Book I of III: The Swords of the Sultan (12 page)

“Yes, sir!”

“Dismissed.”

In the wee hours of the morning, Baltor
tiptoed out of the bunkhouse and headed to the supply alcove. The
only other usable item that he was able to find there was another
coiled fifty-foot rope hidden in an old, dusty sack behind a small
stalagmite—he did find it surprising that he hadn’t noticed that
sack before, but then again, supplies came and went.

He tied the one-hundred-foot rope and the
fifty-foot rope together with several tight knots, put the rope
into the bag, and then slung the bag over his shoulder. He also
took an unlit torch with him, as well a piece of flint.

He soon made his way to the valley, wrapped
the rope around the same spot, lit the torch, put the end of it in
his mouth, and rappelled down as before. This time, he was easily
able to make it to the bottom of the valley only a minute
later.

He walked over to the crumpled figure, turned
it over, and his mouth dropped open in aghast—it was indeed
Vakshia.

After examining the body more carefully, he
discovered that there was only one single bloodstain, spread out
all across the front of her shirt. He lifted the blood-crackling
shirt up, and discovered dozens of puncture holes in her chest and
stomach by something needle-thin and razor-sharp—in ever-growing
shock, horror and sadness, he no longer had any question in his
mind:
Vakshia had not committed suicide … she had been
murdered!!

Once he had overcome the shock and
grief—perhaps hours later—he finally concluded that he would take
the body now, and let the Guild decide what to do next in order to
find the killer, so that justice could be served.

Therefore, he walked back over to the rope,
dragging it over to the body. After tying the rope securely around
her body, he climbed his way up to the top. Once there, two minutes
later, he began to pull up the rope.

He had perhaps gotten the body about
three-quarters of the way up, when he heard another boy’s voice
snarl, “I thought that you’ve been acting a bit funny as of late,
Baltor! I mean, besides being a pathetic little worm, now I know
why.”

Baltor’s head turned and he now saw Thesmul,
who had just entered the perimeters of the torch’s light.

With a bit of annoyance to his voice, Baltor
asked, “Thesmul, what are you talking about? I’m just practicing
some physical strength exercises—that’s all.”

“Oh yeah,” Thesmul asked, who was still a
dozen feet away but drawing closer by the second. “What kind of
weights you using?”

Once Baltor saw the glint of steel reflected
from the torch’s light, he had no choice but to let go of the rope
and turn to face his new opponent before it was too late.

Without any further delay, Thesmul leapt
toward his enemy with a snarl and with stiletto already coming down
in a strike—Baltor somersaulted to his left, just barely evading
the attack.

Instead of waiting for his opponent to get
another attack, Baltor leapt at Thesmul—only a second later his
left shoulder smashed hard into the back of Thesmul’s knees, which
caused not only both of the boys to crash into the ground, yet for
the stiletto to fly out and land at the edge of the torch’s
light.

Within a foot of the cliff’s edge, the two
boys immediately began to wrestle on the ground, each vying for the
upper position or the stiletto!

Now it is true that Baltor knew only a dozen
or so less advanced-techniques than Thesmul, yet the elder boy had
been training for a year-and-a-half longer, and he was still much
stronger and bigger.

Therefore, within a minute’s time Thesmul was
on top, punching hard and repeatedly—although he had taken quite a
few hard hits himself, especially the one in his left eye that was
already black, blue and very puffy.

At first, Baltor blocked most of the hits
that were coming in, but about twenty seconds or so later,
Thesmul’s punches finally began making full contact into Baltor’s
face!

Blood steadily poured from his nostrils and
lips; his eyes were puffy but not completely swollen shut. He only
saw shooting stars….

Thesmul continued to pulverize him long after
Baltor was dazed—until finally, he leapt toward the stiletto. All
the while, Baltor could only lie there on the ground and bleed.

After Thesmul had swiped up his stiletto, he
turned back around, and while twirling it expertly between his
hands, he asked, “You want to know what happened to Vakshia? I’ll
tell you. I promised her that I would help her succeed in this
place. I even helped her all the way up to this point, but when I
tried to seduce and have my way with her, she refused. At first, I
was startled, but then I became upset and then angry. Regardless,
she was a good girl until the end—except for the fact that she
fought me the whole way through. Of course I couldn’t have her
report me, so…”

Thesmul made several sharp and quick jabs
downward with the stiletto, but then he stopped. With a cluck of
his tongue and a shake to his head, he added, “I’m sorry to say,
but there truly is no honor amongst thieves!” He began to laugh
sadistically at his little joke.

His little speech had given Baltor somewhat
of a chance to recover his wits. Though he had only heard the last
half of it—it infuriated his anger to rage!

Slowly and very unsteadily, he got to his
feet and assumed the basic ready position.

This caused Thesmul to laugh even harder and
through his laughter, he asked, “Do you—
ha ha
—do you want
some more of me—
ha ha
—you pathetic worm? By the way, did you
know that with all that blood all over you, you seriously do look
like a worm?
Ha ha!
”

Baltor remained silent.

No longer laughing, Thesmul promised
threateningly while beginning to approach ever so slowly, “I’ve got
a little experiment I’m going to perform on you. I’m going to chop
you into little pieces, beginning with your fingers and ending with
your heart! We shall soon find out whether you, just like a worm,
can regenerate.”

Baltor said nothing, only waited.

With a mighty roar, Thesmul leapt at Baltor
with stiletto jabbing in for the kill!

Baltor immediately fell backward, slapping
his hands hard into the ground in order to do a reverse roll, and
even though he propped his legs and knees tightly into his chest,
he did not yet push himself backward onto his feet using his arms.
Though the stiletto barely missed Baltor by an eighth of an inch,
Thesmul was once again on top of Baltor and falling.

The split-second Thesmul’s chest contacted
Baltor’s feet, only a second later, Baltor propelled his whole body
backward with his back muscles, abdominals and arms, while
extending his legs and feet straight out. These simultaneous
motions caused Thesmul to propel back up into the air and scream as
he flew nearly a dozen feet beyond the edge of the valley!

Unfortunately, neither did Baltor feel
anything underneath him, except for thin air. Without pause, he
reached out and forward with his hands, and luck was with him yet
again, as his eight fingers barely clutched onto the edge of the
cliff!

Ten seconds later, the echoing screams
finally stopped—yet Baltor clung there for dear life.

Several times already, he had tried to dig
his feet into the cliff face, yet always without success—the rock
was just too smooth.

He next tried to pull himself up using his
feet and fingers. Not only were his hands already too weak to pull
him up, they were weakening even further by the second—he didn’t
know how much longer he could hold on.

Once the last remaining bit of strength in
his hands was finally going away, he began to accept the fact that
he would be falling to his death and joining Vakshia in the
afterlife, as well his parents—until suddenly, an idea sprang to
mind.

Thanks to all of his extensive leg stretches,
he was just barely able to stretch his left leg over the edge of
the cliff and hook his foot behind a small stalagmite. Gripping his
fingers even tighter into the cliff’s edge, he used mostly his leg
strength in order to pull the rest of his body back onto solid
ground. For an unknown amount of time, Baltor simply lay there too
weak and tired to move.

When he found that his strength had begun to
return, he slowly stood to his feet, and then began the
unbelievably painful process, both physically and emotionally, of
pulling Vakshia’s body up.

After depositing her over his shoulders, he
wearily bent to pick up the torch before he began to make his way
back. It took him more than triple the time to do it, especially as
his muscles were very exhausted and sore.

Once he had returned to the main cavern, an
unknown amount of time later, he was so beyond the point of
exhaustion that he didn’t even assess that the other students and
instructors had stopped in their training, now throwing strange and
questioning looks.

His legs finally buckled and he collapsed to
the ground with Vakshia’s corpse still on top. When a female
instructor had moved the body over a second later, she saw that
Baltor was no longer conscious at all!

When Baltor first regained consciousness, an
unknown amount of time later, he wondered why his head ached so
badly. The second he tried to open his eyes, unsuccessfully, the
throbbing pains in his head multiplied—he groaned in agony.

An unfamiliar woman’s voice quietly soothed,
“Relax—you need to get back your strength.”

Once most of that pain had dissipated, he
finally asked, “Where am I?”

“You are in the Guild’s nursing ward at the
moment.”

“What happened to me?”

“Of that, we are not exactly sure—we have
been waiting for you to wake up so that you can tell us.”

Something about that voice only now began to
sound vaguely familiar to him, though he could not recall her image
or name, so he asked, “Who are you?”

“My name is Mistress Bayema,” she introduced.
“I was the one who first brought Vakshia to the Guild.”

Once he heard Vakshia’s name, many, many
painful memories immediately began to surface. Not just the
memories of Vakshia and Thesmul, but ones more distant like his
parents’ murders. With a deep sigh that physically hurt his chest,
Baltor found tears pouring through his swollen eyelids.

“
Shhh
,” Bayema hushed with a gentle
voice. “Relax…. Once you are fully healed, then the inquiry will
begin before the High Council.”

“That,” he said, “may take many months, if
not years.”

After a few moments of silence, he heard her
say, “Perhaps, but you’re resilient, meaning tough. Do you mind if
I ask you a question?”

“What?”

“Why were you so interested in Vakshia?”

After sucking in a deep breath and releasing
it, he took yet another deep breath before answering, “She…she was
the only other student that was ever nice to me, my Mistress.”

“I see,” Bayema replied thoughtfully.

A few moments later, he heard the sounds of
silk sliding, and then he heard her say, “For now, relax and
recuperate. I will be back soon.”

He asked, “Before you go, I have one question
that I’d like to ask you.”

“What’s that?”

“How long have I been out?”

“Three days,” Bayema answered. “Your drill
instructor has been here most of that time, patiently waiting by
your side for you to wake up. He went to an important meeting about
an hour ago, so I cannot say when he will be back. Relax and get
some sleep, Baltor.”

A few seconds later, he heard a door close
and he was left alone.

Over the course of the next several days, he
slept most of the time, while his body quickly recuperated. During
one of those occasions that he happened to be conscious—though
still temporarily blind due to the swollen-shut eyes—he had heard
the door to his room open, and then he heard someone quietly sit
down in a chair near the bed. As this person said nothing to him,
he didn’t say anything back either. During the times that he was
sleeping, he had many strange dreams.

Finally, the time came when he could open his
eyes into tiny slits, while noting that his body hurt a lot less.
He first discovered that besides the bed he was lying in, there
were more than a dozen other beds located on this side of the
rather large room. On the other side of the room, a dozen operating
tables with many drawers underneath—probably filled with medical
tools, supplies, bandages, etc.

One such time that he had just awoken from
one of his many naps, he saw Humonus enter.

His drill instructor smiled brightly before
saying, “Hey there, champ! How are you feeling?”

“A little better,” Baltor answered with a
weak smile.

“Good, good,” Humonus said, without that
smile having left his face. He sat in the nearest chair to Baltor’s
bed, leaned forward, and added, “I’m glad to hear it.”

Baltor asked, “How are you?”

“Not bad, not bad… I’m just glad to see that
you’re looking a whole hell of a lot better!”

“How bad did I look?”

No longer smiling, Humonus shook his head a
few times before confessing, “Whew… Let me put it this way—when I
first came into work almost a week ago and saw you, I didn’t think
you were going to make it. Your body was beaten to a pulp, your
face was redder than a beet from all the blood splattered
everywhere, and you wouldn’t wake up even when we splashed cold
water on your face!”

Baltor chuckled.

Humonus didn’t laugh. Instead, he asked very
seriously, “You know what’s going to happen to you, right?”

Even though Baltor suddenly found himself
getting very nervous, he still asked, “What, sir?”

“There will be a formal inquiry into the
matter,” Humonus said, “and you will have to report the entire
incident, from day one, before the High Council.