“Boy, sit next to Osman. Osman, if there’s trouble, hide with the boy, please. I’ll catch up tonight,” Renier stepped off the moving wagon. “Continue your meditation!”
He moved to the side of the road and hid behind a bolder to let the rest of the train pass.
Kasim, Amira, and another eight riders passed slowly by the bolder. It looked like they weren’t trying to overtake the caravan.
Renier decided to follow them at a distance.
After dusk, the group stopped about half a kilometer from the caravan. “You, go check where he camped. Make sure no one sees you!” Ordered Kasim
“Tonight, you’ll go and get the manuscript. That’s why we hired you Karga,” he said to the remaining men. “You’ll get the rest of the payment once we have the manuscript. “Remember, we don’t want any conflict with this man. He seems to be someone connected to the palace judging by what happened in Toroman.”
The others agreed. About an hour later, the scout returned, “he’s not there!” The scout reported.
“What do you mean he’s not there?”
“He’s not in the camp. The wagon he was riding is there. The kid and the old man are doing their business as if nothing happened, but he’s not there!”
“Are you sure?”
“I checked the whole camp twice. He’s not there!”
“If the boy is there, he’s bound to come back. We’ll continue to follow and steal it tomorrow night. Cold camp only!”
Renier decided to also wait and maybe do some stealing of his own. He was particularly interested in another journal to help in deciphering. Hopefully, either or both had a journal, which wasn’t on their person. Not that he couldn’t get it if it were. If he had been as good at pickpocketing then as he was now, he would have never found Ayg’s talisman. He waited while the camp settled down.
It was about one in the morning. Only one Karga kept watch, and Renier was about to go in to steal what he could find when all the Karga got up and rushed Kasim and Amira. They slit Kasim’s throat and held down Amira.
“We can get paid and have a little fun! We can just report this guy killed them. Let’s move out; we don’t want someone from the caravan to hear and interrupt our fun.”
They bound and gagged Amira and put her on her horse. Then draped Kasim's body on his and rode toward Toroman about two kilometers, “this should be far enough.”
‘Girl, where’s the gold?”
Amira didn’t make a sound. Even in the faint moonlight, Renier could see the daggers in Amira’s eyes.
The men searched Kasim and found the pouch full of gold that would have been their payment. Then they pulled Amira down.
She struggled, but two held her down while another two started to work on her clothes. Renier was going to help her, but he waited. ‘Rescued victims feel reciprocity toward their savior and generally cooperate with them. The degree of cooperation often depends on the amount of hardship they have suffered,’ he remembered one of the Keeper’s many lectures.
One of them had lowered his pants and was about to take off her undergarments when Renier weaved the etherbolts, and all eight men died.
Another bolt split the ropes that held her hands.
“Get dressed,” Renier turned to give her some privacy.
“Who.. who are you?” She asked, shaken from her ordeal.
“I’ll be asking the questions. Let’s start with, is your name Amira?”
Amira looked toward the voice but didn’t answer. Then recognition.
“My name is Meryem.”
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As they spoke, Renier searched Kasim’s body, “And you’re part of the Yendeci?”
“I’m a guardian in the Yendeci.”
He found a book inside his breast and took it. “Why didn’t the talisman protect you and Kasim?”
“They only work against strikes and projectiles. A slow blade will not activate it.”
‘Deficient design,’ he thought, “where do you get them?”
“I don’t know. They are part of the equipment we are given.”
“Why are you following me?”
“We want the manuscript that Imam Akkaya gave you. We do not wish to harm you.”
“I’d hate to see what you’d do if you wanted to harm me,” said Renier, laughing.
“That was before we knew who you were.”
“And who am I?” Asked Renier with a smirk.
“We weren’t sure, but you’re connected with the Palace. We just wanted to steal the manuscript. That’s why we hired these Karga,” she said as she spit on one of the corpses. “What are you going to do with me?”
“How do you decipher these journals?” She had finished dressing, and Renier had gotten close enough for her to see him.
“I don’t know. Only commanders get the journals, and only they know the code. I only know that each one has a different code, and that’s how we get our orders and report back.”
‘I’ll be… I didn’t think to see if more pages were getting written since I found it. So they must have two linked journals.’ A flurry of ideas came to him. He immediately used his perception on the journal, and sure enough, a Lucine Spirite talisman was embedded in the spine.
‘Idiot,’ he chided himself, ‘I should have checked! The keeper would have been disappointed.’
“To answer your question, I don’t know what to do with you. My teacher would be disappointed that I didn’t kill you, but I suppose saving you to then kill you would be incongruent.”
‘Am I again being soft because she’s a woman?’
“I suppose I can just let you go,” he scanned her and her horse, and she didn’t have a journal, “you have food and water to make it to the next city.”
“Thank you, Efendi Bey. I hope that if we can not be friends, we can at least not be enemies.”
“If you follow the caravan, stay back. There are men there that can kill you even with your talisman shield,” he started to skim back to the caravan before she could answer. ‘why did he warn her? It’s not like I care,’ he thought as he returned to the caravan. It was almost time to wake up that lazy kid.
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“Yes, master, I’m fine. We must not become his enemy. He wields power like in the ancient texts.” She had waited about an hour before using the communication talisman. She had not lied. Journals were something warrior commanders used, but as a Yendeci acolyte, she had other means.
“No, master, I will travel to Ancyra and try to get close to him there. He warned me about men in the caravan. I’m unsure if they are these assassins we’ve been seeing.” She waited for the response that sounded in her mind.
“How could you think that? I’m only interested in his secrets!”
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Skandar felt he was making good progress. He could now do the exercises without feeling like he was dying. Well, he could until the old man added new ones. ‘This old man is going to kill me,’ his inattention cost him.
“Keep the tip of the sword up. Do five more.”
And there it was. The famous five more. ‘If the food weren’t so good, I’d have left this torture.” At least he had gotten used to waking up early, and most days, he was up before the Old man came for him.
‘And he was done. Now, some breakfast and then the boring meditation! He hated the meditation!’
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‘The kid was doing pretty good,’ he thought, ‘at this rate, I’ll teach him astralmend in a couple of weeks. Get him to start memorizing some mandala patterns.’
Renier was on top of the wagon watching Skandar meditate. The boy had been at it for forty-five minutes without breaking concentration. It was a new record. As soon as he could do it for an hour, Renier would start further training. He was pushing it, but the time till Penumbra was short.
‘We should be in Sarmalius before the end of the day, and I need to take care of the Ebon. Hopefully, they’ll go into town, and I’ll get a chance.’
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Renier skimmed from shadow to shadow, made by the dusk sunlight following the group of five on the streets of Sarmalius. They weren't overly cautious but did watch out for followers. However, in the shadows, Renier was virtually undetectable. They entered a warehouse near the stables. There were four Ebon deployed around the outside of the building. The first three were dispatched quickly enough, but the last one had a pendant.
Renier skimmed to a shadow behind the Ebon and slid a dagger across his neck. It had been a gamble, but he figured these suffered from the same flaw as the ones the Yendeci had.
A second-story window provided an entrance to the building, and Renier made his way on the rafters to just above the six Ebon inside.
".. he's at least a stage three, Viper. We didn't know what to do exactly, but he acted like an elder and knew about us,” the big one reported.
Ayg's sword in hand and imbued, Renier dropped behind the five that were reporting and enhanced his speed with Slipstream. He entered time dilation in his dagraha, and everyone moved in slow motion. Before the count of five, their spines had been severed; each impaled through the back by a lunge. Blood spilled everywhere. 'But that can't be helped,' thought Renier, bemused as he fired two volleys of seven Etherbolts at Viper's chest. The thirteenth one cracked her personal shield, and the last one obliterated her Adhikendra. ‘Much better than the other ones. Was that because she was at stage three?’ Like he had done with Yasmina, he healed her immediately after. He needed information from this one.
"I assume you're Viper. The one in charge of this mission?"
Viper had a terrified look on her face. Her elite stage two team had been annihilated in seconds, "wh-who are you?"
"I'll be asking the questions, Viper. How many more teams do you have from here to Ancyra?"
Viper was silent. He smashed a kinedisc to her face. "You going to answer? Or do I need to start getting creative?"
"Owne on the rhode, ad one id the cidy," answered Viper through her broken nose. Renier did a quick mend. "That's better. See, we can all get along."
"Were you one of the Ebon that participated in the raid against the Pasha's estate?"
"Ye-ye-yes," she finally confessed.
"Very well. You should have noticed that your Mu is gone, so there's nothing you can do to me, even with your weapons. Unfortunately, I can't make you the same deal I made, Yasmina. But I promise I won't kill you if you cooperate. Follow me," he said as the bodies disappeared into his ring.
Renier led Viper to the stables, where he purchased two horses. "Let's go find your friends."
They left Sarmalius on the eastern road to Ancyra.
About a half hour later, Renier stopped and tied his horse's reins to a tree branch. "Wait here. If you make me come after you, my previous promise is void. I'm just going to collect your friends."
Viper heard five loud booms a few minutes later, and then Renier was back.
He wanted to finish this before morning, and the kid had to train.