how everything could go so wrong for everyone.

    “The true word was withdrawn,” said the priest who had been the boy. “What did you expect?”

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  • A Fresh Perspective – I

    (See also A Fresh Perspective – II.)

    For years merchant trains had passed through the town by the falls on their way to the great north-south trade route to the west. The terrain was terrible, but alternate routes were even worse. One could go two or three days journey southward, past the end of the gorge below the falls, then cross the river, and head up on the southern side, but that took even more time and the road above the falls wasn’t any better on that side than on this one.

    This is a work of fiction. All persons, places, and things are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance of anything or anyone in the story to anything or anyone in the real world is coincidental.
    Copyright © 2012,
    Henry E. Neufeld.

    Then had come the bad news. Several towns to the east had gotten together and were clearing and improving the road that bypassed the end of the gorge. They were blasting passages through the rocky hills. They were building a bridge across the river past the end of the gorge. They were building a road that avoided the river entirely. Put simply, they were making it possible for wagon trains to cut several days off their passage and avoid the long treck up the mountain to the town by the falls. The distance was greater, but the time was substantially less!

    The elders of the town by the falls were downcast. Almost all of the income for people in the town, and for miles around, came from the trade traffic. There were porters to make the climb up the mountain, caravan guards, blacksmiths, and all the workers required to clothe and feed them. So they hired an engineer to estimate the cost of blasting a road up the mountain and then improving the road by the river. If they could do this, the route through the town was much shorter, and they could bring the caravan traffic back.

    But the engineer told them that the cost would be much too great. Not even if everyone in the town donated their labor could the cost be brought down to something the town could afford. The resulting road would be hard to navigate, with nothing but tight switchback turns. It would even be dangerous.

    The elders argued for hours. They discussed where they could get loans. They wondered if there was a way to bring goods up to the town that would cost less than building a road. Some people thought one could contrive a way to bring wagons up to the town with a contraption of pulleys and ropes, but the elders dismissed that immediately. Who would ever think of doing such a thing?

    Then one man, bearded and dressed in animal skins, tried to get their attention. He first tried clearing his throat, but nobody listened. Then he waved his arms, but nobody noticed. Then he said “excuse me” while he waved his arms. People nearby said, “Shhh!” but nobody paid any further attention to him. Finally he jumped up, waved his arms, and yelled, “Hey! Excuse me!”

    Then one of the elders said impatiently, “Yes? What do you want?”

    “I have an idea,” said the wild looking man.

    “Who are you?” asked the senior elder.

    “I’m Embo, a hunter and hunting guide,” said the wild man.

    “And what qualifies you to have an idea about our road? We have consulted all the best experts.”

    “I grew up in these woods,” said Embo. I have guided hundreds of hunting parties upstream and downstream, and far afield in the mountains to the north. I know these mountains.”

    “Knowing these mountains doesn’t qualify you to build roads,” said the engineer.

    “I’ve never heard of you,” said one of the elders.

    “He doesn’t look respectable,” said another elder to the person beside him, in a voice he thought was quiet.

    “I know these mountains,” said Embo again.

    There was murmuring amongst the elders and the audience, but the head elder waved his arm and silenced them. “We have been arguing for hours and we have not found any solution. It won’t hurt us to hear this … um … man’s idea.”

    “To the north perhaps a day’s journey, there is a gap in the cliffs. It leads up onto the plateau a few miles west of the village. One could build a road through it, and it would join the river road.”

    “That is why hunting guides shouldn’t pretend to be engineers,” said the engineer. “The passage up to the town is only the minor part of the problem. Building an adequate road along the river presents a much greater problem.”

    “Yes,” said the senior elder. “What do you say to that?” But he asked his question in a tone that expected an answer. You see, none of the elders knew about the gap in the cliffs. They were only interested in what was in the town and in the caravan traffic. Why bother with gaps in cliffs?

    “Well,” said Embo, “I was coming to that. Everybody knows [they didn’t, but why bring that up?] that another day or so westward along the river the current slows enough as it crosses the plateau so that one can navigate it with boats or small barges. . . .”

    “There’s another reason that hunting guides should not pretend to be engineers. How are these boats to get far enough above the falls so that they can be used safely?” The engineer crossed his arms over his chest and gave Embo a challenging look.

    “I was getting to that,” said Embo. “I have frequently moved hunting parties up the river by simply having horses pull the boat along by walking on the current road. While the road is rough on wagon wheels, the horses can handle it quite well.”

    The engineer opened his mouth to speak, but Embo held up his hand. “Before you tell me this is another reason why a hunting guide should not presume to be an engineer, let me tell you that I have seen this sort of thing elsewhere, and that it would probably be best to have the boats hauled by oxen. The path will have to be improved, but not nearly as much as you are proposing. The resulting travel time will be days shorter than it is on the new road, and the wear and tear on the carts will be much lower.”

    The engineer opened his mouth and shut it several times. He wanted to object, but he had already thought of some improvements that might be made to the plan, and there was a commission at stake.

    “I see you are just now beginning to get the idea,” said Embo. “Perhaps that is why engineers should not presume to be hunting guides!”

    (This story was written for, and has been submitted to the One Word at a Time blog carnival on the word “Fresh.”)

     

  • We Want You to Recover the Staff

    “We want you to recover the staff,” said the mayor.

    “Why? Why not just make another one?” asked Jed. He was young and liked to do important things. Recovering a stick didn’t sound important.

    “Make another staff?” asked the mayor incredulously.

    This is a work of fiction. All persons places and events are products of my imagination. Copyright © 2011, Henry E. Neufeld

    “It’s just a stick,” said Jed.

    The mayor looked at Jed for a moment. How could he explain? Perhaps he shouldn’t try.

    “You know the market stall, the one just in front of the entrance?” he asked.

    “Yes,” said Jed cautiously, but he couldn’t keep the acquisitive gleam out of his eyes. Every craftsman in the village wanted that space.

    “I happen to know it will be vacant in a few weeks. If you recover the staff for the village, I will see that you get the spot.”

    “I understand that old Edward the clothier who has it now paid well over a year’s wages for it.” Jed said this in the tone of a casual observation.

    “Yes, but it could be yours if you just recover that staff for the village.”

    “Very well,” said Jed. “I will try to find the thing and bring it back.”

    It took Jed some time to find the staff. The problem was that while it was distinctively carved and quite old there was nothing else to commend it. He couldn’t think of any reason that anyone would actually remember it. And he was right. They didn’t.

    After several weeks he was about to give up when he ran across a stall in a small town market that could best be described by the word “miscellaneous.” There were several staffs there, generally for walking, and amongst them he saw one that was too short to use as a walking stick, unless for a child or a dwarf, and too thick to be comfortable for them.

    It was the village staff. It took all of Jed’s self-control to keep that acquisitive gleam out of his eye. It was his downfall in negotiations. But he managed.

    As he passed over the three copper coins to pay for it, the stall keeper said, “I hate to question a sale, but I’m wondering what possible use you have for this. I haven’t been able to figure it out.”

    Jed considered telling the man the truth, but he was afraid the price would change. He just said, “I have a project and this wood will be just right for it.” The stall keeper just shrugged, took his coppers, and said good bye and good luck.

    Back in the village Jed took the staff to the mayor. “Here’s your stick, Mr. Mayor,” he said in a careful mix of formality and sarcasm.

    “Thank you,” said the mayor, “but I think I will need you to present this formally to the city council.”

    “Why?”

    “It’s important, Jed. You don’t understand, but the council will, and the village will.”

    So Jed took a deep red cloth that the mayor provided, worth much more than the staff, and wrapped the staff in the cloth. At the council meeting he carried it formally into the council chamber and presented the staff to the mayor. Then he was waved over to what was clearly the seat of honor.

    Jed had never been to a council meeting. He had never cared about the politics of the village at all. He was a craftsman, a woodworker, and a good one. But he spent all his time on practical things.

    The village bard got up and began to sing the song of Jed, who had recovered the village’s staff. It described the way in which authority had failed when the staff was missing (though Jed had never noticed), then the many terrors Jed had endured to recover the staff (none of which had actually happened). Then it told the story of his triumphant return to the village.

    In the weeks that followed Jed tried very hard to tell his story. Some of the young, practical folks listened to him, but it didn’t matter to them much in any case. The older villagers and the children preferred the story the bard told. Because he wanted to correct the story, he listened to some of the other stories, such as how the first mayor of the village had received the staff directly from the king.

    Jed got his place in the market, right in front of the entrance. But soon he realized that it didn’t make any difference at all. Everyone wanted to get their furniture from the living legend who had recovered the staff. At first it bothered him, since the story wasn’t true. But as the copper, then the silver, and finally the gold rolled in, he almost forgot about the real story.

    Many a visitor would come into the marketplace looking for someone to make a piece of furniture or do some repairs. “You’ll want to go to Jed in the first stall,” the villagers would say. “He’s already a legend, even though he’s rather young. You’ll want your work done by the man who recovered the staff.”

    The villagers were happy. Jed almost forgot. But every so often it would bother him when someone bought something for well above the market price just because they were buying it from a living legend. It made him try very hard to produce the best product he possibly could so that people would get their money’s worth.

    It bothered him, but with the money in his hand it didn’t bother him very much.

    Then one day a rich man from a city far away stopped in the village. “Are you Jed?” he asked.

    “I am.”

    “I have a friend who has a chair made by you, and I have never seen such workmanship. I want you to make a table and a set of chairs for my dining room.”

    “You’re not here because of the staff?” asked Jed.

    “What staff?” asked the rich man.

    “Never mind,” said Jed.

    And he went happily to work.

    (I wrote this story for the Recover Blog Carnival.)

  • The Prince Will Come

    “The prince is coming here,” said the traveling merchant.

    “How do you know this?” asked someone from the crowd.

    “I saw him in a town far to the south, and members of his entourage told me he was heading this way. He plans to come all the way to the coast, and that will surely be right here.”

    “How long will it be before he gets here?” asked another.

    “It’s hard to tell, but it will be at least a year, maybe as much as two years.”

    The crowd soon broke up into smaller groups. Many thought the arrival of the prince was so far in the future that they needn’t worry. But there were others that thought it was time to begin preparations.

    It had been several centuries since any member of the royal family had been in that particular town. In fact, it had been nearly that long since any member of the royal family had been within a thousand miles. The town was run down. Commerce was poor. There was still some trade by sea, but the trade routes to the interior were risky and unreliable.

    So the town council got together and began to discuss how they might prepare for the arrival of the prince. There were many things that needed to be repaired. Certainly the roads within the jurisdiction of the town council should be repaired. The walls needed considerable work. The port facilities needed improvements.

    So workers were hired to work on the roads, the walls, and the port. More guards were recruited to protect those workers from bandits. The workers, in turn, needed to be fed, so merchants began to go inland to buy fruit and vegetables, and to villages north and south to buy fish.

    Some of the engineers noticed that they could get some very fine wood if they just followed the paths that were being reopened by the merchants, and so they sent work crews to cut trees and to carry them back to the city.

    Within a few months, merchant ships that stopped in the city found more customers than usual and were able to buy more goods to ship elsewhere. Word spread, and so commerce by sea increased.

    Occasionally there were rumors about the prince traveling in areas to the south and west, but never any firm word on where the prince actually was and when he would arrive. There were plenty of people who claimed to have seen the prince. There were even some who thought they knew when the prince would arrive in the town, but as time went on, they all proved wrong.

    Two years passed, and there came a time when the town council met again. They’d been spending money to get ready for the visit of the prince, but they were now past the latest time that anyone had projected for the prince’s arrival. Not only had the prince not arrived, but they didn’t have any word from any of the towns nearby where people might give a reliable estimate.

    There were three parties in the council. The first maintained that the prince would arrive eventually. They were confident in the many words that they had heard about the arrival of the prince. Sometime, they were certain, one of the predictions would turn out to be right, and they would see the prince and his party come over the hill and up to the gate of the town.

    The second party maintained that it was likely that the rumors about the prince were false, or at best there was no knowing when the prince would return, but they suggested everyone look around the town. “Who can possibly suggest,” they said, “that the town is not much better off. This idea that the prince is coming has made this town a much better place. If we keep preparing for him, it won’t matter whether he shows up or not.”

    The third party said that the whole thing was silly. The prince wasn’t going to show up, and he never had been planning to show up. They felt that the townspeople had wasted a couple of years of hard work. Why bother when there was no prince on the way?

    There was quite an argument in the council. Those in the first group obviously wanted to keep the town in good shape for the expected arrival of the prince. Though they agreed with the second group on how to proceed in general, they felt they were faithless. It wasn’t really enough, they said, to keep the town in good shape. One needed to keep it in shape for the prince.

    The third group thought the new way of doing business in the town was simply too much work. Why not relax more. Perhaps things hadn’t been as good and people hadn’t had as much before folks started expecting the prince, but life had been more relaxed. They even passed around stories about how comfortable things had been in the good old days.

    It’s only fair to point out that both the first and second groups thought that the third group had forgotten many of the less pleasant aspects of the good old days, especially lack of food and high unemployment.

    So it came time to vote . . .

    What should the town do and why?

    (This post has been submitted to the One Word at a Time Blog Carnival – Come.)

  • Resolutions

    It all started with the resolution passed by the town council.

    No, perhaps not. That might be giving it too much weight. It really started when Tomas got stinking drunk that evening. But since the council resolution comes into it, we’ll just have to start there.

    It was passed unanimously, and was short and to the point.

    Resolved, that some person or persons of courage, skill, and resolution should form an expedition to deal with the depradations of William the Marauder, bringing peace and prosperity to the town and region of Olimur.

    Agreed to and signed this 321st day of the 37th year of Arnon the Mayor, by the Council of Elders of the town of Olimur.

    Copyright © Henry E. Neufeld, 2011. This is a work of fiction. All events and characters are products of my imagination. Any resemblance to real persons, places, or events is purely coincidental.

    “Typical piece of lilly-livered, yellow-bellied swill from our honorable town council,” said Tomas. He had already had too much to drink. One didn’t speak of the elders in that way. Lilly-livered and yellow-bellied they might be, and would likely even admit it privately, but they were the richest men in the town, and they could always hire someone to deal with critics. Critics, yes, but bandits? Not so much!

    The bartender only grunted.

    “They don’t even have the courage to tell somebody specific to do something specific,” continued Tomas.

    “Why should they assume someone would follow orders once they were out the gate?”

    Nobody had an answer to that one, so the bar fell silent for a few minutes. Olimur was an isolated town, living off agricultural products from surrounding farms and from good bought from the rare trading caravans that made it there from the mountains to the west or from the coastal areas to the east.

    There was a castle just to the south which was known as the Baron’s castle, but there hadn’t been a baron there in as long as anyone could remember, and the idea that there might be a king was the subject of myth. Nobody in town had ever even seen the sea, except for one — Tomas. He had a certain fame here because in his late teens he had signed on with a caravan as a guard, and had actually returned to Olimur.

    The silence was broken suddenly by a man at the end of the bar.

    “So why don’t you do something about it, hero!”

    Nobody could remember his name, but he did some sort of work for the council.

    “You need an expedition, not just one man to deal with this,” said Tomas.

    “Not if it was a man of resolution, as the proclamation says. You’re a man of resolution, aren’t you?”

    Tomas just stared at him.

    “I bet you never have been to the sea, or to the mountains. You just went out and hid in the woods like a rabbit, then came back with all those tall tales.”

    “I have too . . .” started Tomas.

    “Someone who had actually done those things would be able to think of a resolution for this little problem. Someone who actually had seen the mountains and the sea, and who wasn’t himself a lilly-livered, yellow-bellied coward, and a liar to boot!”

    If Tomas hadn’t been so drunk, and if he hadn’t felt that his trip to the sea and the mountains was his only real claim to any respect, he might not have done it. If he had even thought he could get by with challenging a minion of the town council to a duel, he might have done that.

    “OK, I’ll do it!” shouted Tomas.

    “Is that your firm resolution?” The man rolled the word off his tongue and made it sound sort of oily. “Are you truly resolved to do it? Or is this another of your tall tales?”

    “I am resolved to do it,” said Tomas a bit more soberly. It seemed that agreeing to deal with William the Marauder was sobering even to one barely able to stand due to drink.

    It turned out to be impossible to get anyone to join him on his expedition. Nobody thought he had any chance, and they all preferred that the walls of the town be between them and William. As a marauder, William was a practical man. He could have raided the town any time he wanted to, but then what would he raid next? By being there, the town brought a small trickle of commerce, and supported surrounding farms, and he took his share of everything.

    Various villagers were willing to provide Tomas with supplies, and even the council, normally as tight-fisted as any group of people, provided him with a horse. He was fairly well equipped when he left town.

    Every so often he wondered why he was going. But then he’d remember the jeering tone of the man in the bar, and the knowing looks of all his friends who, to a man, thought he’d wimp out before the end, and he’d decide he didn’t have any choice. He wouldn’t be able to live in town if he didn’t go. He had to go.

    He headed toward the mountains. What he didn’t realize was that William the Marauder had eyes and ears in town and had been planning for him almost from the moment he decided to mount his one-man expedition. So just as he arrived in the foothills, he found himself surrounded by bandits, and herded forward until he was face to face with William the Marauder. He’d drawn his sword, and the bandits hadn’t taken it away from him. He tried challenging William to single combat, but William just drew his own sword jumped forward, and within three seconds at most, Tomas was disarmed.

    He thought he was dead, but the bandits didn’t take him that seriously. They beat him up a bit, stripped him to his loin cloth, took all his equipment and his horse. They kept him in camp overnight, and before they left in the morning they tied him to a post they had planted right in the middle of a small stream. His feet were in ice cold water. He wondered how long it would take to die

    There’s nothing like the prospect of death to change one’s outlook on a problem. As he resolved the problem into its component parts he began to curse himself for a fool. The council had, of course, never intended anyone to carry out their resolution. It was just something to point to when people complained. They had also carelessly failed to specify how the problem should be resolved.

    Here was how it broke down. The real problem wasn’t William the Marauder. It was the council, which did nothing about it. If there wasn’t William, there would be someone else. There was enough fighting power in the town, if it was properly organized, to protect the neighboring farms, and probably make it possible for caravans to come and go much more safely. The question was, where could he find someone who could shift the council from their position and organize opposition to the bandits?

    By this time he couldn’t feel his feet any more, and he wondered why he kept trying to figure out a new resolution to the problem when he wasn’t likely to have an opportunity to carry it out. It was then that he realized just how strong his own resolution was. So he started to try to free himself from the post.

    He wasn’t sure how long he’d worked on freeing himself, when he realized he had an audience. A flock of sheep and goats was coming down from the hills and coming to drink from the stream. They were accompanied by a shepherd girl.

    “I would guess you’ve fallen afoul of William the Marauder and his fine associates,” said the girl.

    “Could you please untie me,” he asked.

    “I wonder if that would be safe,” she said, sort of meditatively.

    “I promise I won’t hurt you. I just don’t want to die here.”

    “OK,” said the girl. And while the sheep and goats drank, she went and untied him.

    “I think you should probably get out of the area,” said the girl. “I think I can find you sandals, a robe, and perhaps a walking stick, but that’s it.”

    “I’m surprised to get even that,” said Tomas. “And very grateful!”

    Tomas changed his route. He headed northeast. Nobody went northeast from Olimur. That took him toward the sea, but in a direction where there might be new things. He had also come to realize that the council had not put any time limits on the fulfillment of their resolution. He would take his time, and he would resolve it.

    He had seen many towns and castles and had always been disappointed. In every case, he had found that people’s vision was limited to their own little area, and they were satisfied to see things continue as they had now for decades, perhaps centuries, though nobody could be sure of that.

    He was coming across a line of hills and looking down into another valley when he saw what looked like a town larger than any he had seen before in his travels. He was not much better equipped. He was riding a mule in place of his horse, and his sword was old, but it was reasonably sharp, and he had made himself a hunting bow as well. As he rode down the trail, the town resolved itself into two walled areas, one on either side of the stream. The farms around looked uncommonly well tended. The road became better as he approached, and he could see that where it left the valley to the northeast it looked better than anything he had seen thus far.

    The question, of course, would be whether the sort of person he was looking for would be willing to leave such a fine place to go with him to what would seem to be a poor village beside this town.

    But his resolution held, and he entered the town.

    That night he listened carefully in the bar. He was interested in the way the town worked, in the individual personalities, and who might be interested in some adventure of a particular type.

    Surprisingly, he found plenty of people interested in adventure. It seemed there were more people with swords, bows, and excess time on their hands than he had ever imagined. But they quickly lost interest in conversations with him when they found he didn’t know where any buried treasure was located (or didn’t seem to). They wanted adventure with quick profit. That would solve nothing.

    Finally, on his third night, he was joined by a girl. At least that was what he called her. In fact, she was probably in her twenties, and didn’t seem to have suffered the ravages of early marriage and continuous childbearing that characterized women back in Olimur.

    “I hear you’re looking for someone to solve a problem for you,” she said.

    “Why do you say that?” he asked, surprised.

    “Well, you may think you’re very subtle, but the questions you’ve been asking other people, when considered together, resolve themselves into a pretty clear picture.”

    “Oh,” said Tomas.

    “Is that the best you can do?”

    “No.” But he didn’t really know what to say. “Do you have any ideas?” he asked finally.

    “Yes. Me.”

    “You? What could you do?”

    “I can do this,” she said. Then she waved her hand in front of his face, and there was a flash of light that blinded him. “That’s just a sample,” she said, when he had recovered.

    Tomas had heard of wizards. He’d even been told they were around when he was working as a caravan guard. But he was pretty sure he had never met one. He certainly had no way to judge one and determine whether she could do what needed to be done.

    But he was dazzled, almost as much by her as by her sample spell. She was beautiful. She seemed smart. What was more, she was very sure of herself. No question but that once she had made a resolution, she would carry it through! He was missing her greatest asset, but who could blame him?

    It was less than a week later that Tomas found himself traveling southwest toward Olimur with the wizard, half a dozen men-at-arms, a couple of apprentices, and more bright and shining equipment than he had ever seen before.

    He remembered one of his employers when he was a caravan guard who told him that there were two types of men in armor. Those who were there for show, who normally reflected the light of the sun and looked very good, and those who were there for action, whose armor usually was dented and much less shiny. The caravan guard hadn’t cared for the former.

    He approached the wizard about it, suggesting that perhaps they needed more capable, but less showy guards.

    “You’ll see,” she said. “What people see depends on who they are and what they expect.”

    They arrived at the gate of Olimur, and as he was instructed, Tomas approached the gate ahead of the rest. “Tomas and the wizard Adrina, here according to the resolution of the town council with the ultimate and best resolution for their problem.”

    Then he kept riding. The guards were uncertain what they should do, but they didn’t feel qualified to challenge a wizard (they might have thought differently had they known she was just a girl), and so they allowed the travelers to pass unmolested.

    When the council saw that Adrina was just a girl, they were careful to have her followers disarmed before they came before the council but they didn’t bother taking anything away from Adrina herself. They assumed she was some kind of impostor, and they were angry with Tomas, but they weren’t afraid.

    “Why have you brought this girl to us?” they said. “We authorized you to deal with William the Marauder, not to bring some other people to the town.”

    “Silence!” said Adrina, and instantly the one councilor fell silent. His lips still moved, but nothing was heard.

    Another councilor yelled for guards, but suddenly the door slammed, and somehow the guards were unable to open it.

    The council and the guards weren’t very sophisticated, and by the standards of the larger world, neither were they very rich. It wasn’t long before they agreed to go along with her plans.

    Even though she was just a girl, everyone expected the great wizard Adrina to go out and challenge William the Marauder, thus resolving all problems in one move. But instead she set up guards and patrol routes involving the various farms. Then she sent Tomas as her emissary. William agreed to plunder elsewhere and to leave Olimur and caravans going to and from it alone in exchange for his life. By this time Tomas was so convinced of  Adrina’s power, that he presented this with the proper confidence, and William saw wisdom and went along.

    Back in the town, various of the town elders began to retire or disappear. This usually happened right after they had tried to some scheme over on the wizard Adrina.

    It was heard that they complained to Tomas. They thought he had played fast and loose with their resolution.

    “You should be very careful what you resolve,” said Tomas. “Someone might actually carry it out.”

    And that became a proverb around Olimur, long after everyone had forgotten Tomas, and the council’s resolution.

    (This post has been submitted to the One Word at a Time Blog Carnival – Resolution.)

  • The Sayings of the Master

    Iluan-ga had not felt such excitement for a very long time. She was 81 years old, and a member of a well-disciplined order whose members maintained physical and mental health, and reasonable emotional control.

    She paused in her study of the ancient manuscript. PÂ-EKLI-TÎ-ÂN she read. “The saying of the master.” Not PÂ-EKLI-ÂN “a saying of the master” or even yet PÂ-EKLA-ÂN “a saying of a master.”  More importantly not PÂ-IR-ÂN “sayings,” which would match the readings she knew from more recent manuscripts. In the current dialect it would be PA-IR-AN EKLI, as current speech avoiding the extra infix characteristic of the ancients. “The sayings of the master.”

    This is a work of fiction.
    Copyright © 2011
    Henry E. Neufeld

    Twice before she had encountered this reading, though in modern form, and had heard two different dismissals. In once case the suggestion was simple scribal error. In another, a collective usage. Yet she knew of no other instance of PÂ-ÂN used as a collective. Yet the reading seemed so strange to her as to be utterly impossible.

    There could not be just one saying of the master. Perhaps there was one key saying of the master. That would explain it. Even that was somewhat heretical. The entire order lived their lives according to the sayings of the master. There were thousands of them. The master had spoken much wisdom during his life.

    Yet in a lifetime of study of the manuscripts she had begun to wonder. In her own mind — and strictly in her own mind, as such a thing would never do! — she had formulated a hypothesis. She thought that there had been a smaller collection of sayings, large and full of wisdom, no doubt, yet much smaller than the ones possessed by the order today. To those original sayings had been added the sayings of disciples (specially inspired, she added piously to herself), which expanded the wisdom to meet new situations.

    So she had spent her lifetime, using the blessing of her near photographic memory, to responding publicly to challenges of the wisdom of the sayings, while privately looking for the true core.

    And here at Turio, high in the mountains, with the special blessing of the order due to her long service, she was looking at one of the most ancient collections. If the superscript was to be believed, it dated to a mere century after the death of the master. And it contained the one truly enigmatic reading.

    She had established that earlier sources had less sayings. She had defended the missing sayings by the usual route — establishing their genealogy by tracing them to a reliable source. Yet she had never imagined a singular saying.

    As she recovered from her original shock, her eye went almost automatically to the margin, only to be shocked further. “The story of the saying of the master,” the carefully written note said, “can be found in the inner vault of TU-Û-IZZI-ZHO.” “Where’s that?” she thought, but it hit her, almost before the thought was complete. The ZH sound dropping out in proximity to the hard Z, the common shift of the extended ZZ to something softer. Here she was.

    And there in front of her was the inner vault. She didn’t have explicit permission to look in it, but she thought her commission from the head of the order would cover it. The question was, did she have the key? She worked through the set she had been given, and sure enough there was the key to the inner vault. It appeared nobody thought it particularly important. It was just another cupboard on which the relics of the order might be kept.

    As far as she had been able to tell, nobody here could read the oldest syllabic script in any case. She had to oil the lock to open it, but once inside, covered in dust, she found a stack of manuscripts. She had to work her way through a stack of records from the first year of this monastery’s founding, a historical treasure, no doubt, but of no interest to her. She finally reached a single sheet that appeared to contain some sort of narrative.

    It read (in modernized form):

    This was recounted to me, the founder of this monastery at Turio, by the Follower himself. The Follower sat at the bedside of the the Master when he lay dying. He asked the Master what sayings of wisdom he should pass on to future followers.

    The master spoke briefly, as always. “No saying, only thoughts and actions.”

    Then the master passed on to live amongst the gods.

    Iluan-ga looked at her own translation for a moment. Then she reconsidered the ancient forms and adjusted those last words: “No saying, only thinking and acting.”

    And how, she asked herself, do I think and act now?

  • The Swing over the River

    “And then I let go when I’m at the farthest point out, drop into the river and swim to the far shore. The current will be helping me.”

    “And if you can’t make it?”

    “I’ll come up against that rock.”

    “What rock? I can barely see anything.”

    “There’s a rock in the water just where the river turns. If I can’t make it to shore, I will almost certainly end up at that rock.”

    “And if you miss?”

    They could both hear the roar of the rapids below.

    “If I miss, I’ll die, and you’ll think of another plan.”

    “I don’t think there is another plan.”

    “Let’s get going, then. The bandits can’t be far behind.”

    This is a work of fiction.
    Copyright © 2011
    Henry E. Neufeld

    Sheldon looked around. The ragged group of refugees had pretty much fallen where they stopped. In the darkness with just a waning moon, he couldn’t see their faces, but he knew there would be no hope. They’d been forced further and further south, and everyone knew one couldn’t ford the river here. Soon they would all be killed.But this kid thought he could swing out over the river, and get near enough to the other bank to avoid the rocks. He maintained that the current at that point would push him in the right direction. Not only that, but he’d have to do it with a rope tied around his waist. Once that rope was tied at both ends, they’d run another one, and let the people cross on the one rope while holding the other.

    It would be the end of the road for their mule, who was carrying the supplies. It was the kid again who had inclued that much rope in their load. He seemed to think there were few things that couldn’t be solved with the proper length of rope. Whether the refugees could cross the river in that manner remained to be seen. Sheldon doubted they’d all make it.

    The kid looked at the rope hanging from the tree. The memories were strong. The little river near his home, not too swift, but very muddy, and considered somewhat dangerous, especially for the very young. He’d only been five years old the first time he tried to swing out over the river, much too young. Nothing had ever stopped him. No amount of orders, no punishments, no matter how severe, could keep him away from the rope swing. And he was good.

    As he looked at the river below in the moonlight, he realized how fragile were his plans. There was no room for error. If he was any less skilled than he had said, he would land either amongst the rocks on this side or in the middle of the stream, where he would have no chance to reach the other bank before being swept around the turn and caught in the rapids.

    Then he heard his father’s voice. “It’s dangerous. It’s a waste of time. You need to learn to do useful things.” His father was very fond of useful, practical things. The swing over the river wasn’t useful. Fun, yes, but not useful. His father hadn’t understood fun.

    He positioned himself as far back as he could, to get the most momentum. “What do you think now, Dad?” he muttered, and launched himself over the river.

    He didn’t have time to think. He just reacted. One moment he was hanging from the rope, and the next he was dropping toward the water. He had time for just one thought: This is the biggest thrill I’ve ever experienced. I’d do it again in a heartbeat.

    Sheldon felt somewhat different. He only caught glimpses of the kid in the river. He thought he wasn’t close enough to the far bank. Then he saw him crawling out on the rock. He had come up against the rock–barely.

    At that moment all the kid could think was: Too bad I can’t tell my dad. Some useless activity!

    (This story has been submitted to the One Word at a Time Blog Carnival: Swings, though I think it’s mildly off track for that!)

  • Finding the Rich Man’s Treasure

    http://www.wpclipart.com/money/. Per the licen...
    Image via Wikipedia

    Everybody knew that in a small village in the mountains there lived a very rich man.

    Just why he chose to live in a small village in the mountains nobody knew. Precisely which village was his home, nobody knew either. They just knew that somewhere in those mountains there lived a very rich man.

    Years went by, and there came a time when everybody knew that the rich man had died. Nobody knew precisely where or how, but it was certain that he had died. Everybody knew that.

    Shortly after the time when everybody knew he had died, a rumor appeared that the very rich man had hidden his treasure. It was said to include many wonderful things, and it was hidden in the mountains. Some said it was hidden in a treasure chest buried in the ground. Others thought it was piled up in a cave.

    Again, after a few years, everybody knew that this treasure included gold, magical devices of incredible power, and gems of miraculous size and incalculable value. This treasure was there just for the taking, if one could find it.

    Inevitably, since everybody knew the treasure was there, someone came along wanting to find it. He climbed the mountains and questioned villagers. He wasn’t very careful. He tortured people. He burned down their houses. The villagers were peaceful and content, and had no means to resist him.

    Finally one young man in an isolated mountain village said, “I am the rich man’s grandson. I know where the treasure is hidden. I’m the only one who does.”

    The treasure hunter started to beat the young man up. He tortured him, demanding that he reveal where the treasure was located. The young man endured the torture quietly. The look of peace on his face enraged the treasure hunter.

    “Tell me now where the treasure is, or I’ll kill you!” he shouted, holding the young man in place with one hand, and a knife in the other.

    “Very well,” said the young man. “The treasure is right here. I have it.”

    “But there is no treasure here,” said the treasure hunter.

    “Oh but there is! You’re just not equipped to see it.”

    The treasure hunter grew even more furious and killed the young man. Then he left the mountains in frustration.

    In a few more years, everybody knew that there was a treasure in those mountains. It was invisible to all but those who were most worthy. People spent their lives striving to be worthy to see the treasure. Holy orders arose, with the simple purpose of living lives worthy of just a glimpse of the treasure.

    Everybody knew, but they were neither rich, nor content.

    (This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental, or perhaps a result of the general human condition. Copyright © 2011, Henry E. Neufeld)

    (I’m submitting this post to the one word at a time blog carnival on the word “treasure.”)

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  • Tlisli – Ambushed!

    *It was nearly a week after her first lesson with the sword, and if Tlisli had only had a mirror, she would hardly have recognized herself. Many days of travel with Azzesh had already strengthened her body, not to mention toughening her mind. She didn’t even notice things that would have had her crying only weeks ago back home.

    They followed the river closely, and progress was slow, because the jungle was thick. In addition, Azzesh stopped frequently to collect various plants which she added to her already rather heavy pack. Even though Tlisli knew that Tlazil were much stronger than humans, she was shocked at the load that Azzesh could carry.

    The day was generally normal, though Azzesh had mentioned to Tlisli that they were within a few days of the city. “If we pressed on quickly,” she said, “we would reach the city in about four days. As it is, it will probably be more like five or six. We must watch carefully now as we travel.”

    “Why must we be more careful? Don’t things get safer as we come closer to the city?”

    Azzesh laughed. “Not precisely, small human. When we were far away there were many dangers, but they were far apart. If bandits want to rob travelers, they are going to stay a couple of days away from the city to avoid the guard patrols, but then they won’t go more than a couple of days travel further out because they need to have targets to attack. Further out in the jungle the targets are too few and far between. Bandits don’t enjoy having to hunt for their dinner, indeed they don’t!”

    So Tlisli watched closely as they walked. Azzesh liked to stay where they could see the river from time to time, but where they also had plenty of cover in case someone (or something) on the river should decide they looked like lunch. “Just as I could eat you for my lunch, so there are other creatures who might eat me,” was Azzesh’s comment. “That’s not to mention groups of smaller creatures who might do the same!”

    So when Tlisli thought she heard something that sounded suspiciously like oars dipping in the water and human speech from the river, she quickly hissed a warning to Tlisli, before dropping behind the nearest cover. “It’s always best to get a look at them first,” Azzesh always said.

    Azzesh was actually reaching to push her down, and was pleasantly surprised to realize that Tlisli was already on the ground. The problem was that she had been closer to the river than Tlisli at the time, and she was almost certain that the men in the boat had seen her. Had she just been paying more attention to the river, and less to her effort to catch a rather rare Xiril snake, from which she hoped to milk some venom, she would have seen it earlier. She would never admit to Tlisli that the girl had actually noticed the danger first.

    She motioned to Tlisli to crawl away from the river. They both did so until they were perhaps a hundred feet away.

    “Are they bandits?” asked Tlisli.

    “No, unfortunately.”

    “Unfortunately?”

    “They are much worse. I suspect you would recognize the yellow sun, surrounded by rays, on a black background.”

    It took a moment. Tlisli had practically forgotten the folks who had driven her from her home city. “They can’t be chasing me, can they?”

    Azzesh was momentarily stunned into silence. “And to think I thought I had educated you. Oh how vain are my pretensions to being a teacher! Of course they aren’t chasing you! But we are probably a hundred kilometers closer to the Grand Empire than you were when you left your home city. I had not expected them this close, but I imagine these are scouting ways to cut Tevelin off from its trade routes.” Tevelin was the port city they were approaching.

    “So what do we do now?”

    “Do? We continue northward to the coast and to Tevelin. I think they saw me, and likely you as well, and so they may try to catch us. If so, they’re going to do so further north. I know their boat continued downstream.”

    “Isn’t it possible they just decided to go on?”

    “I’m sure they hope we think so, and knowing that the boat will travel faster than we can walk, they hope we’ll think they are no longer a threat. But I suspect they want to capture us.”

    “So what do we do?”

    “We try to avoid them, but if all else fails, you will get to see how Azzesh fights, and you will get to try your sword in actual combat. I assume you don’t want to be captured by the Grand-Emperor’s forces, do you?”

    “No!” said Tlisli.

    “I will lead,” said Azzesh, “since unfortunately I cannot be  both advance and rear guard. I’m going to assume we’ll spot them first. If they come from behind, you need to move first to get behind a tree, and make sure to yell immediately when they have seen you. You carry a bow with one arrow easily available, just as when you hunt, but you only use that one arrow, then draw your sword. In this jungle, our fight will not be at long range.”

    “OK,” said Tlisli nervously. The thought of actually fighting still terrified her, even though she knew her skill with the bow was almost unimaginably improved over what it had been just a few short weeks ago.

    As it turned out, Azzesh was wrong. The scouting troops of the Grand-Emperor were very skilled at sneaking, and they let Azzesh move right past the first of the ambush. She didn’t notice a thing. In order to keep her from noticing, however, they had to stay somewhat back from the path she was following, so when they moved out to cut Tlisli off, they had several meters of jungle to cross.

    Tlisli was tense and alert, and heard them approaching almost instantly. With a loud shout, she turned, and drew her bow and loosed the arrow at an attacker to her right. A yelp and a crash let of her know that she had hit something. She had no time to decide whether she had stopped or merely inconvenienced that attacker. There was a second warrior coming from her left.

    Tlisli had never been very big on obedience, and on this occasion it was a good thing. Seeing the distance between her and this second attacking warrior, she grabbed another arrow, drew her bow and loosed the second arrow. This time he was coming straight at her, there was no foliage in the way, and the arrow went straight to his heart.

    It was fortunate for Tlisli that the Grand-Emperor’s scouts tended to wear little armor in the jungle. Her arrow went straight to his heart, and she saw him fall. At the same time, she could hear from the other direction that the other attacker had in fact not been killed or incapacitated by her first shot, and he was coming right at her with a short spear. She barely had time to dodge neatly avoiding the spear point and buying herself time to draw her sword.

    While on that first pass he had been so sure he was going to hit her before she realized he was there, as he turned, he was much more careful, feinting with his spear to try to get her off-guard. She had gone immediately into the defensive stance that was so necessary in practicing with Azzesh, and she now realized it’s value.

    He stabbed at a point to her left, and she simply moved her sword inside to protect her torso. It was a good thing, because that was where he moved immediately afterward. Had she parried the mis-aimed blow, she would have been out of position, and he could have stabbed her right in the chest. As it was she parried his next attack with her sword, and took advantage of the time his spear was out of position from her parry to step in closer.

    It was the last thing he was expecting. There was nothing deeper in the mind of a Grand Empire soldier than disdain for women. To him, Tlisli was just a girl. She might wiggle out of his reach, but she would not be a direct threat.

    He was wrong. As she stepped forward and stabbed his gut with her sword, he had only a moment to realize it. She withdrew the sword and struck again, then checked to be sure her other opponent was still down.

    She had been hearing sounds of fighting, about where Azzesh would have been, and she guessed that she had been subject to the smaller attack, probably because the attackers underestimated her so much. These two warriors were to separate her from Azzesh, while presumably the larger force attacked the larger target.

    Despite the short distance between them–less than five meters–there was a tree between her and Azzesh. She came around that tree with her sword at the ready, and saw Azzesh lying prone a large human standing over her, preparing to stab his spear into her. There were already three bodies on the ground, testimony to the speed and thoroughness of the Tlazil’s attacks. Yet she was bleeding, on the ground, and helpless.

    Without thinking, Tlisli charged forward. The warrior jumped back, leaving Azzesh lying between them. Then he made his big mistake.

    “Give it up, girl!” he said. “There’s no way you can defeat me. Your Tlazil master is dying and can’t save you. In fact,” he twitched his spear point back and forth carelessly, “I won’t kill you. The men of my patrol need some entertainment, and though ugly, you will doubtless be adequate.”

    Tlisli didn’t pay attention to the speech. She watched his spear twitch back and forth. He began to criticize her sword stance, pointing out that in that position, she would be best able to go for one of his toes. Tlisli remained quiet and just watched. Hours of being insulted by Azzesh had inured her to the sound of such criticism.

    Suddenly he lunged forward, and swung his spear at her like a stick, aiming to hit her in the side and knock her over. That was Azzesh’s favorite punishment for inattentiveness during training, and this warrior wasn’t as good at it as was the Tlazil. As he swung she carefully angled her sword to catch the haft of the spear at just the right angle, and cut it nearly through. What was left was no longer functional as a spear.

    He had his moment of surprise, and found himself too far forward. She got in one swing with her sword before he drew a long knife from his belt, but she only managed a cut–nothing disabling. Then he let out a war cry and turned to flee. Tlisli guessed he was calling to the remainder of the soldiers at the boat, and planning to to get them and return.

    But now he learned the error of his ways. He had assumed that Azzesh was dying, too far gone even to employ any form of healing herbs or magic. But he was wrong. He had given her long enough to find and use a healing amulet. She was still not at full strength, but she was far from dying. As he turned to flee, she brought up her sword and very nearly cut him in two.

    “Quick!” she said to Tlisli. “Get behind the crotch in that tree. His companions will be here in minutes. Keep an eye out for them trying to slip around, but I think they will abandon subtlety and come straight at us. We will gain the advantage with our arrows. I’ll check that these others are dead, though I believe they are.”

    “How many do you think there are?”

    “I would say about the same number again as we have already killed, but the advantage will be ours.”

    And so it proved. In fact, there were only four more warriors who came to investigate, and they should not have done so. They came carefully, but were unprepared for what they found. When the first two in site sprouted arrows, all fled, but only three were left to run back to the river.

    With a glance around at the bodies on the ground, Azzesh charged after them, and Tlisli followed. It was less than 40 meters to the river’s edge, where the boat was tied to a tree. The three fleeing warriors jumped into the boat while the one remaining warrior who was waiting there cut the rope with his knife. As he pushed away, both Azzesh and Tlisli loosed arrows. Then as Tlisli grabbed another arrow, Azzesh jumped into the water and grabbed the side of the boat. Her weight was substantial and the boat capsized, throwing the remaining warriors into the river where they were at a serious disadvantage over the amphibious Tlazil.

    Then all that was left was to collect the spoils of battle …

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    * This is obviously a work of fiction. All places, persons, and even things are products of my imagination. Part of the Tlisli Series. Copyright © 2010 Henry E. Neufeld

  • Tlisli and the Tlazil II


    Tlisli* jumped up from lunch and reached for her backpack.  Azzesh had again provided an excellent meal, cooked quickly and yet tasty and well seasoned.  There was more meat than Tlisli would have preferred, but she would never think of mentioning that to Azzesh.

    The reason she had jumped up and reached for her backpack was that Azzesh had gotten up and was reaching for her own pack.  Tlisli had learned to respond quickly when Azzesh wanted something done, and one thing Azzesh never permitted was wasting time on the trail.  And while Azzesh was neither like the smothering discipline of her childhood, nor like the brutality of the grand-emperor’s people, she could make life uncomfortable.  Tlisli was convinced that she had been tripped several times, had stumbled into a couple of trees, and even fallen into a large thorn bush because she had managed to put the Tlazil in a bad mood.

    It was two days since her conversation with Azzesh regarding the sword she had found (see Tlisli and the Tlazil – I).  Azzesh hadn’t discussed it, nor had she said she was taking the sword, but she had stuffed it in her own pack, and Tlisli hadn’t objected.

    “What are you putting on your pack for?” asked Azzesh.

    “I thought we were leaving,” replied Tlisli, puzzled.

    “No.  It is now time for you to learn to use this sword of yours.”

    “Mine?” said Tlisli.  “I thought you said I didn’t deserve it.”

    “I don’t think you do, but the gods are more gracious than I.  They have given it to you.”

    “I found it,” said Tlisli looking down, and downcast at the same time.

    “The gods are gracious,” said Azzesh, “But they give gifts that require our efforts.  Do you think you found this sword on your own?  Do you think you survived on your own?  No!  The gods brought you here.  The gods let you find the sword.  The gods helped you survive.  That is surely the only reason I don’t eat you for dinner.”  Azzesh paused.  “Well, that, and the fact that you would be stringy and doubtless bland in flavor.  But with Nistl roots and seasoned with serriss, doubtless even you would be edible.”

    She held out the sword.  “Take it and prepare to defend yourself.”

    Azzesh immediately grabbed a stick that Tlisli hadn’t noticed and began to attack without any warning or instruction.  Tlisli tried to block her attacks, but she was largely unsuccessful.  It seemed that wherever she moved the sword, Azzesh’s stick was coming at her somewhere else.  She was being poked or hit every few seconds, though the blows were not that heavy.

    Suddenly Azzesh swung hard, and as had been the case nearly every time, Tlisli was trying to parry a blow somewhere else, one that never came.  She staggered back, startled by the pain.

    “What did you do that for?” Tlisli asked.

    “To motivate you.”

    “But that hurt!”  Tlisli was still rubbing her side.

    “And had I been swinging a sword, you would now be in two parts, quite ready for me to cook for dinner.”

    “I thought the main point of a sword was to attack the other person.”

    “And what did you expect to do to keep from getting chopped in half yourself?”

    “Use a shield.”

    “Shield?” asked Azzesh, looking around dramatically.  “What shield?”

    “Well, I imagine I would get one.”

    “And if someone tried to kill you before you got a shield?”

    “Well …”

    “No, small human.  You have to learn to defend yourself.  Your sword is designed for it.  Do you feel how light it is?”

    “I thought it was a bit light, but then what do I know?”

    “Wisdom at last!” exclaimed Azzesh.  “Exactly the right answer, no matter how depressing.  What do you know indeed?”

    “But why is the sword light?”  Tlisli was so used to being insulted that she hardly noticed.

    “It was built of a special metal.  I don’t know any craftsmen these days who know how to make it, but it is harder than our ordinary steel and lighter at the same time.”

    “So what does that mean about the sword.  I know it is easier to carry and to swing.”

    “True, but that is both a blessing and a curse.  You can wield it more quickly and with less strength, but then your blows may be less effective.  It is, in fact, intended for someone who plans to use it for defense as much or more than for attack.  There are other features such as the guard on the hilt that suggest the same thing.”

    With that, Azzesh swung the stick again, and hit Tlisli on the other side before she had even raised the sword.  By now she knew better than to complain and simply tried to get her sword into position as quickly as she could.t

    To be continued … next episode – Ambushed!

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    *This is part of the continuing story of Tlisli. It is obviously a work of fiction, and anything that resembles anything in the real world is purely accidental.  I am finally resuming this series after more than a year’s break.  I am also trying to return to the original plan of short episodes.  (Return to Top)