The ride to the sit so far had been incredibly simple in Jaero’s opinion, since all they needed to do was travel down the fence line from where they started. “Though it’s been a fair while” Jaero thought to himself, looking around the horizon. The sun was now below the horizon, the light struggling against the night’s steady push onwards, like a tide of the beach when the moon comes close. Jaero’s eyes continued to study the area, looking across the fence he watched as the paint peeled in chips yet stayed on, acting as if they were belligerent oak leaves in the deep of autumn. Then his attention went to the pasture behind the old fence. Which had turned into what some would call a full-on prairie. The grasses would be up to his chest if went and waded through the plants that went back to the wild.
“Is there a reason why the sheep haven’t been over into this pen? I know we are fixing the fences but they dont look too bad..” Korvan asked of Stamas. Stamas looked to the kid then to the fence. “This was used for the buffalo, kept them spoiled with care here. Well Grandfather did when he was in charge, and alive” Stamas said flatly with only a tinge of sadness in his voice. Jaero, who was also interested in the answer just made a silent “ah” while Korvan looked slightly regretful with a small nod. “Wait, how can you herd buffalo?” Korvan asked, apparently embarrassment didn’t impede him asking questions.
“With a dense amount of difficulty, definitely a different field than sheep herding. We stopped after our grandfather didn’t come back after a couple of months. We were going through the raids at the time.” Stamas explained, Korvan, looking up with a bit of childish bluntness. Then, the accompanying blunt question came, “What happened to him?” Korvan asked, and then went on “Did he die while in the army? Because I know your family also does a lot of doctoring for them…but…” the kid said, realizing he might’ve made a blunder.
“He died in a defense of Stoney Archipelago, he grumbled about being in the conquest and wasn't about to let some ruffians nab it.” Stamas explained to the kid. “He had a habit of going in with nothing on him but equipment to keep others alive. Knowing him, he had probably done the same thing during the defense. Hopefully he was wise enough to not go running out to grab the injured in his old age. He also was originally honorably dismissed due to getting caught in some blast…” The man finished, looking afield with a small sad gaze.
“He was part of that campaign? Are you talking about Axe’s Bloody Rest? That was around the only area where we could get gunpowder. All of the other islands were more of a liability if I recall.” Jaero asked in an almost frantic manner. Stamas shrugged his shoulders, “He didn’t talk too much about the war, saying that it wasn’t for ‘the uninitiated to glorify or to to be nosey in.’ Whatever that meant.” Stamas said grumpily.
Jaero let his mind wonder back to the rough memories of that war, not wanting to remember in too much detail. The war that was waged was a grand collection of desperate and depressing battles for islands that could only house two grand cities on the largest of the isles. And even then you had to put both on the extreme opposite sides of the island. Bloody Axe Rest was not that island however. What it is, however, was one of the few center most land masses that did not get covered in the mystical mists of the ruinous rains of that archipelago.
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“That place was held by only what…a thirtieth of what we sent there? The chieftain there forced us to attempt to get up those namesake cliffs too there.” Jaero said, thinking of some of the bits of that war, “sadly for him, The Hero Samaj found a little cove to get on the opposing beach. Weakening the resupply from the Isle King’s force. It only took us the rest of the year to actually win that one isle…” Jaero said, feeling done with that batch of memories. “ Well both my great-uncle and grandfather were able to come home after that in one whole piece, so I am also glad that Samaj found that apparent cove.” Stamas said
Jaero nodded in an odd half-somber way, “He was able to turn the tide of many a war, when he was alive with us.” Stamas looked around the environment in a bored way, letting the conversation pause fo a bit before he responded. “Him and his group both, the linage of Flame Kings owe their influence to him. While he was out with that group of power obeying him, The Hero.” Stamas commented, now restarting the conversation. I wonder where the rest of The Hero’s Group went, to think that we don’t know where such influential people went…”
With Korvan looking over curiously to the Mond’doss man and catching his eye, Stamas went on, “You see, even the weakest of links in that score of…people, would be a foe so dreadful unto themselves…I’m not sure if any one nation could have stopped them.” Stamas shuddered then looked away, Jaero then studied Korvan’s face. Who looked like a person which did not get an answer to their liking.
“ I am pretty sure that Weaving Cob had died when the FIre Floods started…visiting.” Jaero volunteered, closing his eyes as he thought of the man. He gulped down the little group of words that wanted to crawl out of his mouth, to become a confession. To be honest with those around him. Then he opened his eyes, looking at the rider of the tall black gelding.
“No, he would want his nephew to be safe, to be obscured.” Jaero thought to himself, “Or I would think so, I am always lost on what that telepathic coy spider was concotioning.” He continued to think, the images of seeing the psychic dead in his sleep with his wife comming unbidden to him. Vivid as a painting, if even more so. His eyes refocused back on the kid, who was involuntarily abandoned by all blood family. “He will be better than any of you, just watch, friends.”
“Who was that again?” Stamas asked with a scrunched up face, a pose which many a person had made when trying to recall something that had been buried under other facts and details of everyday life. Jaero let out a slow breath while trying not to roll his eyes. “That man pulled strings in the social fabric so well you'd think that people would revear him at least half as much as they did with Hero Samaj.'' Jaero thought to himself.
“Cob was a person who could tell you how the general life of a person would be for the next year just by their face and gait. That man was the true nation builder of ou- our nation’s Hero group.” Jaero said, then went. “He made other countries’ spy masters ashamed to call themselves such when he lived. One story I heard of was one came to Samaj’s tent to be executed by the hands of Cob. So deranged had the man became when going up against Cob’s conceived chaos.” Jaero said, shuddering at the memory of that man. Deranged was a too tame of a word for what that wide eyed hysteric man had became.