NaNo 2013 Day 29

One day left!!! (Also happy Thanksgiving, one day late!) My WC is now almost 45,000, so I'm typing away madly at the same time as trying to cook Thanksgiving food and organize all the last minute RSVPs to my pot-luk dinner that starts in an hour. Most of the people who are coming aren't American and haven't ever heard the word pot-luc before I used it to invite them about two weeks ago. Why can't people ever commit to things ahead of time? *sigh ~ goes back to typing away madly*

NaNo 2013 Day 28

Almost done! I'm 60 words away from 44,000, so I have exactly 6,060 words to write by midnight tomorrow! Ugh, right?

Here's the next part of you guys!

Chapter 8

In Which a Life is Threatened

            

As afternoon began to fade to evening the group followed the path into a valley at the bottom of the mountain. The ride down Taka Mountain pass had been considerably shorter than the ride up, not only because the altitude of the land was higher north  of Taka Mountain and the Twins but also because the pass through the crags, while seeming flat, actually sloped downward enough to change the distance when climbing back down on the other side.

            

The path through followed a long dry riverbed through the valley. Trees with leaves turning to shades of yellow and red crowded close around the shallow banks of the river gravel path. Larkin and Zija, still riding in the front of the group, chatted about finding a place to set up camp for the night as they would not arrive at the temple until the next evening. Seok and Shula rode behind, whispering plots in their newly discovered language while Cain trailed some distance behind the rest of his companions, lost in thought.

            

Shula sighed and stretched, supporting herself with open palms placed on the horse’s withers she leaned back and complained, “When do we get to stop for the night? I’ve gotta pee.” A sudden noise in the trees beside them made Shula sit up. Swinging her legs for balance she accidently kicked the horse which sidestepped in irritation. That random movement saved Seok’s life as the crossbow bolt that would have lodged itself in his side instead stabbed though Shula’s wrist.

            

Shula screeched as the barb shot through her arm and stopped, protruding out the other side. The horse spooked at the sound and threw her off as three more bolts came flying out of the tree cover on the group’s left toward Larkin, Zija, and Cain. Warned by Shula’s scream when the early shot had landed, they were able to avoid being hit, but just barely. Larkin’s sorrel mare took the bolt that was meant for Zija in the thick muscle of her shoulder as it flew wide around him. She reared and threw Larkin off her back before running in panic down the path away from her companions.

            

Cain and Zija fared better than Larkin, the crossbow bolts flying wide as they urged their horses to move. The two still mounted steered their horses up the right bank of the road into the trees to avoid further attacks, but Seok had jumped off his brown to make sure Shula was alright. Alarmed by her scream, he had not really noticed the other attacks, but despite her wound, Shula had noticed and rolled to her feet as quickly as she could to make for the trees. Seok followed, leaving his horse standing in the path of the four watu that jumped from their cover passed her to chase after their quarry.

            

Larkin and Cain abandoned their horses as soon as they got into the trees. They grew too close and it would be easy to be caught on horseback with no place to run or way to defend yourself. Zija was at a disadvantage anyway, as his quarterstaff was a weapon best used in an open space. To add to that handicap there was an extra six inches of wood added to the length, tied on to the rest of the weapon by a leather strap. Beneath the wooden sheath at the end of his staff was actually a five inch blade. He rarely used the blade, as it was sharp enough to be deadly, but had to be wielded carefully because it was not as thick and sturdy as a spear.

            

As spread out as the companions were, the true targets of the watu attack quickly became clear. The watu paired off; two heading toward where Larkin had dashed into the trees and two to where Cain had abandoned his horse at the edge of the tree cover. The ill-tempered animal, already unhappy about the sudden ruckus, kicked at the watu as they passed behind her. Seok saw the horse’s hoof miss the watu as they chased after Cain into the forest. Shula followed close on his heels as he trailed the loai that were after Cain.

            

The other pair of watu had found Larkin and drawn their short swords. They were beautiful weapons, slightly curved, only one side sharpened, with waving temper lines running down the length of the blades. To the watu, a stocky, heavily muscled race, Larkin, a tall and reed thin man with no weapons seemed like an easy target. “Did this guy really kill five hundred of us?” one watu asked the other. They had split up and were moving toward Larkin from opposite sides. The second watu, snorted to show how ridiculous he thought that was.

            

“Can’t’ve can he? But the shit faced emperor thinks he did, and we’ll get a pretty penny when we hand his ass in.”

            

Larkin could not understand the watu language, as he had never been predisposed to studying languages, despite his other scholarly pursuits. He could hear the scorn in their voices though, and he smiled at the thought of giving them a lesson on judging a person by his appearance. The watu held their swords ready to attack, but Larkin moved first. Shooting toward one of them he disarmed the watu with a clever maneuver where he blocked the dull edge of the sword with one hand and struck the wrist of the watu that was holding the weapon.

            

With the sharp snap of breaking bone and a strangled scream Larkin considered this opponent defeated and turned toward the next one that he could hear approaching. Just as he turned there was a flash of crimson in his peripheral vision and a dull thud as Zija smacked the other watu in the temple with the end of his staff. The watu fell like a rock, instantly unconscious. Zija glanced at Larkin and then at the watu at his own feet. “Don’t think I killed him do you?” he asked.

            

“If his skull resembles yours as much as his hair does then he’ll wake up before too long.” Larkin turned back to the watu with the broken wrist. He had managed to stand again and looked like he was ready for the fight to continue. Larkin hooked his foot around the watu’s ankle and pulled his foot out from under him.  Slipping off a small silver ring he wore on his pinkie, Larkin bent down toward the watu who was whimpering now after having fallen on his broken wrist. Larkin placed his thumb in the middle of the watu’s forehead and the watu’s eyes rolled back in his head. After a moment, he too fell unconscious.

            

“That chi thing you do is creepy as hell you know?”

            

“You’ve told me before,” Larkin answered. “Let’s go see if the others are doing alright. I haven’t heard Cain’s gun go off yet so they’re probably all still alive at least.” He started walking back toward the path with Zija following.

            

“We were lucky you know. If one of the dumb asses hadn’t shot early we’d all be dead.”

            

“Yeah, but I didn’t see where Shula got hit. She may be dead already.”

            

Zija made a face, “Well if she’s dead or dying, you can be sure that the watu who went after Cain are gonna be dead too. Seok’s over there with him.”

            

In fact what had happened with Cain and the two watu who were chasing him was the watu had noticed Seok and Shula following them through the forest. The older watu looked to his junior, no older in appearance than Seok or Shula, “You take care of the kids. I don’t need them in the way if the priest there pulls some kind of temple magic on me.”

            

The younger watu was only too happy to oblige. He was already going to be in trouble about shooting too early, and with how nervous about attacking a high priest he would probably be in more trouble or dead by the time night fell. Attacking a priest just did not sit well with him, and this human was not just any priest either. He had to be protected by the gods, and the watu boy had always had a hearty fear of the gods since he was a boy and lightening had struck his neighbor when he had called a pox on the god of harvest for their bad crop that year.

            

The young watu had drawn his sword and turned around to face the human youths but when he got his first good look at Shula his heart gave a strange lurch. That mass of curly orange hair was enchanting, and such a beautiful face. He knew it was love at first sight, whether the girl was human or not. Then he noticed the words etched  on the bracelets she wore at her wrists and the bolt from his crossbow still stuck through the pale slender flesh and felt such remorse for his actions that he was almost moved to sheath his short sword. 

NaNo 2013 Day 27

Fallen slightly behind on the word count again. I have the rest of today and until about 10 till midnight on the 30th to write about 9,000 words. That's just over 2000 per day if I wanna finish with some time to spare. The story won't be done in 9000 words though, rest assured, there is a lot more in store for my readers, especially since I'm typing on chapter 10 and posting the last part of chapter 7 today.

NaNo 2013 Day 22

*Sigh* Well I was lazy yesterday and didn't do any writing. I have a fairly sound excuse that I was reading a book I have to finish for my lit paper, but it really boils down to the fact that I just didn't want to write. my WC right now is 35,456, and I've already put out about 1600 words today. I only need another 1600 or so to be up to the projected average.

NaNo 2013 Day 19

My current WC 31,060. Awesome right? I need a few hundred more to make today's goal, but it'll be a piece of cake. More writing that needs done though. I have a 12 page essay on Shinto in modern Western fictional literature due on the 8th of December. My first draft was supposed to be handed in yesterday by 5pm. I have only a title page and introduction written. Wish I could hand in the first chapter of my novel instead. That's 10 pages without the double spacing, and probably more interesting anyway.

Anyway, here you go, next installment. Romance fans you may enjoy this one...

Chapter 7 Part 1

In Which Conversations are Overheard and a Life Rekindled

            

Seok shifted in his sleep, the sound of voices slowly breaking their way into his consciousness. At first the words he heard were too slurred by his waking mind to be understood clearly, but slowly as he awoke, the words became clearer. It was Cain and Shula talking that had awakened him, he realized, even before he could tell what they were saying. He still was not sure why her voice stirred him like it did. Whenever she spoke, it was like his attention fixed immediately on her. It was almost the same, only slightly different from how he had been attached to Cain for the first few months after he had been found. Then it had been a kind of pathetic gratefulness that had caused the devotion, now, with Shula, the whole situation was different. The woman was special, but he did not know why, and he still, after a day and two nights spent with her could not shake the feeling that he had known her somewhere else.

            

“They are seals, what I want to know is what relation do they have to Seok’s seal?”

            

“Ah, now there’s a real stumper. I how did you guess my bracelets were seals anyway?” Seok listened closer to the words the two were saying, his name alerting him to his own presence in the other’s conversation. Some instinctive curiosity kept him still, or perhaps he was still too immured in sleep for his body to move if he told it to, but he listened as the conversation progressed, with only a single thought in his mind, “My seal?”

            

Cain asked Shula about her bracelets, describing them well enough that, though Seok had never taken any notice of Shula’s bracelets before, he could picture them in his mind as clearly as if he had seen them being made. It was when Cain said, “I’ve done extensive research on seals and how they’re made. Seok’s doesn’t have a maker’s mark, and from what I’ve seen of yours they’re similar enough that they could have been made by the same person,” that Seok realized what exactly the priest was implying.

            

He almost moved to touch his headband, when the sudden realization came. The headband that he never thought about, almost as if his mind were tricked into forgetting it, even after people commented on his never taking it off, was a seal? Questions came flooding into his mind. Did the seal mean he was a watu? If Shula’s bracelets really were seals that were made by the same person as his headband, then he had known her before? Older questions that he had asked himself before mixed themselves with this new revelation. Had he lost all of his memories before being chained in that cave because of the seal? Why had he been sealed in the first place?

            

Shula and Cain’s conversation continued in the background, though Seok was no longer listening to them. They had stopped talking about him, and even if they had continued on that same subject, his mind was so concerned with the simple fact that he had been wearing a seal for four years without knowing it that he would not have been listening anyway. When the conversation ended with Shula settling down in her cloth next to his bedroll, he lay still, now fully awake, and very aware of the wakefulness of the other two in the small room. Zija emitted a small snore in his sleep and Seok heard Shula’s breath settle into a steady rhythm and then deepen as she fell asleep as well. Finally, he heard a papery rustling that he recognized as Cain’s robes as he took off and folded his sash to prepare for sleep. Seok’s mind continued in circles, asking the same questions again and again until he too followed the others in the room into sleep.

            

Morning dawned bright and clear, the snowstorm from the night before finished, though the wind still blew icy needles through the clothes of the five travelers. Almost as soon as they had cleaned up and set out, Shula fell into a brooding silence that Seok assumed was because of the cold, as it had been the day before. He wanted to ask her about what she had said to Cain last night about his seal, but in a strange turn of events could not think of what to say.

            

His hand reached up to rub the chain, as cold as ice from the frigid wind blowing in their faces. He pulled at it, but it seemed locked onto his scalp, tangled so badly in his hair that he winced. When he ran a finger underneath it though he found there was no hair impeding his fingers at all, after all, how many times had he had to shove his hair up underneath it to keep his lanky brown bangs out of his face? It was definitely something supernatural, and the more he thought about having worn it for so long, the more uncomfortable he felt.

            

Shula had locked her arms around his stomach as she had done the day before, hiding he face from the harsh wind blowing through the pass. They had entered the pass as soon as they left the shelter. It was a narrow thing, only wide enough for one horse to pass at a time. The wall of the mountain shot up in a sheer cliff on the group’s right side and started out steep on the left until about the height of the horses’ ears then the slope gentled into something that would be easy enough to climb when it was not covered with snow or ice. The wind that normally whipped around the side of the mountain was bottled up and concentrated down this smooth tunnel. Even the horses kept their heads low and laid their ears back flat to let their masters know just how unhappy they were at being made to fight the mountain’s breath.

            

The group took heart that at the end of the day that this hellish ride over the mountain would be nearly finished. One thing they were all thankful for was that the wind did provide them a clear path. The snow from the previous night that had drifted high against the walls of the shelter was swept from the path the horses had to travel. Between the wind, the horses trudging forward in single file and Seok and Shula bringing up the rear, there was no speaking between the riders the whole day.

            

At one point near the middle of the day Shula let go of Seok, leaving the only warm spot on the front half of his body vulnerable to the attack of the fiendish wind. She reached back around him with one of her scarves and wrapped it around his neck and the bottom half of his face. Seok could feel the heat and scent of her body still clinging to the fabric. She wrapped the scarf all the way around her shoulders and tucked the end under the collar on Seok’s cloak, effectively tying the two of the together. Settling her head back into its place on his shoulder Seok could not help but wonder if that surprisingly intimate moment had been to help keep him warm or if it had been to create a better wind block for herself.

            

Their ride was finally over for the day when the pass started going downhill and widened out. Another hour and the group was back among the trees. The trees had blocked the wind here so the snow had piled up inches deep on the path. Another few minutes led them to the next shelter house. The sigh of relief Shula let out on seeing the building was audible. While the men began unsaddling their horses next to the connected lean-to, Shula headed directly toward the door to the small building. Only to come back out cursing when she saw there was no convenient stack of firewood inside next to the fire pit in the floor.

            

She tramped through the snow, kicking it out of her way with mutters of “Damn, freezing ass snow, those two freaks can just go die; throwing this shitty ass crap down here.” She bent down and picked up a pine branch that she had kicked the snow off of. Stepping on one end Shula grabbed the other and bent it upward until it broke with a sharp crack into two manageable pieces.

            

Looking up toward the sky, as if to beseech the gods she yelled, “Who the hell’s bright ass idea was snow anyway, huh? ‘It’ll look so pretty on the top of Bhumi’s mountains’ my ass! It’s hella pretty now Niru!” She turned back to the shelter house with the few sticks she had gathered. “Freaking, freezing ass snow!”

            

Zija laughed as he walked past her to look for deadfall for the fire too. “It’s not that bad,” he taunted. “We could have been a few more days late then you could have seen real snow!” He had spent several years north of the watu border where the winters were long and harsh as a rule. Though he agreed that the mountain was unpleasant, he knew it would be impossible to cross this pass in a week’s time thanks to the snow piling up.

            

Shula dropped her wood into the fire pit and went out to find more, hopefully smaller sticks that would catch fire without too much trouble. Seok dug through the snow at the bottom of one of the trees and pulled up handfuls of only slightly damp pine needles. He took them inside to Larkin while Zija came back with a whole armload of sticks and branches that would burn. He was by no account a survivalist and would probably die if left in a forest alone, but the man did know how to find firewood under a pile of snow.

            

“Gee, look, Red’s actually useful for something,” Shula said sarcastically as he tramped through the snow past her a second time.

            

“You sure talk a lot for someone who’s doing nothing,” he said, looking at the few sticks she held in her hands. Zija continued into the trees and they both looked for useable wood while Seok and Cain rubbed down the horses and Larkin tried to start a fire in the damp pine needle kindling. Zija walked past Shula again, heading back toward the shelter with a faggot of sticks held under each arm. He raised his eyebrows at her, gloating, as he passed. “Shitty, red head, show off bastard,” Shula muttered at him, kicking aside more snow with her heavy boots to find the sticks she needed for the fire.

            

Seok and Cain had finished with the horses and were squatting, warming their hands over the fire when Zija came in, stomping the snow from his boots. He dumped his wood next to the fire pit and flopped down on the floor to copy the other two, rubbing warmth back into his fingers. Larkin unpacked the group’s only cooking pan and pushed Seok away from the fire so he could start cooking something he called stew for the group’s dinner. The dried meat he put in the pan with the melted snow would have to boil for about twenty minutes before it became something not resembling jerky.

            

Seok leaned against the wall and stared off into space, still thinking about the news of his headband being a seal. He had thought about the time that Shula had asked him if he remembered someone more than once that day. Just as he was convincing himself that he had actually known her before he lost his memories she burst into the room.

           

Shula glared at Zija and dropped her pile of deadfall branches and sticks on top of his. It looked like the group might now have enough to keep the fire lit for the whole night. Shula unwound herself from her scarves, tossing them carelessly on the floor in front of her. “Benki,” Seok whispered from where he stood against the wall. Shula froze, her eyes wide and mouth hanging partially open.

            

The whispered word got a similar, if less noticeable, surprised reaction from Cain; though it was not seen by the other two men who were watching Shula suddenly throw herself across the room and into Seok’s arms. She jumped on him, wrapping her legs around his waist and arms around his neck as she kissed him. A long, deep kiss, where Seok’s arms slowly wrapped themselves around Shula’s body to support her and hold her closer to his own.