Chapter 1: Dad

The group mounted up and Slicy started talking.

“As I almost started yesterday, I want to accentuate the periods of interest while glossing over the periods of mundanity,” started Slicy.

“Mundanity?” said Jayde.  “Is that even a word?”

“Do you know what I mean by it?” he asked.

“Well, yeah, I know what you mean, but-“

“Then shut your mouth and listen, it’s my story,” said Slicy.

“I was born in the city of Munk.  The city existed as one of the many piles of trash in the giant steamy pile of Gurb, the largest province in Zantia, the country of the Dark King’s empire.  I was born in Munk, but I didn’t live there.  My mother went into labor a month early and died during childbirth which left my father alone to raise his only child.  Well, my father and a fleet of servants, attendants, messengers, wet-nurses, and sycophants.

Life was good.  I was homeschooled by two brilliant and amazing tutors.  I had everything a nine year old boy could ask for, and my dad was the most fun, fantastic, and wonderful person in my life.  That was until the morning everything changed.

I woke to pale, gray light illuminating my large bedroom as I heard boots coming up the stairs.  I figured someone had finally discovered what had happened to my father.  He had disappeared five days previously.  At the age of nine, my father read to me every night.  We had a fleet of servants, but he always put me to bed himself.  My dad was my hero, and I knew no matter what, everything was going to be all right as long as he was there.

Four burly officers barged into the house and dragged me from my room.  A canvass bag was shoved over my head and cinched tight.  Despite being nine, I realized something had clearly gone awry.  I was an insightful young lad.  Hooded, cold, and confused I rode on the back of a horse with an unknown man holding me in place.

We dismounted and I heard a mass of people around me.  The man dragged me up several stairs and I could feel the icy wind blowing through my pajamas.

Someone roughly yanked the hood off my head and I blinked in the early morning sunlight.  Ten paces away I saw my father.  He stood on the top of an elevated wooden platform, a noose around his neck, and a trap door underneath him.  His face had been mangled and his body beaten.  Matted, dried blood covered his head and a black stain streaked down his entire right side.  He had been stripped to just his pants and deep purple welts covered his entire torso.

“Daddy!” I screamed and started running towards him.

The guard slammed his truncheon into my belly.  Pain and the inability to breathe collapsed me.

“Stop!” came my father’s voice from the body.  “I’ve already told you everything I know, hurting him accomplishes nothing.”

I don’t know what I expected him to sound like.  Strong and confident definitely had not been at the top of the list.  He looked pitiful and helpless, yet sounded as commanding as ever.  I later learned my father was an assassin.  He had infiltrated deeply within the other three countries, ferreting secrets and plots against Zantia.  He had been promoted as a State assassin, with the laughable job of checking on his own government.  Nobody expected him to actually do it.  Their mistake.  As it turned out, King Zolf liked his secrets to remain hidden.

I gazed up at him, standing on the giant wooden gallows.  Under the trap door was nothing but fifteen feet of empty space.  We were open and exposed so the entire crowd could watch him die.  Hundreds had assembled to watch.  I remembered a lecture from my home tutor Yeeto on how executions by hanging worked.  The rope extended from his neck, slacked down to his knees, then to the wooden beam above his head.  When the rope became taught, his body weight would be enough to fracture his neck, killing him even before he could asphyxiate.

They had brought me here to watch him die.  Mortality is hard to come to grips with when you had been sleeping comfortably in your bed 30 minute earlier.

I managed to stand and looked at the mob; hundreds had arrived for the execution.  It didn’t matter that most of them never knew my father.  People as a whole have always swarmed to see carnage.  Predictably, the crowd had swollen despite the fact that many were now enlightened due to all his hard work and effort.  They came to watch a man die.  I’m not sure what they expected.  It seemed the crowd despised him.

The Patriarch of the State walked to the stairs, his white robes billowing in the wind behind him.  He lumbered up the stairs, every movement a dramatic presentation of his self-worth.  The crowd quieted.

“Malachi Patterson, you have been found guilty of High Treason before the State for your crimes and lies.  You have spread malice and rumors, created uprisings and rebellions, and destroyed the work of thousands of loyal State workers.

I hereby sentence you to death for your crimes.  Your assets and (nodding towards me) personal belongings now belong to the state,” he said.

“And my son?” my father asked.

The Patriarch then walked closely to my father, so his voice could not be overheard by the crowd.

“He is property of the state,” the Patriarch said.  “He likely has been entrusted with State secrets, considering his stock.  We have no choice.  After you’re done dancing at the end of the rope, we’ll give him a ride as well.”

My father did not respond.

The crowd, though now gigantic, remained silent.  I whimpered a little, but tried to remain strong for my father.  The large man in white addressed the crowed again.

“This is what happens when you disobey!” the Patriarch said, pointing at my father.  “This is what ingratitude and laziness earns you.  If you work hard, and give to the State, you will be rewarded, but this is the reward to those who rebel.”

He nodded to the maniacal manly man manually manning the lever of the trapdoor.  He pulled the wooden lever.

I screamed as I watched my father fall.

I heard a shrill whistle which ended abruptly when the rope above my father’s neck exploded from a curved, “S” shaped double-edged dagger thrown from the crowd.  My father fell through the trapdoor to the ground.

The crowd exploded into chaos.

“Jump down the trapdoor!” yelled my father over the roar of the crowd.

I sprinted towards the opening.  The man in white spun, only to receive my shoulder in his stomach.  The man fell over the side of the gallows, screaming.

The crowd parted as a warhorse charged through.  I scurried down the trapdoor and fell onto the muddy ground.  A man jumped off the horse landing next to my father.  He threw my father and me onto a second horse and we galloped away.

“KILL THEM! KILL THE BOY! KILL THE BOY! THE BOY!” screeched the Patriarch.

Soldiers unloaded crossbows in our direction.  The crowd received the majority of the crossbow bolt peppering.

I looked up and saw our savior.  It was Creeya, my tutor for the last six years.  He had taught me theory, tactics, and history.  He knew about communications and how to conduct sales.  This was my knowledge of my tutor.  He was kind, funny, quirky, and always ready with some preposterous story.

Nowhere had he presented himself as a dagger throwing maniac capable of rescuing people from certain death while surrounded by a legion of troops.

Our horses galloped onward with Imperial troops closing in behind us.  I had been on a horse before, but never at full gallop.  My father somehow managed to keep an arm securely wrapped around me.  Sometime in the scrabbling he had managed to release his arms from his ropes.  I grabbed onto the pommel of the saddle and held on for dear life.

My father’s raspy breath wheezed above the pounding of the horse.  We thundered toward the city gates, only to see a wall of archers waiting for us.  Neither Creeya nor my father halted.

The gate to the city was closed, yet Creeya charged forward, his horse pushing 30 paces ahead of ours.  He stood up in his stirrups and held a dagger between his palms as if praying to the dagger.  A flash of dark green light flooded into the dagger and he hurled the dagger impossibly fast at the gate.  The dagger flew faster than an arrow and embedded into the thick oak gate.  I still remember the dagger sticking into the gate for a split second before the explosion blew the door into wooden shrapnel.

Several archers were taken out in the explosion, but nearly twenty remained that unloaded arrows at us.

My father leaned forward in the saddle, pinning me between the horses back and his chest, protecting me from any errant arrows.

I could feel the jolt as our horse took an occasional arrow in the flank, yet the beast charged onward.  I also felt the sudden hammer of arrows striking my father.

In a dozen heartbeats we passed through the gate.  Though pressed against the horse I caught sight of Creeya as he threw a handful of small metallic balls behind us.  Gray fog emanating from the balls as we rode on.  I later learned that the balls actually were a condensed poison which hung in the air for a long time (he had “borrowed” them from my other tutor Yeeto).  Thus by throwing them as we passed through the gate, it prevented pursuit.  Anyone trying to follow us would have to leave out of one of the other gates or wait an hour for the poison to dissipate.

“Where’s Yeeto,” my father yelled.

“He prepared the getaway,” yelled Creeya.

We rode onward.  The horse’s mouths foamed and blood oozed from their sides, peppered with arrows.  Somehow they continued to run despite their injuries.  We rode toward the nearby forest.

After an agonizing fifteen minutes, Creeya finally stopped.

He dismounted and helped me off of the giant horse.  My father’s breathing had become ragged.

I turned around and looked up at my father.  He was collapsed forward, laying on the horse.  I counted seven arrows buried deep in his back, and fresh blood dripped from the corner of his mouth.  Yet, despite his terrible and gruesome appearance, he beamed.  I ran back to the horse.  When he spoke, his voice was a whisper.

“You did it Creeya, you crazy bastard.  Thank you,” he said.

My father smiled, and then started coughing a ragged, bloody cough.

“Slicy,” he whispered.  “You have more strength than you know.  Work hard, listen to Creeya and Yeeto, they will help you.  Be safe, be smart, and don’t let anyone tell you what you can’t do.  I love you,” he said.

“I love you too, dad,” I said, tears welling.

“I was hoping for a better time and place to give this to you,” my dad said.  “This is your great grandfather’s dagger, use it wisely.  Also, the horse Creeya is on is Simon, he’s gotten me out of more trouble than I care to admit.  Right now it’s time to run.  You need to run and run and keep running.  Running will keep you safe for now, but there are more important things than safety.  Someday you will need to stop running and start standing up, but that day is not today.”  He turned towards my guide.

“Protect him, Creeya, and teach him, make him strong,” dad said.

“You know I will,” said Creeya.

He then turned to another man who had been hidden in the shrubbery.

“Take care of him, Yeeto, and make him wise,” dad said.

“I will,” said Yeeto, emerging from his concealment.

My dad looked down at me, the corners of his bloodied mouth coming to a smile.  I could just barely hear the sound of running horses in the distance.  He reached down and touched my face.  He held out a dagger longer than my arm, smiling.

He then touched my shoulder with the ancient dagger.  I felt energy flow into me, invigorating me, yet calming me at the same time.  The dagger slid into my shoulder and down my arm, though I felt no pain.  The dagger shrank in size and I could feel it running down my upper left arm, the dagger was inside of my body.  It should have been excruciating, but instead I felt alert and energized.

My father then slowly pushed himself up in his saddle.

“I will miss the stories,” he said to me, so softly I could barely hear it.

Before Creeya, Yeeto, or I could protest, he charged towards the approaching horses.

That was the last I ever saw my father.

“Slicy, Creeya, it’s time to go,” said Yeeto.

Creeya spoke to his horse that he had ridden out of town briefly, the creature nodded and we took off again.  Tears streamed down my face.  It was all I could do to not fall off Creeya’s horse.  My father, my rock, my hero had escaped his execution only to run back towards his doom.  We rode as fast as we could.

Ten minutes later, we felt an explosion that rocked us while we fled.  A furious blast of energy passed through us.  I knew then that my father had died.  Apparently my tutors knew this as well.

Creeya slowed to a trot.  Yeeto followed his lead.

“He was a great man,” said Yeeto.

We stopped for a short time, but we heard no horses following us.

“What’s the plan?” asked Creeya.

“We have to leave,” said Yeeto.

“No scat, genius.  I mean where to?” asked Creeya.

“Suliad,” said Yeeto.

“You’re kidding right?” asked Creeya.  “Three refugee humans, coming from Zantia, going to Suliad?  I like my chances better against the troops.”

“Let’s go,” said Yeeto.

We rode on.  I rode with Creeya on Simon as Yeeto led onward.  We maintained a driving pace for the next week.  Yeeto explained that messenger falcons had surely been sent out throughout the kingdom by now and all the neighboring cities would be on the lookout, thus we continued our trek by night, sleeping during the day, avoiding people and slowing making our way to Suliad.

 

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