We spent the afternoon in the great field outside the wall with those of us skilled in archery coaching those of us who weren’t. That was until Daren was summoned back inside.

Borel, Faren, and Gino took that time to talk to a pair of native women who’d chosen to graze their goats beside the edge of the forest nearby, while Rock and Ales spent the time wrestling. Ales had to stop and soothe the wound at his side, then gathered with the others around Jezi while he taught them some local dirty jokes. Jame and I had taken to goading Malchuk to show us what kind of range he could get out of his Imperial Army longbow—around two-twenty, but if you tried to go beyond that it just didn’t offer the draw.

Eventually Daren came back and gave us all a mouthful. We hung our heads in shame for a minute and then spent the rest of the day doing what we were supposed to be doing.

Evening came, but I would have to wait to see Miyani again.

Two days.

Where they sent her, I was not told. But, I should hope to see her in two days.

And hopefully, she would be alive.

I tried not to think about it.

Dinner was some lumpy brown mash with bits of caramelized tomatoes and onions that desperately cried out for salt. That was served with plain brown rice that was also devoid of salt, and to the side were green leaves sauteéd with bits of chopped red stuff and I think slivered almonds, and altogether dripping in oil. Jame went to the kitchen to ask for salt for the table but was sent back empty-handed.

As we gathered, we tried to piece together what the alarm earlier might have been about. Kelint had been stationed a few towers down and saw someone come in through the front gate. “It was a train of them, like some entourage or something. They had some creature—it wasn't a vita'o—some other kind of giant lizard tethered to a carriage. And this thing was covered in bright red mesh with jewelry and beads and shit, and I couldn't see anything inside. There were two of those, and on each side they had six warriors walking a perimeter. We let the whole lot of them through the gate.”

Gino looked at Jezi. “You ever seen anything like that before?”

The Tobori kid nodded. “Ti. Yes. This is someone very important from one of the tribes.”

Jame spoke up. “Tribes? You mean like the people we're at war against?”

“Yes,” Jezi nodded.

I shared my own experience, hoping to add some clue to the stew. “Four of those enemy warriors came into the medical ward carrying two of our guys on stretchers. Both our guys had their right hands lopped off, maybe a couple hours before. No bandages, nothing.”

Jezi looked up at me with hopeful green eyes, gesturing to his right shoulder. “Did you see any tattoos?”

“Yeah,” I answered. “It was like a cloud with two lightning bolts coming down. Three of them had that, and the other guy didn't have anything.”

Jezi nodded. “That one is the mɪwe’iʃi. They control the region east of here beyond the river bend and north towards the mountains; the pass from Saen runs directly through their territory…”

Faren looked up, scanned the ceiling, and lifted a finger. “So… at the Lake of Doom, that region, that guy Hoden said don’t mess with them; he called them ‘true believers?’”

Jezi nodded. “Sounds right. They have always hated us, even since before the war. Right now, they are very, very powerful. But… I have never known them to take prisoners.”

Jame set his hands on the table. “OK. So we've got a regional powerhouse… allied with the enemy… gifting us with POWs they’d normally just kill. They… they want something they can't get through the alliance.”

“Aye,” there were nods all around.

Faren shook his head. “Like what?”

Jame shrugged. Jezi shrugged. Ales started, “well, it won’t be azuka or coffee, or gods be blessed that delicious brown stuff.”

Rock laughed at that. “Dokono!”

Ales pointed and smiled at him. “Anyway, my point is they can grow all that themselves. There’s got to be something they can only get through Carthia.”

Borel shrugged. “Could be the women.”

Half the table chuckled at that. Malchuk furrowed his eyebrows while Northstar turned to look at Kelint. Kelint didn’t translate so much as answer him with a frown, “they can keep them.”

Faren chuckled at that. “What’s wrong, man? I've never had it so easy!”

Kelint shrugged that off with a sour expression across his babyface. “Lucky you.”

Borel tapped Kelint in his shoulder. “What happened? Didn't you three get it on with that thick Tobori runaway?”

Rock sucked his teeth. Northstar shook his head and reminded everyone what his deep baritone sounded like. “We have nothing.”

Jame raised an eyebrow at that. “Nothing?”

Kelint explained. “Nothing. Like night and day, man. They won’t even look at us.”

Jezi nodded. “They will wait to see if Isa is pregnant. If she is not, she might use you again.” It wasn't lost on me that Jezi joined us after Kelint had already told us about that evening.

“Use?” Malchuk laughed at that.

Jezi smirked and elaborated further, glancing between Rock, Northstar, and Kelint. “A lot of men are dead, so some of the women here will improvise. You people have that stupid Naveris tradition, but if no one knows who the father is that no longer matters.”

Faren smirked at him. “Come on, you guys have your own weird traditions, like ‘æmiʃʌði.”

“What's that?” Gino asked.

Jezi grinned. “It is where you choose a lover to welcome you to adulthood.”

My eyes bulged. “What?”

Faren smirked at me. “Come on, Caleb, I thought you would know about that.”

“Why would I know about that?”

“It's alright,” he shrugged. “It's not a race.”

Borel lifted his chin towards Jezi and grinned. “Who’d you pick?”

Jezi smirked back. “This is not a thing we discuss.”

“I’m sorry,” Malchuk interrupted and turned to Jezi. “This is all fine and good, and I’m sorry for being selfish about this, but have you found out anything about my situation yet?”

Jezi shook his head. “I haven’t spoken to anyone since this morning.”

Malchuk added, “I would like to go to the church.”

Jezi looked apprehensive, so Gino spoke up to that. “What if Caleb and I go with him?”

I shrugged, “surely he’d be safe with us, yes?”

At that, Malchuk looked hopefully at Jezi, who bobbed his head back and forth. But it was Ales who answered. “Yeah. Groups are so safe; surely no one is going to stick a knife in you if you’re in a group, am I right gentlemen?”

With that matter decided, Malchuk dropped his hand into his lap and spent the rest of dinner staring at the wall while the banter continued around him. Then, as everyone else was leaving, he took up his plate still with food on it, and headed in the opposite direction.

Gino looked at me, then urged me to accompany him.

Malchuk stood just outside one of the archways that made up the walls of the mess, cast in the blue of waning daylight muted by heavy clouds above. He crouched low towards a small herd of pigs and scraped his leftovers for them. Numerous snorts followed along with several squeals as they pushed one another out of the way to gobble it up. Malchuk reached his hand out to pet one of them, and Gino and I glanced at one another in understanding.

Gino spoke first. “I was thinking. Since the three of us all go to the same church, why don’t we have a little study of our own, just the three of us?”

My eyes lit up. “That’s a great idea!”

Malchuk nodded, then smiled. That was the first time I’d seen that in him.

First, I wanted to look in on Geraln, so the three of us made our way to the medical ward. When we got there, he was sitting up with a plate of food in his lap while a familiar native woman with large, flat lips and doe eyes sat beside him dressed in a small rectangle of fabric with tufts of fluff in a criss-cross pattern over her lap. Gino couldn’t get over her generous bosom, split by a necklace of soft leather with a silver medallion of a crescent moon sparkling with tiny diamond-tree stones.

I turned to the new guy. “Malchuk, have you met sæwi?”

Chirpy was sitting on her lap when we approached. She jumped down onto the floor and scampered up to him, circling around his feet and sniffing at his knees. Gino added with a warm smile, “and this is Chirpy.”

The baby lizard craned her neck up at him and let out three light chirps before jumping back onto the bed and curling up on Geraln’s feet.

Saewi smiled when we came in, then looked up and down the man without smiling.

Geraln had a spun-wood plate with a variety of stuff on it. There was a mound of brown lumpy stuff smothered in cheese with half of it missing. Some yellow buttery-looking stuff, some shredded green stuff, and some red mix that looked like maybe tomatoes and onions with specks of green that judging from the smell had to be coriander. It probably had salt in it.

He also had a small stack of flat cakes that he used in place of cutlery, folding up a mass of food into a roll that he clearly enjoyed. He looked up and spoke to me between chews. “Gods! You need to try this!”

He took up one of the flat cakes, used it to scoop a bunch of stuff and handed it to me. Saewi put her hand out to block him. “Please, no. You need t’eat.”

Then she looked at me briefly. “I’m sorry, but he needs t’eat if he’s t’recover…”

I answered her in Goloagi, “I understand.”

Saewi looked briefly at Malchuk and answered; her Goloagi was clean as a native speaker. “Miyani asked about you.” She was looking at me.

I raised my eyebrows. “She did? What did she say? What did you tell her?”

Saewi let out a light chuckle and returned her gaze to my friend, stroking his knee as he stuffed his face. He took a brief moment to pause and looked at her. “Tell her…” Geraln grinned at me. “Tell her… that my friend here is the kindest guy you’ll ever meet. He’ll do anything for you if you need. He’s that guy. Tell her that. Oh… believe me. In fact, he’s so kind, that he’ll spend money that isn’t his to help you out. He’s that nice. Tell her that!”

My heart sank as he gazed up at me with a wide grin.

Saewi shook her head and smiled. “I told her that you are a pup.”

Before I could process the meaning of that, Gino lifted a finger and looked at her, pausing as if to wait for the words to catch up to where his mind was at. Then, he spoke. “Saewi, I’m sorry, I have a question for you. You work on the dock, right? You’re an inspector?”

She glanced at Geraln, then back to him in the same serious tone. “Yes. Why?”

Gino straightened himself out. “I was wondering if you’ve seen anything unusual coming in or something.”

She shrugged and looked up. “What do you mean?”

“Well,” Gino began, “there was an alarm earlier.”

“Yes,” she nodded. “They would not let me see him.”

I spoke up, “we were trying to figure out why. Do you know anything?”

She shook her head. “No.”

Gino then elaborated. “OK. Here’s what we’ve got so far. Some fancy carriage was brought in through the gate, and those two men over there,” he pointed, “Caleb was here when four enemy soldiers brought them in. Jezi says that they were from the mɪwe’iʃi.”

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

Saewi’s eyebrows popped.

I interrupted. “You know about them?”

Saewi nodded. “They are evil. They are not to be trusted. They want to exterminate us by any means necessary. They will say they don’t actually believe this, but some of us have been to their village. The people there, they openly speak of it. They joke about what they will do to our bodies when we have been exterminated, and they boast of how many of us they have killed. And to their people, their leaders daily promise to do this—to wipe us out. They say we are stupid, that they will trick us into believing otherwise. This is their rhetoric. Whatever they tell you, just know, they are planning to kill everyone here.”

Gino and I glanced at each other, then to Malchuk, who shook his head.

Then Gino concluded, “We were thinking. Based on what we’ve managed to piece together, they want something from us.”

Saewi shook her head and leaned in. “They want to kill you. If they are offering a deal, it is to kill you.”

“Well,” I figured out where Gino was going. “Maybe. We have ships coming in and out of that port. If they could get something…”

Saewi shook her head. “They don’t care. They never traded with Carthia before, and they don’t care to now. They say we are a disease. Untermensch. You cannot negotiate with such people.”

Geraln raised a finger, “wait a bit, let’s think about this.” He chewed a morsel of food and swallowed. “Perhaps there is something Carthia can offer them that they can’t get through the alliance. Not Carthia, but the Empire. I get what you’re saying about the rhetoric, but at the same time anyone with power and influence has to know that the Empire dwarfs the whole Uhui region by order of magnitude in terms of geography, manpower, and resources. If the Emperor wanted to, he could snap his fingers and this whole place would be razed to the ground. Someone high up in Miwe’ishi leadership could very plausibly want to get on the Emperor’s good side. If that’s the case, Carthia would be a way to get a message through.”

We all looked at him as he licked the grease off his fingers.

Saewi shook her head. “It’s a trap. If they wanted to talk to your emperor, they could send a pigeon to him directly. Why go through Carthia?”

I asked, “they have pigeons, too?”

Saewi frowned at me. “Why would they not?”

I felt stupid. Gino furthered his line of reasoning. “OK, so let’s ask that question. Maybe they’ve been talking to the Emperor, then they send an emissary here. Maybe they need access to the port if the Emperor wants to send them a shipment or something.” He faced Saewi, “do you suppose you could look out for anything unusual?”

She nodded. “I could, but I promise you, they will kill all of us as soon as they can.”

I scratched my chin. “OK, so it’s my turn. Saewi. In your personal opinion, would you say that Malchuk, here, looks… rapey?”

Malchuk raised an eyebrow, then gazed at her directly.

Saewi chuckled lightly and shook her head. “You want to know what that is about. First, I am not the one saying this. I have spoken to the one who did, but I don’t agree with everything she says.”

Gino nodded to her, “who’s the one saying it?”

Saewi shook her head. “I do not believe it will go well if I share her identity with you, but I can explain what she is referring to.” She faced Malchuk, “she believes you are a war junkie.”

Malchuk pulled his face back. “A what?”

“She says that you finished your tour in Kulun and that you volunteered to come here. Is this true?”

He nodded. “Yes. What's that…”

“Why?”

Malchuk blinked a moment.

Saewi expounded her question. “Why did you complete your tour of duty and, instead of taking your veterans payment to live out your life in peace, you come here where I'm sure everyone told you is a death trap?”

Malchuk shook his head and shrugged. “I don’t see how that means anything?”

Saewi held her face perfectly still and watched him for a response. “She thinks you raped war victims in Kulun.”

“NO!” Malchuk shouted.

“She believes you liked doing that so much that you came here to do the same.”

Malchuk stepped closer and threw his hands up. “That’s ridiculous! Why would you…”

Saewi held up one hand and shook her head calmly. After a moment, Malchuk took a deep breath and let it out.

Saewi continued. “Don’t be angry with me for extending the kindness of relaying a message to you; I’m not obligated to tell you anything. This is what she has been saying. There are some who believe she is right, and some who don’t. Perhaps, if you explain to me why you chose to come here, I can have that conversation on your behalf?”

Malchuk ran his fingers through his curly hair and scratched at his scalp some. “I did take my veterans pay. Got a nice plot of land in Umaz. Thought it would be great. It wasn’t.”

Gino faced him with a sincere look in his eyes. “What went wrong?”

Malchuk sucked his teeth. “Nothing. Nothing went wrong. Everything was right. But something just felt… off. I don’t know. It’s hard to explain. I don’t know what it was, but I just couldn’t do it.”

Gino spoke up, “couldn’t do what?”

Malchuk scrunched his lips and shrugged. “I don’t know. I still don’t know. All I knew was I didn’t feel the way that… I thought I would. I heard there was a war going on here, and I thought that maybe I could… I don’t know… bring my experience or something. But it wasn’t no raping or anything. You know what, add this—because the General Commander strictly forbade it. And he would do inspections, too, of the places we’d liberated and asked the locals how his men behaved, and if some girl said one of our guys raped her, that was it. He was done. He didn’t tolerate that sort of thing. So no, even if I wanted to, and I never did, it wasn’t allowed.”

Saewi nodded.

After a while, Geraln had finished his meal and closed his eyes. He then yawned hard and leaned back in his bed and groaned.

Saewi took his hand in hers, then stroked his hair with the other. “You ready f’sleep, darling?”

“Yeah,” he wheezed out.

At that he closed his eyes, and Chirpy resumed her favorite place curled up on his chest. Saewi gave her one last rub under her chin and we all stood to leave. While sæwi went back to wherever she went, Gino and Malchuk followed her with their eyes and don't get me wrong—she did look nice—but she wasn't Miyani.

Another woman met us as we made to leave. It was Tani, the same one who'd given me that most comfortable of garments. I remembered she'd said we would talk later. She came up close and looked me over, “I sorry… uh… no is good time. Later.” And she disappeared.

“Wait… Huh?”

Gino laughed then lifted up the ear pendant. “At least now we know why Miyani gave you this!”

“What?” It didn't make sense to me.

When we came into the barracks, Faren was there reading the book that I found, and he didn't even know about it until I told him, so then why was it fair that he gets to check it out first?

“Is that?” Malchuk furrowed his eyebrows and gaped at the title on the cover.

Faren grinned, “the one and only, my friend!” and he went back to reading.

Gino bubbled with excitement. “You haven't seen the library yet? They've got a whole section dedicated to illegal books!”

“OK, then!” Malchuk opened his eyes wide and shook that off. Then he turned to Gino and I and said, “how should we begin?”

At that, we all sat down. I on my bed, Gino on his with Malchuk next to him. We each had our own Scripture. Gino looked up at me, “how's this: you and I each share something we've learned since we last saw each other in Kyoen, and then Malchuk, you share with us something you know?”

Malchuk and I glanced at one another and shrugged.

Gino nodded. “I'll go first. After you left, the bishop of Kyoen was replaced. Some rumors went around that he'd been pocketing the tithe, but we never got a chance to find out if that's true. The new guy they brought in was this regular guy, super friendly, talked non-stop and always offered you a drink. He was like that with everyone, made you feel special. Something I really liked about him, he always had something for you. No matter who you were or what you were going through, he took it upon himself to figure out a way for you to get what you needed.

“I asked him what his secret was, and this is what he told me. He said it all goes back to the very beginning of scripture, the very first lesson. He said we keep that in mind, and everything else falls into place.”

I was intrigued. “Which lesson is this?”

Malchuk turned to me, “the golden seal. God broke it in half and made man and woman from the two halves…”

Gino stopped him, “no, after that. In the garden was the forbidden tree. I never paid attention to it, but Scripture names it the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Once you eat of it, you know right from wrong. They ate.”

“Right,” I nodded. “Adam blames Eve, and Eve blames the serpent.”

“Yeah,” Malchuk took over, “take responsibility.”

Gino looked among us, “it goes deeper than that. Think about what that means. We have the responsibility whether we choose to take it or not. Through this lesson, we understand that the knowledge of right from wrong lives within us, and that's independent of whatever else Scripture says. And, we’re responsible to it even where Scripture is wrong.”

“What?” I pulled my face back. “No, Scripture is the Word of God. How are you going to say…”

“Think about it,” Gino said, looking at me. “Even you said to me that there are passages in Scripture that don't feel like justice. But God is just, so how does that work? Are we supposed to follow Scripture on blind faith and ignore what our heart tells us? Ignore the truth within us? No. If something doesn't feel right, then something isn't right.”

I shook my head. “That's very dangerous.”

“Yes,” he said, “but that's how it is. We want some concrete law, but there is none.”

Malchuk shook his head. “God’s law is concrete! If you're going to discount Scripture like that, then what?”

Gino nodded and glanced between us. “Then we discount everything beneath it. That's the lesson. Right here, God is telling us that His spirit that lives within us is the ultimate authority on what is right and what is wrong. Not Scripture. And, by extension, everything that falls beneath it. The Emperor, the Archbishop of Golago, every Duke, every priest, Commander, there is no authority greater than the Spirit of Truth.”

Faren spoke up from his book, “you want to hear something funny? That's exactly what this book talks about.”

We all turned to face him. He set the book on his lap and looked up at us for a moment. “Your ‘scripture’ tells you that you should blindly accept some authority because it's greater than you. And that, right there, is the reason why the world goes to shit.”

“No,” I shook my head. “Without an eternal law, there is no order. Scripture is permanent. Unchanging. Unyielding.”

Faren pointed at me and smiled. “That, right there, is your problem. Life is dynamic. The world changes. That's reality. You spend your whole life looking for something permanent, but only the dead are permanent. You need to embrace disorder. Chaos. Be flexible!”

Gino smirked. “I don't know about all that. The point is, how many times do we hear, ‘I was just following orders’ or ‘he made me do it, I had no choice,’ whatever. That's why that act of disobedience was a sin—because it opened our eyes to the truth, which made us responsible for it.”

“Sin!” Another man spoke up from the upper bunk several beds down. The head of his mattress had a mass of spider webs, and he sat up, allowing the sheet to cover his legs and showing a chest decorated with scars and lean muscle. He had long, straight, dark-green hair and light olive-green skin like me.

We all turned to face him. I looked around and saw two other men sleeping with their backs turned; the place was otherwise empty.

The man elaborated. “Sin is the equivalent of your mother telling you that Turtle brings gifts for Bawseth.”

Gino smiled at the man. “You don't think sin is real?”

The man smiled. “I don't think there's an invisible man living in the sky shaking his holy finger at you every time you break one of his asinine rules.”

I answered him, “it's not about that…”

Gino cut me off. “What's your name?”

The man sucked his teeth and looked to the side. “My name is my foot up your arse if you think you can convert me to your superstition.”

Faren laughed and looked up from his book. “His name's Rolf.”

“Whatever.” At that, he lay back down and turned his back to us.

I resumed my attention to my friends. “I guess it's my turn, then?”

Malchuk looked pensive. “What I want to know is, why doesn't God give you what you ask for?”

He glanced between me and Gino and continued, “it says He gives to all without finding fault, ask in His name and it'll be given to us, but that never seems to do anything.”

Rolf rolled towards us again, “that's because there is no God.”

Gino looked at him and smiled. “I understand why you'd feel…”

Rolf interrupted, “sorry to be a shit about this, but I was trying to relax before the three of you came in talking fairy tales so if you don't mind?”

I sat up straight. “We have as much right to be here as you!”

Malchuk rested his hand on my knee. “It's fine. I'm tired anyway.”

—

The next morning, the sky kept a light sprinkle throughout a breakfast of unsalted goo.

Out on the training grounds, we set up the dummies against the outer wall and went about grouping ourselves for archery practice. I was working with Gino and Faren. Gino was able to mostly hit the target, but Faren still held his fingers too close to the nock, pinching the arrow and pulling it away from the bow.

I heard a whistle off to my right.

We all turned, and it was Ahmi. She stood with her white hair in a feral mass about her shoulders and down her back. Her breasts were covered each by a lock of hair that came over her shoulders. She was looking directly at me and made a come hither gesture with her finger.

I sucked my teeth and went back to coaching Faren on his technique. The pinching he would learn to control, but in the meantime I was showing him to use a guide finger to keep the shaft in place.

Daren slapped his meaty hand on my shoulders and barked. “What's wrong with you? Ahmi says ‘come,’ you come. Got that?”

I shook that off. “I don't feel like talking to her.”

“Go, man. That's a bloody order.”

At that, Faren smirked, and half the unit chuckled under their breath. And as I walked past, I could feel their eyes taunting me. I should have taken the money; at least then I'd have been able to buy some coffee.

I came up to her and stopped a good ten feet away, then took a deep breath and stared without speaking a word.

She looked up at me with her eyes wide and a warm smile, then took a few paces to close the distance. “I am sorry for yesterday. My conduct was disgusting and unprofessional. You deserve better.”

That shook me. “Huh?”

“You are worthy of my respect, and I did not afford that to you as I should have done. You are also correct in pointing out that I was rude to Miyani in her absence, and I admire your courage for speaking up about this. I am deeply, deeply sorry, and if you will accept my apology, I would like to make it up to you.”

“Uh…” I scoured my mind for words. “OK?”

“You came with a question. I strive to encourage my students to ask questions and not shame them for it. So, I have made myself available to you for the remainder of the day. Any questions you have, I will do my best to answer them. I am sure you would like to know more about the alarm yesterday, and we have discussed what is acceptable for you to know. I also have a nice lunch prepared for us if you like.”

My first question, “do you have any salt?”