Beyond the Hell Cliffs (5 page)

“You two managed to make it through the night alright, it seems,” Boram bellowed.  “The kid looks a little disheveled.  What did you do to him?”

“He kept me up all night, is what he did,” Raegith proclaimed, sitting up to meet his comrades.  “Feeding me some nonsense about a flaming monkey demon to keep me awake.”

Boram and Tavin both looked at each other in surprise.  Suddenly Boram spurred his mount up to the side of the cart and had Raegith by the collar, pulling him halfway out of the cart as it rolled down the road.

“Didst thou see the Demonic Fire Monkey?” Boram asked.  He reached back and gripped the hilt of his sword.  “Does the demon follow us even now?  Speak boy, before my sword determines your true worth!”

“What?  No!” Raegith exclaimed.  “He’s not following us, he… wait, the monkey’s real?  There’s really a flaming monkey out there?  I thought Ebriz was telling a joke!”

“Why would he joke about something like that?” Boram screamed at him, his booming voice nearly deafening the prince.  “Do you have any idea how strong a monkey is?  Well this one is possessed and made of fire!  Picture that, bitch!”

Tavin was busting up with laughter and Ebriz simply sat on the edge of the cart with a grin on his face.  A moment later even Boram was smiling widely and Raegith was just entirely confused.

“What the hell is going on here?” he asked.

Boram let him back into the cart before releasing him, laughing the entire time.

“You couldn’t resist, could you?” Boram asked Ebriz.

“Who else could I play that story off on but a boy who’s spent most of his life in his room?” Ebriz replied.  “Look at
him, he actually believed it for a moment when you grabbed him.”

“Yeah, real funny,” Raegith said, thoroughly humiliated.  “I knew there was no fire monkey.”

The group got quiet again and exchanged light sheepish looks at each other, as if they had heard something funny, but didn’t know if they should laugh or not.

“Guys, there is no such thing as the Demonic Fire Monkey, right?  Why are you
looking at each other like that?”

“No, there is no Demonic Fire Monkey, prince,” Tavin said, his smooth voice much more even
-toned than Ebriz.  “That monkey had an exorcism a long time ago.  He’s completely himself now.”

It was another two hours before the rest of the group caught up with them.  They were pulling another cart, this one much fuller of gear and items.  There were cabinets on the sides with jingling bottles and containers and all manner of instruments.  Beside the cart were Hemmil and Zakk, the sun reflecting cleanly off of their plate armor.  To the other side was a tall Faeir in dazzling orange and red robes riding atop a strange and colorful beast.  Walking in front of the cart and leading the horse that pulled it was another Faeir, dressed in
grey pants and a short robe. 

This Faeir was much different than the other.  The mounted Faeir was of orange skin and looked like fire, while the walking one had pale blue skin and wore
bland clothing.  The blue Faeir held a different stance than the other, in much more of a submissive posture and looked at the ground while walking.  As Raegith watched the group approach in the fading day, he realized another grave difference between the two Faeir.  The blue one was a female.

“Have you been riding in that thing all day?” Hemmil asked Raegith as they came up on the cart.

Raegith had to break his gaze away from the woman that led the cart down the road.  “Of course.  What else would I do?”

Zakk sighed and Hemmil eyed Raegith hard.

“Get off, now,” Hemmil ordered the prince.  “I would expect a lay-about like Ebriz to overburden this poor beast, but by the Fates Raegith, you’re supposed to be in training!  When we travel, you will walk!”

Raegith got off the cart, feeling embarrassed in front of the Faeir woman who was now close enough to hear him being admonished.  She did not even look up to notice him.  He tried not to pay an overt amount of attention to her, but she was such a lovely creature.  She was taller than him, with slender Faeir features and black hair
that hung loose in front of her face.  He tried even to pull her scent into his nose as she passed by, but she was too far from him and Hemmil was already barking orders at him.

“…and I’ll be damned if you’re going to try and… are you even listening, boy?” Hemmil growled.

Raegith felt the blow to the back of his head and he stumbled forward, barely keeping his footing under him.

“Pay attention, damn you!” the man yelled.

By the time they had decided to camp, Raegith was tired and hungry.  He couldn’t believe something as simple as walking could drain him so badly and the pain in his heels was nearly unbearable.  He looked around for Onyx and found her beside the larger cart, pulling out poles and canvas to set up the tents.  She yanked and tugged, having a seemingly difficult time with her task.  Out away from the cart, the other Faeir was sitting cross-legged and resting his back against a tree.  His eyes were closed and he paid no attention to his companion toiling away at the set up.  Hemmil and Zakk already had taken off to scout around the area and it did not look as if Boram, Tavin or Ebriz were too concerned with setting up a tent and they certainly weren’t helping out the woman.  Raegith eyed her, contemplating going to aid her, despite the weariness in his feet and shoulders.

“Don’t”

Raegith looked down to where Tavin was sitting, a pipe glowing near his face.  Boram and Ebriz were doing something with their gear that seemed overly noisy, but Tavin simply sat on a log and puffed his pipe, looking over to the Faeir woman, as well.

“Don’t what?” Raegith asked, playing dumb.

“I know what you’re thinking,” the man said, staring forward instead of looking up at him.  “I’m telling you not to act on those thoughts.”

“Is no one going to help her?  Is she some kind of slave or something?” Raegith asked.

“It’s just a different culture,” Tavin said.  It seemed like his voice never changed inflection.  Everything he said was given calmly, in an even tone, as if he were stating facts.  “The Faeir are not like us.  They don’t like mingling and they don’t have any compassion for those they consider inferior.”

“You said they are not like ‘us?’” Raegith asked.

“
Saban.”

“You may have noticed, I’m only half
Saban,” Raegith replied.

“
Half isn’t too bad,” Tavin said, continuing to puff on his pipe.  “Besides… you can’t hunt, you can’t run on trees and you probably couldn’t even fit in those dinky tree houses they live in out in the West.  You’re a Saban with a little Twileen in ya.  But you sure as hell aren’t Faeir, so keep clear of them.”

Raegith turned back to look at the female Faeir.  She had her gear out of the cart and was busy setting it together to raise the tent.  Her companion had not moved from his spot and may have even been sleeping.  Raegith wondered what the relationship between the two was.  Was it a master and servant, or something more intimate?  He briefly thought about disregarding Tavin’s suggestion that he keep away from the woman, but before he could make a decision on his own, Hemmil and
Zakk had returned and were already calling for him.

Chapter 4

Ebriz had not been joking in the slightest when he talked about how boring it got on the road.  Raegith was accustomed to down time, having lived most of his life in a keep with nothing but the walls and some books to entertain him.  He tried to keep his body fit during that time, knowing that someday he might be released or, at worst, he would have to escape.  However, doing calisthenics
that his mother taught him in an old dungeon and walking all day in second-hand boots were two very different exercises and Raegith was doing the latter for as long as the sun was out, every day.  His morning training began before dawn each day as Hemmil barked out commands and Zakk assisted by continually out-performing him.  Then he would help pack everything up and load the cart only to walk beside it the entire day.  As soon as they found a spot to camp, he would unload the cart, set up their tent and eat his evening meal before passing out on a cot across the tent from Zakk.

Ebriz was the official entertainment of the journey, singing songs and telling tales during the cooler times of the day, but hiding out under a tarp in the back of the cart through midday.  Boram was a close second in keeping the attention of the group, having nearly as many stories as the Bard.

The huge Saban was an ex-soldier of the Fifth Regiment and now spent his time leading the local militia of his home in the East and running around with Tavin.  He was a veteran of the Stampede War, where a group of ungodly hideous monsters crossed into Rellizbix from beyond the World Edge Mountains in the East and wreaked havoc.  It was their leader, Nogrin the Behemoth, that Raegith’s father had slain to end the war before he was born.  Boram was a young private in the army when he was deployed to hold a pass that would let the monsters through to the central plains and all the farmland within. 

The battle waged there was one of the bloodiest of the entire war, with three entire battalions lost.  Boram, though barely a man at the time, was still a Saban giant and stood toe-to-toe with one of the monsters, as the lone survivor from his platoon.

“I had just woken up, you see, after being slammed against a cliff face,” the huge man said.  “A couple of my ribs were broke, ya know, just enough to piss me off.  Then I see that all of my buddies were gone and there was just this one, gnarly-looking fucker in the middle of them… smiling at me.”

Boram had lost a bit of the humor that had peppered the earlier part of his story and Raegith had completely forgotten his aching feet and the sun-burn on his face in listening to the story.  As he turned to walk backward, looking at Boram, he saw that
Zakk was nearly on top of the man, he was riding so close.  The young soldier was completely spellbound by the man’s story and Hemmil looked agitated by it.

“So I decided to give that big shit something to smile about,” he continued.  “I didn’t have but one weapon and that was rage. 
Pure, white rage.  I’ve never been so crazy with it, for I had been kind of a timid kid til then.  But when I saw what it had done, when I realized what was in store for me, I lost it.  I tore into that thing like a reaper to the crops; punching, kicking, biting!  It hammered at me with ungodly strength, but I wouldn’t stop; not until it was a puddle of mush at my feet!”

He reached up and touched his sword hilt.  “That’s where I got this from.  Bloody bastard was wavin’ it at me when I attacked, but I was too fast to get hit.  I was inside his range before it struck, tearing at its face with my fingers.  I grabbed its arm and pulled… pulled with all the fear and hate in me!  Bones popped, flesh tore and I took that Fate-damned sword arm from him… took it whole!  With the demon’s grip still attached, I swung the entire thing into its skull and drove it to the ground, but it still lived.  So I flung its dead arm from the massive blade and engaged it again.  With a mighty blow, I cleaved the fucker’s head from its body and kicked its still twitching torso into the dirt.”

“Fates,” Zakk whispered, drawing Boram’s attention.

“Don’t worry, lad, you’ll see your share of death when we’re through,” Boram said, wrapping his thick arm around the soldier
’s neck and jostling him a bit.  “Then, when we’re back in the safety of our own land, the drinks are on me!”

Hemmil reached out the hilt of his warhammer and lifted Boram’s arm off of Zakk, who looked as if he were blushing.

“Wait a moment, though,” Raegith said, still backpedalling in front of the men.  “I read in the histories that my father left stocked in the keep that Nogrin was no monster.  The enemies of the Stampede Wars were originally thought to be monsters, but it was later discovered that Nogrin was just a very large Saban with an army of men from the Wilderness who dressed in hides and animal bones.  He used a rogue Faeir slave to make himself appear monstrous.”

“
You know about Nogrin and his Stone Seer slave, but you’re fooled by a Flaming Monkey Demon?” Boram asked with a deep frown.  “Yeah, we all later found out that the monsters we were fighting were men in hides.  It was no less terrifying!”

“
It was a hard lesson for us,” Hemmil said.  “Nogrin the Behemoth had no larger than three hundred men and destroyed a third of the soldiers in the Fifth Regiment before King Helfrick ended him.  The weapons they used were crude farming tools and only a few of them had military training of any kind, but with that Faeir magic they were able to use fear against us.  Fear is both a powerful weapon and debilitating weakness on the battlefield.  Remember that.”

The big man rolled his eyes and smirked at Raegith.  Raegith returned the smile and turned around to continue following the cart as the day wore on.

The terrain had changed very little in the time that they had been on the road.  They purposefully took less travelled routes that circled around settlements and towns, as Hemmil did not want Raegith anywhere near the people of Rellizbix.  They had seen a few farms and even a large pasture of livestock owned by a renowned rancher in the area.  Raegith had no idea who the man was, but when Tavin pointed out the “Double S” sign above one of the gates, several of them seemed more interested in seeing the animals within.  Apparently the guy who owned the heavy, waddling beasts within the fences was a wealthy man, with some influence in the kingdom. 

The Central Plains, as
Ebriz explained, were exceptional farming and ranching ground and most of the food that was shipped to the larger cities was from these massive, uninterrupted fields with small forests peppered in.  Raegith was less interested in where the food came from and more in where the next available shade was.

As
they travelled and Hemmil continued to take longer sips of his wine skin, he let it slip that the king was planning on setting him up in a small Saban village along the northern coast.  Once that knowledge was out of the bag, Hemmil humored the boy and described what he knew of the coast.  He told Raegith of the tropical plants and white sand and of the salty blue water that crashed upon the shores.  It was not as heavily populated up there, but it was the furthest away from invading hordes as one could get.  Both points were what sold Helfrick on the town of Seawane to turn his son loose upon.

“And before you ask
, the King has expressed his strong desire that as few people as possible know what you are,” Hemmil said to Raegith.

“A sober virgin that smells like sun-cooked meat?”
Raegith asked.  “No, of course we wouldn’t want them to find that out.  It could be disastrous for my reputation!  I concur, Paladin.”

Raegith got a swift kick from behind by Hemmil, but after a few days the boy had come to expect such things and barely faltered from it.  This day he
turned around to face the Paladin, however.

“Don’t you worry just a little bit that once you’ve taught me what you know of combat, you might face a bit of recourse from these disciplinary actions?”

Zakk snorted with exasperation and rolled his eyes at the thought of Raegith facing off with the Paladin.  Raegith turned to the soldier as he rode next to the stern-faced paladin. 

“Oh, you’re first, Giggles,” he said, nodding at the soldier.

Zakk was clearly incensed by the remark, but Hemmil held out his arm for silence and Zakk immediately gained his composure and looked ahead.

“If the day comes, boy, that you can best me in combat, then I won’t care a bit,” the Paladin said.  “So long as you don’t shit your pants and die the minute some beast turns at you with a
blade and deathly intent, then you can return all the beatings I’ve given you, for I’ve done my job correctly.”

“Well, I won’t make any promises on shitting my pants,” Raegith said, turning around to continue following the cart.  “I don’t know what kind of spells
they use in the Greimere, so I don’t want to rule anything out.”

The group was not half a day past the Pisces River, which divided the civilized Rellizbix Proper from the untamed Wilderness, before running across one of the three patrolling Regiments. 

They had run right up on
scouts from the 9
th
Regiment and were forced to improvise.  Hemmil and Ebriz managed to convince the scouts that they were a guard group sent to pick up a prisoner from the Detention Center in Galveronne, far to the southwest.  The scouts, however, insisted on taking them back to the Regiment so that they could hitch a ride as far as Big Oak.  Hemmil could not find a way out, so they travelled behind the scouts to meet up with the 9
th
Regiment. There were fires going and the smell of grilled meat was in the air.  Their small group had only cooked meat twice since Raegith had joined them and simply ate the dried remains and bread in between, so Raegith was excited about another hot meal.

Hemmil was hailed by an official-looking soldier with similar fancy armor and he instructed Tavin to find them a suitable area to set up camp while he went and handled the official business.  The male Faeir, who Raegith learned was named
Pyrrhus and did not talk to anyone but Hemmil, came up to the Paladin and whispered something to him before instructing his companion to lead their cart off away from the others and in towards the center of the camp.  Raegith watched longingly as the tall, slender female walked away, guiding their cart into the mix of soldiers.

“Hey, where the hell are they going?”
he asked.

Hemmil ignored him, but Ebriz was willing to entertain his question.

“If you haven’t noticed, the Faeir are a bit picky with whom they hang out and since we’re all lowly Commoners, save Hemmil, we’re not all that entitled to converse with such mighty intellects as them.”

“So Hemmil is a Citizen?” Raegith asked.  “He took the Passage of Blood, I imagine. 
Boram, how are you not a Citizen?”

“
Cause I don’t suck enough cock,” the big Saban replied, waving him off.

“They’re most likely moving off to camp with the
others of their kind among the Regiment,” Tavin said, motioning for them to keep their voices low.  “It’s actually a smart move.  It would raise too much suspicion if they stayed with us in such an environment.  I’m sure they’ll be fine.”

“There are others here?  How do you know?” Raegith asked, looking around.

“Every regiment has mages from the College,” Ebriz explained.  “They’re all of officer rank.”

“Yeah, and they act like royalty, the pricks,” Boram said.  “No offense, Raegith.”

Raegith rolled his eyes at the big man as Ebriz continued.

“I doubt we’ll see much of them until we
can sneak away from this group,” Tavin said.  “Let’s get set up.”

“Hell yeah,” Boram affirmed.  “Let’s get this damn tent up so I can relax and you can sneak out and grab us some grub.”

“Until you can show me you might survive without one, a weapon is useless to you,” Hemmil huffed at a defeated and exhausted Raegith after the boy asked about weapons training.  “You might find yourself in battle without a weapon someday and by my labor you’ll still be able to kill.  Lose your hands in battle and by my labor you’ll be able to run far enough away to die in peace.”

Raegith had spent the first week with the 9
th
Regiment, or Summer Guard as they were called, never remembering how he got to bed.  For the time being, they were stuck travelling with the Regiment, so Hemmil thought they should at least take advantage of the free time afforded them.  Each morning he would go out into a field with Hemmil and Zakk, performing his exercises and running in big circles for what seemed like hours.  Then he would train in hand-to-hand combat with either Hemmil or Zakk.  Both men refused to take off their armor and Raegith was given nothing but some thick, leather gloves to save his fists from the beating they took every time he missed a blow to the unarmored areas of his opponents.  Hemmil seemed to take it easy on him for the most part, but Zakk was merciless with his attacks and Raegith never made it to sun down before being knocked unconscious by the zealous fighter.

In the
morning and sometimes during the night, Raegith would wake on his cot, feeling a slight twinge of soreness, but missing all the signs of the previous day’s beatings and feeling clean.  He would then start out the new day with his exercises which led into a daylong ass-beating. 

On the fourth or fifth day the camp busied itself with packing up and moving away from the sparring session, as the three m
en stayed behind to continue training.  When Raegith woke up the next day, he was in the new camp that had been set up that day while he was in dreamland.  He did not see Tavin or Boram or Ebriz during this time and he certainly did not see the Faeir woman.  All he saw was Hemmil and Zakk, kicking the shit out of him every day until his eyes stopped opening.  By the second week, Raegith was getting tired of the schedule.