Where the Wind Takes Us
Part 2 - Long Ago
Chapter 8 - Fire Insects
The supper that Yora and Takan provided for them all was a simple meal of fried beef, mutton and milk. The peach-colored crispy skin on the meat sizzled as it was passed around in a large dish. The meat was from male animals that had been fattened up over the season, so it was tasty and tender. A few vegetables had made their way into the pan as well. Sharp rakua cheese made from goat’s milk was set to the side, so people could add it to their food or not as they wished.
After the meat was passed around, Yora distributed bam, butter and honey from a basket. Balsa picked up her meat to eat it and was scolded by Yora. “You don’t eat it that way.” She placed a large green leaf in front of Balsa.
Balsa, confused, looked to the others. Kii sliced her leaf, then used it to wrap the meat, pick it up and take a bite. Balsa imitated her, though it didn’t make sense to her for Yora to be so fussy about it. Somehow, the meat had the sweetness of miuri, a fruit jam. The taste must have come from the leaf.
“Tastes good that way, doesn’t it?” Kii asked.
“Of course it does,” Yora said proudly. “I’d stack my mutton against any other cook’s in Rota.”
Balsa wondered if Takan and Yora were Tahsa people. They seemed more prideful and competitive than other Rotans she’d met. Maybe that was part of the reason why Rotans had a problem with the Tahsa people.
***
After dinner, Takan and Yora heated up some spiced wine for their guests. The Sadan Taram continued their performance, to the delight of the innkeepers. By the time the Sadan Taram went to their rooms to sleep, it was the middle of the night.
“Well, can’t do that too often anymore,” Sansa said wearily as she stretched out. This room had eight beds set up on low platforms, all lined up along the same wall as a fireplace. There was space in the room for more bedrolls and futons.
“It’s so cold,” Kii complained, hands trembling as she stretched them out over the fire.
Balsa looked over the room and added wood to the fire. Then she heard a noise coming from the other room. She knocked on the door and said, “Jiguro?”
Jiguro opened the door immediately. “What’s wrong? Did something happen?”
Sansa was behind Balsa, looking concerned. Balsa shook her head.
“Did you get the fire built up?” Jiguro asked.
“Yeah, I did.”
Jiguro’s eyes suddenly locked on a vase stuffed full of flower petals and leaves. Takan and Yora burned them to sweeten the scent of the indoor fires. Balsa had noticed it before, but now Jiguro appeared alarmed.
“Get everyone out,” he ordered. “Don’t breathe the smoke from that fire, whatever you do.”
Balsa returned to the other room and told the Sadan Taram that they had to leave. The fire was crackling merrily; there was strange green light moving below it, which escaped the grate and vented into the air along with a peculiar smell. Balsa was curious, but Jiguro had told her not to breathe in, so she didn’t.
After everyone was out in the hallway and the door was closed so that the smoke wouldn’t spread, Jiguro sought out Sari and Gamal and explained the situation.
“I see,” Sari said. “They were planning to put us all to sleep. Then they’d have all night to break in and deal with us, and no one would know.”
“Are we sure that’s what the smoke was? Sleeping gas?” Balsa shook her head. “I saw this weird green light. I’ve smelled sleeping gas in the swamp, too, and it didn’t smell the same.”
Jiguro nodded sharply. “Fire insects.”
“Fire insects?”
“They’re a byproduct of toka, a mineral that’s mined further south. Crushing it up makes that glowing stuff, and that’s what it’s called. They might have put it in the potpourri pots, but I actually think they laced the firewood with it. They wouldn’t have to come inside that way. It’s a decent trap.”
Overhearing this, Takan stepped forward. “Who would have done such a thing? And why?”
“How many merchants did you say came here asking after the Sadan Taram?” Jiguro asked.
“Six,” Takan said.
“Including their guards?”
“There were four guards and two merchants,” he said.
“And did you tell them that the Sadan Taram were coming today?”
“No,” Takan said. “They weather’s been unpredictable, so we couldn’t be sure of that ourselves.”
“But we did say we expected you tonight or tomorrow morning,” Yora said. “The merchants said it was a shame that you wouldn’t be here this morning.”
Jiguro gestured to Balsa. She followed him into the room where the wood laced with fire insects was burning. She held her breath so that she wouldn’t inhale the smoke, then took an unlit candle from a table in the corner of the room. She lit the candle and passed it over the window frame, looking for signs of tampering.
There were scuff marks. The windows here weren’t large, but they were large enough to allow a person through. It seemed like someone had tried to come in this way. They weren’t here anymore, but there was no guarantee that they wouldn’t come back.
Balsa and Jiguro exchanged knowing glances, then left the room.
***
Balsa woke up when she heard a noise. It was still night, but past moonset; the world was dark. Her eyes tracked to the window. She saw three shadows moving from the shed toward the inn.
Unsheathing her spear, Balsa prepared to fight. The glint of the spearhead under starlight would give her away, so she wrapped the spearhead in cloth. She crouched down facing the window and waited.
The three men crept closer, two carrying ladders. The windows of the first floor were too small to squeeze through, but that wasn’t true on the second floor. Two men climbed up the ladders, and one jumped to the roof. When they were all in position, one of the men let out a sound like a bird call.
That’s the signal, Balsa thought, holding herself still as three more men ran up to the ladders. They were going to come in any second now. Where was Jiguro?
Then Balsa heard it--footsteps, and farther away, the sound of the inn’s front door unlocking and opening.
That was when Jiguro struck.
Balsa saw one of the men standing near the ladders fall with Jiguro’s spear embedded in his back. Jiguro toppled the ladder in front of him, dislodging another man, then climbed up the remaining ladder and followed the intruder into the house. Three other men looped around to the front door of the inn, but they didn’t make it far. Balsa couldn’t see them anymore, but she could hear the commotion in the entryway clearly enough to understand what was happening.
Jiguro didn’t need her help yet. Balsa stayed crouched down with her spear ready. She moved toward the entryway quietly and surveyed the battle.
One man was already down; his arm was broken and he was groaning on the floor. Jiguro had another attacker pinned against the wall. Another--maybe the man who’d climbed to the roof originally--was out cold in the doorway.
Swiftly, Jiguro rammed the attacker in the gut with the butt of his spear. The only other attacker in the entryway beat a hasty retreat, jumping over his fallen comrade and running for the woods.
“Don’t let him get away!” Jiguro shouted.
Balsa sprang into motion, running after the fleeing man. An arrow whizzed past her ear. She went flat to the ground immediately as more arrows whistled over her head.
That was close.
Then she heard footsteps, and the sound of a spear deflecting more arrows. “Are you all right?” Jiguro called out to her.
Balsa got up and prepared to give chase again, but Jiguro caught her arm.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Two got away,” Jiguro said. “And I caught two. Takan said there were six, but I think they got reinforcements. There are more archers in the woods, probably mounted. Even if we rode our pack horses, we wouldn’t be able to catch up. There’s no point in chasing them down now.” He let go of Balsa’s shoulder. He was shaking slightly and sweating; this fight hadn’t been easy for him. They were outnumbered by their enemies, and possibly trapped in this inn. Balsa still wanted to know why.
“Sari was their target,” Jiguro said as he caught his breath. “I learned that much.”
“How?”
“I waited when they came in, same as you did. One of them was checking the faces of the sleeping Sadan Taram through the windows. They wanted to make sure they killed the right one.”
Jiguro’s eyes flashed in the darkness. He and Balsa looked at one another, listening to horses galloping away from the inn.
“Why are they after her?” Balsa asked. “Because she’s their leader?”
“Probably,” Jiguro said. “They covered their faces to protect themselves from the fire insect fumes. And two of them carried oil jugs. I think they wanted to burn the inn to hide the evidence--but only after making sure Sari was dead.”
Balsa hugged herself. Goosebumps rose along her arms.
Jiguro and Balsa went back to where the Sadan Taram had been sleeping before the attack and found Takan and Yora also awake.
“The last one got away,” Jiguro said. “They might bring more, but it’s likely that we’ll be safe for tonight at least. You all should get some sleep.” His sense of calm instilled confidence. The innkeepers and Sadan Taram went back to bed.
Jiguro and Balsa rounded up their prisoners. Jiguro had caught one man on the second floor with a jug of oil. The other man was crawling away in the yard. Balsa knocked him out and lugged him back to the inn, complaining internally about how heavy he was.
Jiguro hadn’t lugged his captive to the entryway yet. Balsa set hers down inside the door. Yora caught sight of what Balsa was doing and paused on the stairs, appearing both worried and puzzled.
A few of the Sadan Taram men were still awake, determined to help keep watch after the night’s attack. While they had no skill or training with weapons, their life on the road meant they were accustomed to fighting off wolves or bandits with whatever came to hand, and they were canny enough as watchmen.
“Keep an eye on this guy for me,” Balsa said.
The Sadan Taram men nodded.
Balsa went upstairs to see what was taking Jiguro so long. She found him in the hallway, carrying his captive to the stairs. When they reached the first floor, he took the man to an empty room and tossed him haphazardly on a bed. The man groaned in pain, and only then did Balsa realize that both of his arms were broken.
“What do you want with me?” the man asked.
“We can’t question him here,” Jiguro said. “There are Sadan Taram sleeping on this floor.”
“I’ll get everyone to the second floor, then,” Balsa said. She went to the room where Sari and a few others were sleeping and explained the situation. “Jiguro wants to question the captives, but it might not be safe with you nearby. You don’t want to hear it, and they might try to harm you again unless we’re very careful. Out of an abundance of caution, I think it’s best for you all to sleep upstairs for the rest of the night.”
Sari nodded, but something in her expression conveyed that she understood Balsa and Jiguro’s intentions with the captives. “What... will you do to them?”
Balsa didn’t answer. Jiguro appeared in the doorway.
“Surely you wouldn’t... Balsa, you wouldn’t...”
“It’s time to go to the second floor,” Jiguro said inflexibly. Sari didn’t try to argue, and the others followed her lead. After the door of the room on the second floor clicked shut, Balsa and Jiguro brought in the other two captives from the entryway, so that all three were in the same room.
Balsa knelt down next to the man she’d dragged in from the yard. It was part of her training to break the arms of swordsmen, in particular. A spearman could typically use either arm to fight with their weapon, but a swordsman was more or less dependent on his dominant arm. This man was a swordsman that they wanted to question, and he was still a threat. She should break his arm, but he was still unconscious, and she didn’t want to. It didn’t feel sporting.
She could break his arm to take him out of commission for a few weeks, or she could cripple him permanently. The knowledge of all the ways to break an arm went through her mind as she considered what she was going to do. She knew there was no way to avoid this, but the thought of reaching out and breaking the unconscious man’s arm made her feel cold through.
Jiguro’s eyes were on her. She lifted the man’s wrist over her knee, used her fingers to check the placement of the bone, and snapped his radius bone clean in two. A clean break. If he took care of it, it would mend fine.
A chill went through Balsa. She took a deep breath and waited for it to pass. The unconscious man was instantly awake, clutching his injured arm to his chest protectively.
Jiguro backhanded the man across the face, then drew his dagger from his belt. He brought the tip of the dagger to the man’s right eye and paused an inch shy of stabbing in. The man went deadly pale. He was shaking from head to toe.
“You know why my blade is at your eye right now, don’t you?” Jiguro asked.
The man nodded shallowly, never blinking.
“Why did you try to kill the Sadan Taram leader?” Jiguro demanded. “I won’t ask twice. You have ten seconds to answer.”
The man said nothing.
“Ten,” Jiguro said, beginning the countdown. “Nine. Eight...”
Balsa watched the man’s eyes as the reality of his situation sunk in. No one was coming to save him. He could only save himself by talking. When Jiguro counted “three,” he opened his mouth to say something, but no words came out.
Jiguro hauled the man up by the collar, the blade moving even closer to the man’s eye. “Speak,” he said, “or it’s the end for you.”
The man nodded shallowly again. “All I’ve done, I’ve done as an honorable soldier of Rota, and that’s a fact.”
“Go on.”
Defiance returned to the man’s posture; he tried to struggle. “If you’re going to cut my eye out, do it.”
Jiguro slugged the man in the gut with the hilt of the dagger. The man’s eyes rolled back in his head; he was unconscious again. Jiguro stood up straight, then faced Balsa. “We still need to question the other one,” Jiguro said.
Balsa shook her head. “I’m not sure we’ll get much out of him. They already know that a few got away. All they need to do is wait for help. They’re soldiers; they probably considered themselves dead from the moment they were captured.”
“We’ve already gotten more out of them than they intended to let slip,” Jiguro said.
“What?”
“This man fights for honor, not money. Not even for an employer, necessarily. These aren’t mercenaries. They think that they have a good reason for what they’re doing.”
Someone knocked on the door. Balsa opened it and found Sari standing there, looking worried.
“Is it over?” Sari asked.
Jiguro nodded. “For now. How is everyone?”
“Sleeping,” she said. “Though not everyone. It’s hard to get to sleep, after something like that.”
Jiguro nodded again. “I see. And was there something you wanted to talk about?” He crossed the room to the pile of firewood, inspected it, then picked up a log and set it up straight on the floor. He took his sharp knife and peeled off a chunk of the log from the side, a little more than a foot long and an inch thick. The blade would dull from using it like that, but Balsa understood with the stick was for.
“Yank the bone straight to set it, then splint it with this,” Jiguro said, passing the stick to Balsa.
Balsa nodded.
Sari looked at Balsa, her face pale, but she didn’t say anything. Balsa felt Sari’s eyes on her, but she didn’t say anything, either. She needed to concentrate.
As Jiguro cut more splints and Balsa set bones, Jiguro sent Sari around the room with a candle so that she could take a closer look at the captives. “Do you recognize any of these men?” Jiguro asked.
“I’ve never seen them before,” Sari said.
“That man there knew your face,” Jiguro said.
“What?” Sari asked, surprised.
“He was looking from bed to bed through the window. When he saw yours, he drew his sword and gave the signal to attack.”
“How…” Sari shook her head. “No, I know how. We travel from place to place, and we stand out as traveling musicians. I see more people in a day than I could possibly remember. This man could easily have blended into the crowd, and I never would have noticed him.”
Jiguro nodded. “It’s understandable that you wouldn’t recognize him. We know that he’s a Rotan soldier, and that he and the others are after you, specifically. Not the rest of the Sadan Taram. Do you have any idea why?”
Sari shook her head again. “I can’t think of a single reason. I’m sorry.”
Jiguro took Sari’s arm and steered her into the dining area. They sat down, and Jiguro told her everything that he and Balsa had learned from the captive soldier about the attack.
“We know he’s a soldier and is acting on his oath as one, but we don’t know who he serves," Jiguro said. “We can assume that he’s either working for the king, or a powerful clan. It must have something to do with your rounds, since the attacks are all based on your visitation schedule.”
Sari went pale. “I don’t have anything to do with the King of Rota…” Her eyes went wide. “But a maharan trade deal to Rakul Province would involve the king. I can’t see any other connection between us and anyone powerful in Rota.”
“That’s what I think, too,” Jiguro said. “A lot of maharan wood is changing hands this year, and it’s affecting the economy in Rakul Province. I just can’t figure out what you and the Sadan Taram have to do with that.”
“I don’t know, either,” Sari said. “The Sadan Taram are musicians, not traders. Maybe we’re interfering with the merchants’ work in some way? But we don’t mean to, and I haven’t been approached about that.”
Jiguro rubbed his chin. “We know for sure now that the Sadan Taram aren’t what they’re after. It’s just you. We need a reason why you would be targeted, and no one else.”
Sari held her breath.
“As to that…” Jiguro nodded. “I think I’ve got it. You’re the only one who can open a safe path through the Valley of the Forest King. Maybe your attackers fear that power--or they want to prevent you from doing that this year.”
“Maharan wood doesn’t grow in the Valley of the Forest King,” Sari said.
Jiguro shrugged. “It’s my best guess based on the information we have. I might be able to learn a little more from the soldiers, but I doubt it. But I’ve been thinking about how odd it is to leave the corpse of that hero alone for half a year. That’s not normal, but it speaks to how much the Aru clan lord fears venturing into that valley. If you’re the only ones with the power to travel there, and you can make it safe for others, that makes you unique and valuable.”
Jiguro set both his hands on the table. “Sari, if you and your people go to the Valley of the Forest King this year, you will die. More soldiers will come for you, trained just like these ones were, and this will be their last chance to catch you. If you don’t turn aside now, they’ll kill you.”
Sari didn’t say anything for a long while. She looked down. Tentatively, she said, “I know you’re right, but this is my duty. I can’t just give it up, no matter how terrible the risk.”
“Can you still complete your ceremony if you’re shot?” Jiguro asked severely.
Sari blinked.
“It’s a serious question,” Jiguro said. “We can protect you, but we’ll certainly be outnumbered. Even if we make it in, we might not make it out alive. You have to understand that now.”
“I understand,” Sari said.
“All right,” Jiguro said. “The first thing we should do is send a message to the Aru clan lord. He has an interest in protecting innocent people and punishing murderers who are on his lands.”
“What do you think he’ll do?”
“If we’re lucky, he’ll send reinforcements to the Valley of the Forest King. That would improve our chances. We probably don’t need to worry much until we’re past Kemiru Hill. This part of the province is more populated than most. The danger is on the road, after we pass the hill. There will be fewer witnesses and more places for enemies to hide.”
Sari nodded. “Only people who are on business for the clan lord use that road. There won’t be anyone else there to help us.”
“Yes. So if we mobilize the clan lord’s forces and have them accompany us to the Valley of the Forest King, we’ll be more difficult to attack. If our enemies do attack us, they’ll immediately be branded as criminals and chased off. It’s our safest option at this point.”
“I’ve never sent a litter to a Rotan clan lord before...” Sari wrung her hands. “But Lord Shisal should hear us out.”
“Lord Shisal?” Jiguro’s forehead creased. “Oh, right, the Aru clan lord that got married to a Rotan woman not too long ago.”
“I’m certain he’ll at least give us a fair hearing,” Sari said.
Jiguro nodded. “All right. We’ll send the letter first thing in the morning, and tell them to send a reply to Tokua. That’s the village at the foot of Kemiru Hill. There should be plenty of time for the response to reach us.”
Jiguro stood up from his chair and looked outside. “It’s almost dawn,” he muttered. “You should get some sleep. There’s no harm in sleeping in a little today.”
Sari rose to her feet, walked over to Jiguro and kissed him softly on the cheek. Then she went back to the second floor, where the other Sadan Taram were sleeping.
“Balsa,” Jiguro said.
Balsa’s eyes flicked open. She’d dozed during the conversation.
“Are you tired?” Jiguro asked.
She nodded. The long night and the attack had both depleted her reserves of energy. The catnap she’d just stolen wouldn’t help her very much when they set out later in the day.
“I’ll keep watch,” Jiguro said. “You get some sleep, too.”
“It’s my turn to keep the night watch,” Balsa said. “I’ll finish my shift, then go to sleep.”
Jiguro shook his head.“You’ll be scouting later. You can’t do that without real rest.”
“Scouting? Are we going to try to figure out where the other soldiers went?” Balsa asked.
Jiguro smiled. “You did well today at predicting how they’d attack. If they left any signs for us to follow, I’m sure you’ll find them.”
There was still a splint in Balsa’s hands. Jiguro took it, then said, “Go to bed.”
Balsa nodded and got up. She did feel tired, but at least her mind was clear. She went upstairs, looking back once at Jiguro. He was still holding the splint.
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