The Long Road

     Having clopped along at a good pace for nearly twenty minutes, Brigh looked back toward the mountains where he had spent the last few years of his life.  High above the small settlement where they had lived, were several mountain lakes that he liked to hike up to and catch mahiqezel. 
     He could still taste the flesh of the slippery creatures tinted green along their spine and accented with rainbow scales along the length of their sleek bodies.  Akia had taught him to chop off the heads and save them for bait in a leather bucket of lake water. 
     He would pull out a satchel of seasonings,  herbs, and spices that his mother had blended and given him to take along in case he caught one.  After gutting the mahiqezel he would take the seasonings and sprinkle them inside and on the skin.  With a small fire he would settle in to watch the sunset and roast the mahiqezal to a nice brown crisp on a woven bed of selukidwood stems.  The flesh would flake off and burn his fingers as he ate.  Eating the mahiqezal required a keen eye to watch out for its needle-like rib bones, too. 
     After his mother and he had left Tanist, they had lived liked nomads.  Truly care-free for the most part, but used caution in everything.  They had first fled north to the mountains west of Tanist, upstream of the Cuub River.  She had taught him to catch mahiqezal in the river.  She pushed them to brave the mountains to the west.  Led by some inner compass she was drawn through valleys and along ridges that eventually led down the west side of the mountain range to a large lake. 
     He never learned the name of the massive lake.  He called it "The Mirror".  It was majestic during times of great calmness with no sign of a ripple.  There was a settlement there where his mother and he had lived for a few months.     Akia had decided that she was not yet far enough away from Tanist when she had heard of a patrol of savaran that were looking for a woman and a boy in the region. When people started asking too many questions about her plans and why she had come she took that as an omen that she should leave. 
     They had left and traversed around the lake's shores to the south and then northwest.  They had encountered another settlement where they had been able to work for a farmer while the seasons changed and the harvest time required extra hands.  
     Led by his mother's  instincts, they acquired goods and preserved food, enough for a trek overland to the upper Zahgros River, and set out again. 
    Living in tents, sleeping on rugs, and eating their preserved food they were able to survive until they discovered the westmost settlement in Teiv Navendon, just miles from the headwaters of the Zahgros River.  She had decided that she was done running and wanted to have a permanent home there. 
     Thanking Ashua in spiritual tongues that Mohbed Jolan had taught her, Akia had danced and sang songs of worship and blessed the grove of trees that she was lead to.   She had worked tirelessly with the help of several people who were eager to assist their new neighbors, to fell trees and build the cabin they had lived in. 
     "Brigh, this is the place where we shall live.  Mountains, plains, desert, river, and freedom will be our food. Ashua, Ashua you are high above, all that you give, all that you do, all that you are is good."  She had sung in haunted tones that he'd never heard before or since then.  His mother's voice had truly been an instrument of Ashua.  It whirled and undulated, cracked and reverberated, like the wonderous stringed instrument he had heard once back in Tanist as a younger boy.  One of the elders had been playing it and it had mesmerized Brigh. 
     All these things, he couldn't help but think, were gone forever to him.  In his mind there was no room for more wonderous places, beautiful singing or mesmerizing music.  The world had turned gray, tasted like insect wings, and smelled like the sweat behind his ears. 
     Brigh was certain that nowhere else existed tea as exotic as the kind his mother made.  The odds were impossible that the mahiqezel tasted better anywhere else.  He was in love with his mountain lakes.  He had killed a juvenile gorok by himself.  He had trapped and slaughtered a terrifying white vivesector, had raised the pup she had left behind, and had sold it to a trader. 
     The thought that lesser challenges may face him in his new home, this Drakeel, disgusted him.  He started to formulate who he was going to be now.  This long road would allow him to transform into something new.  He had seen his mother meld and mold to different situations, being who she needed to be in different situations to survive.  He had learned from a master and now it was time to emulate his teacher.  He may never see her again, yet her blood, her strength, flowed through his veins and it fed every fiber in his body.
     Tirlock broke the interminable silence. "Do you know where your name comes from?"  He didn't look back at Brigh.
At first, Brigh reacted as though he'd just experienced a hallucination.  He wasn't sure he'd really heard what he'd heard.  He kept silent.  He had also determined early on that he wasn't going to talk to the dung pile that was riding in front of him. 
     "Drakari is an old name," Tirlock said in continuance. "Your father's ancestors came from the old continent, the old Navendon in the east.  It was a small country plagued with many ancient and irrelivant wars.  You know what irrelivant means, right?"
     No answer came.  He continued.  "A man took his sons and built great boats.  They learned to navigate the seas, driven by a desire to escape war.  They came to this place, they named it Teiv Navendon.
     "Creyton, amongst many names, comes from one mercenary savaran who accompanied that man and his sons to this land.  The mercenaries were former slaves of one of the warring factions in Navendon and were eager to escape to form their own classes.  The totality of savaran kept that man's clan safe and helped guard his malikdom and the culkeths for ages."
     "What does Brigh mean?" the boy asked.  Focusing on the swishing tail in front of him, he couldn't help but ask.  He regretted asking it the moment it came out.
     "She named you after a girl.  It means exalted fire goddess of power, filled with vigorous strength, and ever virtuous.  She named both you, and Jano after girls.  Your father wasn't around to dispute the names and they were validated with the Tanist elders."
     "What does Jano mean?"
     "It means violet blossom.  Said she was picking yarmine flowers when she went into labor with him.  The morning light cast a violet hue on the white petals and she thought of the name."
     "How do you know this?  I think you are full of skueil dung." 
     Spinning around in his saddle and flying off his steed, he crossed the distance to Brigh in seconds, yanking him off his steed and throwing him to the ground.
     Completely caught off guard, Brigh landed in a cloud of dust, gasping for the air that had been knocked out of his lungs. 
     His uncle turned him over and grabbed him by the collar of his dirty tunic.  Face to face with Brigh, spray from his mouth showered the boy as he chastised him. 
     Staring into Brigh's terrified eyes he laid into him.  "You will not talk to me in an insolent manner, boy!  I wouldn't lie about your mother.  She's my sister after all.  I loved her dearly at one time.  That was long ago and..." he trailed off pushing Brigh back  into the dust with a shove.  "Get off your duff and get back on that steed.  There's more where that came from if you want it boy.  You don't talk to me like that again.  Got it?" 
     Brigh nodded his head in acquiesence.  He caught his breath and spit behind his uncle as the man walked back to his steed.  Tirlock flew up into his saddle with perfected grace.  Brigh looked at his future self from the ground as his uncle turned and looked back at him.  Emotionless face, long, black, curly hair tied back.  The man was almost too big for his horse.  He'd made his mother look like a dwarf earlier in the morning.
     The bay looked back at Brigh as if to convey empathy and moral support.  She snorted and shook her head.  He got  up and dusted himself off.  Brigh patted her neck in apprecition.  He grabbed the reins and her mane as he crawled back up in his saddle to contunue the arduous journey east to a settlement near "The Mirror". 
     "It may take us several weeks or months to reach Drakeel.  We will not be going straight there.  In that time, you will begin your training with me, preferably before you grow fat studying at the academy."  Tirlock slowed his pace and came up neck to neck with Brigh's steed. 
     "I aim to turn you into Drakeelii steel, sharp and unbreakable.  I will teach you what I know about surviving on your own and teach you the oaths we live by.  It is likely that you will go either one of two ways as a Savaran.  You will either rise to a position of respect and responsiblity, honed like a precision instrument, and exacting in the execution of your duties,"  he said, "or you will fight this truth, and it will break you." 
     "With me you will have time to decide which is to be your fate, Brigh.  You will either learn to accept your fate and bring  honor to your family names, or you will be pulverized by honor and scattered by the wind.  You will be homeless, honorless, rejected, branded for life as a deserter if you turn from it." 
     Brigh locked his gaze with Tirlock.  No words were needed between them.  The just-noticable-difference of his facial expression changing communicated to Tirlock that the boy may come to the verge of breaking before he'd make his decision.
     Kicking his steed and resuming the lead, he pulled the lead rope attached to Brigh's bay.  He lead them along the river for hours until just before sunset.  After thoroughly watering the the steeds, he headed them into the trees for cover.  He surveyed an area and deciding it would provide the cover and shelter he wanted, he slipped his leg over his saddle and slid off his horse. 
     Without looking at Brigh he asked, "Did she at least teach you how to build a fire?"  Not waiting for a response, he set to looking around the camp for kindling and dry wood. 
     Refusing to answer the walking dung pile, Brigh got off his steed and tied her to a tree.  He had never ridden that long in his life and his legs were shaking.  Brigh lost his balance and fell into several clumps of tukkon grass.
     "You'll get used to it," said Tirlock with a chuckle.  "It'll take a few days, in the mean time, I've got some salve that'll help.  I'll get it when we're done getting wood."
     Brigh rolled over and pushed himself up, staggering.  Too embarrased to talk, he set off in a different direction and began looking for wood as well.  He found some good pieces and brought them back to an area where there was little foliage. 
     He started looking for stones to build the fire pit.  He pulled his tunic out of his pants and created a pouch to hold stones.  Returning to the clear area he let them fall to the ground. He used the heel of his boot to carve out a bowl-shaped pit to line with stones.  Carefully placing the stones one at a time so that each one complimented the shape of the one next to it, he built a snug circle to keep the heat in and the wind out.  
     Tirlock came back and nodded with approval at the firepit Brigh had made.  He laid the wood and kindling down by Brigh.  As he sauntered over to his saddle to unhook his hatchet he remembered to get the muscle salve out of his saddle bag to give to Brigh.  
     "Why couldn't we have brought her with us?"  Brigh said as his uncle dug in his saddle bag.  He looked at his uncle with trepidition after saying it, realizing that he might hit another nerve and end up broken in half.
    His uncle didn't turn around as he refastened his saddle bag buckle and moved to undo his hatchet.  "It didn't occur to me at the time," Tirlock said.  He offered up no other comment about the matter and continued unpacking his horse.
     Sighing, Brigh shook his head in annoyance.  He watched his uncle approach him with a stern face.  Brigh took the jar of muscle salve from his uncle's hands when Tirlock offered it to him.  He turned away from his uncle and unfastened his pants.  They dropped to the ground and his tunic hung down to mid-thigh. He open the jar and scooped some of the spicy-menthal smelling goop out with his fingers and put it on the inside of his thighs where the soreness was most prominent.  
     "Don't rub your eyes after you put that on, it hurts like nobody's business if you do.  Give it a minute, it'll start to feel warm and take away the pain."  Tirlock walked over after having split some kindling and got the jar from Brigh. 
"Get your pants on, you've got a fire to make," he said.  Tirlock walked back over to his saddle, put the jar back, and unloaded his bedroll. 
     He also untied some leather bladders and poured some water into a hard leather bucket that had fit over the end of his bedroll.  They had watered the steeds at the river a few times and he wanted to give them a drink before the night set in.  Tirlock used the other bucket at the opposite end of the bedroll for the other steed.  He kept glancing at Brigh with an emotionless expression.  He didn't think the boy would try to run, but he contemplated how to hobble Brigh's bay to keep him from easily taking the animal.
     Brigh had walked over to his bay's saddle bag and fished out a flint and steel to start a fire.  He started to notice the warmth on his thighs intensify as he walked back to the fire.  Crouching down he plucked some dry grass, pushed it under the dome of kindling he had made, and positioned himself to strike the flint.  He struck and a large spark hopped onto the grass, starting a little flame that grew hungry for more.  It spread and started to smoke.  It looked like the down of a tukkon grass bloom after it had shed it's seeds. 
     He blew gently to feed the fire with oxygen and it licked the kindling as it explored the confines of the kindling dome.  It grew up the inside of the kindling, climbling, and creating a deep green and orange flame.  He placed a couple of small pieces of wood criss-crossed over the fire to feed it further.
     Satisfied with his fire, he turned to go back to his saddle and return the flint and steel. 
     "What are you doing with my steed?" he asked.   He ran up to his uncle and tried to grab his arm and pull it away from the bay.
     "Get back, boy!" he growled pulling his arm free from the boy's grip.  "I am hobbling the steeds for the night.  That's what you do, so they don't wander off." 
     Brigh pulled back and watched his uncle for a moment.  Annoyed at the man, he walked around the other side of his steed and put his flint and steel back in a saddle bag.  He'd never had to hobble the bay before.  He had just tied her up by her reins and she had stayed in one  place as long as she could reach grass she was content.  He thinks I'm going to run.  There's no way I would run in the middle of the night.  I don't have a knife and I'm not that foolish.
Sighing, he took his bedroll down from his saddle and tucked it under his arm.  Brigh walked back to the fire and he laid the roll down on the other side of the fire from his uncle's bedroll.  He sat down cross-legged with his hands on his knees a body length away from his bedroll.  He pulled grass mindlessly and threw it into the fire watching it burn up and slither into the sky like tiny little wyrms.
     "Are you hungry.  I've got some dried meat and that pack your mother prepared for you."  Tirlock looked at Brigh with eyebrows high. 
     Brigh didn't look at him.  "No, I'm not hungry.  I guess just thirsty."  He sighed again and rolled onto his feet to go get his blegger. 
     "It's important to eat, makes you sleep better and wake up refreshed." Tirlock shook the bag and examined its weight in his hand.  "What did she pack in here anyway?"
     "I don't know, you eat it."  He shrugged and grabbed his blegger.  The cap came off with a few twists.  The water was sweet and cold, washing the dust out of his throat.
     Testy little cuss! Tirlock, opened the pack.  It was filled with various dried meet and mahizeqel, dried grain cakes, and some strange-looking fruit.  "I'm not going to eat your food.  I couldn't do that.  She packed it for you.  Have one of these fruits."  He whistled and tossed the fruit as Brigh looked up. 
     Brigh barely caught it and thankfully it didn't explode in his hands.  He tested the firmness of the fruit and figured that he should eat the fruit first, they might ripen and he would miss out on being able to eat them.  He bit into it and the flesh tasted amazing.  It quenched his thirst and hunger.  Having gone some time without food, the juice served to intensify the flavor of the fruit on his tastebuds. 
     Tirlock smiled with one corner of his mouth.  The boy looked so much like his mother.  Even so, he looked too much like his father in Tirlock's opinion.  It wasn't that Macinn had been an ugly man, quite the opposite.  He had been a grand man.  Taller than Tirlock was, muscled like a bull Bahntuka, and swift for his size, the man had always exuded warrior prowess. 
     To all involved, it appeared Akia had chosen well when she had allowed him to court her.  His mother Antella came from a wealthy family who had a vast ranch on the Esebus plains.  She had traveled to Drakeel to study with sages and learn history.  Antella had met and married Refukio Drakari, an arzbad at Ayvanmahal Drakeel.  He had a distinguished career as a savaran and was well paid.  His position was involved with higher security detail than the more common savaran were as they personally guarded the royal family living there.
     Macinn was the oldest of his family and therefore was inducted into the Savaran.  He was honor bound as the oldest able-bodied male amongst his sibling and had no choice in the matter. 
     "It broke him, you know."  Tirlock said to no one.   "We all tried to help him.  He turned to the wrong people for guidance and it led him down a path of rebellion against his own kind."  Shaking his head in disappointment he looked up and spotted Brigh looking at him with hatred in his eyes. 
     Brigh was standing next to his bay with his hands clenched, chest heaving and his jaw clenched tight. 
Tirlock backed off.  He had thought long and hard about what it might mean if he ever found the boy, but he couldn't have imagined he'd be experiencing the feelings he was having.  And the memories.  Those memories had been pushed into the vast closets of his mind.  He'd never had the chance to put them away in an orderly manner and opening them now, they just spilled all over, unpacking themselves all around him. 
     He hadn't realized how bad things had gotten for Macinn and Akia until it had been too late.  This. All of this.  Being threatened with life in prison for not finding the only living child of Macinn Mynot Drakari and bringing him to Drakeel wouldn't have happened to him, if he'd intervened instead of looking down his nose at her.  He wouldn't have had to spend years of tracking Brigh and Akia, having to put his own dreams aside.  He was oath-bound to find the boy.  Finding him would not only free him of a debt his brother-in-law owed the Malikdom, but it would allow him to pursue his career and escape prison.  He was required to check in with letters often and the savaran tatoos on his forehead and eyelids gave him away everywhere he went.  
     Macinn had abandon his Savaran oaths and joined the Marzpahn, the border guard, and by doing so, he pushed the duty of bringing his only living son into the fold of the Savaran onto the boy's uncle.   
The Marzpahn received their orders from a vast system of elite leaders who answered directly to the Malik.  They were given more freedom to roam the wilderness and defend the boundaries of Teiv Navendon where it bordered the Ohotek lands. 
     The lure of a less structured system of leadership, bloodshed, and the uncertainty of the border regions had appealed to Macinn.  He had been lost to his family and loved ones for some time and this transition wasn't unexpected.  The effects of it were, however, and it had unraveled any shred of hope that life for his children and wife would be blessed. 
     Settling down in his bedroll, Brigh slipped off his boots and put them inside his bedroll to keep night critters out.  He crawled in and turned over, giving his uncle his back.  He prayed to Ashua for mercy and if it was possible, to not wake up in the morning.  Another day in the saddle would kill him, he was certain of  it.
     Tirlock also crawled into his bedroll, eyeing the smaller lump across the fire from him.  Guilt grew in his chest. 
"I shouldn't have said those things, Brigh," he said to the boy's back.  "We'll start fresh tomorrow."
The only response from Brigh was an angry, loud, fart that caused Tirlock to startle. 
     Genuinely shocked he looked up, propped himself up on one elbow and peered incredulously across the fire at Brigh.  To curb the irritation of the insult Tirlock picked up a small piece of wood near his head and chucked it at Brigh's back. 
The boy still didn't stir, but angry-farted at his uncle again, in response.
     Getting angry, Tirlock chucked another piece of wood at him, harder this time, hitting Brigh's leg.  "You better not do that again or you're going to need to burn those pants you lousy smekherder!"
      Brigh's body shook under his bedroll. He snorted in laughter and flopped onto his back laughing out loud.  "Oh, Ashua, those stink.  I nearly died from that last one."
      Tirlock burst out laughing with nostrils flaring.  He put his hand over his mouth to muffle the volume as the laugh ran out of noise and turned into a squeeky wheeze.  The wheeze turned into choking and coughing. Finally Tirlock caught his breath,  "Whoo boy, I nearly peed myself."  He chuckled again. 
     Their mischief caused their steeds to snort and shuffle a bit. 
     Brigh quipped, "There's more where that come from uncle.  Don't talk to me like that again."
     "No, no, I'll be more careful.  We've got to stick together out here.  I am certain now, that nothing will bother us in the middle of the night after what you just did."
     After a few more chuckles, they both rolled over and settled back into their bedrolls.  With the tension broken, Tirlock surmised that the boy most likely wouldn't run off, and he let himself drift off for a while before he woke to do a perimeter check.