Part 5
I woke up sputtering, for someone had poured a bucket of ice-cold water over my head. "Wake up assassin." I heard some creature hiss. I opened my eyes to see a buzz standing over me holding an empty bucket. I started to stand up to teach the buzz a lesson for soaking me, but I tripped back down to the ground.
I looked down at my feet, and then at my hands, "Shackles?" I murmured under my breath as I rolled over into a sitting position, but even so the buzz heard me, and went up in an uproar.
"Stupid assassin. While you slept, we captured your pet, and that traitor Wintroq. According to the high council of this castle you and your companions are to be executed tomorrow morn." Then the buzz kicked me in the ribs, "Now get up assassin, I am supposed to bring you to the cell that holds your friends."
"At least I am not going to be separated from Wintroq and Dorono." I thought to myself as I slowly stood up. I had to take exceedingly small steeps in order to not trip over my shackles. I was going as fast as I could, but to the buzz it was not fast enough. "Get a move on assassin! I don't have all day!" and the buzz shoved me making me fall face first into the dirt. The buzz laughed at me, and then he grabbed the chain that held my hands together, and started to drag me through the dirt.
If only I was not in shackles, and had my dagger, I would have destroyed the buzz, but I did not have my dagger, and I was stuck in the shackles. I guess that is why the buzz was not afraid to drag me through the dirt. Even so the dirt war rough against my fur, so as to get back at the buzz I gave a mighty tug, sending him sprawling into the dirt pushing up a cloud of dust. I laughed at the buzz, having given him a taste of his own medicine. "That is what happens when you drag an assassin through the dust."
"You shall pay for that!" the buzz said clenching his fists, and talking between gritted teeth. He walked up to me and started to violently kick me, but I did not care what he did to me, for I was to be executed the next day. Then after he had finished his kicking fit, the buzz dragged me the rest of the way to my cell with Dorono and Wintroq looking worse then I had before with a few scrapes from the buzz's boots, and dirty matted up fur.
"Zarrel Charmain!" Dorono ran up to me, and embraced me in his paws, and I had to push away in order not to be smothered. "When I saw you crumpled up on the ground after the shield had hit you, I thought that they had."
"It is alright Dorono." I said rubbing his ears. "We all survived. Even though we are to be executed tomorrow." I added. Dorono really looked none the worse for his encounter.
Right then Wintroq limped over. I guess that he had fought hard, for all the marks that he wore. His tail had a big slash across it that looked as if it had just healed, and his eye was purplish in color. "Glad to see you Zarrel Charmain." He said patting my back. "We took down somewhere around fifteen guards before they could take us captive." Then his smile disappeared, "Only too bad that that was our last fight."
"Yes." I added, "We really made a team."
That just about ended our talk for the day. After that, we mostly just sat around in the dimness of our cell waiting for the night that would be our last. I just wished that Dorono could have escaped all of this. He was to young to have his life ended upon the morn. I decided right there that if at all possible, I would help Dorono to freedom. It was the least I owed him. I sat pondering any means of escape, until I thought myself to sleep.
* * * Kirin led me into the dark forest, and I couldn't help, but wonder how he made his way through the night with nothing to guide him. With Tarnox perched on my shoulder, Kirin led us up to a huge howled out tree. "This is where we will spend the night Zarrel Charmain." The assassin said. "Tomorrow I will teach you how to defend yourself." And then we went to sleep. Two zafaras and one airax.
I woke up to Kirin shaking my shoulders. "Come on." I moaned, for the sun had not yet risen, "Let me sleep in." but Kirin would not stop.
"Get up Zarrel Charmain. If you want to have protection against that krawk, and other creatures that your father sends after you, you better learn how. Next time I probably won't arrive in time to save your tail."
"Okay." And with a big yawn I got up.
"Now, lets see how good you are with a weapon." And Kirin handed me his dagger. I grabbed it by the handle, unsure how, for it was the first time I had ever handled a weapon. "No, no. You're holding it all wrong." Kirin scolded, and he put his hands over mine, and fixed my grip. "There, that's better. Now," he said, "Give it a good swing. No, not at the tree, at me." I swung the dagger at Kirin, and it went flying out of my hands scarcely missing Kirin, and then fixing itself in a tree.
"Sorry." I said rushing over to Kirin to help him up, for he had to dive to the ground in order to avoid being impaled.
"This will defiantly take a lot of work." He said, and then we went back to how to hold the dagger.
We had been working for quite a few hours, and I was getting hungry. "I'm hungry." I complained, "Can't we take a break?"
"Take a break, and I will not teach you. I refuse to teach quitters." And with that I continued my training with Kirin.
As the day drew to a close, I had sharpened up my fighting skills severely. Kirin had me work all day on my fighting skills with Tarnox watching in a tree, until I made him jump back with each strike. Finally, I struck him in the shoulder drawing blood. "I'm sorry Kirin." I said running up to his side, for he had fallen to the ground. "I can see if you do not want to train me anymore." But I got a totally unexpected reply from Kirin.
He rolled over out of the dirt with tears streaming down his face, but not tears of sadness, but he was laughing so hard, that he had started to cry. "Stop training you Zarrel Charmain." And he sank into a fit of laughter once more. "You are the first creature to draw blood from me in over three years, and you are just a child. You are a natural assassin, and the best swordsman. err, woman, that I have seen in years. Now why would I quit training you?"
I smiled up at Kirin, "You really mean it?"
"I do. But tomorrow we have to get you some new clothes, for it is hard to fight in a dress." And with that we continued my training, until it was time to call it a night.
* * *
I was the first to wake up the next morning, and I woke up the others when breakfast had arrived. We stared down in silence at our food, until Dorono broke the silence. "You might have well just left us alone to sleep, because this food is not worth waking up to." And he lifted up the wooden spoon supplied him, and dripped the chunky gruel back into his bowl.
"I have to agree with you there Dorono." I said eyeing the chunks of. stuff in the food.
"I don't know about you two," Wintroq started, "But I am going to try and make the best of my last meal." And with that he took up a spoonful of the stuff and shoveled it into his mouth. I looked at him as his face turned green, and he spit the stuff back into the bowl. He gagged, and started wiping off his tongue over the bowl while Dorono and I suffered a guffaw in his direction.
"I'll stick with eating the fur off my back, thank you. It would sure taste better." Dorono snorted, but before Wintroq could think of a witty remark to through back at Dorono, the door crashed open.
I stared in utter dismay, as a krawk with a scar going from his slightly yellowed from disuse left eye to the tip of his snout. He was the krawk from my dreams, but not the worst of my problems. Then following from behind the krawk an exceedingly large brown zafara followed who somehow looked familiar.
Wintroq looked up from his job of cleansing his tongue, and the moment that he saw the zafara he bounded up. "You told me that mother had destroyed Zarrel Charmain. You said that she had been destroyed those many years ago, and that's not the worst part. The worst part is that I believed you. Mother tried to tell me from the cell that you had locked her up in. I just spat at her and told her to not lie to superior creatures." A tear slid down Wintroq's cheek, "Forgive me mother." He said up at the ceiling. Then his anger went back onto the brown zafara that I had realized with a shock was my father. "You deserve to be boiled in a cauldron of whatever that is that you feed us filled with grakle beetles, and." but before he could say anything else, the krawk wit him with the back of his hand sending Wintroq to the ground.
"Be quiet stupid zafarrra Wintrrroq. Otherrrwise you will get worrrse." Then with a signal from my father the Krawk was silent.
My father strutted up to me, and starred at me with both fury and awe at the same time. "Zarrel Charmain. How many times I have tried to get rid of you. I thought that you really had perished so many years ago, and I made up that story that your mother had destroyed you in order to get your brother to join me. I then looked up your mother in the dungeons until she perished from disease. I never expected to see your horrid face again, but here you are after all those years. I know that you are supposed to be executed today, but I have a proposition for you. Word of your skill with the sword, and of your wit has reached me, and I have decided that I will forget past grudges against you if you will come and work for me. Just ditch your weak brother, and that Hairball of an eyrie, and I will appoint you captain of my troops. You will have immense power Zarrel Charmain. The only ones above your head will be me and Xern here, and you never know if you will pass us up. What do you say to that?" and my father held out his paw for me to take. I stood up, and walked towards my father to the horror of Dorono and Wintroq. With an evil smirk on my face, I reached out my hand as if to take my fathers. I looked at the grin on his face, for he thought he had won, but instead of taking his hand I did a backhand strike right into his face making him jump back holding hid face.
"I will never leave my friends for anything." I said motioning to Dorono and Wintroq who looked pleased with me.
My father stood up tall again, a long red mark going across his face, "So be it." He said. "Xern! Get your men to take the prisoners out to the arena, now!!!"
"Yes masterrr." Xern said, as he ran out the door to gather up his men who quickly walked in. "Take the prrrisonerrrs to the arrrena." And with that we each had about three guards come to each one of us. They took off our shackles, but then tied a fine, but strong rope over our hands, and then they started to lead us through the castle.
"What do they mean by arena?" I asked Wintroq, for I had expected a creature in a black hood with an ax, not an open arena.
"Well to tell the truth, you really do not want to know."
"Tell me!"
"Okay, what they mean is," but before he could say any more, the techo that was holding him slapped him.
"Be quiet zafara. The assassin will find out soon enough." And the techo ended that with a snicker.
"We are here." One of the guards said, as we walked up to a large metal door. I had thought that we would have been the only ones to be executed, but we were not. There standing right in front of the doors being held by two other guards was a blue shoyru with golden eyes. She was staring at the door with hard eyes ready to meet her demise. But the wait at the door was not very long, for then the guard said to me more than anyone else. "Prepare to meet your doom assassin." and he opened up the door, and I squinted my eyes against the bright sunlight. I looked around at my surroundings. All fore of us, including the shoyru, were in a large stadium. It was sort of like the battledome, only it had a large glass wall around the sides, and the ground was hot sand. I looked up in the air to see my father, and quite a few other pets watching through the glass as Dorono, Wintroq, the shoyru and I walked into the mists of the stadium. It was then that I noticed that the guards had gone.
"Where have the guards gone?" I asked no one in general, but before I could get an answer I heard a long menacing growl from behind us. We turned around facing yet another door, that shook, and then slowly started to open. I looked at the creature emerging from the door, and then started to wish that there really had just been a creature in a black hood with an ax.
I woke up sputtering, for someone had poured a bucket of ice-cold water over my head. "Wake up assassin." I heard some creature hiss. I opened my eyes to see a buzz standing over me holding an empty bucket. I started to stand up to teach the buzz a lesson for soaking me, but I tripped back down to the ground.
I looked down at my feet, and then at my hands, "Shackles?" I murmured under my breath as I rolled over into a sitting position, but even so the buzz heard me, and went up in an uproar.
"Stupid assassin. While you slept, we captured your pet, and that traitor Wintroq. According to the high council of this castle you and your companions are to be executed tomorrow morn." Then the buzz kicked me in the ribs, "Now get up assassin, I am supposed to bring you to the cell that holds your friends."
"At least I am not going to be separated from Wintroq and Dorono." I thought to myself as I slowly stood up. I had to take exceedingly small steeps in order to not trip over my shackles. I was going as fast as I could, but to the buzz it was not fast enough. "Get a move on assassin! I don't have all day!" and the buzz shoved me making me fall face first into the dirt. The buzz laughed at me, and then he grabbed the chain that held my hands together, and started to drag me through the dirt.
If only I was not in shackles, and had my dagger, I would have destroyed the buzz, but I did not have my dagger, and I was stuck in the shackles. I guess that is why the buzz was not afraid to drag me through the dirt. Even so the dirt war rough against my fur, so as to get back at the buzz I gave a mighty tug, sending him sprawling into the dirt pushing up a cloud of dust. I laughed at the buzz, having given him a taste of his own medicine. "That is what happens when you drag an assassin through the dust."
"You shall pay for that!" the buzz said clenching his fists, and talking between gritted teeth. He walked up to me and started to violently kick me, but I did not care what he did to me, for I was to be executed the next day. Then after he had finished his kicking fit, the buzz dragged me the rest of the way to my cell with Dorono and Wintroq looking worse then I had before with a few scrapes from the buzz's boots, and dirty matted up fur.
"Zarrel Charmain!" Dorono ran up to me, and embraced me in his paws, and I had to push away in order not to be smothered. "When I saw you crumpled up on the ground after the shield had hit you, I thought that they had."
"It is alright Dorono." I said rubbing his ears. "We all survived. Even though we are to be executed tomorrow." I added. Dorono really looked none the worse for his encounter.
Right then Wintroq limped over. I guess that he had fought hard, for all the marks that he wore. His tail had a big slash across it that looked as if it had just healed, and his eye was purplish in color. "Glad to see you Zarrel Charmain." He said patting my back. "We took down somewhere around fifteen guards before they could take us captive." Then his smile disappeared, "Only too bad that that was our last fight."
"Yes." I added, "We really made a team."
That just about ended our talk for the day. After that, we mostly just sat around in the dimness of our cell waiting for the night that would be our last. I just wished that Dorono could have escaped all of this. He was to young to have his life ended upon the morn. I decided right there that if at all possible, I would help Dorono to freedom. It was the least I owed him. I sat pondering any means of escape, until I thought myself to sleep.
* * * Kirin led me into the dark forest, and I couldn't help, but wonder how he made his way through the night with nothing to guide him. With Tarnox perched on my shoulder, Kirin led us up to a huge howled out tree. "This is where we will spend the night Zarrel Charmain." The assassin said. "Tomorrow I will teach you how to defend yourself." And then we went to sleep. Two zafaras and one airax.
I woke up to Kirin shaking my shoulders. "Come on." I moaned, for the sun had not yet risen, "Let me sleep in." but Kirin would not stop.
"Get up Zarrel Charmain. If you want to have protection against that krawk, and other creatures that your father sends after you, you better learn how. Next time I probably won't arrive in time to save your tail."
"Okay." And with a big yawn I got up.
"Now, lets see how good you are with a weapon." And Kirin handed me his dagger. I grabbed it by the handle, unsure how, for it was the first time I had ever handled a weapon. "No, no. You're holding it all wrong." Kirin scolded, and he put his hands over mine, and fixed my grip. "There, that's better. Now," he said, "Give it a good swing. No, not at the tree, at me." I swung the dagger at Kirin, and it went flying out of my hands scarcely missing Kirin, and then fixing itself in a tree.
"Sorry." I said rushing over to Kirin to help him up, for he had to dive to the ground in order to avoid being impaled.
"This will defiantly take a lot of work." He said, and then we went back to how to hold the dagger.
We had been working for quite a few hours, and I was getting hungry. "I'm hungry." I complained, "Can't we take a break?"
"Take a break, and I will not teach you. I refuse to teach quitters." And with that I continued my training with Kirin.
As the day drew to a close, I had sharpened up my fighting skills severely. Kirin had me work all day on my fighting skills with Tarnox watching in a tree, until I made him jump back with each strike. Finally, I struck him in the shoulder drawing blood. "I'm sorry Kirin." I said running up to his side, for he had fallen to the ground. "I can see if you do not want to train me anymore." But I got a totally unexpected reply from Kirin.
He rolled over out of the dirt with tears streaming down his face, but not tears of sadness, but he was laughing so hard, that he had started to cry. "Stop training you Zarrel Charmain." And he sank into a fit of laughter once more. "You are the first creature to draw blood from me in over three years, and you are just a child. You are a natural assassin, and the best swordsman. err, woman, that I have seen in years. Now why would I quit training you?"
I smiled up at Kirin, "You really mean it?"
"I do. But tomorrow we have to get you some new clothes, for it is hard to fight in a dress." And with that we continued my training, until it was time to call it a night.
* * *
I was the first to wake up the next morning, and I woke up the others when breakfast had arrived. We stared down in silence at our food, until Dorono broke the silence. "You might have well just left us alone to sleep, because this food is not worth waking up to." And he lifted up the wooden spoon supplied him, and dripped the chunky gruel back into his bowl.
"I have to agree with you there Dorono." I said eyeing the chunks of. stuff in the food.
"I don't know about you two," Wintroq started, "But I am going to try and make the best of my last meal." And with that he took up a spoonful of the stuff and shoveled it into his mouth. I looked at him as his face turned green, and he spit the stuff back into the bowl. He gagged, and started wiping off his tongue over the bowl while Dorono and I suffered a guffaw in his direction.
"I'll stick with eating the fur off my back, thank you. It would sure taste better." Dorono snorted, but before Wintroq could think of a witty remark to through back at Dorono, the door crashed open.
I stared in utter dismay, as a krawk with a scar going from his slightly yellowed from disuse left eye to the tip of his snout. He was the krawk from my dreams, but not the worst of my problems. Then following from behind the krawk an exceedingly large brown zafara followed who somehow looked familiar.
Wintroq looked up from his job of cleansing his tongue, and the moment that he saw the zafara he bounded up. "You told me that mother had destroyed Zarrel Charmain. You said that she had been destroyed those many years ago, and that's not the worst part. The worst part is that I believed you. Mother tried to tell me from the cell that you had locked her up in. I just spat at her and told her to not lie to superior creatures." A tear slid down Wintroq's cheek, "Forgive me mother." He said up at the ceiling. Then his anger went back onto the brown zafara that I had realized with a shock was my father. "You deserve to be boiled in a cauldron of whatever that is that you feed us filled with grakle beetles, and." but before he could say anything else, the krawk wit him with the back of his hand sending Wintroq to the ground.
"Be quiet stupid zafarrra Wintrrroq. Otherrrwise you will get worrrse." Then with a signal from my father the Krawk was silent.
My father strutted up to me, and starred at me with both fury and awe at the same time. "Zarrel Charmain. How many times I have tried to get rid of you. I thought that you really had perished so many years ago, and I made up that story that your mother had destroyed you in order to get your brother to join me. I then looked up your mother in the dungeons until she perished from disease. I never expected to see your horrid face again, but here you are after all those years. I know that you are supposed to be executed today, but I have a proposition for you. Word of your skill with the sword, and of your wit has reached me, and I have decided that I will forget past grudges against you if you will come and work for me. Just ditch your weak brother, and that Hairball of an eyrie, and I will appoint you captain of my troops. You will have immense power Zarrel Charmain. The only ones above your head will be me and Xern here, and you never know if you will pass us up. What do you say to that?" and my father held out his paw for me to take. I stood up, and walked towards my father to the horror of Dorono and Wintroq. With an evil smirk on my face, I reached out my hand as if to take my fathers. I looked at the grin on his face, for he thought he had won, but instead of taking his hand I did a backhand strike right into his face making him jump back holding hid face.
"I will never leave my friends for anything." I said motioning to Dorono and Wintroq who looked pleased with me.
My father stood up tall again, a long red mark going across his face, "So be it." He said. "Xern! Get your men to take the prisoners out to the arena, now!!!"
"Yes masterrr." Xern said, as he ran out the door to gather up his men who quickly walked in. "Take the prrrisonerrrs to the arrrena." And with that we each had about three guards come to each one of us. They took off our shackles, but then tied a fine, but strong rope over our hands, and then they started to lead us through the castle.
"What do they mean by arena?" I asked Wintroq, for I had expected a creature in a black hood with an ax, not an open arena.
"Well to tell the truth, you really do not want to know."
"Tell me!"
"Okay, what they mean is," but before he could say any more, the techo that was holding him slapped him.
"Be quiet zafara. The assassin will find out soon enough." And the techo ended that with a snicker.
"We are here." One of the guards said, as we walked up to a large metal door. I had thought that we would have been the only ones to be executed, but we were not. There standing right in front of the doors being held by two other guards was a blue shoyru with golden eyes. She was staring at the door with hard eyes ready to meet her demise. But the wait at the door was not very long, for then the guard said to me more than anyone else. "Prepare to meet your doom assassin." and he opened up the door, and I squinted my eyes against the bright sunlight. I looked around at my surroundings. All fore of us, including the shoyru, were in a large stadium. It was sort of like the battledome, only it had a large glass wall around the sides, and the ground was hot sand. I looked up in the air to see my father, and quite a few other pets watching through the glass as Dorono, Wintroq, the shoyru and I walked into the mists of the stadium. It was then that I noticed that the guards had gone.
"Where have the guards gone?" I asked no one in general, but before I could get an answer I heard a long menacing growl from behind us. We turned around facing yet another door, that shook, and then slowly started to open. I looked at the creature emerging from the door, and then started to wish that there really had just been a creature in a black hood with an ax.