Ioren walked out of the sicc hideout through the front door into a crowded dirt road. He stared absently at the ground as he passed three people crouched near the building. They may have been dead for all he knew; his mind was completely absorbed in the artifact he had found upstairs in the pack with rose embroidery.
A jet black ring.
There was no mistaking its appearance. It was exactly the same as the one his mother had given him before she disappeared three years ago. The same one she also wore as she left, on a mission with the Vanguard, somewhere far away into Danet. The same one that had embedded itself into his finger on his left hand and delivered him to the ancient deity Cantimorelius.
How did these siccs come upon something mythical like this? Where did my mother get them? Does anyone else know about these rings?
Too many questions and too few answers. The only one who likely had any answers for him lived all the way across the Barrier River, if Cantimorelius was to be trusted. He had to find his mother.
Ioren was so lost in thought crossing the road that he nearly collided with Linoor. She stood in front of him, hands on hips, a stern look crossing her face. Ioren had never noticed before, but her eyes sparkled a light blue in the morning sun. She was really quite beautiful.
"Care to explain yourself?" Were the first words out of her mouth.
"Sorry?" Ioren asked, confused.
"You recognized this was an ambush, yet alerted no one. Then you disappear without a word. If you had died to that lookout up there, I surmise many more of us would have turned out like Thorne," she said.
Ioren traced her gaze back behind him and turned around to see Thorne on the ground, seated in the shade of the sicc hideout near the door he had just left. A large bandage wrapped his abdomen, a stain of red barely seeping through on the right side. Violet knelt beside him, drinking from a canteen.
"I'm sorry he was hurt, that was not my intention," Ioren admitted plainly. He truly did hate to see others in Danet befall tragedy, especially at the hands of siccs. "But everyone had the same chance that I did to see the tripwire. Ignorance kills more often than Greys in Danet."
"And arrogance more still," Linoor lectured him with a grimace. Ioren met her glare steadily. She looked to be the same age as him, perhaps a year older. Danet was his homeland. She was in no place to lecture him over its machinations.
Ioren began to walk away when Linoor placed a hand on his shoulder.
"Stay and practice. I am teaching Ardenel and the younger ones swordplay. 'Friends can be found in a tavern; comrades are found on the practice grounds,' and all that," she said, slightly flushed. Ioren hated her habit of talking like an old book as if it gave her, a younger person, some sort of borrowed authority.
The three young nobles stood together behind her in the road, just ahead of Ardenel. The three seemed visibly shaken by the encounter. He wondered idly if it was their first time encountering death.
Then, for no reason in particular, he thought of Van. Younger than Ioren by two years and just as green as these nobles, Van had been Ioren's Finder partner after his mother disappeared. They had foraged nearly every village in central Danet, crossing them off on each new map they bought every time the Vanguard scouts released an updated copy. It was a grand time - until that day in the southern swamps, when Van died and Ioren had killed another Finder for the first time.
Maybe it was because he was feeling sentimental, or maybe he just needed a break from all the thinking these past two days; whatever the reason, Ioren agreed to spar with the young nobles.
Linoor paired herself with Ardenel, Elune with Dal, and Ioren with Ysmena. The noblewoman was perhaps a year or two younger than Ioren himself, but Danet had a way of aging Finders quickly and ruthlessly, to the point that she seemed half his age. She wore a fancy gambeson, likely of double padded filling used for armor, leather gauntlets, and an officer's side sword that seemed more fit for walking about town than fighting to the death in a wasteland continent. As Ioren examined her clothes, she looked over the wooden plank Linoor had found for her in the rubble of a collapsed shed. All of them had equipped themselves with small wooden planks of sorts to practice, just as Ioren's mother had done for him when they first moved to Danet.
When Ioren spoke he half-expected his mother's voice to come out of his throat.
"The three most important components of swordplay are blade work, tactics, and footwork. Blade work," Ioren said as he brandished his plank, "is your control over your weapon. Footwork is, likewise, control over your body. Lastly, tactics is control over your mind - and your opponent's, if you are good enough."
"The blademaster of my father's estate taught me all of this already," Ysmena answered. "None of it helped me in that fight, though. My body just wouldn't listen to me! I was frozen completely. Everything happened so fast and was over before I could figure it out."
"It takes experience to recognize a situation and take action," he said as he walked forward slowly. He whacked the noblewoman in the leg with his plank.
"Ow!" She shouted, rubbing her calf. "What in Yasha's name was that for?"
"Why didn't you defend yourself?" Ioren asked. "You saw me advancing toward you with a weapon, didn't you?"
"That was a cheap shot," she said.
"There's no such thing as a cheap shot," Ioren said. "When the other guy dies you can claim to have fought as noble as you'd like. He won't be alive to dispute it."
Ysmena rubbed her chin as she ruminated on the thought. Ioren could tell she was smart and ambitious, but she seemed the type to think too much. So, he whacked her again, harder.
"Would you stop!" She yelled.
"Stop allowing me," he retorted, bringing the plank back for another strike. This time, she blocked the attack with ease, and counter attacked with an upward thrust into Ioren's chest. He sidestepped it and grabbed both of her hands on the hilt of her plank with his free hand, whacking her again with his plank.
"Forget everything you were taught about honorable fighting. The only tactics that truly matter in a fight are the ones that keep you alive. Control your space. Wait for an opening. As long as you are alive you will have more chances to find an opening. When you find one, hit it."
Ioren found himself smiling as they continued. It had been a long time since he had taught anyone about Danet, but he felt a familiar pride in watching someone learn.
As Ysmena caught her breath, Ioren backed off and watched the other two pairs. Ardenel's eyes were glazing over as Linoor lectured him on something - probably the finer aspects of dueling strategy, or something equally as mundane. Dal had wrestled Elune's plank from her and was holding it above her head as the two laughed together.
"So you're a loner, right?" Ysmena said to him suddenly. Ioren turned back to face her, balancing the plank across his shoulders with the weight of his arms.
"I guess so," Ioren said back.
"Petra was telling us to be wary of you earlier. You only travel alone. She said you killed some people a few years ago," Ysmena said. She traced in the dirt with the tip of her plank as she spoke, not meeting Ioren's gaze.
"Are you afraid I'll do it again?" Ioren asked.
She stopped tracing for a moment and rubbed her chin. Ioren could tell she did that when she thought hard about something.
"I don't think you ever did such a thing in the first place," she said finally. "Even though you probably gave me welts with that plank, you seem like a good person." She finally looked up at Ioren, but didn't smile.
"A couple years ago me and my partner, Van, decided we were finally experienced enough to search an uncleared location. No Yashan gate. Real stakes. Since it was our first time, we asked around at Gen's Pub for some help. Two former Vanguard guys agreed to come with us to the southern swamps. That was strike one," Ioren said. He noticed Ysmena listening intently. She cocked her head at the last sentence.
"What was wrong with them?" She asked.
"Well, people are usually former Vanguard for a reason. These guys were expelled for excessive violence toward scavs. Usually the crown doesn't care much about scavs, so whatever they did had to have been bad. Real bad. But we were stupid, and didn't think to ask. We went with them to the swamps and found a fishing village. A small one, but there was no Yashan Gate, so we went slow. They split with us to search, so we did the same. Strike two," Ioren said.
"You let them out of your sight when you couldn't trust them," Ysmena said.
"Very smart," Ioren replied, which finally made her smile. "Turns out one of them was watching us with something. Some artifact that let him see us through the walls. Van found an attractor in a pile of rubble, and one of them immediately came in and claimed they saw it first. Van tried to argue, but that was strike three."
"They had always planned to betray you," Ysmena said ruefully.
"Probably since the moment they saw us in Gen's Pub asking for help," Ioren said with a sigh. "Anyways, Van wasn't about to let this attractor go. We probably could have taken them on, but I didn't help him. I couldn't believe they had really attacked him. I kept begging him to just give up the attractor, but he was too damn stubborn. They cut him to ribbons before I finally leapt in and killed them, but by then it was too late. I stayed with him for hours in that depressing swampy town until he went cold. A passing Vanguard scout picked me up in the evening and brought me to a royal trial, but I didn't even care. I admitted to killing the two, but apparently they had arrest warrants from the Vanguard themselves, so nothing happened. Except the rumors, of course," Ioren finished.
"That's terrible. I can't believe I even listened to Petra earlier. I'm so sorry," Ysmena said. Real sympathy was a thing Ioren had not heard in years. Danet had a way of frying you, day in and day out, until the sympathy and good was all boiled away.
"I don't fight the rumors anymore. I don't want to partner with anyone anyways," he said.
"Why did you take this job, then?" Ysmena asked. Ioren's voice caught in his throat. He was getting careless again, especially with someone as smart as Ysmena.
"I think that's enough about me. Why did you and your sister come to Danet?" Ioren asked, hoping to distract her from the question he couldn't answer.
"Elune is my cousin. I don't have any siblings," she said. "My father is a small, unimportant lord in the western provinces. His entire life has been unremarkable. The Red King's army never came close to our lands, so he wasn't even involved in the Reunification War. He received his inherited lands, ruled over them, and became old. My mother spends her days inside, reading or tending her gardens. But I know we can have more. I read a book about our family history once. My great-great-great-grandfather established Deornis as a decorated general in the king's army - when Rolakkhad still had its own king, of course."
Elune and Dal erupted in uproarious laughter to Ioren's right. They seemed to be getting along very well. Elune had hardly spoken up to this point.
"I was playing with my father's firestarter one night, when I realized how we could return the glory to our house. If we came to Danet and became famous, people would have to recognize us again. We could maybe even be called to Capira!" Ysmena seemed to have stars in her eyes as she spoke. Ioren was right about her ambition. Maybe it skipped every six generations in her family.
"Well, if Ardenel's plan goes well, you will have what you seek," Ioren said. "Nobody has made it over the Barrier River in the last ten years, since the Temuli passage was opened by the Red King. High cliffs block the western banks of the river, and, according to Ardenel's scouts, the only crossing is at Riverstop Keep."
"We'll be the first over, I can feel it," Ysmena replied, finally wiping the sweat that had accumulated on her brow. Ioren had left out the part about his mother actually being the first one over the Barrier River.
Across from the laughing duo of Dal and Elune, Linoor and Ardenel had finished their lesson. Ardenel sat on the ground leaning back against his hands, gasping for air. Linoor seemed rather unbothered.
"Alright, let's set up for a sleep. Wind your watches and be ready to leave in six hours," Ardenel said in a ragged voice from the ground. Linoor must have really pushed him.
Ioren looked at his wind-up watch. It was ten o'clock, meaning sixty-two more hours of daylight left today. He then slipped off his backpack and reached inside for the soft white communication sphere that Alastair had given him the night before. He would need to deliver an update before he slept.