As part of the Katabull Nation whose main form of commerce had been the sea ever since the end of the Great War, Jabone, Ufalla and Tarius had been at sea many times, but Jestia had not. After one rough day she had downed the awful stuff that was the Kartik sea-sickness remedy and now ran around the deck just soaking it all up. Tarius ran around after her soaking her up.
Jabone was sitting in the stern enjoying the cool breeze that raked his cheeks. Ufalla walked up to him and sat down on the rail beside him. "What are you thinking?"
He looked at Ufalla and didn't hesitate to tell her, which let him know just how much more he cherished her friendship than her brother's because it was something he never would have told Tarius. "I was thinking that it's only been two days and I already miss my parents, especially my mother Jena. I want to wipe out the vision of her crying as I got on the ship and I want to wrap it up and keep it at the same time."
"I know what you mean, except it's my father's tears that haunt me. The Kartiks are all passion and so physically demonstrative, but well my father has always been more openly emotional than my mother. I think it's a Jethrik trait and I'm not sure whether I'm happy or sad that I don't seem to have it."
"Do you think . . . Well have we made a terrible and selfish decision?"
Ufalla shrugged. "I don't think so. If we did well they only have themselves to blame. I mean if they'd taught us more about nets and rigging than they had about the sword and warfare we'd be fishermen instead of fighters."
Jabone nodded. "I feel like it's something I have to do. I love my madra, but how will anyone ever even notice me if I'm always standing beside her?" He took a deep breath and started throwing his arms about. "Tarius the Black, who conquered the Amalite scum, the greatest fighter who ever lived, the Great Leader who built our sea port and brought in the ships that serve our nation and who built the great wall between the Katabull Nation and the sea, who is Kingdom Warlord and the best bard in the country. There is nothing which she does at which she doesn't excel. Everyone is always saying Jabone you are just like your madra; I know they only mean this as a great compliment and when I was younger when they would say it I would glow with pride. Now . . . Well I don't want to hear that anymore. What they're really saying is that I will never be as great as my madra. I will be like her but I will never be her. I want to be my own man, to have stories told about me and my great deeds, but that will never happen as long as I'm with her because she shines brighter than the sun. "
Ufalla sighed. "That she does."
Jabone laughed at her crush and she shrugged and smiled knowing why he was laughing. "It's more wanting to be her than wanting her you know?"
Jabone nodded, understanding what she meant. Jestia and Tarius went running past them in some game of chase and Ufalla made a face. "My brother makes an ass of himself two or three times daily."
It was the first time Jabone had seen it, or at least if he had seen it before he hadn't recognized it for what it was. Suddenly so many things made sense. "Oh," he said simply.
"What?" Ufalla asked nervously.
"Just oh," he said with a shrug and a smile.
Ufalla sighed and her shoulders slumped. "Is it that obvious?"
"Not at all or it wouldn't have taken me this long to see it," he said. "Have you told her how you feel?"
"Why would I? She's slept with half the men in the kingdom."
"That doesn't mean she would reject you, Ufalla. I mean look at you, anyone would have to be crazy not to want you."
"Oh she'd probably have sex with me just for the experience and then toss me aside like all the others and expect me to act as if nothing had happened and . . . Well I love her so that wouldn't really work for me. I'd become one of those people who chase after the person who doesn't like them and won't let go."
"Like Tragon," Jabone said, making a face.
"The man who betrayed your madra?" Ufalla didn't understand the reference.
"He did worse to my mother, to Jena." Jabone told her the story.
"See? No one should ever chase after someone who doesn't want them, it's just hateful and pathetic," Ufalla said as he finished. She was still watching Jestia where she was now standing talking to Tarius on the other side of the boat. "I'll just watch her from afar and hang onto my fantasies. Those usually turn out to be better than the real thing anyway."
Jabone looked at her with raised eyebrows then. "Voice of experience my sister?"
"Like you I've had my share of women. It's never been as good as I thought it was going to be."
Jabone nodded. "I think it's better if you really love the person, if they love you."
"But you can't make people love you," Ufalla said with a sad sigh.
"No, but you can let that love change into something like a really good friendship." He looked at her then. "Ufalla do you ever worry that . . . oh never mind."
"What?"
Jabone took in a deep breath and let it out. "Do you ever worry that you'll never find someone that you love who will love you back?"
Ufalla sighed and smiled a sad smile. "Only every time I look at Jestia."
* * *
"I don't see why we can't just go off on our own. We don't need a bunch of stuck up Jethrikian bastards telling us what to do, and we sure don't need them to tell us how to fight," Tarius said.
"You do remember that you're half stuck up Jethrikian bastard don't you?" Jestia asked with a smile.
Tarius made a face. "I was born to the Pack of the Marching Night in the Valley of the Katabull. The Great Leader's own breath flows through my body . . . "
"Yeah, yeah," Jestia said with a sweep of her hand. "Half your blood is still Jethrikian. You're blond headed for the god's own sake."
"So what?"
"So maybe these people will be perfectly nice and maybe we will enjoy their company, and maybe, just maybe, we need a little help before we go off on our great adventure," Jestia said.
"Oh so . . . Now that adventure looms have you gotten as careful as your brother?"
"I wouldn't be on this ship if I was as careful as Katan. Hell I wouldn't even step out of the castle. But I have thought long and hard on all that Tarius the Black told us and I think it's high time that maybe I do learn at least a little caution. The Great Leader's breath running through your body won't protect you from swords and arrows either."
Tarius nodded thoughtfully. "You make a good point."
"Do you really think so, or would you just say just about anything to get me into your bed?"
Tarius looked only some taken aback. After all having the Great Leader's breath running through his body had gotten him a lot of action among the packs. He was known as a ladies' man. "Can't it be both?"
Jestia laughed in that way that girls do when they have no intension of sleeping with you and then she walked away. He followed her not so easily put off.
"So what about it?" he asked her.
"I'd like to ask what, like I didn't know what you're asking, but I do, and no. I'm not going to sleep with you."
"Why not?" Tarius asked angrily. "You've slept with half the kingdom."
"First off if I really had I wouldn't be able to walk," Jestia said angrily, "and second off . . . It's a wonder anyone sleeps with you considering you're such a little pig!" She stomped off towards bellow decks and this time he knew better than to follow.
"What did you do pig?" Ufalla asked at his shoulder a few seconds later.
"Nothing, and I'm getting a little tired of women calling me that!" Tarius screamed after Ufalla, who was obviously going after Jestia.
Jabone looked at Tarius and smiled.
"What?" Tarius demanded.
"So, did you say something really stupid?"
Tarius laughed and slapped Jabone on the back. "Yes, yes I did, incredibly stupid and insensitive and more or less a guarantee that I'm never going to get a piece of the royal ass."
"Do you think that would be such a good idea anyway? If we're going to work together I mean," Jabone said, thinking that considering how Ufalla felt that if Tarius ever actually slept with Jestia there would never be peace between these already feuding siblings.
"I suppose you're right."
Jabone looked out over the endless waves and wondered again if they were as ready for this adventure as they had all thought they were.
He wondered if his mother was still crying.
* * *
A young man in the uniform of a Sword Master of the Jethrik met them at the docks. They recognized the uniform though they'd never seen one before because they'd heard it described dozens of times in stories. He wore the plain blue puffy pants, black stirrup boots, and the plain long sleeved white tunic with an air of importance. Obviously a man used to being respected.
"So I'm guessing it's you four then," he said with a brilliant smile as he walked up to the four youths eagerly awaiting him on the dock. Jabone nodded yes. "Do you speak Jethrik?"
"Yes, all four," Jabone answered. He clapped his hands, and when one of the sailors looked at him he said in Kartik, "Please unload our horses and gear we must depart."
"Yes my prince," he replied in Kartik.
Jabone made a face. He never thought of himself as a prince. The Katabull picked a leader. Even when the end of his madra's days came he would not automatically take her throne. Still the Katabull thought of him as their prince.
"I am Master Richard," the man said.
Jabone didn't hear because he was to busy sniffing the air. He looked around him at the sea of blond-headed people and the hair on the back of his neck rose. Amalites. Madre is right; they do have a different smell about them. A bad one. He made a face and watched as the horses were brought out of the hold. He wasn't used to giving orders, but there was a reason he hadn't offered to help with this. He had never before done it and his madra had told him it was risky business. Bringing horses up from the dark hold into the light and getting them down the gangplank without losing them in the sea took knowledge and a certain finesse. Much training, training he didn't yet have, but decided to get as he watched the horses successfully unloaded.
"I am Jestia," Jestia introduced when it became obvious that Jabone was too preoccupied to do it. "Jabone, Ufalla and Tarius."
Jabone just nodded, not really breathing until the horses were safely on the docks and his horse's reins were in his hand. He was very attached to his mount. The horses had already been saddled and their gear packed onto them. Jabone patted the horse's nose.
"You look like one of us," Richard said, to Tarius which was of course the wrong thing to say to Tarius.
"My father was of your people, but I am Kartik through and through. The very breath of the Great . . . " Ufalla slapped a hand over his mouth as Jabone gave him a heated look.
"You will have to excuse my older brother, Master Richard. He is a small man who takes offense at most everything including our father's blood. I look forward to meeting a great deal more of my father's people," Ufalla said.
"As do I," Jabone said, and reminded Tarius as he told Richard, "my father is also of your country."
Jestia sighed. "While I am the only pure blood among the breeds."
"Shall we go then? It's a long ride and I hope to get there before supper," Richard said.
They were all tired of sea rations and they didn't have to be told again before they had all mounted up and were following Master Richard out of town.
Jabone found the countryside much as his parents had described, it pretty but mostly drab compared to the Kartik. A strange sense of homesickness filled him as he realized he was no longer in his country.
"What are you thinking now?" Ufalla asked him in Kartik.
"How different it must have been for my madra to come here alone and bent on revenge. There was no one to greet her at the docks, no one to lead her to the academy. She was a foreigner alone in a strange world where detection would mean that she'd never get to fight in the war she'd come to fight," Jabone said also in Kartik.
"It's no secret that your madra is very brave," Ufalla answered.
"It's no secret that his madra had already lived more life by then than most people live in a life time," Jestia said, riding up beside Ufalla and looking around her at Jabone. "What's your point Jabone?"
Jabone was more than a little miffed with her. He had been talking to his friend not her. "I don't have to have a point Jestia," he snapped. "I was just talking."
"Oh that's right, you aren't your madra. Your stories don't actually ever go anywhere," Jestia teased.
"I guess it's true what they say about witches," Jabone sneered back.
"What would that be?" Jestia asked.
Jabone was silent, having trouble coming up with a follow up.
"That they're all a bunch of whoring bitches," Ufalla supplied. "No wait, it wasn't all witches that was just you," Jabone and Ufalla laughed.
"Ha, ha," Jestia said, and rode up ahead to where Tarius was talking to Richard. Ufalla and Jabone looked at each other, smiled, and talked of less serious matters.
* * *
The villages stank, and they were filthy. The streets were filled with horse shit and the gutters were filled with human waste. That must be where they dump their pots waiting for a rain to come and clean them out—and send it where? Jabone didn't want to think about that. Most houses in Kartik villages were made of stone or brick. The Katabulls built their huts using a pole construction with woven sticks covered with clay for the walls. Most of these Jethrik buildings were wood and the construction had a cobbled-together look you would have never seen in the Kartik.
"What a wretched, horrid place," Jestia said, and for once Jabone agreed with her. His mother had been right. The Jethrik apparently had no rules about keeping the streets clean or keeping their waterways clear of filth. She had told him that they didn't know as much about disease as the Kartiks did, and that was obvious because they threw their filth in their streets which brought bugs and made sure they tracked filth into their homes and businesses on the bottom of their feet. If one was sick, soon all would be.
As they rode through the small village of Pearson they could see the garrison ahead of them. It rose out of the forest some sixty-five feet tall, a huge rock wall surrounding five acres of ground, with four watch towers and four ballistas. It took four men to open the front gates and five to close them back again. He sighed with relief when they had entered. The garrison was clean. He remembered now that his madra told a story about a Code of Cleanliness the Sword Masters lived by, and he was glad for it.
Once inside, Richard led them to the stables where they groomed feed and watered their weary horses. It wasn't exactly fair to make a horse take a long boat ride and then gallop them for most of an afternoon. Jabone apologized to his horse with a good brushing and an extra measure of grain.
The evening meal was still an hour away, so they gathered their practice swords and met on the open ground near the front gates and far away from everyone else. Everything was new and strange and they just needed to have some normalcy. For them normal meant sword practice.
Well for three of them anyway.
"Come on, I'm tired and hungry and there's no one here to make us do it," Jestia whined, but picked up her sword and started to fight with Ufalla anyway.
Tarius walked up to Jabone's elbow and whispered, "The foreigners are watching us." Jabone looked around to see if Tarius was right and seeing people look away knew that he was.
"You forget we are the foreigners here. Perhaps they aren't used to seeing women fight even now. Or perhaps they aren't used to beautiful Kartik women fighting. More than likely they aren't used to seeing Kartiks period. I haven't seen a dark head since we left the ship. What ever the case let them watch and then maybe they'll know to leave us be," Jabone said. Tarius nodded and then they, too, started to fight.