Westhaven by Rowan Erlking (best sci fi novels of all time TXT) 📕

The adult men swallowed with murmurs to one another. But the boys just stared at Key as if they thought he was making it all up.

“What do you know about the blue-eyes?” the smith asked, mostly sounding curious. He walked over to help Key pick up the wood he had dropped. “You worked under them, right?”

“He was the slave to General Gole,” Rainold snapped, still pointing.

“General Gole?” the smith echoed. His eyes widened. He looked to Key who nodded, though the boy also cast Rainold a glare that said he still wanted to punch him.

Key drew in a breath then exhaled. Inspecting the faces of the men that stood around him with caution, he then answered the smith, “The Sky Children—I mean, the blue-eyes are…dangerous.”

“No kidding,” Tiler said. He looked to his friends with a roll of his eyes, setting his hand on his hip.

“Shut up!” Key clenched his hands into fists again, rising on his feet.

“No, kid,” the man that was still standing near Key said, “He has a right to be here. You don’t. You just answer our questions. You were pretty close to General Gole, so tell us, and be specific—how are they defeating our armies?”

The man looked likely to kill him. Key fell back into his humbled slave mode, swallowing his anger at being beaten down for so long. He shrugged as he said, “They’re more powerful.”

The men’s looks went darker.

Cringing, Key said, “If you know about the Sky Children then you know they have a deadly touch. But they can control it and use it to steal information from your head.”

“And they’ve done this to you?” the smith asked.

Seeing that the smith had no malice towards him, Key backed away from the other man to his side. “Yes. But only a few times. It leaves you really weak.”

“What about their magic sticks? The ones you call guns?” one of the other men asked.

Shaking his head, Key glanced at his firewood, wondering if he ought to start picking it up again. “Guns aren’t magic.”

They stared.

“But they kill whomever they are pointed at, and there is no arrow shaft,” the man said.

Key shook his head again. “A gun is not magic. It is technology.”

They blinked at him. The boys made faces again as if they thought Key was insane.

“What do you mean by technology?” the man that had first threatened him asked, leaning in.

Seeing that he really was going to listen, Key replied, “General Winstrong says that technology is only a better way of doing things. He says that technology always beats magic.”

“But what is it?” the man asked again with bite.

Key retreating to the smith.

“I don’t know exactly, ok? But one of the lieutenants told me that their people, their ancestor, the Sky Lord was from up there.” He pointed up at the tree cover overhead. “In a place he called space. He said out there are other worlds, civilized worlds that have no magic, so they use technology. He said they remember it and are making everything like their ancestors.”

“That makes no sense.” One of the men growled with a disgusted huff.

“He’s making it up,” Berd said.

“I am not!” Key snapped, fighting the urge to hit him.

Tiler snorted. “Why would the blue-eyes talk to you?”

Clamping his mouth shut, Key stomped back to the firewood.

“Oh, no.” The man that had grabbed him earlier set his hand on the back of Key’s neck again, clenching tight. “You’re not going back to work until we decide what to do with you.”

“Wait.” The smith seized the man’s wrist. His eyes narrowed in a glare. “Kleston put him in my charge.”

“I doubt Kleston knew whose property he was,” the man replied acidly, not letting go.

But the smith shook his head with a look at Key. “No. I am sure he did.”

The man froze, blinking. Then he peered down at Key.

The boy was shaking with his eyes on the far hill where he had intended to run.

“Are you saying Kleston knew this kid was the boy on all those wanted posters?” he asked. “And you knew it?”

The smith’s expression was impassive as he replied, “I don’t question Kleston’s judgment. But he brought the boy to me specifically to watch after. And I swore to put him to use.”

“But—”

“No buts,” the smith replied with a harder glare. “I am sure Kleston knows what he is doing.”

Letting Key go, the man also took a step back from the smith. “Fine. But when Kleston gets here with the provisions, we are going to have a serious talk about this.”

All the people in the clearing slowly turned and went back to their respective places of work. Only the boys remained. But even they eventually walked off, whispering to one another. Key wouldn’t put it past them to plot some sort of ambush to claim the reward on his head.

The smith leaned down and whispered in Key’s ear once they were gone. “I kept my promise, kid. Now you’d better work on yours. I want you practicing your knife-making every day until Kleston comes back. If you really are the heir to the Bekir Lake swordsmith, you had better prove it, or they just might turn you in for that silver.”

He walked back to the smith station, leaving Key to stand alone.

Shivering, Key was unable to move for several seconds. Words General Winstrong had said on a number of occasions echoed inside his head like deep bells: “Humans often turn against their own out of greed.” Up until that moment, Key had not really believed it. Now, he wondered if the general had not in fact been right all along.

*

It didn’t feel right retiring so early. Gailert looked about his house in Roan. His boy dragged in his bag as Saimon the porter greeted him then gave an accounting of what had occurred during the general’s absence.

“…and as for Market Street, you will find that the products there have improved greatly. With the house of Hustern leading the social scene, there has also been an increase in fine parties up in the center of town. I am sure you and your, uh, lady would love to participate in those. You have already received several invitations to the up and coming seasonal parties…”

Gailert really wasn’t listening. He gazed over the room as his maids were uncovering the last of the furniture. He had telegrammed ahead, ordering a meal first and then the rest to be done. His arrival also had been two hours early. His porter was merely trying to distract him from the disorder in the home.

The general’s new boy reappeared at the foot of the stairs peering about the room.

“So, I see the rumor is true,” Saimon said, gesturing to the boy. “You got yourself a new footman. What happened to the last boy you had, if I may ask?”

Sighing, Gailert knew that question would come up sooner or later. “Yes…. The boy disappeared during a battle with some insurgents north of the Semple Mountains. I’m not sure if he is alive or dead since he seems to have escaped through a nest of demon parasites.”

“Demon parasites, sir?” The porter’s mouth dropped open with sincere surprise.

The general nodded. “Spiders.”

Saimon cringed as he shook his head. “Yes. I see how it would be difficult to know for certain. Perhaps I should show this boy to the cellar where he will be sleeping.”

“No, Saimon.” Gailert glanced at the boy whose eyes widened at hearing the cellar would be his new home. “Arrange the stairway closet for his bed.”

“The closet, sir?” The porter blinked at him.

Gailert nodded. “He is used to the closet, and I’d prefer he remain on the main floor.”

With a slight tilt of the head, the porter resisted the urge to shrug. Instead he glanced at the boy then gestured for the child to go with him. The boy retreated behind his master until Gailert motioned for him to follow the porter. Obeying, the boy looked back at him until the general went upstairs towards his room. The woman he had brought from Barnid had already gone ahead. It was time for a rest.

*

Key hardly rested. Busy at the fire, banging away at the steel he had forged, Key kept going at it, trying to remember the steps his grandfather had shown him when he had made the dagger years ago. It wasn’t just casting the steel. There was heating and folding the metal over and over again, hammering it until it was strong and shaped right. He also had to keep the hilt in mind, as well as the handle. His grandfather had a style that was elegant. Key just couldn’t remember how he had gotten the dagger to meet up to that standard. So far all his knives and daggers were merely shadows of the one he had first made.

But that was not what bothered him the most. It was the dry clack-clack of wood sticks hitting each other in mock battle coming from the clearing where the other boys were supposed to be sharpening the newly cast arrowheads. To them, being with the Herra raiders was all a game. They had never experienced real danger. Most of the leaders sheltered them from it. And for some reason that really bothered Key.

“Ha! I got you!” Berd shouted out at Polen who winced where he had been hit in the arm with the stick.

“No fair! You cheat!” Polen shouted back.

Key rubbed his eyes from exhaustion, wondering if he had ever been that stupid when he was younger. He could hardly recall when he had just played instead of worked. Even now he could not imagine playing.  Remembering the real swordsmen in that battle at Foreston, the very idea of someone being stabbed crying out ‘no fair’ just looked ridiculous.

“What are you laughing at?” Tiler called at him.

Blinking Key had not realized that he had been laughing. Turning away, he went back to work.

“I bet you can’t swordfight.” Tiler stomped over with his stick in hand.

Thinking he was probably right, Key ignored Tiler, turning the hot steel over and hammering the other side to the blade.

“Come on back, Tiler. He is such a coward,” Rainold said waving him back. “You’re wasting your breath.”

“A coward?” Key set the dagger he had been working on down into the water barrel. “You’ve never even seen a real battle. And if you did, you’d wet your pants.”

The smith looked up. He had been melting iron the entire time, though he glanced at Key occasionally when the boy paused in his work. He looked over at the boys this time, an idea coming to him. He said, “Why don’t you play with them? You could use the rest.”

Key turned to stare. “Playing with them isn’t rest.”

Chuckling, the smith scratched his eyebrows. “Did anyone ever tell you, you talk like an old man?”

Making a face, Key took his dagger out of the water and set it aside. “Fine. But they don’t want to play with me.”

But the boys had already been staring.

Polen lowered his stick from the battle he as having with Weston and he walked over. “You can use my stick.”

The boys watched their friend with increased shock, even as Key stared at him when the stick somehow ended up in his hands.

But then Tiler set his feet apart and waved Key over. “Fine. I’ll fight you.”

Already Key glanced back to the smith. He thought it was a bad idea. He really ought to go back to working on his dagger. However, he dragged his feet into the clearing, stepping around the fallen tree, and lifted up his stick as if to weigh it in his hands.

“The thing’s off balance,” he murmured.

“So what?” Polen said, following him back to the group.

“So, a good sword is balanced,” Key said. “How am I supposed to—?”

But Tiler attacked him. Key ducked then rolled, dodging rather than blocking. He skidded over the fallen leaves. The boys laughed, their voices echoing some. That drew the girls out of the tents and longhouses with