“Of course not,” protested Rejji, “but surely that search can wait another two weeks. You have been looking for years already. What does it matter if we take a little bit longer?”
“And at the end of two more weeks, then what?” she pouted. “You will ask for yet another two weeks. No, Rejji, it is time for me to go. I want you to come with me, but I think you have found a new home here. Soon you will be pillaging villages with the rest of them.”
“That is unfair,” Rejji began, but he stopped when he heard footsteps coming down the hall. “Out quickly!”
Mistake swiftly climbed the rope while Rejji moved to the spot in the wall where he could listen.
“Are the preparations made?” Wyant asked.
“They are,” Brakas replied. “I still don’t like the idea of taking everyone with us. What if they decide to ambush us once we are on the road?”
“If they can ambush our entire tribe, then what does it matter?” retorted Wyant. “They are strong enough now to walk all over us. Our only hope of survival would be to band with the other tribes.”
“But here we have the fortress,” Brakas complained. “It is a very defensible place.”
“Yes it is,” agreed Wyant, “but it is not impregnable. And if we only took a portion of the troops we would be setting ourselves up for just that. I am already leery about the Jiadin holding this meeting on sacred ground. Something smells to me.”
“You think it is a trap?” questioned Brakas.
“I do,” answered the Zaldoni leader. “The Jiadin have broken every agreement the tribes have made. They have attacked villages in our territory as well as others. Now they appear to have set up camp in the sacred lands, where no tribe is to be. If this is not a ploy to put all tribes under the Jiadin, I’ll eat my horse.”
“Then why go at all?” asked Brakas.
“Because we need to show strength to the other tribes,” explained Wyant. “I am hoping to convince some of them to join with us in opposing the Jiadin.”
“If Grulak finds out about that he will attack us for sure,” commented Brakas.
“Then he had best not find out,” frowned Wyant. “By the way, Rejji is not coming with us.”
“So you do think he is a spy then?” questioned Brakas.
“No, I don’t,” answered Wyant. “He has trained hard to be one of us and Klavin says he has learned well and swiftly. It is his desire for revenge against the Jiadin that troubles me. To take him there would be too tempting for any man to resist and it would expose our entire tribe to danger. I like the young lad, but I am going to turn him loose in the morning when we leave. Perhaps he will rejoin us someday in the future.”
“Makes sense I guess,” Brakas responded. “Vandegar Temple is not the place for us to start a fight.”
Chapter 6
Rocky Road
“It sure would be nice to have that gold Brontos gave you,” needled Mistake, “or at least something other than my daggers to get food with.”
“The villagers gave us what they thought they could spare,” replied Rejji. “You are just looking for an excuse to start stealing again.”
“It would have been easy, Rejji,” she grumbled. “They weren’t even watching me.”
“We will find another village or some travelers we can ask for food,” Rejji promised. “Maybe I can find some work at the next village and pick up a few gold coins.”
“Maybe,” Mistake frowned, “but we have been a week on the road now and haven’t seen any other travelers and the villagers are suspicious of everyone.”
“Can’t say as I blame them,” responded Rejji. “If Wyant was right about the Jiadin gathering all the tribes together, Fakara is going to become a much more dangerous place than it has been.”
“It never has been safe,” Mistake pointed out. “You have lived in a idealistic world, Rejji. Outside your little village, people have been robbed and murdered daily. That is the way of this world. You take what you can get and guard it from others.”
“Well that is just stupid,” Rejji stated. “If people worked together, there would be more for everyone. Our village survived because we shared everything. Nobody was left to fend for themselves.”
“And where are they now?” Mistake blurted out and immediately regretted it.
Rejji halted on the trail and stared at Mistake. “The people who attacked our village will pay for it,” he promised. “If all the young men of the villages weren’t running off to join the bandits, the tribes would think twice about attacking the villages. Somebody has to stand up to them.”
“I am sorry, Rejji,” apologized Mistake. “I shouldn’t have brought that up, but you should not believe that everyone is good at heart either. While all of the tribes are bandits, not all bandits are members of the tribes. There are other bad people in this world. Someone will always be there to take what is yours, tribesmen or not.”
“There are a lot of good people too,” countered Rejji. “Those villagers this morning didn’t have to give us anything, but they did, and they don’t even know us.”
“True,” admitted Mistake, “but that has not been my experience in the past.”
“Of course not,” chuckled Rejji as he started walking again. “You never bothered to ask.”
“All right, Rejji,” she smiled, “I am willing to try it your way, but I am still hungry.”
As they rounded the next bend in the trail, four men stood blocking their path. Rejji and Mistake halted and gazed at the men who were brandishing swords. They wore no markings of any tribe, but they did not look friendly.
“You are trespassing,” declared a tall lean man. “Do you have gold to pay the fee?”
Mistake’s hand hovered near the dagger on her belt as she asked, “Do you have any food to spare, good sirs?”
The men laughed and Mistake heard laughter coming from behind her as well. She stole a glance behind her and saw two more men on the path they had just walked down.
“We have no gold,” Rejji stated. “We didn’t know we were trespassing and we offer our apologies. If you will point out the shortest path off your land, we will be gone swiftly.”
“Your hand goes any nearer to that dagger girl and you will have one less arm,” sneered the tall lean man. “Why don’t you remove it and drop it on the trail before one of boys thinks you plan on using it.”
Mistake looked at Rejji and when he nodded she dropped her dagger to the ground.
“That’s a good girl,” grinned the tall lean man, which Mistake now assumed to be the leader. “It’s a long ways off our land and would take you days on foot, so we will give you a ride so you aren’t tempted to stray further into it.”
Mistake sensed the men behind her coming closer and started to turn when she felt the blow to her head.
When Mistake came to, she was in a wagon made into a cage and Rejji was holding her. There were other people in the cage as well and Mistake could see three more such wagons behind them. There were at least twenty riders accompanying the wagons from what she could see.
“What happened?” Mistake asked.
“They don’t like us talking,” Rejji whispered. “I assume the men behind us hit us over the head. I woke up just a few minutes ago. I guess they found a lot of trespassers.”
“They are slavers,” whispered an old woman next to them. “You give them any trouble and they’ll cut you just as soon as look at you. They been working these trails for over a year, but I never expected they would come into the village.”
“How do you know they are slavers?” Rejji asked.
“My husband was killed by them,” the woman cried. “They said nobody would buy him cause he lost a leg a while back and they didn’t want no cripples.”
“Quiet in there,” shouted one of the riders. “Keep your traps shut or I’ll shut them for you.”
Rejji looked at the people in the cage with him. Most of them were old and over half of them were women. There was one small boy around ten years old and another that Rejji figured was a year or two younger than himself. The older boy had a wild, ragged look about him and he stared constantly out the back of the wagon. The boy intrigued Rejji because his clothes appeared to be all animal skins like Mistake’s. Everyone else was dressed like normal villagers with mostly clova wool garments. Many of the people appeared to be sleeping and nobody spoke.