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

Gailert stared at the dagger for hours before the captain finally came in to give his report. The captain didn’t look happy in the slightest, and his report explained why.

“That man Kleston really thought out his plan,” the captain said. “We extracted a few camp locations out of his head after passing through an emotional barrage he set up in his mind. But when we went to search the camps, they were already cleared.”

“Anything else?” Gailert asked, brooding over who his opponent had been.

With a shrug, the captain exhaled wearily. “Not really. Though we found an antidote on him, it was too late to use. The man died, fixating on one word, saying it over and over again. Key. It made no sense until we found an all-key in your office. A crude iron copy of one.”

Closing his eyes, Gailert exhaled. “All right. I was just hoping for a sign that we got the last of those raiders. But I’m afraid we didn’t.”

“Yeah, they got away, for now.” The captain frowned. “We’ll scour the hills for their camps and continue hunting down the raiders until we’ve got the last of them.”

“But that man was our best lead,” Gailert murmured.

“Yes.” The captain turned then stopped, waiting for the general to approve his departure.

“Dismissed,” Gailter muttered, spinning the dagger in his hands wondering how many other raiders with connections to the Bekir smithy had escaped.

*

They had to go in by night. By day the soldiers from Herra could spot them easily. They left the Herra hills carrying the minimal necessities. They took the smithing tools and all of the swords Key had recently made. But they had left most of the household belongings behind. Most of the children were sent off with another group, though Key went with the boys his age and two men to find their way across the plains to the west. They snuck away under orders to keep silent as the leader of their small group guided them to the western mountains. They would not reach them until after many days.

“I hate this,” Rainold muttered under his breath. They had been walking through the miles of soggy wild grass, following the group leader whom none of them knew very well. “It is so cowardly to run from a battle.”

“Do you want to be dead meat?” Polen hissed at him. “Our camp was compromised.”

Berd cast a glare at Key. Key remained silent, with his thoughts only on Kleston.

Tiler punched Berd in the arm, hissing through his teeth, “Not his fault. General Gole came because of that fire. Not because of Key.”

The boys stifled their grumbles. They had known that with the rise of attacks against the Sky Children would come retaliation. All the adults had said so since the beginning. But hearing it and experiencing it were two different things. They hated what it made them do.

“There.” Their leader pointed to the foothills near the town of Wingsley. “In that forest we go for another night. Then we can go back to traveling in the day.”

Looming ahead were towering peaks of the Duglis Mountains. They were always snowcapped and nearly impassable. Currently their peaks were all white, still clinging to winter even as the spring thaw was well underway. It was there where they would meet up with allies.

*

“So, this is the camp?” Gailert winced as he tramped down into the muddy hollow. He peered at the primitive shelters made of tree bark and branches set among trees in the concave clearing. He could see the remains of three fire pits and what looked like impressions where tents had been.

His captain and the lieutenants walked down with him surveying the area. Their soldiers had already scoured it the week before when they had discovered it. As soon as the doctor had declared him healthy enough to leave bed rest, Gailert insisted on seeing it himself. He looked around, noticing that household items remained. Some clothing remained. And a few other luxuries had been abandoned. It was obvious they had left in haste.

“How do you think they got away before you discovered the camp?” the general asked the captain.

Nodding to the lieutenant, the captain said, “He was with the team that found one of their guards. Let him show you.”

The lieutenant nodded.

“Yes, Captain.” The lieutenant walked down into the clearing in the center of the hollow. “We came across their last evacuation crew, all of them guards who did little else but watch this camp. In fact, they have no information of the whereabouts of their comrades. Their plan was to travel south to the Semple Forest to meet up with other insurgents they heard of. Apparently even they don’t know of their actual hiding spots.”

Gailert frowned. “Did you get anything useful out of them?”

Nodding, the lieutenant said, “Only a little before they died. Their leader coordinated with that Kleston from Herra but took no orders under him. They also had a magician, a witch, and a smith who was training an heir in case he died. Also, Kleston had a vested interest in one of the boys in the camp. We assume it was his son.”

“A son,” Gailert murmured. He then asked, “You said before they died. Did they also take poison?”

With a sigh, the lieutenant nodded. “They did. And worse, their thoughts were blasted hard to get through. They kept bombarding us with emotional bombs. It wasn’t until they were weak that we could get that much out of them.”

“What about Kleston’s son? Any identifying features?” Gailert asked hoping for a lead.

Shrugging, the lieutenant shook his head. “I’m sorry. All they remember about the boy is that he was getting tall, and he always wore a bandana on his head.”

“No name?” Gailert asked, praying for this lead.

“No, they had a name,” the lieutenant said. “But it didn’t sound like a name to me.”

Gailert cast him a glare. “But what is it?”

“Key,” the lieutenant said.

The captain set his hand on the general’s shoulder. “Did he say key?”

Nodding Gailert turned to confer with him. “That was what the man muttered before he died, right?”

“He wasn’t talking about the key he used to escape his cuffs. He was talking about his son.” The captain started to chuckle. “It was the one thing he wanted to protect the most.”

“He is our key to ending the raiders once and for all,” Gailert said.

*

It was new camp. There were new people to get used to, but the work was the same. As soon as their small group had contacted and met up with the insurgents near Wingsley, the camp leaders set the boys to work on assembling arrows. And as for Key, their party leaders were negotiating for him to take up swordsmithing again. Only, there was one problem. The insurgents near Winglsey already had three smiths.

Key stood as a mute listening to the men argue over whether they would even let him cast arrowheads let alone work near the forge. The smiths were brawny men, the size of monsters, going about bare-chested in the crisp spring air as if to brag about their pectorals and stamina. They looked down at Key, snorting as though they thought it was impossible that this silent one was even capable of picking up a hammer.

“Let’s make a deal,” the leader of the small escape group from the Herra Hills camp said to the smiths. “If our boy can make a better sword than the three of you, then he gets access to the forge full time to do whatever work he wants.”

The smiths laughed.

“You can’t be serious,” the broadest smith said. “I’m the swordsmith in this camp. Those two make the steel bows and arrowheads. If the kid wants to sit and watch, we’ll let him. But he is not to touch our tools.”

“That’s fine,” the Herra Hills man said. “We brought our own.”

Balking at the impertinence of the man who was now giving Key a confident nod, the smithy of the Wingsley Forest replied, “Did you bring your own iron?”

The Herra man glared at the smithy.

“Let’s see what he can do,” a calm voice behind them all said.

Key and the group leader from Herra turned to look at the man who had spoken.

Yet it wasn’t a man at all. A woman with long dark hair and a deep voice, flanked by a pair of guards gazed at them expectantly. She was obviously high born, dressed nicer than most of the people in their camp with silks and linen clothing. Walking behind her was Rainold, Tiler and Frad who had also come with them.

“These men brag about this boy’s ability. I want to see it,” she said.

Key bowed to her, feeling his knees shake. “I’ll need access to a forge as well as iron and carbon.”

The woman gave a slow nod. “They will be provided.”

With the standoff over, the smiths glared at Key and his friends. But the Herra boys went to get the tools from their packs.

Tiler helped Key set up his own forge, gathering large rocks from the campground and mountainside. The smiths still would not let Key use theirs regardless of what the camp leader had said. Rainold even volunteered to scrounge up some bellows as the other boys went in search for coal. Mostly, though, they stacked rocks and filled the forge with sand for a hearth. They had to use clay to hold the rocks together, and their first fire in it baked the clay until it was hard. From there Key set out his tools and prepared to make a sword that would impress the elegant woman. This, of course took a few weeks to even start. By then the other smiths had already produced a broadsword to meet up to their challenge.

Daily the smiths would walk by and cast jeers at Key as he labored. And daily Key would hammer away without so much as a word in retort. Since their arrival in the camp, those from the Herra Hills were regarded as outsiders. And though it was a not a war camp like that in the Herra Hills, but one made for refugees—a place where the leaders of the camp mostly focused on security for the people as well as to provided rest for traveling warriors on their way to other places—Key felt unsafe. He kept close to the boys he had come with. The Herra boys continued to assemble arrows, occasionally watching to see how far Key had gotten in his steel-making and then in his folding of the layers of what would be a new blade. It was a long process, one in which Key paused in occasionally and assembled parts of the hilt to give him a change of pace.

Key hammered the blade and honed the metal until it was strong and long. The sword turned out somewhat broader than most of the other swords he had made. And lifting it, it was perfectly balanced. All he had left to do was sharpen it.

“Hey kid! You done yet?” one of the smiths cast over to him with a laugh.

“Almost,” Key said, giving a slight nod.

The smith froze for just a second before snorting. “Huh. Well hurry it up. I finished mine in just a week. You’ve taken forever with yours.”

With a mild look, Key carried his sword to where he could sit and sharpen it. “You never rush art.”

The boys working nearby chuckled. They remembered their first impression of Key also. This one was much worse. It made him sound like a snob.

“Art?” The smith laughed. “You’re making a sword, kid. Looking good won’t make a difference in a battle.”

Key lifted his eye for moment to the man, then sighed, returning to his work. He picked up the whetstone. The contest didn’t matter to him anyway. He had made his own