The Pass by Zion Kistler (top 100 novels txt) 📕

/> Treaf looked about himself as he stretched his neck painfully. It was a very tiring business, bending down so many times and picking up the load in your arms, later just to dump them into a cart. This was hard especially since Treaf was injured, and each time he bent down his side hurt.
He was especially aggravated once when he bent down; trying to pluck a sword from the ground, but the blade was tangled in with a few other weapons which were buried in some armor that was on a dead body. “Blasted thing!” Treaf said to himself angrily. He was not in the mood for this. Then he tried again, and it still would not come. Then with his own sword he hacked as hard as he could through the whole thing, destroying the pieces of body and armor alike. Then he frowned as he slid the sword out. The whole thing was a pile of slimy things, and he had to be the one to clean it up. It would have been simpler to take off the things on top first, Treaf reminded himself painfully. Why did everything have to be so hard? But then he shrugged it off, because he was bound to make a mistake once in a while. If he just wasn’t so tired he would be in a better mood, though. He was very sore also, and in a lot of pain. He remembered traveling through the Goshopian forest and thinking of how he would finally have the chance to rest and do other such things besides traveling. But he had been wrong like so many other times when he had been wrong also. This was definitely not a time of such things! They would even have to gather a whole army all over again. And they could not use the king’s troops, because they had been spent on a battle that had nothing to do with them. Then he remembered what the Elder had said to him a few hours ago: The Blackwolf Spirits are hunting you. And the old man had said also not to fight them if he was not around. How could that possibly happen? The elder would have to be with him right when the Spirit attacked. He couldn’t just run off during a battle. The Blackwolf Spirits would just follow him. And what if the Elder died in one of the coming battles? I guess I’ll just have to learn magic, Treaf thought. Even Mildo could do it. It definitely would be good protection in the battles yet to come, but finding the time to learn it would be a different matter. They were so busy these days there was barely enough time for sleep.
These troubles came to Treaf quite a bit as he worked through all the rest of the time until the carts were carried away, all full of trash that was very disgusting indeed to go through. Once in a while Treaf even felt like puking, but he resisted it somehow, gagging all the way through it. He looked around a lot, probably because he stopped at every excuse to rest. The work was very boring and monotonous also, so that only added to the misery.

Mildo almost screamed in frustration. There were simply not enough men to do the job! Things were going so slow it seemed that there was no hope in finishing at all. There was so much stuff on the ramparts that had to be hauled away, so many scattered weapons, and a lot of other things. The whole length of the ramparts where men had fought during the battle was lined with things they had yet to clean up. I guess if I stop working the process will be even worse, he decided, slowly dragging his body away from leaning over the edge of the railings, looking over at the forest on the other side of the baron fields that had been used as the battlefield. It looked just as it had before the battle, except for a few broken bushes and other large plants where the enemy had come through for the first time. That had definitely been a very terrifying moment, especially for Mildo, for he had been out in the front lines, and it was very lucky that he had survived at all. After all so many other people had died, so why hadn’t one of them been him? It had been a slim chance that it hadn’t been, but Mildo was glad that he had survived. But I guess I’m no High Novice of the Scout’s Academy anymore, he thought, smiling. Those had been easy days, but more so for Treaf then him. After all Mildo had worked very hard to gain his position in the Scout’s academy. Treaf had done—well…nothing. He just sat around, enjoying his time with that friend of his, Ietuqe. Mildo wondered who was a closer friend to Treaf now, and it soon came to him that the answer was he. The two of them had been through a lot together, definitely more then Ietuqe. They had just been friends from the start.
Shoving all of this away, Mildo got back to his hard work. He was definitely looking forward to when this was done and he could rest.


Chapter Two
Training of Arms

Treaf woke up to a very loud morning, one with the loud bird and other regular hubbub of the city. In fact Treaf actually thought that he had heard a cart moving down below him, and he decided that he would try not to be in a bad mood that day.
But then something happened, and he realized a fact that he had seemed to have forgotten. We are now in The Jaragon. Treaf groaned and got out of bed, feeling very heavy and annoyed. He didn’t really know why he was in a bad mood, for he had been in bed and enjoyed dreams of who-knows-what hours ago.
Once he was out of bed he realized that there was no one else in the room, for they had already gotten up and probably gone to work. The thought of work put Treaf in even worse of a mood, so he decided to think of the present and not worry about how sore he would be when he tried to lift something. It’s kinda weird—yesterday we were all fighting large beasts and trying to defend this city, and now we’re trying to repair al of it. I bet the King is pretty upset that we basically totaled his army. Treaf smirked. He in a way realized that he had an inkling of wanting to meet the King in person. He had seen him once before, but that was just across the room during a meeting. I wonder what would have happened if Malock hadn’t been right when he said that the Blackwolf Spirits would probably attack us. If they had never even attacked, he would probably be punished because of lying to the beloved King, which would be considered a public offense.
After thinking of this Treaf realized that he was truly wasting time when he hadn’t even put on his shirt. Now was not the time and age to stall.
After a few quick steps down the stairs Treaf heard a lot of bustling, talking, and the aroma of food. There were scraping of plates, and other various sounds that Treaf could not identify with what he knew about. Hah. I guess I’m not too late for breakfast.
After a bit of walking he reached a table where a few of the Seven Warlords were seated. The food had already been served, but there was plenty on the table for Treaf to eat, for it was not the same system of a restaurant. There was the simple order to distribute the according amount of food to each table.
After eating for a little bit Treaf noted that Hibned and Sloyd had struck up some kind of conversation, and Treaf listened in, only to become bored when he realized that they were talking about past experiences with chickens. Hmmmmmmm. Maybe I should ask them about what we will be doing for today as far as the schedule goes.
“Do you know what the plan for today is, anyway?” Treaf asked. They paused for a second, and then said, “Just when did you show up?” Treaf for some reason was not in the mood to respond, so he kept things short.
“That is irrelevant. Right now I am asking for the schedule. Or do you two not have it?” Treaf questioned. Actually he didn’t remember where he had come up with the idea that they would know the schedule, but it was a guess and he didn’t care if they were offended, for that was their problem.
“We’re gonna clean up the battlefield more and another team is gonna clean up the damage made by the Blackwolves. The rest is probably not important, seeing as these are the main things that an injured person like you would need to worry about.” Treaf comprehended this, and then said, “I am actually quite surprised that anybody noticed that I had been shot by a crossbow the other day.” Sloyd chuckled, and Treaf found it annoying—but Treaf was also eager to here what he had to say, so he planned not to contradict him.
“Well, actually it was pretty hard to miss, and really I think it just comes down to the matter of who would want to talk about.” This seemed to make sense to Treaf, and he realized that he would probably not talk about the King if he was injured. Treaf did not know why, but he seemed to think that he didn’t really like the King—he seemed to be abnormal in his opinion—or that was Treaf who was abnormal and he looked at normal people to be abnormal because they were not like him. Well I guess that’s the function of the world—everything is balanced on relativity. If something seems abnormal to me, it is normal to others, and…and.... Treaf stopped thinking about this because it became too complicated and it didn’t matter anyway.
“Treaf, you aren’t eating.” Treaf came back to realization when Sloyd said this.
“Sorry, I didn’t realize.” Treaf shoved all of this aside, and he started eating some canned fruit that was set before him. It tasted good, but for some reason this thought hadn’t registered until then. I need some time to think, but whenever I set time like that apart I get bored and want to practice dueling or something.
Breakfast was over shortly, and after that there wasn’t anything that Treaf decided was worthwhile. There was just the normal bustling, the clearing of plates, and then when the ‘smoke’ cleared Treaf found himself going in group B, the one that was going to help repair the different houses that