The Wanderer
Lord Tokian led the caravan. His
family owned the Dakam Store in Rota. All told, there were more than
forty men associated with the store accompanying the caravan. Their
usual tasks were to cook and clean up after the rest of the caravan,
and to load and unload cargo. The toshul traveled in the wagons at the
head of the caravan, with food, tents and supplies following them.
Guards surrounded the caravan on every side. All of the guards on duty
were mounted. Gozu gave strict commands so that there would be no
obvious openings in the caravan’s defenses.
Gozu had been in charge of protecting
caravans for more than thirty years, and was getting old himself. He
knew a good guard when he saw one, and helped Jiguro get acclimated to
his new comrades as quickly as possible. He was fair in his division
of duties and always spoke to Lord Tokian with the utmost respect.
The caravan paused to gather firewood
in the early evening on the first day of their journey. Gozu called
out to Balsa. “Your dad taught you well,” he said. “You may be half as
big as the rest of us, but I’m willing to assign you to guard shifts.
You ride a horse well and can fight better than most. If you do the
job well, you’ll get a cut of any extra payments we receive, too.”
Balsa blushed and thanked Gozu
politely. She’d rarely been praised for her riding skills before, and
was happy at the compliment. She agreed to take guard shifts, though
she didn’t expect to make much money in exchange. Maybe she would make
enough so that she could do a little shopping for herself. They would
be separating from the caravan at the Trader’s Market. Balsa wanted to
buy a souvenir for Tanda. He loved drawing and picture books, and in
Rota, there were picture books with special paper made from flower
petals and fragrant grasses. She knew he’d be overjoyed if she brought
one back for him. She looked forward to it as she bedded down in a
small tent that night.
Wind flapped at the tent canvas.
Sometimes she heard men patrolling slowly back and forth through the
tall grass. The ground was hard and not exactly comfortable to sleep
on, but Balsa’s heart felt light and free. The smell of the earth and
the grass were all-encompassing, and she felt like a part of it all.
When she’d slept at the tavern, surrounded by walls, Balsa often had
nightmares that her and Jiguro’s pursuers found them and captured
them.
Balsa closed her eyes, feeling safer
than usual. She had no nightmares.
Moving the cargo safely so that it
wouldn’t spill or leak out was exceedingly difficult. The caravan’s
pace slowed to a crawl. By the time they entered the vast, grassy
plains typical of northern Rota, it was almost the end of autumn. Most
early mornings were misty and cold enough to freeze people through.
The cooks and doctors in the caravan had their hands full, but they
were skilled at their work, and no one suffered too much from the late
autumn chill. They fried bam in the middle of the day and distributed
it. A kind of stew called laru and sweet tea were always boiling and
readily available.
The head chef was singled out for
particular praise by Gozu. “He knows what he’s doing, at any rate.
Makes this whole effort worth all the fuss,” he said while sipping at
his stew. “Lord Tokian kept most of the same group that we usually
take on this trip, which shows that he has common sense, at any
rate.”
Many of the guards in the caravan had
been working this route for ten years or more, and knew Lord Tokian
well—some of them had known him since he was a small child. Lord
Tokian’s father knew the men of the caravan better, of course, having
worked with them for longer. This was Lord Tokian’s first time leading
the caravan expedition without his father present.
“One thing does bother me,” Sumal
said. “His father always ate with us, but he always takes his meals
alone, in his tent. Very standoffish.”
The other guards near Sumal grinned.
“Don’t let it bother you. He’s always like that,” one of the guards
said quietly. “He’s not like his father. He wants to expand this
business considerably. I’ve heard rumors that he’s got his fingers in
several pies.”
The guard fell silent. Gozu glanced
at him. “You’re not thinking about gold dust, are you? Everyone knows
those are only rumors. Jitan had a hefty supply of it a long time ago,
and the merchants that traded in it used it to barter connections with
the royal family. But the market for gold dust is more or less locked
down now—none of the merchants trading in it currently would be
willing to let an outsider get a cut of their business.”
Gozu smiled. “The Dakam Store has a
proud tradition, but no one would call it large or famous. It may be
that Lord Tokian hopes to blaze a new trail for us by exchanging
toshul for gold dust in Jitan, but we won’t know that for sure until
we get there. Who knows? His plans for the future might make things a
bit easier for all of us.”
Balsa listened to the adults’
conversation. Jitan was the ancient capital of Rota and home to a
royal palace. Because of that, the roads surrounding it were protected
by Rota’s army, and there was little risk that the caravan would be
attacked by bandits or thieves there. The caravan’s route had been
chosen so that they would indeed pass through Jitan on their way to
Toluan and the Trader’s Market, but trade between these three
important cities wasn’t easy. This was by design: the economies of all
three cities depended so much on trade that they made artificial
separations between them and authorized routes that would only pass
through one or two cities on any given caravan journey. The fact that
this caravan was stopping in all three places meant that they would
have to take a dangerous road over a river gorge that wasn’t
frequently used and was poorly guarded. Jiguro had revealed all of
this to Balsa during their travels.
Balsa didn’t really understand why
there was such a convoluted trade system—the details put her to
sleep—but she remembered the gist of it. She listened to the guards
talk while sipping sweet tea and eating fried bam, and tried not to
think too hard about the dangers ahead.
Suddenly, Sumal chuckled. “If I know
Lord Tokian, he’ll probably sell off as much toshul as he can in Jitan
and offer the gold dust merchants a share of his own profits to get on
their good side. Let’s pray that he fails. If he doesn’t, he’ll fire
half of us without a second thought, since he’ll have both his profit
and a much lighter cargo. Don’t tell me you all are still planning to
follow such a man?”
The guards exchanged chagrined
smiles.
A whistle blew: the caravan would
depart soon. Guards hastily finished their stew and packed up their
tents and gear. The road in front of them now was a familiar one: they
knew which places were safest as well as the places where bandits
could spring an ambush. The vigilance of the guards relaxed slightly,
and they moved at an easy pace. The other guards taught Balsa what to
look for along the road as they traveled.
Balsa tried not to follow Jiguro
around too much, especially while they were working. He was in the
vanguard of the caravan, and she was in the back. She was usually
around the other guards during the day, and had many opportunities to
speak with Gozu and Sumal. Gozu was exceptionally skilled at bow
hunting. When they stopped to hunt for food, Gozu sometimes took Balsa
with him and gave her pointers on how to improve her shooting.
Of course, Jiguro had taught Balsa
how to use a bow before, but Kanbalese bows and Rotan bows were
entirely different in terms of usage and design. Kanbalese bows were
designed for the mountains and open fields, whereas Rotan bows were
longer and harder to draw, since they were often used as offensive
weapons or to hunt game that was far away under tree cover. Balsa was
excited to learn a new skill, especially since it was so useful for
survival.
Autumn was the season for hunting. Balsa gathered ripened fruit from trees to eat while walking through the woods, following the tracks of deer and wild boar. Between the meat, fruit, and their stores, meals in autumn were like a feast for the caravan. The sizzling fat of hunted meat bubbled and hissed on the fires. The scent of it always made Balsa’s mouth water. Meat that wasn’t eaten as soon as it was caught was dried, smoked, or salted. Jerky was a common snack for Balsa and the other guards. Stew with meat in it warmed Balsa all the way to her bones.
The caravan guards who weren’t on
duty always gathered firewood around sunset. Sometimes people talked
or told stories to pass the time, but not everyone did. Balsa kept her
eyes fixed on the camp in the middle distance, watching the flames of
the cooking fires.
By bad luck, Balsa was finding a lot
of green wood that wouldn’t burn well. The other guards didn’t fare
much better. When she brought back her load, Jiguro was standing near
the wood pile. He looked at the wood, then started speaking in a low
voice.
“White tree, new tree, grow toward the sky.
In our bodies, the impulse for growth resides.
Black tree, old tree, your trunk has grown thick.
It embraces the white wood of the new tree.
Trees, exchange your growth for warmth,
warmth that embraces us, and keeps us alive
so that we, too, may grow. A fire glows
in the heart of old firewood, brighter and brighter
the longer it is kept in store.”
Balsa looked up at Jiguro. “Who wrote
that poem?” she asked.
Jiguro shrugged, then shifted his
gaze to the cooking fires. “It’s an ancient poem, from Kanbal. No one
knows who wrote it anymore. It’s a poem that most old Kanbalese
warriors know.”
Balsa snorted; she assumed Jiguro was
holding out on her, and that he did know who’d written the poem.
Jiguro simply smiled, looking down at
Balsa like an old tree towering over a sapling.
Balsa, uncharacteristically, sat next
to Jiguro at the fire that night. The warmth of the flames banished
both the cold and the darkness. She could feel them all around her,
but they couldn’t touch her. She was content.
Sumal caught a nasty cold and started
suffering from chest pain. Gozu shifted him to the rear guard of the
caravan so that he would be able to keep pace easier. Sumal taught
Balsa how to recognize signs of an injured or sick beast in the wild,
since other animals would often try to corner and attack such a beast.
Balsa thought that Sumal himself was a little like a wounded beast, at
the moment.
The journey was a long one, so the
caravan sometimes took rest days for the sake of both people and
horses. It became Sumal’s habit to go hunting on rest days, and Balsa
would usually tag along with him. They were standing in a grove in the
early morning, frost turning bare tree branches white, when Sumal
said, “Don’t focus on a single spot. You need a complete view of your
surroundings before you can concentrate on a specific trail. Once you
learn the general patterns that emerge in nature, you’ll understand
instinctively where animals are likely to be. Try taking in as much as
you can at once, to start.”
Balsa did as directed, her breath
steaming in front of her face. She didn’t see anything of interest.
She wondered if Sumal had brought her to this place as a trick or
something, to test out what she already knew. But there were no tracks
here; of that, she was certain.
Sumal placed his hand on Balsa’s
shoulder, then pointed at the roots of a tree to her right. “Look
there. There’s something on the roots; do you see it?”
Now that he’d pointed it out, it was
obvious that a portion of the roots was shiny. Balsa squinted, then
gasped.
“That’s right,” Sumal said. “The fur
of a karam.” A karam was a small woodland creature, similar in size to
a squirrel. “They shed their autumn coats before growing their winter
fur. When they brush against the trees, some of their autumn fur comes
loose and gets left behind. If you can see that, you’ll be able to
tell where the karam headed next. Imagine that karam brushing against
this tree. Which way were its feet pointed? Where did it go from
here?”
Balsa pointed. “Probably that grass
over there.” There was a patch of grass that was slightly tamped down.
She hadn’t noticed it at all before, but now that she knew the karam
had been here, it was so easy to see. She found it strange—and a bit
mysterious—that she could see so many things with her eyes, yet still
not notice them. She headed into the grass and discovered the paw
prints of a karam pressed faintly into the muddy ground.
“You found it,” Sumal said. He
sounded satisfied. “Do you want to try getting closer? You don’t have
to.”
Balsa decided to follow the tracks.
Sumal stayed a little behind her, observing. They were passing by
another tree when Balsa stopped and pointed at its roots. "Isn’t that
more karam fur?” she asked.
“Ah,” Sumal said, crouching down
slightly. “Looks like this one’s a mother, since it’s larger. The one
we’ve been following is smaller and younger. I think she was leading
her young along this path somewhere recently.”
Balsa noticed fur higher up on the
tree roots as well as more fur closer to the ground. Balsa thought
about a mama karam leading her babies from tree to tree and smiled.
Sumal smiled, too, and his smile lacked all trace of bitterness or
sadness. “Karam are delicious, but killing a mother and children in
cold blood goes against my sense of ethics. We can try to get closer,
but I’m not of a mind to hunt them.”
Sumal patted Balsa fondly on the
head, then peered into the forest grove. “Karam babies stay close to
their mother. They cling to her until they can walk on their own. And
karam mothers are very protective—they won’t let their children out of
their sight.”
“Do wild animals have families, like
people do?” Balsa asked, looking down at the karam tracks. “I haven’t
seen male animals help with raising babies, though.”
Sumal laughed. “Well, I suppose
that’s nature at work. The women do the hard part while the men have
all the fun. Only women can have babies, so they can’t avoid ‘em once
they’re born, like men can. It’s an unfair system—though not all
animals are the same.” He started walking again.
Sumal and Balsa walked through the
trees. The temperature dropped; the ground and the branches twining
above their heads were dusted with a fine layer of frost. There was a
line of small caves eroded in rock along the path. As they were
walking past the caves, Sumal whispered, “You know, I had a son, too.
He looked a lot like me when I was young, though he wasn't as strong.
I was away on jobs so much when he was little that my wife ran off
with another man. She took my son, too, and I didn’t see him again
until I passed through a town and found him working in a shop. She
left him there, you see. I took him out to the woods like this when he
was a kid, and taught him about the animals. I miss those days.”
Balsa didn’t know what she was
supposed to say to that. She didn’t like talking about her own past,
so hearing Sumal talk about his made her a little uncomfortable.
“He died when he was eight,” Sumal
said quietly. “It seemed like a cold, at first. But he never got
better.”
Balsa’s eyes widened. Sumal wasn’t
looking at her. His eyes were on the karam tracks. “I shouldn’t have
told you that. I’m sorry. I’m a father, but my son died without his
mother or his father near him, left in the care of strangers. It’s a
common enough story, but it wasn’t one I needed to tell.” He
apologized again, then started coughing. Balsa stopped walking and
turned toward him.
Sumal’s coughing finally quieted.
Balsa moved behind him. He faced her before they started walking
again, and a shaft of pale autumn sunlight fell over his face. His
white hair and beard seemed to glow in contrast to the sere brown
leaves and trunks of the trees. “I understand why your father wants
you to to follow in his footsteps,” he said. “Even if we’re attacked
by bandits, or die of some disease, at least there’s a good chance
that you’ll die together.”
Sumal’s smile was more like a grimace. “That’s a very Kanbalese idea, always being ready to die. You never know what’s gonna get you. But doing this work prepares you to deal with many dangers, on your own and in groups. It increases the chance that you’ll live longer.” He sighed. “I would understand better if you were his son. I can’t even imagine bringing up a daughter like you, the way he has. I couldn’t bear the idea that you might die because I failed to protect you.”
Balsa’s face clouded over.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Sumal
said. “People are entitled to their own opinions.” Sumal narrowed his
eyes, looking straight ahead. “Killing people with a spear is
distasteful work. No matter how justified you think you are in killing
someone, death is permanent. You can’t take back killing a person, or
an animal. If you were my daughter, I’d never let you do it. But you
have to be able to kill to guard a caravan.” He smiled again, but he
seemed sad.
“You probably don’t think of yourself
as a girl. You’ll follow your dad through thick and thin, and grow up
just like him. I’m certain you can do that. But getting used to
killing—to the sight of blood all over your hands—is a miserable
existence. You may reach the point where the people you kill are
nothing but numbers to you. The more you kill, the more you get paid,
so it all becomes—well, transactional. Impersonal. True, you’ll save
some people, too, but they won’t thank you. It’s why they pay you;
that’s all.”
Sumal’s tone was cynical. The
emptiness in his eyes was like a bottomless pit. “And if you survive,
all you can expect in the end is to be dismissed and discarded as
worthless. Younger caravan guards are growing up all the time. You
might be able to live on savings for a while, assuming you have any,
but after that…” He shrugged. “Most of the men I’ve known who make it
this long starve to death.” He looked up at the sky through the tree
branches, squinting at the sun.
“That’s why I wouldn’t bring a
daughter into such a life,” he said. “I’d find a place to leave you,
with good people, so that you could put down roots and make a better
life for yourself. If my son had lived…” he sighed again.
Do you want to live in Torogai's
hut?
Balsa remembered Jiguro’s words and
stopped still.
If you'd rather not keep living like this with me, I'm sure Torogai would take you in. She might complain that it was a bother at first, but she wouldn't mean it.
Remembering Jiguro staring up at the ceiling, saying that to her in his calm way, made a chill go up her spine. She felt like a cold evening wind was blowing through her, strong enough to knock her down.
"I want you to really listen to what I say next," Sumal said. "If you ever think that you aren't cut out for this life, quit. Do something else--anything else. Find a good man, settle down and have kids. You'll have your own family, and children to mourn you--and you won't starve to death, or die on the end of an enemy's sword. Don't become a wanderer like me, who lives only for money--and only because I need it to stay alive."
Once again, Balsa was at a complete loss for what to say. Sumal stared at her for a moment, then chuckled. They kept walking, tracking the karam through the woods.
Balsa walked behind Sumal, thinking about what he'd said. He thinks he knows about my life, but he doesn't know anything at all. She bit her lip. Sumal's story saddened her, but she didn't think his fears for the future were well-founded. Jiguro had always protected her, and she could protect herself now, too. If there came a time when she couldn't protect herself anymore, then she wouldn't survive. Jiguro had taught her that much.
And there was a mountain's worth of information that Sumal didn't know about Balsa and Jiguro--their past as well as their current life. They didn't only have to fear death from bandits, or from starvation. Enemies dogged their heels, and they would never shake them as long as King Rogsam of Kanbal was alive.
Leaves fell around Balsa's feet as she thought about her past, and her father--her real one. He'd smiled a lot, and talked a lot: much more than Jiguro in both instances. She could never think about him for very long before being overwhelmed with a piercing grief that made her feel like she was being stabbed through the heart. She didn't know how long she kept walking, feeling that way: it seemed like time was standing still.
Jiguro and her father used to eat dinner and drink together most evenings. Jiguro was content to listen to her father's stories and news of the day. He'd smiled a lot more then, too. Balsa remembered sitting in her father's lap so that she could reach the table. She remembered him bouncing her on his knee.
But her father had been murdered, and the peace and happiness her family had enjoyed was shattered. Her breath caught. She was no longer grief-stricken, but enraged.
If only he hadn't been killed...
If she would have grown up in Kanbal with her father, she probably would have turned out a lot like him. He was so kind, and laughed and smiled a lot, and never killed anyone with a spear. She would be a girl who laughed and smiled and talked a lot, who was nice to everybody. But that didn't seem like a person she could be, now.
Someday...
Balsa looked down at her hands, which were nicked and gouged from gathering firewood and training with the spear.
I'll kill King Rogsam. I'll chop his head off and use it as a kickball, and I won't regret it at all, not ever.
She often thought about killing Rogsam, but she didn't know the ins and outs of assassination. She'd dreamed up good ways to kill him for years, but none of them seemed likely to be successful. Still, the desire to kill Rogsam burned constantly within herself as a raw core of rage.
The path of Balsa's life had taken a violent turn, full of broken bones and bruises and slashing blades. Balsa feared both pain and injury, but her over-arching instinct was to transcend her physical limitations using brute strength alone. She didn't have to be afraid, if only she was strong enough.
The anger inside her coiled in her gut like a poisonous snake, ready to strike out with every movement of her spear and every blow of her fists. If she became strong enough--even if it was only a little at a time--she'd be able to kill Rogsam, someday. And if she couldn't do that, she would die. Her life up until that point would be a failure. If she failed, she would only demonstrate--to herself and everyone else--that she'd been too weak.
Sumal couldn't possibly know or understand her motivations for wanting to be strong.
Balsa took a deep breath. Birds were singing somewhere close by. She stood still, shifting her gaze to Sumal, who was still walking ahead of her.
Sumal...was crying.
Balsa's hear skipped a beat. Sumal made no sound, and kept walking as if there was nothing wrong, but there were definitely tears streaming down his cheeks.
Balsa looked down at the ground. She didn't want Sumal to know that she'd seen him crying.
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