Inklings #? - Run

I’m running.

Primal instincts kick in.  Whoever was in front of me isn’t anymore.  I can feel the wind in my ears, the screams behind me, the fear in the village.  I can’t do anything for them.  So I keep on running.

Eventually, my heart stops pounding, and my breath evens out.  My pace gets to be more regular.  I land each step like my life depends on it.  I can’t hear the screaming anymore.  The ground beneath my feet is no longer sandy.  There are leaves scattered everywhere.

I have never been in a forest.  I have never left the village, under the care of Puba.  Puba said that the forest was dangerous, full of darkness and no light.  I look back for the first time ever.  It’s like I’m crossing a boundary that never existed before now.  An invisible line.  The scent of smoke fills my nose.  I start running again - they are coming.

The branches of strange plants whip at my face and scratch my legs.  I pant.  I’m going up hill, along with
the only hope of a new life.  The only thing I need.  A sword.

The hill continues upward until the crest of a small mountain, where a brush of snow sifts down when I step.  The snow is too cold.  I can’t stay here tonight.  I will probably have to run the whole night.

I turn back.  This is the last chance I will have to ever see my home.  The whole thing is burning, and I don’t see anyone except that bunch of murders there.  So they are dead.  There is no hope.

A wolf howls.  I remember Puba trying to describe wolves to me.  He couldn’t do it.  That howl sent such a chill down my back that I almost screamed.  The fear surprises me.  Puba taught me never to fear, just like the other warriors.  I am too young to be the last warrior.  I cannot fight the desert marauders.  There are too many.

I run again.  The forest is on fire.

Only after the moon is nearly set behind me do I stop.  I have outrun the fire I think, or at least, I have bought myself some time before burning to death.  The price is that I am hungry.  Very hungry.

Listening, I hear a cart nearby.  Carts need roads to be pulled on, and if there are roads, there are people.  People have food.  I trot to catch up to the fast-retreating sound of wagon-wheels.  I need food to keep running.

I think of how to disguise myself.  My village was in the Slash.  We were not loved by anyone else.  We all had dark skin and barbaric customs, Puba said.  They will rip you apart just like our homeland says.  “That is why the call it the Slash.”

Eventually, the cart blends into the sound of life.  A goat runs past me, followed by the sounds of running feet.  I quickly climb the tree.  I cannot be seen yet, not with my appearance as it is.  A girl, about my age, runs past, calling for the goat to come back, but the white coat has disappeared into the brush.  Another person follows the girl.  A heavy-footed man.

“Look what you have done now Kei!”  He roars into her face, screaming, “You’ve lost me my best goat.  You’ll pay for this slave!  No wonder no one would keep you!  No wonder you sold for so little!  I should sell you again!  I have half a mind to!”  He pulls out a whip, holding the girl by three gold loops in her right ear.

Realizing what he is about to do to her, I jump out of the tree and onto his back, drawing my sword and chopping off his head.  The girl screams so loudly that my ears feel like they might crack.  Then she drops to the ground in a faint.

Well then.  I killed a man and scared a silly slave girl.  No one will ever let me buy off their food, even if I did have money.  I search the man’s pockets.  Four silver dinaku is enough for food for me.  I look at the girl.

Half an hour later, I drop the girl next to a stream, stretching my sore back.  I tie her hands.  Once she wakes up, she will be terrified.  Just to be safe, I gag her too.  She might scream and then we’ll both be in trouble.  Climbing the tallest tree near by, I look back to the village I was going to go into.

It is more than a village, it is a town.  Some of the buildings are stone, and I see a huge road going to the north and south of it.  I am going north.  I can follow that road.

The girl wakes up.  She is trying to scream, I can tell.  She bangs her feet on the ground and groans.  I walk over to her, and stare.  She does not look like a slave girl.  I know she is, because of the gold earrings in her ear and the triangle tattoo on her neck.  Still, with tan skin and rougher hands, she looks like a desert woman, rather than a slave girl from the north.

“Promise not to scream?”  I say, wondering if she would keep that promise.  I can knock her out again and carry her further, but I’d rather not.  I still need food, and I don’t want to waste time hunting every day.

The girl - Kei I think - bangs her feet on the ground and nods.  I take out the rag I had used to gag her and put it in my makeshift bag.

Kei spits and sputters for a moment, then demands, “Why did you bring me here?”

I don’t respond right away, but clean off my sword.  I did not have time to do that earlier.  Finally, I turn around and say, “Are you a desert girl?”

“Answer my question and I’ll answer yours, Slash boy.”  She has the strong spirit of a Northlander then.

“I need your help.  You’re a desert girl who got stolen, probably by the Northlander army when the took over the Slash and south.  You got sold as a slave.  You probably want to run away now.”  I spit at her feet.  “Don’t worry, your people are still happy and pillaging mine.”

Kei narrows her eyes.  “So you’re a smart Slash boy.  You’d don’t come across those every day.  Still, what you say is true.  I was going to run away tonight.  I have food stored up and everything.  But I suppose a Slash boy like you has everything under control - food, direction, that sort of thing.”

She is a smart, snarky desert girl.  Almost exactly what I needed.  I put my sword away, then pick her up - she is so light it only takes one arm.  “Look,” I say to her, no more an inch away from her face.  “I don’t like it anymore than you do, but we need each other.  You’re obviously a slave.  Anyone who has any brains can see that.  If you want to escape, then you’ll need someone to play as your master.

“I’m obviously from the Slash.  I can still pass off for a changed man though.  But I need food if I want to escape.  So we need eachother.”

Kei sighs.  After a moment, she bites her lip and says, “Fine, but I’m not going to be tied up the whole time.  And I’ll need to know your name.”

“Chaka.  My name is Chaka,” I say as I slash my sword through the ropes.

“Well then Chaka,” She said as she flashed me a dashing, southern smile, “I’m glad we came to an agreement.  Now let’s get the Slash out of here.”  And then she stalked off towards the west and the town.

I dash after her.

Kei visits the town only for a short bit of time.  If she stayed too long, she would get snagged up in chores - at least, that’s what she said.  However, she did stay long enough to steal her food collection and to feed a story to the townsmen.  According to her, a wild, barbaric Slash war chieftain had appeared out of no where and knocked her unconscious.  He was about to perform a ritual killing when she woke up and ran back to the town.

We lay low till nightfall, then start off following the brick road north.  There is little to no conversation.

Then around midnight, Kei stops and pants, “I’ve got to take a break Chaka.  Please?”

I was feeling rather annoyed because I had to cut her skirt free from some brambles not three minutes before.  “No!”  I snap out of spite, “We have to keep going!  I can’t stop for you every time you get tired.  I’m tired too you know.  I haven’t slept in two days and I’m not complaining!”

Kei glares at me.  “Well I’m not some Slash boy with years of who-knows what kind of training.  I’m not a barbarian.  Just because I was born in the sand doesn’t mean I was brought up there!”

I pause and think about it.  Sipping from my waterskin, I say, “I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean to insult you.”  I pause, then add, “If you want to...you can borrow my sword to cut your skirt, so that you can run easier.”

I watch as the last relic of the last Slash village is used to tailor a girl’s skirt.  I am quite proud of that sword.  It hadn’t been mine until the raid, but I needed a weapon so I stole it from a foolhardy pillager who forgot to check his surroundings before entering a room.  But we don’t have a knife, so the sword is the best thing to use to cut that skirt short.  If you ask me, she cut it too short though.

Once she finishes, Kei stands up and brushes the black hair out of her face.  “May I ask a question?”

I sheath the sword and collect the fabric, saying, “Yes, what is it?”

“Why in the world are we going north?  Shouldn’t we be going south, to my tribe?”  She is looking wistfully back the way we came.

“Kei, you know just as well as I do that your tribe is dead.  Desert warriors would never give their children as peace offerings - they would rather die than have their women sold into slavery.”

She takes a sip out of the waterskin.  “You know a lot about the desert tribes, don’t you?  I don’t know anything about your people.  That’s not very fair, is it?”

I’m suddenly very aware of how close Kei is.  I whisper, “Life is not fair.  We should probably start running again.”

“I can’t run, not yet.  Can we walk?”  She looks at me and I know I can’t say no, so I start walking.

We travel another several miles that night and find a nice grotto of trees to sleep in.  Neither one of us particularly want to, but we sleep next to each other for warmth because we don’t have a blanket.  I wake up as the sun sets and we eat, but then we set out again.

There isn’t much conversation for a while, except for an occasional “no that way” or “waterskin”.  I don’t know about Kei, but I start to forget about how she’s desert and I’m Slash.  I start to not care that we’ve been sworn enemies all our lives.  Look for the good in everyone, Puba used to say.

Puba!  What would he say if he was here now.  He would probably disown me - running away alone with a sixteen-year-old desert girl?.  Now that I think of it, you can’t disown someone if there is no one to disown them from.  I am the last Slash.

Suddenly, Kei whispers, “Sh!  Someone's coming up on the road.”  We huddle down in the brush, seeing two people approaching on horseback.

The only people I can think of who would ride horseback at night are army.  “Northlanders - soldiers,” I whisper to Kei.  I give her my bag and draw my sword as silently as possible.  Kei stiffens beside me.

As they get closer, the moon comes out from behind the clouds.  I can see them much better now.  They look like upperclass soldiers, with armor and capes and Northlander-style swords.  For some reason though, their skin looks too dark, but it is probably just because it is night time.

As they ride past, I hear one of them say gruffly, “I can’t believe they’re making us ride all the way here just to show those Desert barbarians a lesson-”  The rest was lost into the night.

As soon it was safe, Kei gasps and whispers, “Oh no!  Which tribe!?”  From what I can see from her she looks really worried.

“Should yours be dead?”  I ask, feeling tricked.

Slowly, as if the words are hard to get out, she whispers back, “My father and mother escaped with my little brother.  I know they probably joined up with another tribe that escaped the scourge.  But I got separated, and I’ve worried about them ever since.  I don’t even know if they were accepted into another tribe.  My father might have been turned down as a coward.”

I’m not sure what else to do.  I reach out and hold her hand and say, “I’m sorry.  I didn’t know.”

She looks past me at the full moon and says, “It’s ok...thank you.”

We start up again, and no one says anything for the longest time.  This time we sleep back-to-back under a stone bridge as the day goes on.  I don’t mind tonight.  When Kei wakes up in the evening, I tell her to go back asleep - we are near a city and we need to buy more food, so we need to go in during the day.

We start out at midnight this night, and we only walk.  We don’t want to look to strange if some one was to pass us.  Kei says she couldn’t run if she tried anyway.

“It’s so cold,” she whispers to me as we slog through a muddy stream.  We’re very close, to try to be as warm as possible, but I can still feel her shuddering.  I pull off my shirt to give to her - she needs to stay warm.  I’ve been trained.  I’ll deal.

She stares at me, then looks at the shirt that I hand her.  She pulls it on over her tunic and says slowly, “What are we going to do?”

I stop walking and look at her in surprise.  “What do you mean?”  I hadn’t really thought of this until now.

“I mean, well, we’re both outcasts.  I’m a runaway desert slave, and from the sound of it, illegal.  You’re the last warrior, probably the last Slash in all of Tendrilla.  We don’t belong anywhere - so where will we go?”  I suddenly realize exactly how close Kei is.  I don’t move away.

“I don’t know,” I whispered honestly.  “I’ve been mostly thinking about surviving up until now.”

The moon goes behind a cloud and I can’t see her face anymore.  I hear hoofbeats coming up behind us and stiffen.  Kei ignores them.

“We could run away together,” she breathes, so close I can feel her heart beating.

Her lips touch mine.

At that moment, I realize that everything is very wrong.  My breath catches and I double over.  The horses come around the bend and Kei leans back, smiling horribly.  Blood drips from her knife.

I fall to the ground, gasping.  The whole world seems to be spinning, but I can still clearly see Kei’s scornful smile.  I can hear her final words as two fuzzy men leer behind her.

“Long live the Desert, Slash boy.”