A Warrior's Heart

Journey

The other girls, all awake now, have been watching the spectacle with sleepy eyes, but don't say a word.

I make myself small and lean my back against the cage, to embarrassed to look at them. I was a fool for thinking the male cared a lick for us that he would give us water. When we get to their camp, we will be made slaves. We will be objects to them. I try not to let my mind wander to what might happen to me. What those males might do.

Escaping the Rhadjari by fighting is useless. So if I'm going to have a chance I need to fight not with violence, but with the mind.

I think on what I know about the Rhadjari.

The Rhadjari were created by the god Aserath. They serve the god by doing what he created them for, raging wars and to bring death and chaos to the lands. To do so the god gave them heightened skills.They are faster and stronger than any other iskrai and are exemplary and ferocious fighters, trained from a young age to be fearsome. The scars and dark-inked patterns on their bodies are not put there by themselves but are tokens from their god. Whenever a Rhadjari male or female kills another iskrai, created by another god, that Aserath deems a worthy death, a yida, a thick white scar appears on the skin of the Rhadjari. The scar is shaped like a straight line with three dots above it, the three dots standing for Aserath's three sacred animals, a tigress, a white bear and a wolf . If he or she kills a human, a black inked pattern, called a thana appears, burned into the skin.

I look at the Rhadjari males riding on horses. All of them have more scars than thanas. I wonder how many inhabitants of Ra'na they killed. My eyes fall on the male who gave me the flask. He has a thana on his arm that looks new from the redness still lingering around the spiral shaped pattern. Who was it he killed? If Aserath gave him a thana for the human kill, it must have been a formidable opponent. Was it someone I knew? How come this male, this evil male, gets to live? And the person he took a life from, is reduced to only a trophy on his arm. I feel sick thinking about it.

I was always taught that the Rhadjari were created by a god who was evil, and therefore they were also considered to be evil. It is only now, when that evil has taken my home, that I understand. The Rhadjari were created to kill. To destroy.

And they destroyed what I always knew as home.

And I don't know if I can rebuild. Or if I will even survive to be able to do that.

***

The journey is an arduous one, full of uncertainty of what might come ahead. As we travel, we encounter few souls. If I had to guess why, it would be because of the Rhadjari. No one would want to risk crossing paths with them, for fear of their own lives. Even other iskrai would not dare to face the warriors. For two days we journey, with little food or water. By the third day I am so hungry, that I even envy the horses, when they get fed. How solemn that the Rhadjari would rather feed their horses first than spare food for their prisoners. I try not to think about my empty stomach, by looking at everything we pass. By now we've traveled out of Morata and I was right. We seem to be taking the route that leads to the Wrykka Desert. I know this because slowly but surely the landscape changes. We leave behind the woodsy lands of Morata, the human kingdom in the north of Eriphae, and welcome the dry broken ground of the Wrykka Desert. This desert is like any other desert, except it's the only desert where wrykka's thrive. Wrykka is the Rhadjari word for 'wolf'. And it's a very apt name since these wolves belong to the Rhadjari.

Wrykka's are vinurs, spirits created by Aserath to aid the Rhadjari, who have permanently taken on the form of wolves . The power of the vinur allows the wolf to grow to the size of a horse and they are only trained for war, because the Rhadjari ride on their backs into battle.