Son of Soron (5 page)

When Soron went to check on him, Nathan was lying on his bed but not asleep. Even in the low light of the bedroom, Soron could see Nathan’s bruised and bloodied face. Ah, his first real fight. Is it just his pride that is wounded or is he injured? Soron thought to himself as he went over and sat on the corner of his son’s bed.  “Want to talk about it?”

Nathan had long ago stopped trying to figure out how his parents always seemed to know when something was wrong, especially his mother. When he could not avoid talking, Nathan had found the best way to deal with his parents was to just be honest.

“I got into a fight with Tomas today. I don’t even know how it happened; one minute we were playing bartoh, the next he is sitting on top of me punching my face in, telling me to stop spending time with Ava.”

“Ah, Tomas is a little jealous of you and Ava, is he? Well, can’t blame the boy for that,” said Soron with a little smile.

Nathan gave his father an incredulous look. “Father, do you not see my face? How can I not blame him for that?”

“I didn’t say he might not deserve blame for his role in the fight, I meant his jealous is natural. Ava is an interesting girl; why wouldn’t he be interested in her? Tell me, son, what bothers you more: that you were beaten or that he wants you to stop seeing Ava?”

Nathan pondered this one for a minute. He was a bit embarrassed and his face hurt like heck, but he had no intention of leaving Ava alone to allow the buffoon to court her. “I’m not sure, father… it’s a little bit of both.” 

“Okay, son, one thing at a time. Are you going to avoid Ava so that Tomas stops rearranging your face?”

Nathan grimaced at his father’s blunt question but did not hesitate to reply, “He can try rearranging my face every day. I’m not avoiding Ava because of that jerk. “

Soron grinned. His son may have lost the fight but he certainly was not a coward. “Now, I can’t help you with the girl, but I can certainly help you prevent having your face look like that every day. Tomorrow, we will start changing up your training. Hold on for a minute, I will be right back.”

Soron slipped out of his son’s room, returning a couple minutes later with a small package of salve.

“Here. Put this on your face so the swelling goes down before your mother sees it. If she saw you tonight we would be burying poor Tomas tomorrow.”

Nathan couldn’t help but laugh, his mother probably would have over reacted. But he wasn’t so sure about the way his father’s choice of words. “Poor Tomas? Why poor? I didn’t even land a punch.”

Soron gave a hearty laugh. “Trust me son, if I know anything about woman, Tomas is going regret his actions today. Ava is not the kind of girl I’d want to get on the bad side of.”

Nathan thought about it. Maybe his dad was right. Ava had a ferocious temper at times. This made Nathan smile just a little bit. It probably was ‘poor Tomas’ after all. As Soron got up and went to let leave the room, Nathan called out “thanks Father.”

Standing at the door for a second to look back at his son, Soron thought about how fast his son had grown. “Get some sleep; you are going to need it.”

The next morning Soron woke Nathan up early and took him for a walk. Velaina had not yet woken and Nathan was grateful for this. Having told his father about the fight was one thing; his mother was an entirely different story. While the swelling of his face had gone down considerably, it was still puffy and bruised. He was happy to avoid seeing anyone right now.

Soron had Nathan take him to the spot in the forest where he had fought Tomas. Nathan showed him the tree where the scarf had been, and the cedar he had been hiding behind. Next Nathan described how Tomas had run into him, the brief conversation and the rest of the fight.

“Tell me why you lost the fight?” Soron asked.

Besides getting the wind knocked out of me, sucker-punched and pinned to the ground? Nathan thought to himself before replying. “The fact that he is older and bigger probably had a lot to do with it.”

“Yes and no, son. Yes, the element of surprise was a factor. Tomas running you over was an effective attack but that wasn’t the end of the fight. The fact that he caught you off guard with a punch was a failure to judge your enemy. Tomas being older means little. While he is certainly heavier that you, I rather doubt he is any stronger. He got you in a position where his extra weight neutralized your strength.” Soron paused for a second to let this information sink in before continuing the lecture. “Surprise attacks are just that, a surprise. So there was nothing you could do about that. After that point, how you react will dictate the outcome of combat. Fighting with your hands is no different than fighting with weapons. You need to know your opponent and fight to your strengths and not his. Since you are not going to stop talking to Ava, it is very likely that Tomas will try again. Most of the damage he inflicted was after he pinned you to the ground. Let me show you how to counter that.”

For the next couple of hours Soron, taught Nathan the basics of wrestling and striking. By lunchtime, Nathan was exhausted so they stopped for the day and headed back home. As they walked back, Nathan asked his father where he learned to fight.

“The north can be a dangerous place; all young men are trained to defend themselves. I had good trainers,” said Soron.

Nathan knew from previous attempts to get his father to talk about his past that this was all the he would say on the subject.

When they got home, Velaina had a pot of hot soup waiting for them. As Nathan came to the table, she came over and inspected Nathan’s face. “After lunch, put some more salve on, and then again before you go to sleep. Now eat your lunch.”

Nathan was surprised and relieved. He had expected a much different reaction. His father must have talked to her about the one-sided fight last night. Nathan looked over at his father who gave him a quick wink before focusing on his lunch.

“Ava came by while you two were out. She said for you to meet her by the pond this afternoon.”

Ava would often come by after her daily chores were done so that was nothing out of the ordinary, but he suspected that Ava had heard about Tomas. She probably wanted to hear from him what happened.  Nathan finished up his soup, thanked his mom for the meal and messenger service. He put some more salve on the bruises and headed out to the pond. Half way to the pond it occurred to Nathan that his mom had made soup so it would be easier for him to eat.  He made a mental note to thank her later. He appreciated not being coddled. Perhaps his mother realized he was not her little boy anymore. She had made more than one joke about how fast he had been outgrowing his britches. Now to meet the second most important female in his life and hope it went as well as it had with his mother.
 

Chapter seven

AVA WAS NOT THERE when Nathan got to the pond, so he laid down on one of the big flat rocks that surrounded the pool and basked in the sun. Between his face being sore from fighting Tomas and his body hurting from training with his dad, Nathan felt happy to take a short nap and relax his aching body. He yawned. He reminded himself to chew some henta leaf to relieve the pain before going to sleep in the evening.

When Nathan awoke from his nap he was no longer getting the full light of the sun, something blocked the rays of warming heat and light. Opening his eyes, he found Ava standing above him studying his face. “That looks like it hurt,” she said matter of factly.

“You think my face looks bad? You should see his hand. Now that fist took a beating, let me tell you,” Nathan quipped. “Now do you want to get out of my sun please? I was enjoying my nap.”

Despite Nathan’s attempts at humor, Ava did not smile or laugh. She sat down. She lay down beside Nathan so they both got the pleasure of the warm afternoon sun touching them.

“So are you going to tell me what happened?” asked Ava. “Sharon told me she found Tomas on top of you punching you, and then you disappeared." She did not look at Nathan. She just closed her eyes and waited. The sun warmed the dusting of freckles across her cheeks.

Nathan gave Ava the full story from getting knocked to the ground to being pinned and then Tomas’s threat about Ava.

“Fie! Tomas is disgusting,” said Ava when Nathan finished his account of what had happened.  She continued, “He is a pig. He was with Sharon before and she liked him but he kept trying to touch her and kiss her. Finally, she told him to get gone. Now he is trying to get all friendly with me. The fact he thinks beating up you will help his cause is so stupid. I am going to kick his creepy arse for this." Ava’s anger was apparent from the way her volume rose with each statement.

Nathan didn’t need Ava getting involved in this. “Please don’t attack Tomas. Let me deal with him," Nathan begged her. It was bad enough he had lost the fight, having Ava try to make it right by attacking Tomas would be humiliating.

Ava turned so she faced Nathan as they sat on the warm rock. “Well, I don’t want this happening again,” she said, reaching out and gently touched his face. She grimaced as she turned his face to inspect it further, tisking then adding, “You are ugly enough without getting your face smashed up.”

Nathan produced a small grin. Her gentle caress felt nice. “What are you talking about? I was already too beautiful; these war wounds make me look more manly and rugged. All the ladies are going to love me now. I should be thanking Tomas.”

Ava’s gentle caress of his bruised face was quickly replaced with a swift punch to the arm. ”Watch it, mister, or Tomas won’t be the only one making your face manly and rugged.”

Nathan felt relief. This had gone better than he had envisioned it, and having Ava caress his face felt good. Maybe things weren’t so bad, he mused to himself. For the rest of the afternoon, they just sat there enjoying the sun. Occasionally the silence would be broken by a short argument about what each unique cloud looked like, but by their standards, this wasn’t an argument. It was merely an ongoing dialog to interrupt the comfortable silence.

Chapter eight

RAUL VENTEGO’S FEET hurt! His high quality Morthon leather boots were excellent for riding but left a lot to be desired when it came to walking. From now on, he would travel with a second pair of shoes just in case, he thought to himself as he walked down the road.

Half a day’s ride north of the village of Birchone, his horse had come up lame, and so he walked. For two days now, he walked to keep the horse from suffering further injury. He looked forward to reaching the village of Elderwood, where he could get the horse looked at by the blacksmith and spend a night at the local inn. If he remembered correctly, they served darn good pie there.

Raul was one his way to Progoh, the largest of the nine cities that comprised the kingdom of Tarnstead. Raul along with his brother Paulo ran a large trading company in Venecia. Once every couple of years one of the brothers would make the journey up from the coastal city through the eastern plains and into Progoh. Searching for new vendors and goods to send back in return for the goods they sold.

This trip, however, he was also acting in an official capacity as an emissary of the Venecian council. Bandits were starting to cause serious losses for many of the wealthy families that ran Venecia; losing money was not a popular pastime in Venecia. Raul was carrying a letter to the king of Broguth, demanding action as much of the bandit activity was situated just outside the lands surrounding the kingdom of Broguth—the very roads he walked on now, Raul mused to himself. He regretted the impatient decision that had led him to leave the safety of his company’s well-guarded caravan. The blasted group just traveled too slowly. Now, with a lame horse, he was in a precarious position. With luck, he would reach Elderwood soon. Tired of the walking he decided that when he reached Elderwood he would wait there for the caravan. That would give his horse a day or two to rest and he would enjoy some of that town’s famous pie.

      …

Edmar, a short, shifty-eyed bandit scout, quietly yet swiftly moved up to the large oak beside the road where the bandit leader Ungar waited. For three days now, Edmar had been scouting the road from Birchone to Elderwood and had found several interesting targets. The one with the most potential was coming up the road now.

”He is coming around the bend now, and will be walking up the path in a minute,” the scout reported. Ungar was, even by bandit standards, a vicious man and the scout did not want to cross him, so he quickly finished his report. “He is well dressed, southern style. He has a high-quality saddle on a good-looking horse with two saddlebags. His horse has a sore front right hoof and, for at least the last day and a half, the southerner has been walking to save the horse.”

Ungar nodded, quietly absorbing the quality scouting report. All of Ungar’s men were good woodsman and fighters, many having deserted or served time in the king’s army. The gent would be tired, an easy kill. The horse would be valuable if its front hoof had no permanent damage. If the hoof was bad, no matter, the rest of the horse would fill their bellies nicely.

“I want that horse and it’s about time I had a decent saddle. Kill him. Don’t give him any chance to escape.” The bandit scout was used to this type of order. Often, if the intended victim argued about being robbed, he ended up dead. Apparently, this poor sod was not even going to get the chance to argue, the scout thought to himself.

A minute later, as Raul walked up the road into the clearing before the oak tree, he caught a slight movement to the side of the tree. Before his brain could recognize the danger, the arrow was in his heart. Quickly the bandits descended onto his lifeless body, looting his possessions and grabbing the reins of the horse.

Ungar slowly walked up and stared down on the recently deceased stranger, feeling no remorse or pity. “What did he have?” he grunted to the bandits looting the body.

“A couple gold coins and a letter for the king. It seems our friend here was an emissary from Venecia,” came the reply from one of the men.