The Path of the Sword (4 page)

The roof was tar shingles, a rarity and a luxury usually reserved for wealthier folks, and slanted down from one end to the other; the occupants never worried about finding puddles on their floor or the cots they slept in. The tiniest wisp of gray smoke stretched from the tin chimney in a long sinuous line that reached to the heavens. The windows—though small, they were another luxury—were dark, or perhaps they were not but the glinting glare of the sun gave the illusion that they were.

It was a pleasant cabin, small and comfortable, designed for a father and his son to have a comfortable place to lay their heads when the sun was just a memory, and the stars played out their eternal dramas for any who were so inclined to watch.

It was a well-tended cabin, its walls brightly white with its new coat of paint, but really, there was nothing fancy about it. It was just paint after all, and there were no swirling and whorling bits of wood trim around the eave, no shutters flanked the windows. There were no colorful gardens surrounding it in their tidy little beds. The occupants of this abode were a father and his son: the former was entirely too busy for such niceties, and too pragmatic, and the latter was...well, the latter was a boy of ten with much more interesting things to do than tend to flowers all day.

The door flew open so swiftly that a casual observer may have thought fell sorcery was afoot—the door was there, and then it was gone! But of course it was not gone. A ten year old boy lived there and it was an early morning in spring. Surely that was explanation enough?

There was a flurry of movement in the shadows and the boy darted out quick as a thought. He took three paces at a dead run and stopped, stretched out his arms and breathed deeply of the wonderful air, his chest puffing out like a sparrow's, and he grinned a grin that spread from ear to ear. He stood there with his breath held letting the sun, that ancient and inexorable skygod, still only just begun his day's journey smile its primordial light upon him, warming him. Behind him, the door swung silently shut on well oiled hinges but he did not notice. He only had eyes for what was ahead of him.

The day was spectacular in his opinion. Absolutely stunning. It was as though some god at some time in the distant past had pulled together a committee of ten year old boys and given them the sole task of discovering the answer to one question: What makes a perfect day?

The air was warm and soft. There was no more of the spiky undertone that reminded of winter's lurking presence warning that, at any moment, freezing winds could sweep across the land driving snow with such a ferocity to cause each flake to actually sting, chafing red any exposed flesh, driving gales that howled like angry devils, scrubbing the land clean of all things green. Certainly, the days had been warm recently as was normal for that time of spring. It had been warm enough to melt away the snows, warm enough for a simple cloak, even if it was wool, to suffice instead of layers of heavy furs. But on that day, for the first time that spring, a simple cotton shirt (long-sleeved) and linen trousers were ample covering.

The faintest trickle of a breeze like a breath exhaled from a newborn babe reached him, raised tiny goose pimples on his arms, and carried with it the smells of life stirring: musky earth, sweet grass, and spring flowers.

It was the kind of day that would let a boy go fishing without fear of a chill but was just a little too cool for biting insects to leave their nests. It was the kind of day that let a boy run as much as he wanted without the discomfort of his shirt clinging soddenly to his back like a molting snake's second skin. It was a perfect day.

He let out his breath with a long,
“Aaaaaah!”
and stretched. It was wonderful feeling the sunny warmth after the long, cold darkness of winter. But there were more important things for him to do than stand there.

Off to his left no more than a stone's throw away he saw his tree, an expansive old elm tree whose branches spread for miles in every direction, or so it seemed to him. He loved climbing into the upper branches and resting his back against the gnarled bark and gazing across the landscape that opened up before him like an eagle unfurling its wings. From the upper branches, even in the height of summer when the tree was thick with greenery, he could peer out and see the cabin he shared with his father and beyond. He could see the buildings that made a farm what
it was—the sprawling barns, the impossibly high silo, the squat workshop. He could see Galbin's
own grand manor, proudly announcing to all passers-by that a farmer of means worked this earth. Even the men working beyond the fences, far out in the fields looking like ants as they plowed and picked, hoed and sowed, were visible from his nest. The small wood bordering the northern edge of the farm compound where he and his friends played countless games of hide-and-seek stood tall and ancient. That small wood, and probably his own tree too, he supposed, had once been part of the great forest, gloomy and sinister, that he could see if he looked south and across the road but it had been cut off from its mother by Galbin's father's father who had built this farm with his bare hands a hundred years ago. Beyond the woods, though not visible from his tree for it was beyond the main barn and over a rise, was his pond. It was not a big pond and not
deep. He could swim across it with ease. But the water was fresh, rejuvenated as it was by the stream that fed it. He spent countless hours there every summer with his friends fishing and swimming and catching frogs. There was as yet no foliage on his tree, just little green buds like upturned teardrops, and that always made the scenery even more panoramic though it was less pretty without the green framing.

He considered climbing his tree then but only for an instant. It was the first perfect day of the year; there were far better things to do than waste it in a tree. He thought then of the chores he should be doing but there really was not so much. He would simply have to make sure he got home first so he would have time to clean the dishes, get the mud off the floors, take the sack of dirty clothes to the main house for the laundress's, get water from the well, clean the chamber pot...

But if the tree was not important enough to hold his attention for long, then a list of chores was definitely not in the running for things he wanted to do right at that moment. Besides, his father never got home before the sun was nearly set. He had all day. First, he had to find his friends. Best to get started then.

He ran then, as fast as his legs would carry him, tousled sand colored hair dancing in the wind, across the grasses until he reached his first destination, the large barracks-like barn that had been built to house the variety of employees a farm this size needed: nearly two score farmhands, maids, cooks, a blacksmith and a carpenter all stayed in the barracks, along with their children. The only residents of the farm who did not reside there were he and his father who, as Galbin's right-hand man had been given the honor of separate lodgings, and of course, Galbin's own family who lived in the grand old house originally built by Galbin's father's father and renovated to its current state by Galbin's father.

When he flung open the door, which protested with a creak like a reluctant old man, one glance immediately told him there was no one there. All the men were out in the fields at that time of day, plowing and sowing for the growing season ahead while the womanfolk would be at the main house seeing to chores of their own: washing, sewing, cooking, and a shopping list of other necessary chores needed to keep a farm running, all the while immersed with their gossip and laughter. The rows of cots populating the large main room that were reserved for the single men were all empty—except for blankets scattered in crumpled heaps that looked like little bodies still curled in sleep. Even most of the doors along the back wall which led to the more private family rooms were open.

Unsurprised, he slammed the door and ran on. He passed the workshop, a squat structure with wide double-doors set on rails so that they slid open wide enough to allow access even for wagons in need of repair, and a dense cloud of gray-black smoke rose into the air coming from the forge's chimney like a rock-slide going the wrong way, and he did not bother to spare a glance through the open doors. His friends certainly would not be wasting their time in that dark, smelly place, enduring the gruff roars of Jax, the dark, smelly blacksmith.

On he went, leaving the rhythmic clanking of the smith's hammer behind, flying past the south wing of the main barn, the largest structure on the farm—though not the tallest, an honor reserved for the silo—easily housing the entire herds of cows and horses, the pigs and the chickens, when they were not outside. He thought about searching the haylofts, a favorite spot during those dreary rainy days when being outside was as much a chore as scrubbing floors, a perfect spot to set up man-sized stacks of hay so they had a soft place to land when they jumped from the rafters. But it was not raining and certainly no chore to be outside. He discarded his thought out of hand. They most definitely would not be there.

He rounded the corner and the silo came into view. Easily taller than the tallest tree, it stretched up to the heavens with a strangely graceful grandeur that always awed him. Almost always. Not that day. He had better things to do. All it contained were stacks upon stacks of food stores, depleted after the long winter, but not so much so that they would starve before the next harvest. He dismissed the silo and sped on, not wearying, barely even breathing heavily with all the exuberance of childhood at his fingertips.

The world finally opened up when he passed between the north-west wing of the sprawling L-shaped main barn and the corner of the smaller secondary barn reserved for storage—harvested crops that almost unbelievably did not fit in the silo, tools, wagons, and sundry knick-knacks, many of which he did not have a name for. The woods rose abruptly along an invisible border far to his left where farmland ran into it, a clot of elms and cedars still waking from their winter sleep, spotted with clumps of evergreens giving the entire line a mottled look.

He angled right, leaping over the low wooden fence which zig-zagged its way along the edge of the compound looking for all the world like a slithering snake, to where the trees thinned out and gave way to a hill whose gentle, shallow slope misled. Seen from this side, it seemed no more than a low rise, but the slope was a long one and when he reached the top, panting finally for it really was a very misleading hill, he could once again see that it was indeed quite tall. If he looked over his shoulder, he could see the top of the main barn from here. But he did not look back of course, for he had found his friends right where he thought they would be. He started down the other side of the hill, much steeper on this side, steep enough that in winter, when the snows were deep, a boy on a sled could pick up blinding, mind-numbing speed and if he was reckless, could sail halfway across the pond before coming to a stop.

Dismay washed through him and he redoubled his pace when he saw the group of friends huddled in a small circle near the edge of the pond, staring intently at something on the ground. They had found something interesting, maybe even
exciting
, and they had not waited for him. Halfway down the slope, he waved to them and called out.

“Halloo,” he yelled and if he had not been concentrating so much on keeping his feet under him—instead of over him which would be an entirely unfortunate thing—on the treacherous hill, he would have winced at the note of desperation in his voice. What did they find?

The heads of his friends popped up like curious prairie dogs, and when Darren saw him running down the hill toward them, he grinned and waved a hand that looked like a ham with sausages sticking out of it. He was a large boy. Not fat, just large. Even at eleven years, he had a girth that suggested he would be extraordinarily powerful when he grew up. As the blacksmith's son—and apprentice—he often did work that many men found back-breaking. His plain features were open, honest and he was well liked on the farm.

Trig was there too. Being the oldest at the farm—besides Valik who did not count, in most of their opinions—everyone tended to defer to him which was all right. Trig was a pleasant boy even if he was by all accounts a rather ugly one and, as his nickname suggested, he was bright. He always had the best ideas, like the time he had suggested they prop a bucket full of water over Valik's door. “Maybe that'll cool him off,” Trig had laughed. It backfired though for it was Valik's mother who had entered the room first. Trig had been a little more prudent about the locations of his pranks from then on. At least until the welts on his back had faded anyway. He was smart.

“Jurel! Hurry and see what we found!”

“What
I
found you mean,” Wag, the youngest of the boys, said.

Trig rolled his eyes in Wag's direction even as they turned as one to welcome his approach. Not surprising, really. Wag had a terrible tendency to follow them around like a lost puppy and had all the energy of one. Of course, Wag was not his real name but one day about a year before, he had followed Darren around so closely, bouncing on his feet and babbling about everything, Darren had turned on him and shouted that he needed to “stop wagging like an excited dog,” and a nickname had been born much to the younger boy's chagrin.

“Hello everyone,” Jurel said between pants, slowing to walk the last few paces. “What's going on?”

He could barely contain his curiosity as he searched the ground, trying to find what all the fuss was about.

“Oh, it's nothing. Wag found a silly hole,” said little Frieza who popped out from behind Erin's back.

Jurel noted her general state of cleanliness. Or lack thereof. She looked as though she might have been attacked by some sort of mud monster and lost, she was so covered in it. Before Wag could send the scathing retort he was most surely formulating right at that moment, Jurel decided to poke a little fun at the tiny wisp of a girl.