Chapter Six: Part Two

Continued from Chapter Six: Part One

All the booze had run out. For the last couple of years, their travels had been accompanied with beer, or wine, or hard alcohol. The night at the edge of the desert were the first completely sober nights of their adventures in a long time. Jarvela found the experience thoughtful and calm. He didn’t miss the alcohol. Although he found that he wondered with a greater urgency than ever what Kyouki had in mind for the future.

“I think that your fiddle needs new strings,” Kyouki said to Jarvela on the second night, when they had camped in a gravely patch surrounded by rocks and thorny bushes. Kyouki lay on his blanket, the stars reflected in his eyes. Jarvela sat on a log across the campfire from him. At Kyouki’s suggestion, Jarvela fetched his fiddle from one of the packs. He had taken up fiddle at some point during their travels. Kyouki encouraged it, seeming to think it calmed Jarvela.

It did, Jarvela hesitated to admit. He had always thought music seemed a prissy pastime. Admitting he quite liked it came hard. But he did admit it.

Gently adjusting the delicate wood, Jarvela removed some of the old strings from his fiddle. He had new strings in his bag, but before he started putting them on he checked everything else about the fiddle to be certain it stayed in good shape. He worked quietly, keeping his main attention on his task while allowing his imagination to wander freely, thinking through old ponderings. He began wondering about Kyouki, his past and motivations. Jarvela knew very little about Kyouki, really. Kyouki had money and Kyouki had prestige, though why he did never seemed to come up in conversation. On their travels, Kyouki would often be treated with an almost religious respect by the few who recognized his name—usually historians or the very religious. They called him “consort”—Consort no Uma. Though consort to whom they never mentioned. Kyouki never brought it up. It seemed that Kyouki had no allegiance to any kingdom. He seemed neutral to both Engelkind’s new regime and to the old king exiled in the north. One thing he had told Jarvela was there were no lands that belonged to the name no Uma. Kyouki conducted himself like an errant knight, allied to no one.

The only distinct point of character that Jarvela had gleaned of Kyouki was a profound religious respect. Many people chose a god or two, sometimes, three, to hold in most reverence, directing the bulk of their prayers and sacrifices to that god. Jarvela himself had always held Ythig, the lord of chaos and first mover, in most reverence, though he had a strong respect for Ellen Róf, the shield maiden and courageous cousin to Ythig. People would remember and revere all the other gods. They were gods. They all deserved reverence. Each god had a different philosophy, though, and healthy folk would decide on the one that suited them best and live most by that philosophy. No one followed all the gods at once. That would imply far too much discipline.

Kyouki did, though. Kyouki would make daily references to all seven of the gods. He would talk in the morning of Ythig’s excitement of new movement, throughout the day Kyouki would talk of Gróesn and the value of being aware of the still things, and at dusk he would tell sometimes unsettling stories of Ferryman and his often peculiar place in history. Kyouki would talk of Gróesn’s wife, the lady Wendy, when they rode through leafy woods, and on the crossing of rivers and when they walked on the tops of cliffs overlooking the sea Kyouki would laugh and shout to Ellen Róf, Ythig’s wife. The other two, Uncle Spircan and Mama Boom-Boom, known sometimes as the grandparents of the gods, Kyouki would mention less often, but with as much respect. Uncle Spircan often came up when they lit campfires, and he would mention Mama Boom-Boom often when he would sing songs or tell old tales. Kyouki rarely spoke of Kunig, the new god, but when he did he was thoughtful, as if he had made no certain decision about him.

Dedicated allegiance to the entire pantheon was unheard of in Jarvela’s memory. Men who tried became confused and flighty, never sure what they believed. Jarvela knew a few historian monks who claimed to be non-denominational, following all gods the same. They mumbled rather than spoke and were perpetually lost in study, never aware of anything but their books.

Somehow, Kyouki seemed functioning enough. And when he told stories of the gods the stories sounded less like old legends, heard from childhood up, than like anecdotes. Some of Kyouki’s tales almost seemed to feature him. Jarvela had long suspected Kyouki was more than human, though not a god himself. Kyouki never confirmed it. It hardly mattered. Many strange things lived in the world. Jarvela knew Kyouki no Uma the person, and that contented him till Kyouki cared to explain himself.

Jarvela finished stringing his fiddle. He began tuning it. Probably Kyouki guessed Jarvela’s thoughts. Kyouki had an uncanny talent to do that. When he did he would address Jarvela’s concerns, but in a sideways way that made Jarvela think about what the problem had been at the first.

“Are you concerned that I have no idea what I’m doing, Jarvela?” Kyouki asked. The question surprised Jarvela. He shook his head and muttered, “Of course not,” before he really thought about it. Doubting Kyouki’s self-assurance had never occurred to Jarvela. Now that the question had been posed, though, Jarvela began to realize that Kyouki seemed completely confused. He got routinely drunk, started fights almost nightly, and wandered without clear purpose. It made sense to think of Kyouki as befuddled. He always seemed so wise and in control, never a hair on his head out of place, never a question set to him without an immediate answer on his lips. It inspired Jarvela to just go along with Kyouki’s idiosyncrasies. It suddenly seemed idiotic to Jarvela that he had failed to question Kyouki’s state of control sooner.

Kyouki smiled. “And his world comes crashing down around his ears,” he said. “You have the tools to doubt me. Rightly you should. My world has been devastated since the War. Since the exile of the gods I have been attempting to rebuild my world. I have not been making too fine a job of it either. There’s been progress, though.”

Jarvela thought of a question. He hesitated to ask it.

“Ask it, Jarvela,” Kyouki said.

“What was your place, master?” Jarvela asked.

“What do you think it was?”

Jarvela thought about it. Kyouki was more than a man, that much seemed clear. He told stories he could not know about things in the shadows of the past, and he seemed on first-name terms with all the gods at once. Some old stories featured strengthy beings, more than men and less than gods, who served the gods as their close consorts.

“I’d warrant you’re Oswemend,” Jarvela said. “A god herald.”

“And that does not frighten you?” Kyouki asked, smiling still. “Men are usually awed to know that.”

“They have not drunk with you, perhaps,” Jarvela said. He raised his now strung fiddle to his shoulder and drew a few notes from it. He continued pondering. Oswemend--god herald. A servant of the gods, made by the gods to work with them, and all the gods but one exiled to none knew where. The one left had been the power exiling the others. Here was Kyouki left behind.

“I have nothing left to do in this world,” Kyouki said. Jarvela could see that. “Or I had no possible mission. As I have said, I have been rebuilding.”

“There are other Oswemend, I presume,” Jarvela said.

“Yes. We are a closer-knit bunch for the fall of our lords,” Kyouki said. “Our world looks far different than any we had ever anticipated for ourselves. We have been forced to grow.”

“You are boozing rapscallions?”

“Come now, you know me better than that,” Kyouki said. Jarvela wanted to believe that he did. Keeping his mind on the sweeps of his bow across the fiddle strings Jarvela quieted his rising anger at Kyouki. Before his anger could quite take root, Jarvela thought over the past couple years, finding if there was anything aside from the boozing and the fighting that unified their travels.

Continued on January 31...

Chapter Six: Part One

I am heartily sorry for the delay. It has been a busy weekend. I beg your patience and forgiveness.

Continued from Chapter Five: Part Four.

Jarvela Gunnar ruled gangs. He was born in Kunigsgrad, back when it was called Seafasten, in the later days of the war. The streets were most dangerous then, and he called the streets home. Jarvela lived by his wits, staying alive by keeping ahead of the other urchins. It always felt to him like he had more than the usual rationing of wit. People he knew back then all seemed slow and stupid. He made them into a gang, for their protection and his own. Then, in the shortest version of a long and painful story, though, the gang all died, killed by a larger and more powerful gang. Jarvela survived. After spending a week of night drinking he armed himself, making ready to storm the house of his enemies. He wanted to end his life. As a return, he wished only to take a few of them with him.


Any other option sickened him with grief. He would not go on. He would not go back. But over his last bottle of rum, taken in a tavern before making his attack, a person confronted Jarvela, suggesting a different option.

The man called himself Kyouki no Uma. He had sleek black hair grown long, thin eyes that slanted at the edges, and skin colored like unbleached silk. He smelled like mint, wore sleek clothing, and stood taller than Jarvela. He looked out of place in the dark wood of the tavern, stained with smoke and worn to sleekness by hundreds of years of people walking around the room. Jarvela stood at the bar, his third clay cup of rum in his hand, and he angled his head to the mint smelling man who looked out of place in the tavern—far too clean, far too distinguished. Castles and fine halls would be Kyouki no Uma’s natural environment. Kyouki looked sideways at Jarvela and smiled crookedly, twisting his trimmed goatee.

“You’re shitting me, little man,” Jarvela said, raising his rum to his lips. Kyouki had just offered Jarvela a job. He had not yet said what job. It didn’t matter. Jarvela didn’t want a job. It was common for refined men of money to hire men like Jarvela to do the violent things they lacked the spine to do themselves. Jarvela would have been interested any other day. He just wanted to be left alone today. “Find some other schill, little man,” he said.

“You haven’t heard the job yet,” Kyouki said, his voice low and perfectly pronounced.

“Step off,” Jarvela said. “You’ve picked a bad day.”

“I think it’s the perfect day,” Kyouki said. “As I understand it, your enemies have deprived you of your allies and you have nothing left to do for yourself.”

Kyouki said the words evenly, without spite, without a hint of bragging. Only Jarvela’s enemies would know what Kyouki said.

“Tread carefully,” Jarvela said, lowering his voice and his cup of rum. His axe hung at his waist. He readied himself to use it.

“I’m not one of your enemies,” Kyouki said.

“You’re sniveling enough to be one of them,” Jarvela said.

“Jarvela Gunnar,” Kyouki said, a name he should not have known. Jarvela never used his real name back then. Kyouki’s smile softened. “Do you remember your first cloak?”

That cloak had been the first Jarvela had met Kyouki no Uma. Kyouki had given Jarvela his first cloak—a wool cloak, grey, soon stolen. After several days of thought, Jarvela did take the job Kyouki offered. He found he preferred it to dying. At first, Jarvela had acted as Kyouki’s valet and bodyguard, traveling with Kyouki. Kyouki went everywhere inside of the first few months, getting in the worst kind of scrapes. Kyouki would start fights everywhere. They would enter bars, and Kyouki would empty bottles of wine himself. He’d raise a ruckus and he and Jarvela would be forced to fight their way back to the street. Jarvela wondered from the first days what Kyouki wanted with a bodyguard. He could take care of himself, and more. Kyouki started teaching Jarvela things, in fact. Not just fighting, though Jarvela and Kyouki saw most eye-to-eye about that. Kyouki had a broad understanding of history, philosophy, logic, geometry, and all the old stories. Education had never either appealed to or wholly revolted Jarvela once he had a chance to learn from Kyouki he found his curiosity grew daily. He plagued Kyouki with questions and Kyouki fielded them with the patience of one who felt they had all of eternity to answer. And, sometimes, Kyouki would volunteer a piece of information: “I rather like to collect ghost stories,” he said more than once, and, more than once, he asked for new ones from the people they met on the road.

Jarvela continued, nominally, to be Kyouki’s bodyguard, though the idea of “employment” faded. They traveled to all corners of the world. They traveled to the farthest south and raised hell with the pirate lords, which Jarvela thought was stupid. Not as stupid, however, as the next few months when they went to the eastern isles and wandered the Savage Lands, bothering werewolves and the primal natives. From there they spent almost a year zigzagging gradually westward across the great plains in the middle of Eardbána, sampling beers, women, and brawling through towns. Jarvela sometimes wondered what drove Kyouki. Most days, he allowed the journey to be its own adventure. Other days he inquired what they were doing. Kyouki always answered that particular question with some sociopolitical question--who is the king? What is justice? Does anyone speak for the voiceless? The question started some only slightly related discussion, and Jarvela let it go. He presumed that Kyouki meant to tell Jarvela abstractly what the point it by the discussion. Jarvela had not divined the answer yet. Perhaps there was no answer and Kyouki was merely mad; that made more sense most days.

The Gelodra Mountains in the west slowed their journey, as winter had fallen upon them by the time they reached the foothills. Instead of stopping, Kyouki stocked up on whiskey and forged ahead, keeping Jarvela slightly tipsy through the whole trek through the passes. Jarvela remembered very little of the Gelodra days. He remembered, in their drunkenness, singing loudly enough to cause a few avalanches, and he remembered fighting bears that sparked from the mouth and bears that seemed a little too smart, and he vaguely remembered fighting monsters. He mostly remembered bitching about the cold and drinking more whisky.

“It was not wise to go into the mountains in winter,” Jarvela grumbled during a blizzard. He couldn’t tell if it was day or night. The world had greyed out. The warmth of a half of bottle of whisky kept him riding.

“Wisdom is subjective,” Kyouki said. “A man’s intentions inform the wisdom of his actions.”

“You haven’t told me what your intentions are,” Jarvela said, frowning.

“You can only decide the wisdom of your own actions, then,” Kyouki said, nearly shouting to be heard over the wind.

The whisky lasted just long enough to get them through the mountains out into the lush jungle in the western shadows of the Gelodra Mountains. Jarvela had always feared Kyouki would take them this way. They hiked through the jungle, where it rained constantly. Kyouki said they were fortunate it rained. The barbarians living in the jungle stayed indoors when it rained. Jarvela had despised the rain.

Eventually they passed from the jungle. The trees thinned and eventually disappeared. Then, with a suddenness almost like ocean breaching shoreline, they reached hot desert.

“You miss the rain now, I think,” Kyouki said, surveying the seemingly infinite sands with an ironic smile.

“Lord of chaos, you’re a crazy bastard, Kyouki,” Jarvela said.

They rode south along the edge of the desert, keeping in the scrubby hills. The tufts of olive trees and bramble offered some shelter from the heat, and Kyouki explained they would be more able to find water. “We’ll head out into the dunes in perhaps a few days,” Kyouki said. “Maybe. I hope not, though.”

Continued on January 26...