The First Life of Tanan (8 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Tanan couldn’t believe his grandfather had been killed.  People in Port Billen didn’t get killed, especially by the King’s Legion.  The Legion was there to protect people, not kill them.  When Soama had told him about what the Legion did to Lataki, he hadn’t really believed it.  If they could kill his grandfather, who spent his whole life helping people, they could kill anyone.

As the hours drew out and they walked farther into the woods he thought about his grandfather and Jelak being killed by the Legion and it started to hurt.  He couldn’t help but imagine a Legionnaire stabbing his grandfather through the heart with a sword.  He imagined his grandfather and Jelak’s bodies laying on the cobbled street in pools of blood.  He didn’t like to think about it, but he couldn’t help it.

When Anin had told him what they’d done, he had cried into his father’s chest.  Anin cried right along with him.  There had been a pain, a wrenching of everything inside him as if everything in the world had suddenly changed and he was no longer part of it.

Under the heaviness of the grief, there was guilt and anger.  If he hadn’t killed the Legionnaire, his grandfather wouldn’t be dead.  If he hadn’t been born a Lataki, none of this would have happened.  But they didn’t have any reason to kill Jelak and his grandfather.  What kind of evil people would kill two old men to punish a boy for an accident?  The anger Tanan felt was sifting down into all the cracks and crevices, where it hardened into a hatred for the King’s Legion, and for the King that made them do the terrible things they did.

•        •        •

Soama led them through a mountain pass and through to the Lataki plains.  From the summit of the pass, Tanan marveled at the seemingly endless prairie stretching to the horizon like a sea of grass.

Once they reached the flat grassland, they turned north and travelled with the mountain range to their left.  For three weeks they continued north, keeping a vigilant watch for any signs of Lataki or King’s Legion.  Only once did they see a column of smoke in their path and they altered their path to avoid the Lataki camp.

A second range of mountains, with much higher peaks, grew up in front of them as they continued north.  They eventually came upon a river and followed it into a wide valley.  The mountains grew larger around them every day.  Eventually, the valley narrowed and began to slope upward as they neared the foothills of these mountains, which Soama said were called the “Appas”.

They stopped for the night where another river joined the one they had been following.  They had been traveling for six weeks and they were starting to feel winter creep in.  The days were getting shorter and the nights were getting colder.

“We’ve been out of Lataki territory for about a week now,” Soama told them.  “I think it will be safe for us to make a fire tonight.  Maybe we can catch some fish and have a hot meal.”

Anin had been able to supplement their modest stock of dried meat with roots and berries he harvested as they travelled.  They were barely getting enough calories to sustain them.  Fish would be a real treat, and Tanan would have even been happy to have a bowl of Soama’s dirt tasting stew if it meant warm food.  A meal of cooked fish sounded like a feast.

Anin took a small net out of his pack and walked along the river bank until he found a suitable spot to try his luck.  Soama and Tanan went into the woods to gather firewood.  They returned a short time later with armloads of various sized branches.  Soama stacked the wood, creating what Tanan thought looked like a little wooden tent.  He stuffed a couple of handfuls of dry grass and moss under the wood.

Soama looked at Tanan, who had been watching him work.  “I’d like you to try to light this fire using the heat trick that I taught you.”

Tanan could easily make his hand warm, but he didn’t think he would be able to generate the kind of heat it would take to start a fire.  When he told Soama this, the Abbot told him, “Build the warmth in your belly, but instead of letting it flow into your hands, try to build it up and focus it.”

Soama picked up a handful of the dry grass he’d gathered and held it in his open hands.  “Imagine you’re pressing it down and making it smaller.”  He demonstrated by smashing the grass into a ball in his hands.

“Once you build up the compressed heat, push it through your finger to a spot outside your body.  If you send the heat into the dry moss, it will catch fire.  We have some time, so just practice and see what you can do.”

Tanan spent an hour trying, succeeding only in becoming frustrated.  When Anin came back from his fishing spot with several good sized fish Tanan gave up and Anin lit the fire by scraping his knife on a piece of flint from his pack.

“Keep practicing,” said Anin.  “Anything worth doing takes practice.”

Soama went into the woods again and returned with green branches, which he stripped of bark.  They roasted the fish over the fire and enjoyed the first hot meal they’d had in weeks.

There was no sign of rain, so they didn’t set up the tent.  They would sleep near the fire, taking their regular turns on watch.  Soama always took first watch.  Anin would take the second watch and then Tanan had the last couple of hours.  When the sky showed the first signs of dawn, Tanan would wake the others and they would pack up and be ready to move as soon as there was enough light to see.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

A messenger arrived from Komisan with news that the King’s brother had been murdered by a Lataki boy.  All the Legionnaires on the mainland had been sent out in pairs to locate the fugitives, who were believed to have fled the island.  Nubran and Elsib had come across the trail of two adults and a child.  Nubran followed the trail and Elsib returned to base to report what they’d found.

Nubran had been tracking the fugitives north for a month now, marking his path for Elsib and the other Legionnaires she would bring.  He’d caught up to the Lataki boy two days ago and had been watching them ever since.  The boy was traveling with a middle aged man, probably the boy’s father, and an elderly Abbot.  The orders they had received were to kill the boy and anyone who was with him.

As a fresh recruit in the King’s Legion, Nubran had been trained in the new camp at Lake Larin.  He had then been sent to the mainland to train with an experienced Ranger for six months.  He’d been partnered with Elsib, one of the few female Legionnaires, for his training.  His training with Elsib was nearly finished, and he would soon join one of the many Legion patrols that monitored the western Lataki plains, hunting Lataki that came too close to Komisani territory.  He had less than a week of Ranger training left when the word had come down about the fugitives.  And now Nubran was going to be the one to kill them.

It was late in the day and the fugitives had stopped and were setting up their camp.  Nubran circled around to the left of them into the deep cover of the woods.  He watched as the old Abbot came into the woods and gathered firewood.  Once the old man returned to his camp, Nubran crept to within a hundred yards of the camp and held his position, watching.  Eventually, they lit a fire and cooked some fish the other man had caught.

Nubran watched until the boy and the middle aged man went to sleep.  The previous two nights, Nubran had only slept for a few hours at a time so he could learn the watch schedule of the fugitives.  The old man took first watch, followed by the younger man.  A couple of hours before dawn, the boy would take watch.  Nubran would wait until the men were asleep.  Tonight he would strike.  The Lataki boy would be dead by dawn and Nubran would return to Komisan a hero.

He moved two hundred yards into the woods, sat with his back against a tree and allowed himself a few hours of sleep.

CHAPTER THIRTY

Tanan woke with Anin gently shaking his shoulder.  “Time for your watch, son.”

He sat up and rubbed his eyes.  Tanan knew that Anin never actually slept while he was on watch, just closed his eyes and kept watch with his ears for the last couple of hours.  Tanan knew he wasn’t ready to have an actual watch by himself, but he was glad his father pretended to let him have a watch.

He stood up and stretched, then walked twenty paces down toward the river where he watered a bush.  The fire had burned itself out during the night, and when Tanan walked back to the camp he sat in front of the blackened remains and poked at them with a stick.  He reached over and pulled a handful of dry, yellow grass out of the dirt, throwing it on the black circle that had been the fire.

Tanan was bored, so he kept pulling handful after handful of dry grass and piling it up.  Eventually he had pulled up all the grass he could reach without moving.  He had an impressive pile of grass where the fire had been.  He looked around.  It was quiet.  The river splashed it’s way through the rocks, and crickets chirped lazily.

As he often did when he was on watch and it was cold, he summoned the warmth in his belly like Soama had taught him.  It warmed his body and he let the warmth flow out into his feet and hands.

As he stared at the pile of dry grass in front of him, he decided to see just how much heat he could build up.  There was no pressure to start the fire now, so maybe he’d be able to concentrate a little better.  If he could figure it out now, maybe he would be able to impress his father and Soama by lighting the fire later that night.

Tanan let the heat in his belly build until he felt very warm all over.  He imagined smashing the heat down into a red hot coal right in the middle of his stomach.  He held the coal in his mind and allowed its heat to radiate a warm bubble around itself.  The bubble of heat grew until his belly was again filled with heat.  Then he smashed it down into the coal, which he now imagined was glowing a bright yellow. 

Three more times, he let the coal heat up his entire belly before compressing it down.  He was starting to sweat a little.  He imagined the coal glowing bluish-white and pulsing with heat.  This was more heat than he’d been able to summon before.  If he could just focus it into a pinpoint.  He reached his hand out toward the pile of dry grass…

“Tanan!”, screamed Anin as he scrambled to get out from under his blanket.  Tanan hadn’t realized his eyes were closed, but when he opened them he saw a man from the King’s Legion standing over him.  The man held a shiny silver sword and it was arcing down toward his head.

The anger Tanan felt for what the King’s Legion did to his grandfather surged through him.  Tanan let loose an incoherent scream of rage as he threw his hands toward the man, unleashing a stream of white hot energy and hatred into the man.

Nubran exploded with a sickening wet pop, sending a slag of blood and flesh flying in every direction.  The sword, which suddenly had no hand wrapped around the hilt, flew over Tanan’s head and slid to a stop behind him, glowing red hot.  What was left of Nubran sloshed to the ground in a boiling pile of twisted metal, bone and viscera.

Tanan's eyes widened, then rolled back and he slumped over, unconscious.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Soama leaned over Tanan and put a hand on the boy’s forehead.  “He’ll be fine,” said the Abbot.  “He’s going to sleep for a while after expending that much energy.”

Anin started packing up their things, shaking gore out of the blankets as best he could.  There would be time to properly clean them later.  Now, they needed to move.

What was left of the Legionnaire was nauseating.  Anin kept his eyes on other things as he worked.  He couldn’t believe what he’d just seen Tanan do.  He’d never even heard of magic like that.  It was good that Soama was taking them to a place where Tanan could be properly trained.

Soama returned from a quick search of the perimeter.  “I don’t see any others out there.  We were lucky.  He was alone.”

“What should we do with the… body?” Anin asked.

Soama looked at the bloody mess.  “That man meant to kill Tanan.  Let the crows have him.”

Anin slipped into his backpack, picked up Tanan, and started walking.  Soama followed, carrying his and Tanan’s packs.

Soama didn’t think there would be any more of the King’s Legion this far north, but he also hadn’t expected the one Tanan had killed either.  He chose a circuitous path, doubling back a few times and walking through an icy stream for a mile to throw any tracker off their trail.

•        •        •

They made it into the mountains by nightfall, stopping only when it got too dark to travel safely.

Soama was able to wake Tanan the next morning, and the boy’s demeanor was grim.  Anin had hoped that the boy wouldn’t remember what had happened, but Tanan remembered.  He didn’t regret that he’d killed the man, either.  He had no sympathy for the King’s Legion.  They had killed his grandfather, Jelak and countless Lataki.

Tanan was beginning to think it was anger that made his magic so strong.  He had been very angry at Grapf when he killed the Constable, and his anger had turned his simple fire lighting experiment into the burst of magic that had saved him, his father and Soama from the soldier.  With what he’d learned about the King’s Legion, Tanan didn’t regret that his anger had caused two of them to die.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Elsib was something of an anomaly in the King’s Legion, being one of only a handful of women, and the only female who had become a Ranger.  She was as tough as any man in the Legion and smarter than most of them.

She was currently leading a squad of Legionnaires north in pursuit of the fugitives who had killed the King’s brother.  Her trainee, Nubran, had been tracking them and leaving markers for her to follow.  Nubran had a few days lead on her, but she’d been pushing the squad hard and they had almost caught up to him.

The fugitives left a trail that a blind simpleton could have followed.  They had passed through this area side by side, trampling the grass and stepping in every muddy spot they could find.  It was almost as if they wanted to be found.  Nubran’s trail wasn’t much better, which irritated her.  She had trained him, and she expected better.  When she caught up to him, she’d set him straight.

She held her hand up, signaling the squad to stop.  She’d found a spot where Nubran had stopped and lain in the grass.  His trail led away to the left, towards the woods.  Elsib let her squad rest while she followed Nubran’s trail into the tree line.  He must have been watching the fugitives.  Elsib was able to track every move Nubran had made, including where he had napped next to a tree.  She could clearly make out the imprint of his butt where he’d sat and slept.

Elsib moved down out of the trees.  There was a black circle where a fire had been and she walked down toward it.  There was the carcass of an animal near where the fire had been.  She drew closer and saw that there were pieces of metal and leather mixed in with the blood and entrails.

And then Elsib doubled over and threw up.

•        •        •

Elsib and her squad tried to follow the trail of the fugitives.  Apparently their encounter with Nubran had caused them to become more careful.  The fugitives had doubled back, created false trails and entered streams several times.  The squad spent two weeks trying to find any sign of the fugitives before giving up.  They turned south and started the long journey back to the Legion mainland headquarters.