Category: Arn

After his confrontation with Nevo in the training yard, Arn began to take his training more seriously.  It was easier without the guard treating him like a slave—and Master Quenden’s insights might have played a secondary role in earning Arn’s attention.  Most days, he spent the morning chopping wood with Gamden and then moved on to sparring once his muscles were sweaty and sore.  He would sleep in a state of fatigue that thankfully robbed his mind of visits to the dreamworld. Continue reading Arn 63

A dry, salty wind tore at Arn’s scarred face as he drifted across the Deep once more.  The sky tilted between day and night—ahead of Arn was a low moon and behind him was the setting sun.  With a long oar and bulging muscles, Arn pulled his raft across the scattered waves for hours.  Glaring at one another across the ocean plane, the sun and moon did not set.

Arn finally grew weary as he began to remember that he had once been weak.  He had nearly starved to death, hadn’t he? Continue reading Arn 62

They had taken Arn and Gamden to a strange wooden house with a slanted roof.  The place was surrounded by bare tree trunks, similar to the siege wall that surrounded the smouldering stone settlement.  Between the wall of tree trunks and the wooden house was a yard as wide as the central campfire area in Razaad.  A few small shacks were built here, and Arn and Gamden were given one to sleep during the nights; they found a pile of several cots inside, a small fire for light and cooking, and a single, small box for storage of their clothes.  Master Quenden’s guards had passed Arn a pile of tunics and trousers upon their arrival. Continue reading Arn 61

Emrez made Arn and Gamden man the oars this time, as he captained their little rowboat across the last few waves to the shore.  They were landing slightly east of the smouldering city, just outside the wooden wall that Ponark had called the “siege wall.”  Yet another term with which Arn was unfamiliar.  It was harsh labour under the scalding sun; Arn’s muscles—regrown on fish and a salted meat called “boar”—were glistening with sweat by the time he put down the oars.  Ponark grabbed a wooden platform that extended into the water and pulled them alongside it.  Others quickly tied ropes around wooden pegs on the deck of the platform while Arn wondered how such a thing could have been built, into the ocean, like that.  Then Arn and Gamden were brought ashore under the protection of a dozen of Emrez’s armed fighters. Continue reading Arn 60

Pain.  Someone had burned a hole right through Arn, he realized, as he emerged from another restless night of the dreamworld.  It had been two weeks since Emrez had brought Arn this suffering, but that wound never let up, it seemed.  He lay face down on Morlo’s bottom bunk and groaned as he tried to sit up.

Ponark yanked him off the bed and Arn floundered across the floorboards of the doctor’s quarters.  Gamden yelled defensively, rising out of the chair in which he slept.  Ponark yanked the curved sword off his belt and pointed it at Arn’s head.  Gamden was forced to stop, glowering at the second-in-command. Continue reading Arn 59

Arn silently sat in the rowboat as the sailors got situated.  As two others took the oars, Captain Emrez looked at Arn and ordered one of the crewmen to pass him an oar.  Arn shrugged and grabbed it.  He was still not as strong as he used to be, but Emrez was giving him the chance.  Gamden held out a hand, but Arn shook his head and plunged the oar into the water.  Emrez’ blank expression quirked with a smile, and then he looked back at his ship. Continue reading Arn 58

For two days, Arn and the strange crew of the ship continued across the Deep.  They passed a few more tiny islands, but it wasn’t until the third day that Arn saw it.  He was helping a man loop up a rope into a manageable size when his eyes caught a dark mass on the horizon: land.  He stepped toward it without even noticing his own movement.  The land on the horizon was nothing like the little places they had passed, nor was it like the land where Arn had grown up—Razaad.  It started as a brown smudge on the horizon, reaching from the rising sun past the limits of his vision. Continue reading Arn 57

Arn had to sit down.  He had been getting stronger, truly, but a day of helping on the ship’s deck still bent him badly out of shape.  He slumped against two barrels near the mast of the ship and let out his breath.  Gamden had sat down a few minutes ago.  Though the other survivor had recovered a little quicker after their initial rescue, Arn was more driven to get his strength back.  He didn’t trust these sailors, but he also knew they were bringing him to an enormous place.  Arn had seen several of these enormous watercrafts during his life—if each travelled over the Deep for as long as this vessel… how much larger was the world than Razaad?  He once would have faced such uncertainty unflinching.  But those were during times when he could have run for all day and night without rest. Continue reading Arn 56

A few weeks ago, Arn had thought that a coconut was the strangest food to eat.  That had been before Gamden and he were rescued from their sandy graves to be carried across the Deep in a large wooden building called a kasad, a ship.  Now, Arn had experienced food far stranger—something called an orange, peeled from a tough skin and sectioned out like some creature’s organs.  It tasted sour and sweet at the same time.  Morlo said it would restore Arn’s strength.  He had communicated it using a mix of words Arn did not comprehend and his body language.  Strength—or karu—was conveyed using a flexed bicep, though neither Morlo or Arn had much muscle on them. Continue reading Arn 55

“I caught one!” shrieked Gamden.  He lifted a small grey fish over his head as he cheered incoherently and stumbled back toward the shore.  He lost his footing twice on the way and Arn feared he would lose their first meat two days. Continue reading Arn 54