Chapter 9 - Part 7

Bern hurried to the open area in front of the Sivis Station’s front porch. His mother had kept him late for a few extra chores, and he was worried about meeting the other children. In Merylsward there was a custom that went back more years than anyone but a dwarf could remember that allowed children under the age of ten some free time to play after lunch. Bern was almost eight years old, and he didn’t want to be cut out of the fun.

The sandy-haired human boy turned a corner and found that thankfully, everyone else was still there. Bern played with a group of about twenty youngsters between the ages of seven and ten. Some were human like him, some were shifters, one was a goblin, and one was a half-orc girl that Bern kind of liked in a way that he didn’t understand. Two other boys, both human and only slightly older than Bern, waved to him.

“Hey Bern,” said Vroyd. Vroyd always spoke in a quiet voice, and he had a missing pinky. He was the innkeeper’s nephew. He had lost the pinky and his parents when a wizard from Aundair had flown above their town and unleashed a strong of magical lightning bolts that blew buildings up.

“Hey,” Bern said a little breathlessly. “Everyone else got here late too, huh?”

“Naw, they’re all just making cheese!” said the other boy, Dannick. Dannick’s father ran a dairy farm, and to the tall and thin boy ‘making cheese’ meant running your mouth and not actually doing anything. “Nobody can agree on what to play.”

“What does Kurska want to play?” Bern asked quickly.

Dannick laughed out loud, and even Vroyd smiled a little. “Bern-and-Kurska, sitting on a dragon!” Dannick began to chant. “She offered him a cup, and he drank a whole flagon!”

“Shut up!” Bern snapped. “I was just asking. If you don’t know…”

“Of course I know!” Dannick said, trying to puff out his thin chest. Dannick always knew things, even when he didn’t. “She wants to play Tharashk, what do you think?”

Bern looked over at the tall girl with the cascading hair all done up in blue and green ribbons. Kurska had biceps like a teenage human boy, and jutting lower canines that marked her father’s race. Kurska’s father worked in Merylsward’s only mine, digging iron, and her human mother was a successful seamstress who always dressed her little girl in the best of clothes. Kurska was making an argument, and losing, that the group should play Tharashk again. Two shifter girls who always disagreed with her were trying to convince everyone else to never play Tharashk again, ever, ever. The girls were very into talking about how things should be, and the boys were so bored they were kicking rocks around.

“I’m playing Tharashk, I don’t care whether everyone plays with me or not!” Bern said loudly, walking over to Kurska and the shifter girls. Both girls glared at him, and one of them shifted, growing sharp teeth. Bern stood his ground, knowing that if Rrro – the girl with the teeth – would ever bite him, her mother would tan her bottom good.

“Great!” Kurska said. “These two can argue, everyone who wants to play let’s start down the Orien road!” A cheer went up from the bored children, and most everyone followed Kurska and Bern down the road. Kurska smiled down at Bern, who was trying to keep up with her. “That was pretty well-harvested, Bern, thanks.”

“It was nothing,” Bern said, blushing. Behind him, Dannick guffawed loudly.

Soon the children were just south of town, with the buildings still in view. The forest on both sides of the road was thick, but not too thick to play. A chanting rhyme went up to determine who in the group would be the first runner. The runner would then take off, running or hiding as they liked, and then the others would attempt to find him or her. The one who found the runner was declared the Tharashk, winning the game. Then, time permitting, another runner would be chosen.

The chant ended on Nuck. The excited little goblin jumped up in the air, clapping his hands. Some of the other children were disappointed. Nuck wasn’t very strong or bright, but he was very good at hiding and stepping quietly. Only Kurska looked excited at the challenge. “Okay, we’re counting to twenty!” yelled one girl. Nuck took off to the west of the road, disappearing in the underbrush. The children counted loudly together, but slowly. Everyone always gave Nuck extra time to do anything, because their parents were always on their necks to be nice to Nuck. Nuck’s parents had been lynched by Aundarian soldiers who hated goblins, and he now lived with his grandfather, a goatherder, and his grandmother, who helped cook at the inn. More than one child was convinced if a dragon attacked the town, all the parents would demand that everyone be nice to Nuck before anything else.

“Nineteen,” everyone said together. They looked at each other, wondering who would be the first to say ‘twenty.’ Finally someone started to say it, and they all yelled “Twenty!”

Some children dove right into the woods, others went north and in, and others south.
Bern went south down the road, mostly because Kurska did. After a minute or two, every other child had turned right into the woods but the half-orc girl and the human boy.

“Aren’t you going in yet?” Bern asked her.

“Nope,” she said. “I’m going down to the culvert. Nuck’s gonna go to the creek, and then go through the pipe under the road. He can fit real easy. He’ll hide on the other side for a while until he wins the game. I’m going to cut him off.”

“How do you know he’s planning that?” Bern asked.

“Cause I’m the one who told him it was such a good idea!” she laughed. “You have to think ahead to win Tharashk! Didn’t you read about Delegado in the Korranberg Chronicle?”

“My Dad says that the Chronicle writes a lot of guff,” Bern said. He didn’t want Kurska not to like him, but his Dad was his Dad, and Dad knew lots.

“My Dad heard from an orc bard that Delegado is the best hunter in Tharashk, and that the papers don’t even touch half of it, and that he always plans ahead,” was her response. “Here’s the culvert! Come on!”

Bern started to follow her but stopped. “You hear that?” he said, pointing down the road. After a moment she did.

“Horse steps and wagon wheels!” she said, giddily. “The Orien caravan!”

Both children waited anxiously by the culvert, not wanting to miss their chance to see the caravan, but not wanting to miss a chance to grab Nuck, either.

They were soon rewarded. The caravan’s frontriders came around the bend first, Wardens of the Wood on Vadalis magebred horses carrying long lances and shortbows. The riders grinned and waved at the kids who waved back. Then the first wagon came into view. A loud man with fancy blue clothes was talking to a shifter woman in studded leather armor who was ignoring him on top of the first wagon. Six wagon followed in all, along with several other riders, some armed, some not. Ponies and horses carried merchants and one group of refugees – a half-elven family obviously looking to escape the war by heading deep within the Reaches, and even as the wagons passed the children, they began to slow down and disgorge their passengers. People cooped up after a long ride wanted air, and wanted to walk into Merylsward by themselves. Kruska and Bern saw human, shifters, half-elves, gnomes, and one dwarf, all of varying ages, begin to dismount and mill about.

“Wow, this is neat!” Nuck said, crawling out from under a bush to stand between his two friends.

“I got you!” Kruska said, tagging him. Her enthusiastic thump sent Nuck reeling backwards. “I’m the Tharashk!” She glared at Bern, daring him to argue.

“Look,” Bern said with a dry throat, raising a shaky hand.

The last wagon had paused to their right, as the people inside began to get out. Rather than the relieved looks that the other passengers had, they were throwing suspicious glances back at the one person who was currently disembarking.

He wore clothes, loose things of simple weave that some traveling pilgrims of Balinor were fond of, which at first glance made on think he was humanoid. But his feet were bare, as was his head. There was no mistaking the metal parts that glistened in the midday sun, or the three fingers made of stone and metal that gripped a tall walking staff. His belt, a sturdy thing with an ivory-colored central thread, held some weapons that the children had never seen. One was a pointy thing like a fork with pronglike extensions, and another looked like a miniature scythe. The warforged did not drip blood or wear a string of ears as they had heard in the stories, but he seemed capable and confident.

“Ah, so does anyone know where the inn might be located?” he asked his fellow passengers. They sniffed or gave him a glare, and moved away from him without answering. The warforged looked up to query the driver of the wagon, but that worthy, a hireling of House Orien, pretended not to notice the warforged’s predicament as he clicked the reins to get the horses moving again. In short order the warforged was left alone on the road, watching the others walk into town. Comments along the lines of ‘happy to be rid of him’ came floating back from the crowd.

“Are you a warforged?” Kurska asked him suddenly.

The warforged turned his head towards the children, and they all took a step back at his attention. “Hello,” he said. “Do not be afraid. I am Iron Orphan.”

“Are you a warforged?” the half-orc girl asked stubbornly.

To Bern the warforged seemed to sigh. “I prefer to call myself lawforged, but yes I am of the race that you call warforged. I can assure you that most of the stories of brutality that you have heard are overblown. I mean you no harm.”

“Which army do you fight for?” Nuck asked, hiding behind Bern.

“None,” the thing that called itself Iron Orphan said. “I do not fight except when I have no choice.”

“Your owner lets you get away with that?” Kurska asked.

“I have no owner,” the warforged told them. “I am a free being, although some take exception to that. I had hoped that the Eldeen Reaches was a place where people could understand freedom.”

“We are free!” Bern insisted. “It’s the wizards in Aundair that want to make us slaves!”

“Then why can’t I be free?” it asked him, with a humorous tone in his voice. “I do not wish to be a slave.” Bern and Kurska looked at each other, but neither had an answer.

“Why do you call yourself Iron Orphan?” Nuck asked suddenly, his voice serious.

“I have no parents,” Iron Orphan explained.

“Did your parents get hung, too?” the goblin asked in a whisper.

“I was made in a forge,” the warforged said with sympathy. “It was predominantly made of iron. I named myself because I thought it fit. I am sorry about your parents, but I am not part of the great war that rends Khorvaire apart.”

Nuck nodded. “My granny works at the inn, I’ll take you there if you want.”

“Me too,” Bern said.

“Me too,” Kurska said, walking forward of the other two. “Come on, let’s go!”

Bemused, the warforged followed the three children who brought him into the town like he was some prize that they had found.