Tharalek's Rose
It didn't take long for me to get lost. Being absent-minded and all. No matter how long it took, I was lost now. Me, Horace Hunter, a senior at a school called, The Great School. I had always laughed that the people that had named the school were really imaginative, to come up with a name like that!
The Great School was the only school in the whole kingdom. It was a gigantic building that housed hundreds of thousands of kids all year and taught them everything that they needed to know about the craft that they wanted to be, unless it was a military craft, then you went to the military school.
I was training to be a woodworker with my sister, and truly it was her that kept me at The School at all. If it weren't for her I would be a homeless idiot, kicked out of the school for his absent-mindedness.
None of that mattered now, though. I had been on a trip to see the borders of the kingdom, and to be taught about the dangers of leaving the borders. The guild-master had just been talking about savage clans of people that lived in these great woods. I couldn't imagine anyone living in these woods. They looked sinister and evil as they loomed in front of me and blocked the sun's rays. It was the only place for me to go however so I marched determinedly into the forests depths. It wasn't that bad, actually. The trees were about two feet apart and their branches didn't star to sprout until they were about an arm's length above my head. The leaves made complicated patterns on the ground and the birds chirped happily in the trees. The thin underbrush didn't seem to be anything poisonous to touch so I moved forward.
Suddenly I noticed that the birds had stopped singing, and that there was a strange cackling sound resounding through the trees. I spun around and stood face to face with a monstrous animal. It was black all over and it was covered with rippling fur. Its eyes glinted bright yellow and its mouth drooled hungrily. I screamed and began to run. It pounded after me and crashed through the thin ferns and underbrush. It claws ripped through the back of my thin shirt and tore painful lines down my back. I waited for the inevitable feeling of teeth crunching down on my thin body as I fell, but it didn't come. Instead I heard the animal scream in pain and fall over on its side with a wicked looking spear sticking out of its side.
"You shouldn't be here, soft-skin!" a frighteningly raspy voice said in my ear.
"I-I'm sorry, I'm a-afraid I've gotten lost," I managed between chattering teeth. I opened my eyes and saw my rescuer. He snorted and crouched next to me.
"Let me see your back, fool!
I reluctantly showed him my back, causing searing pain to slice down the tender cuts.
"Damn!" the man cursed.
I felt his strong arms under my body and another wave of excruciating pain covered my consciousness and everything went black.
When I awoke there was a slightly painful prickling in my back. When I moved my arm to scratch it, however, a strong grip clasped on my arm and held it sill.
"Don't move, boy," a female voice said form behind me, "I am not finished with my work."
"Who are you?" I asked, hoping that I had been found by my group and taken to an infirmary.
"My name is Healer Carmes," Was the reply, and my hopes plummeted. I had never heard of such a name among the healers in The Kingdom.
"You are lucky that Raspy found you when he did, otherwise you would be merwith chow."
"What is a merwith?"
"The thing that attacked you in the forest. Many a warrior has fallen to their deadly poison."
"Poison?" I asked, alarmed.
"I had to treat you before trying to seal the scratches, because the poison stops the ability to heal and causes great pain."
"How long have I been out?"
"Five days, soft-skin, you have a surprising constitution."
"What do you mean?" I asked, bewildered by the compliment and the insult in the same sentence.
"Most people die immediately after being struck by a merwith, let alone survive the poisons influence for five days, albeit under my extraordinary medical skills."
I could detect the pride in her voice stayed silent for a moment.
"How did I survive?"
"Well, Raspy said that you began to run and that the merwith caught up to you and clawed you hard on the back, and he raced out of hiding and killed it before it could finish you, a pity it would have been better if you had died, but he instead picked you up and carried you here and we had to take care of you, or risk breaking the sacred Code of Care."
"What is...?"
"Oh, shut up!"
"Sorr..."
"Shut up!" she said it louder this time and I held my tongue, even though I was bursting with questions.
"Finished. You can get up now, but be careful. If I did all this just to have you reopen the cuts and bleed to death I swear I don't know if I will ever forgive myself.
I slowly lifted myself of the mat that I had been laying on and was revolted to see that the entire mat was red with blood, my blood. I looked at the person who had revived me and noticed her fiery red hair that hung in a pony-tail behind her head. Her face was covered in freckles and she seemed to be scowling at him
"Finished staring? Follow me, and don't say a word." The healer ordered and walked out of the hut. I followed her slowly but I didn't want to overdo myself. Finally she stopped in front of a hollow tree. There was a flap of merwith skin hanging down over the door. This seemed to be the house of someone important.
"Wait right there."
"Right here?" I said jokingly, but she gave me a stern look and I shut my mouth.
The medic stepped into the tent-like overhang and there was a quick exchange that wasn't quite audible to my ears. When the voices stopped the overhang's flap was swished open and a woman stepped out into the clearing. Her brown hair hung loosely down to her waist and her green eyes flicked over him as if she was inspecting a slave at a market. Healer Carmes ran into another clearing that had several more leafy overhangs and began to rally more of the people her to the clearing that I was in. People began whispering and pointing as they filed in.
"What is your name, soft-skin?" she demanded. Her voice was calming and it made me answer immediately, even though I was still staring at her hair.
"Horace Hunter."
"Well, Hunter, You have shown great constitution while you were fighting the merwith's poison. However, your learning ability and strength are still in question," her voice as beautiful as her face, but it still had the hard edge of command that hinted that this was a woman of authority. By now there was a crowd of about twenty-five people gathered here. Some were women and some were men. They looked like they were of varying ages and they all seemed to be set on the fact that they didn't want me here.
"Now that the entire tribe has gathered we will come to a verdict on what we will do with you."
"Anything would be fine other than slavery or death," I stated.
The leader laughed, "Really? Anything?"
"Well I'm sure that given enough time I could figure out other things that I don't want to happen to me but...but..." I trailed off.
"Alright, enough of this, I was about to say that we give you a week to learn our ways, if you do not we must kill you."
These words caused an uproar among the crowd that had assembled. They yelled that they would never accept a soft-skin into their tribe, no matter how desperate their situation was. I noticed Raspy towards the edge of the crowd. He stayed silent and stared at me thoughtfully. The woman standing in the clearing swished her hair impatiently, and all the words and yells died down.
"Now if you will let me speak then I will explain. We need warriors in the fight against the War Tribe. Therefore I will train him myself, and if he doesn't learn he will die because of the brutal assessment at the end of the week."
"But Melonna," somebody in the crowd said, "are we that desperate for fighting men. In other words why must we choose a weakling such as this?"
The man speaking pushed his way to the front of the crowd and shoved me hard in the side. I stumbled and fell, as I slowly regained my feet, the man saw my back and his jaw dropped open.
"We are not warriors Windswipe, as you seem to forget, peace is our goal. He is not as weak as you think, Windswipe. He can help us learn the ways of war, so that we may defend ourselves."
I looked around and saw Healer Carmes running towards me, "Turn around," she ordered.
I turned and showed her my back.
"You're lucky that you didn't reopen these."
Windswipe took control of the conversation, "Yes, but we already know how to fight, we just need men to perform the duties of war!"
The soft-skin may know how to make weapons that are superior to our staffs, and he may know something about tactics that we don't. Alright, everyone, what shall we name the soft-skin?"
"Why name him?" Windswipe spat.
"Because I said so," Melonna snapped fiercely.
"His apprentice name shall be Lighthand, because of his light skin and bright hair," Raspy said from the back of the crowd, strangely I didn't detect even a slight crack in his voice as he spoke.
"Fine, Lighthand it shall be, therefore this gathering is dismissed. Lighthand, you shall share a hut with Raspy.
With those words everyone trudged off, leaving just me and Raspy standing in the clearing.
"Come on, I'll show you the hut," he said and gestured me to follow him.
