The Merchant of Death (16 page)

It feels kind of weird to admit it, but as I stood there watching these people going about their dreary lives, I started to cry. Normally I'm not a crying kind of guy. Yeah, a couple of times I got weepy during a movie when somebody's dog died or something. But this was different. This was real. I
stood in the center of this village and it was like I could feel a huge weight of sadness press down on me. The thing is, no matter how bad somebody's life gets, it can always get better. Things pass and life goes on. Like for me. As bad as things were for me right then, I had a shot at getting home. There was hope. But for these people, there was no escape. Their future was just as bleak as their present. This was their life, and the hopelessness of it brought tears to my eyes. For that one brief instant, I could feel their pain.

But you know something? It didn't last long. If anything, it made me want to get out of there even more. Yeah, I felt bad for them, but it wasn't my problem. This struggle had been going on for a long time and nothing I could do was going to change it. I had to worry about myself right now, so I wiped away the tears, put my head down, and started to look for the path that led to the river. I had only walked a few feet when somebody grabbed my shoulder and whirled me around.

“Crabble nectar?” It was Figgis, the strange little guy who tried to sell me the sweater before. He was holding up a leather pouch that looked full of liquid. “Very delicious. Very rare. Only four quills.”

I assumed quills were like Denduron money.

“Thanks, no,” I said and walked on. But Figgis jumped in front of me. This time he held out a thing that looked like a crude fanny pack that was woven from dried straw.

“Twenty quills!” he announced while tying it around his waist to demonstrate.

Even if I wanted to buy it, I didn't have any quills, so this was a waste of time. I tried to push past him but he blocked my way again.

“Ten quills, since you are new!” he offered.

He could tell that I wasn't interested, but he was desperate
to make a sale so he quickly yanked off one of the ten rings that he wore on his fingers.

“Two quills!” he shouted.

“I'm sorry, dude, I don't have any quills,” I said.

This guy seemed to be all about cash, so I figured that telling him I didn't have any would make him back off. It didn't. He grabbed my arm and pulled me toward him so fast that I didn't have a chance to stop him. He leaned in close and whispered something in my ear like he was giving me some information of dire importance.

“Tak is the way. It is the only way. Rellin knows this.” I could feel his hot breath on my ear. He smelled like a goat. I wanted to retch. “Remember tak. Remember me.” He then let go and scampered off and disappeared into the activity of the village.

That was weird. What was tak? He spoke about it with such passion that it made me think it must be something pretty special. It was like he was tempting me with it. Maybe it was illegal and he had to be careful about selling it.

It also felt kind of weird that I understood what he was saying. The day before his words made no sense. Now I heard them as if he were speaking English. But according to Osa, he wasn't speaking English. He was speaking the Denduron language, but I heard it as English. Still, there were some words that didn't translate into English like “quill” and “tak” and “crabble.” I guess those are things that are special to Denduron, and therefore don't have an English translation. Whatever it was he was selling, I didn't want any. So I continued on toward the river.

A path snaked out of the village in the opposite direction from the ocean. Since I hadn't been there yet, I figured it must be the way to the river. After walking about a hundred yards
through the forest, I began to hear the sound of rushing water. A few yards further along, I hit it. The path ended at the bank of a river that looked to be about twenty yards across. I knelt down on the bank and dipped my hand in. Yeow! It was like sticking my hands into a bucket of ice. I'm sure it was fed by snowmelt from the mountain, and rivers fed by snowmelt are frigid. But I was feeling all crusty from sleeping in animal skins and breathing smoke from the fire, so cold or not, I had to get wet. I took a deep breath and splashed water on my face. Wow. It was like a thousand needles stinging me, but it actually felt pretty good. I took a big gulp and swished out my mouth. I wished I had my toothbrush, but this would have to do.

That's when I heard the
crack
of a broken branch. Somebody was nearby! I heard someone humming a sweet tune. It was coming from just a few yards away. I think under normal circumstances I would have turned and left, but something compelled me to investigate. Remember how I described the people of this village? There was no joy here. There was only the sad business of survival. So hearing a pleasant tune being hummed felt out of left field. It made me want to see who it was. As strange as this seems, knowing that one of the Milago would actually want to hum a song made me feel that there might be some hope left in these people after all.

I remember going on a hike with my dad once through a forest that had been recently destroyed by fire. We were surrounded by nothing but the burned and black remains of what had once been a wonderful, green thicket. It was sad, until I saw that growing out from beneath a fallen log was a single, green fern leaf. As horrible as the devastation was, this one leaf was proof that one day the forest would return to normal. Hearing this tune coming through the woods made me
think of that single fern leaf and I wanted to see who was singing it. So I quietly snuck through the brush toward the sound. When I pushed back the final branch between me and the singer, I saw that it wasn't one of the Milago after all.

It was Loor. She was kneeling on a rock with her back to me, washing out some clothes. I was disappointed at first, but this posed another interesting puzzle. As I told you, Loor is a hard case. I don't know much about the territory where she and Osa came from, but it didn't take a genius to figure out that these two were warriors. Osa had a calm way about her. She reminded me of one of those Black Belt guys who are so confident in their fighting abilities that they are actually gentle people. Of course, if you messed with them, they'd kick your ass. Loor, on the other hand, didn't have that calm thing going on. She seemed ready for a good ass kicking all the time. Maybe it was because she was young and hadn't gotten that wisdom comes with age thing. It didn't matter though, all I knew was that she scared the hell out of me. But seeing her on this rock, with her hair undone and humming a sweet tune seemed completely against character. Maybe there was a soft side to her that she kept hidden somewhere below all that macho stuff. Way below. She was facing away from me and had no idea I was there. Her long hair fell across her shoulders. It was deep black, and beautiful.

Now before you go thinking I was some kind of perv watching her from the bushes, you gotta realize that I was stuck. If I made a sound, she'd turn and see me watching her and probably pick up her stick and start playing Bobby the piñata boy. I wouldn't blame her. My only hope was that she'd finish washing up and walk back along the river toward the path without ever knowing I was there. So I stood rock still, doing my best to look like a tree.

After what felt like a lifetime, Loor stood up and started to braid her hair . . . and that's when I heard it. Another crack of a branch told me that somebody was walking up behind me. My heart pounded. I thought for sure that Loor would hear this, turn around, and catch me standing there like a doofus. I also thought that whoever was behind me was about to see me doing a peeping Tom number on Loor. But I was afraid to leave because Loor would surely catch me. None of these scenarios was very good.

What I didn't realize was that there was another scenario that was worse than all the above.

“I've been looking for you, Pendragon,” came a deep voice that made Loor turn quickly in surprise. I turned too, and what I saw made my knees buckle. Standing behind me was one of Kagan's knights! He towered over me holding a spear in one hand and a rope in the other.

The guy had me. In that instant I felt sure that Saint Dane, or Mallos, or whatever he called himself had sent this guy to bring me in, the same way they got Uncle Press. And I knew one other thing—I wasn't going to go easily. So before the knight could make a move, I made my own move. I turned and ran for the river.

Loor didn't have time to react and I made another snap decision. She was coming with me. As she scrambled to her feet, I launched myself into a full-on, horizontal, flying tackle. I hit her and we both went sailing off the rock into the river.

Cold? You don't know cold until you jump into a river swollen from melted snow. The only reason it wasn't frozen solid was because it was moving so fast. But the truth was, I didn't care. If this river could get us away from that knight, it didn't matter to me if it froze the blood in my veins. I could always get warm later.

We hit the river in a tumble of arms and legs. The water was flowing so fast that it swept us downriver and away from the knight. There was no way he could catch up with us. I looked back and saw him standing on the shore looking stupid. He wasn't even going to try and catch up.

My attention went from getting away from the knight to surviving the river. You know when you first jump into the ocean you get a jolt of cold, but then your body quickly adapts and you get used to it? Well, not here. The river water was too cold for that. It felt like my body was actually freezing stiff. But I had to fight it, because we were in rapid Whitewater, and that meant there were rocks. I heard once that if you're caught in rapids like this, the best thing to do is point your feet downriver and go with it until you hit a calm patch where you can swim to the side. That was the plan, but Loor was making it tricky. She held on to me so tightly that I was having trouble moving my arms to maneuver. I had to get away from her or we'd both drown.

“Feet first!” I yelled. “Float on your back!” I tried to push away, but Loor wouldn't back off. Then she said the three words I never expected to hear from this macho warrior girl. They were the three worst words you could hear in this situation, but she said them just the same.

“I cannot swim.”

Oh, great. No wonder she was clinging to me. This was bad. The river was swirling us around and every time we hit a drop, both our heads went under. Each time we came up sputtering, and I didn't know how long our luck would hold out. I had to take control somehow or we were going to drown, or bash our heads into a rock and then drown. I thought maybe we could make a train with both of us on our backs. She'd go feet first and I'd cradle her from
underneath while using my arms to guide us like a rudder.

“Feet downriver!” I shouted. “Face up, lie on me!”

She didn't move. She couldn't. It wasn't that she didn't want to, it was because she was paralyzed with fear. I can't imagine what it's like not being able to swim, but it must be terrifying. And with her strength, there was no way I could pry myself loose. We hit another drop and both went under again. No sooner did we come up for air than we both slammed into a rock. I barely felt it because Loor took most of the hit with her back. It must have been crushing, because it made her loosen her grip on me. Instantly I grabbed her and flipped her onto her back.

“Grab my legs,” I commanded. She did. I was on my back too, with Loor between my legs. My arms were now free to steer and keep us afloat. My train idea was working. Now if we could only ride this out until the rapids stopped.

“Use your legs to keep us off the rocks,” I said. Loor was scared, but she had enough of a grip to start thinking again. While I paddled frantically, she kicked us away from a few sharp rocks. We then hit another drop and went under again. I could feel Loor starting to squirm away from me, but I held her tight with my legs. In a few seconds, we were above water again.

Then I was hit with a terrifying thought. What if these rapids led to a waterfall? There was no way we could survive that. I had to force the idea out of my head, because there was nothing I could do about it now.

We hit a few more drops, bounced off another rock or two, and then mercifully, the river grew calm. We made it through the rapids and there was no waterfall waiting. But we weren't safe yet because Loor still couldn't swim. My junior lifeguard training took over at this point and I began to tow her to the
side. She was so tired and beaten that she didn't have enough strength left to fight me, so it wasn't all that tough to bring her along. Soon we were dragging ourselves out of the freezing water and crawling up onto the bank. We lay down on the gravel, totally exhausted, totally beaten up, but alive. Luckily the three suns were now higher in the sky and they were starting to give off some warmth.

After I caught my breath, I sat up on my elbows and looked at Loor. She lay flat on her back, still breathing hard. I have to admit, now that we were safe, I was feeling pretty good about myself. Not only did I save the big, bad warrior girl from one of Kagan's knights, I also saved her life a dozen times over on the river. I couldn't wait for her to admit that I wasn't the lame wad she thought I was. But of course I wasn't going to fish for a compliment. That wouldn't have been cool. It had to come from her. So I waited. And waited. And waited some more. But she didn't say a word. What was up with that? I was getting kind of ticked off. Not that I was expecting a full-on “Oh, Pendragon, you're my hero!” but a simple “Thank you” would have been nice. Still there was nothing. Finally I decided to break the ice.

“You okay?” I asked.

“No thanks to you,” came the reply.

“What?” I shouted and sat up straight. “I saved you from drowning!”

“But if we had not been in the river, I would not have needed help,” she said as if she were totally ticked off at me.