True Warriors Sing by Rowan Erlking (classic book list .TXT) 📕

Blasting around him, LjuBa heard the most profound bell-like ring, stronger than when she clasped her belt to the song. She saw those soldiers visibly struck by it, flopping backwards as if Jonis had swiped at them with a tree trunk.

“Geta ov ma lan,” Jonis said, now growling.

The soldiers pointed their weapons at Jonis, one doing something to make it let off a loud noise, like a firecracker.

Jonis ducked, barely in time. Then he drew his weapon just like it. “I em bitta shat den ya, Oprin. I cen kil ya rait na.”

The balding man dropped his weapon, his eyes widening. But he stood up, calling to Jonis through his teeth. “Ef I don bren ya in, som van ors vil. Ee dey vil kil ah yo famli.”

Tia drew in a breath.

“What is it?” LjuBa asked.

The woman’s chest was heaving as she answered. “He said that if he doesn’t bring us in, then the Patriarch will probably send and even worse person after us who would slaughter our children.”

“No!” Ljev marched down from the house, crossing over to Jonis. “That is not right!”

“Ljev, get back!” Jonis shouted, his face suddenly tense.

But Ljev did not retreat.

The three soldiers lifted their weapons, setting off those firecracker sounds, so loud it hurt LjuBa’s ears. Two ricocheted off Ljev’s chest, not even nicking him. But the third made a hole in his arm.

Ljev staggered back, clenching it with a cry. “OW!”

“Ljev!” LjuBa ran out after him.

“Stay back!” Jonis shouted, now firing at the soldiers with his weapon. He picked off one, taking out the hand holding the weapon. He grazed another that moved just in time out of the way.

But the strange weapon that had harmed Ljev suddenly made a similar hole that was in Ljev in LjuBa’s side. She felt it burn through. Then a warm puddle of blood started to drip out.

“No!” Ljev leapt up, catching her.

“I told you to stay back!” Jonis shouted at them, yet he picked off with his weapon the one that shot her, wounding his shoulder. Then he jumped his own fence, punching out the balding man he had been speaking with.

His sons ran out also, claiming the weapons of the fallen.

Once the solders were disarmed, Jonis stalked back to LjuBa. Ljev was already putting pressure on the seeping wound.

“When is it going to sink into your head that I am capable of taking on three mere humans?” Jonis then crouched next to LjuBa. “And why is it that I have to heal you again?”

He then gestured for Ljev to set LjuBa down. Jonis called for his wife to go inside and get something for him. She was gone and then back in hardly a minute. She handed Jonis his red scroll paper that he had been using to make gole wards and a writing brush with black ink.

“Open her robe,” Jonis ordered Ljev.

Ljev blanched. “You—”

“Just do it!” Jonis snapped.

Blushing bright red, with an apologetic look to LjuBa, Ljev undid her belt then opened her coat then robe. Jonis tore open her underdress at the bloody hole, sticking his hand on the spot as he said the words to a spell. Immediately he drew into his hand the small piece of metal that had lodged into her side.

The blood seeped out more.

Dropping it into Ljev’s hands, Jonis muttered, “Why didn’t you sing that ‘luck song’ of yours this morning? Are you still put out because it is magic?”

“Is she going to die?” Ljev’s voice shook.

“Not if I can help it,” Jonis muttered.

He then took his red paper and wrote on it, saying the words to a spell in his tongue. But midway he glanced at Ljev and chuckled, finishing it. With care, he set it over the wound, pronouncing the end to the spell. Automatically, the paper slapped to her skin, holding everything that it touched sealed, and that included her wound.

“There.” He rose. “That should hold it until it heals up.”

Ljev set his hand to his face. “Oh, thank Jodis.”

“Thank Jonis,” Tia replied, rising also.

“No,” Jonis said grinning at his wife before going back to the three soldiers his sons were watching. “I can’t do anything without Jodis’s permission.”

He started off.

“Without Jodis’s permission?” LjuBa leaned up, the pain there but muted because she was holding together.

Jonis looked back. “Yeah. All spells ask the four gods for their influence. Without them, there would be no magic.”

She blinked, feeling stunned. All magic was with permission of the gods. It had not occurred to her. Permission. Not stealing.

An overwhelming relief filled her. She had been mistaken, and so shamefully so. But now she knew that it really was ok. All the world was singing because of the magic in it. She was not betraying the gods. She was not robbing them by being a wizard. They allowed it. And if they didn’t want it anymore, they could stop it.

Ljev helped her rise, though Tia reached for his wound, telling him to undo the laces to his jerkin so she could take his shirt off and bandage him. LjuBa watched Jonis as he stooped over the wounded soldiers once more, talking to them as if to a defeated opponent in a tournament rather than an enemy.

“What is he saying to them?” LjuBa murmured. “Who are they?”

Tia shrugged. “I’ve never met them before. But I believe that Jonis knows one of them. That bald one.”

“In his soldier days?” LjuBa asked.

Tia nodded.

“How come he is no longer a soldier in the army? He is younger than that man there,” Ljev asked, wincing as the woman pulled out the metal piece from his arm.

To that Tia smirked. “Jonis left the army when he was nineteen.”

Both LjuBa and Ljev stared at Tia.

“What?”

“He was decorated by the Patriarch himself.” Tia then tied a knot over the wound on Ljev’s arm. “Right before the Patriarch summoned demon hunters to kill him.”

The pair of KiTai warriors stared even more.

“But he seems so loyal…” Ljev murmured, looking back at the Cordril.

To that Tia laughed. She shook her head. “He is loyal to Brein Amon, not the Patriarch. Which is why he left the army. The Patriarch’s goals and Jonis’s goals are vastly different. And the Patriarch has left him alone up until Jonis ran off with me. After that we’ve been hunted by all sorts of men, and Jonis has sorted them out like a good father and husband.”

Ljev blinked at her then at Jonis. “I see. So he fights not to kill, but to defend those he loves.”

Tia nodded. Then she pointed to the soldiers. “He spares those with sense. If they choose to leave us alone after a fight, he lets them live. If they are going to be trouble later, he will dispatch them entirely.”

LjuBa peered after him. “So…he is like a KiTai warrior.”

Shrugging, Tia’s smile lightly spread on her lips. “I guess you could see it that way. His ancestors are from your land. Maybe in his deep memory somewhere he holds to a KiTai warrior’s philosophy.”

Jonis walked back to them muttering to Tia. “We might have to move again.”

His wife frowned. “Again? But I was really liking Poris.”

“Poris?” Ljev murmured.

Jonis met his gaze with a nod. “PoRi. In Brein Amon it this place is called the Poris Crossroads. My ancestors owned it at one time, but I guess we’ll have to vacate it like they did.”

LjuBa stood up with effort. “Why don’t you just come to KiTai?”

The couple blinked at her.

Leaning back, LjuBa nodded. “In the Northern Corner my…my older sister says there is a Cordril village. You…you might be happy there.”

Tia blinked at her, and Jonis also stared.

“The old Cordril village is still there?” he sounded amazed. Then he looked to his wife. “I thought that village would have vanished by now. What do you think? As a last resort?”

“You don’t want to go to Jatte?” she asked with a chuckle. “Your friend Emrit keeps offering to pay the passage on the ship like he did for his family.”

“Like the Brein Amon army would let us on a ship.” Jonis shook his head. “No. I’d rather stay in Brein Amon as long as I can, anyway.” But then he nodded kindly to LjuBa. “But if necessary, I think your offer is a nice one, as long as the king of KiTai does not object.” He glanced to Ljev next.

Ljev sighed, fingering the bandage on his arm then glancing to LjuBa’s bloody robe that she had tied closed again. He looked to the ground with a chuckle then extended his hand to Jonis, “We’ll see what we can do.”

Jonis smiled, his blue eyes sparkling.

Jonis’s sons dragged the three soldiers into the house and tended to their wounds, talking to them with warning in their voices as LjuBa rinsed out the blood to her coat. Then Tia fed the soldiers, speaking frankly with the balding one as he sat back, cowed by her eyes, keeping as far from her hands as possible. All the while, Jonis packed the gole wards into a satchel for Ljev, offering them another night’s rest to deal with their wounds. But Ljev refused.

“We’ve lingered long enough,” Ljev replied, glancing at LjuBa who was peering hard at the soldiers while trying to understand their language, which sounded familiar, yet not.

Jonis peered over also. He sighed. “I guess you are right. You do have to deal with a number of pressing things. I’ll go get the horses ready.”

“Hey!” The balding man called out to Jonis as he turned. “Vai es ya takin veth dos rid valiors? Vas es ya plading?

Like a boy teasing, Jonis answered the soldier, his grin wide. “Das es de preents a KiTai. I em mekin en a’liens ves im ee ma fam’ly. Tel de Patri’ark dat ef e sind pepo afta ma fam’ly a’gin, e vil haf de KiTai valiors an is hed.”

The balding man’s eyes suddenly fixed on Ljev, going wide.

Ljev blinked back at him then a flash of understanding crossed his expression, and he smacked Jonis’s shoulder. “Watch what you are telling him!”

“What are you telling him?” LjuBa asked, “I almost got it, but…”

“No more!” Ljev’s face flushed, pushing Jonis back as the man was laughing from his mischief. “Please. No more. Just show us to your stables and we’ll be on our way.”

LjuBa rose, huffing. She glanced to the soldiers, then to the snickering looks on Jonis’s son’s faces then at Tia’s calm expression as she also smothered a smile, though it shone in her eyes. It was clearly a private joke, teasing Ljev. Something must have occurred between them after she had gone to bed that she wasn’t aware of.

But with their bags packed, Ljev urged LjuBa to hurry with him outside. Jonis took them to the stables, looking back only to make sure they were not getting lost.

“I would appreciate you let the horses loose, or send someone to bring them back. They can find their way home, but I would prefer safe delivery,” Jonis said.

Ljev nodded. “I promise. It is very gracious of you to even lend us your horses.”

Jonis shook his head. “No. You need to ride fast. It is necessary I lend them to you.” He pulled open the