Timir woke up covered in blood not his own. The three Arambans, whose blood it was, lay dead and dismembered around him, their crushed heads and bent armours telling tales of last night. Fighting to keep thoughts of Koru out of his mind, Timir stood up and cleaned himself up with the water in the trough as best he could. There was bloody grime under his fingernails and it caked his hair as well. He would need new clothes soon too. The rags he had worn for the past several weeks had seen better days.

The horse had bolted in the night. He would have to find a new one... right after he found Ugr. Understandably, someone had swiped his big ugly greatsword thinking him dead. This wasn’t the first town he had lost it in. It wouldn’t be the last.

Having enriched himself with a dagger and some gold from the dead mercenaries, Timir made his way out of the stable and into the mid-day sun of Sueila. A few boys saw him and fled. Something told him to follow them, so he did and soon found himself in a part of the market he had been in last evening. Had he been less drunk then, he might have noticed things other than the three men tailing him, like the richly coloured fabrics that lined the shopfronts, or the fact that the Sueilan flag had a goat’s head in the top right corner.

Timir swore and slipped into the lane next to the garment shop. He stripped off his bloodied shirt and entered the shop through a window, immediately startling an old man. Before he had time to make a noise, Timir threw his bag of gold at his feet and said, “This is Aramban gold. Can it buy me a clean shirt?”

The Aramban gold, it turned out, could buy him much more than a shirt. It could buy him robes and headgear to help him pass as a noble. It could even buy him smiles from the girls who dressed him and the caress of their soft hands. He allowed his thoughts to wander until better sense prevailed and he reined in his fantasies. He wasn’t cruel enough to inflict his darkness upon them. After spending a little more of the gold to buy their silence, he left the shop through the main entrance before adding his new colours to those of the mid-morning market crowd.

“Is that a sword or a pillar from the ruins of Samargund?” said Ahala, examining the blade that looked more stone than steel. “It would take three men to heft it, forget swinging it. What’s it made of?”

The two fortune hunters who had dragged the thing to her portside pawn shop looked at each other. “Enkum?” the short one suggested.

Ahala snorted. She had no idea what enkum looked like, so she decided to answer their bluff with one of her own.

“Wrong colour,” she said confidently.

“We got it from a dead man by the stables,” the tall one said, deciding to go with honesty. “There were some dead Arambans there too.”

Ahala looked up and considered him with a frown, “And you decided stealing from murdered Arambans was wise, did you?”

“Since when do you care?” he replied. “Will you take it or should we find another…”

Ahala held up her hand and resumed examining the red letters etched into the blade as she spoke. “No one here will risk buying something you stole from Arambans. That right there…” she pointed at a small ship anchored just past the pier, “…is an Aramban ship. Would you like me to point you out to them? Maybe you can discuss what enkum is going for these days.”

The tall man froze, then recovered in time to grab the short one by the collar, who seemed like he was about to bolt. He was about to say something when Ahala spotted a tall nobleman in rich greens turn the corner. She instantly thought him odd for he had no servants behind him, nor a carriage of any kind.

“That is one ugly sword,” Timir said loudly as he got closer. “Are you selling it?” The two men turned and stared at him. The short one was the first to run, away from the market. The tall one ran too, but in the other direction. The stranger looked at him go with an expression that Ahala thought was resigned sadness.

“I take it the sword is yours,” Ahala said. “You don’t look Aramban to me.”

“Then I bought all this for nothing,” Timir said, feigning regret as he gestured at his garb.

“If you wanted to pass for Aramban, you should have bought purple.”

“I did, a few moons ago, in Aramba itself. Didn’t work. They sentenced me to death.”

“You don’t seem dead.”

“That is because I made my escape by killing a whole lot of them…” Timir said and pointed at the greatsword lying on the counter between them. “…with that.”

Ahala took measure of the man before her. He wasn’t bad to look at despite the scruffy hair and the sad eyes, but she doubted even he was strong enough to wield the monstrosity that lay before her.

“Tell me,” she said. “Is this sword made of enkum?”

“Could be daitya bone for all I know,” Timir replied. “I stole it from a temple in Banki.”

“Banki?” Ahala said, doing her best not to look impressed. “Is that to the east?”

“Yes,” Timir replied. “Far east.”

“Is that where you are from?”

“No. I am from even farther east.”

“And what brings you here?”

“The need to go west.”

“What’s in the west?” Ahala asked, but Timir didn’t answer. His attention had been claimed by commotion coming from the ship’s general direction. Ahala figured she wasn’t going to get much more out of the stranger. Not that she cared. Anyone the Arambans wanted dead was alright in her book.

“The sword is yours,” she said. “If you can manage it.”

“That’s my curse…” Timir said and hesitated.

“Ahala.”

“That is my curse Ahala. I always manage,” Timir said, a gentle sadness colouring his words, just as the Arambans stepped into the shadow of the awning.

“It’s over rakshas,” said their leader who was wearing purple, unlike the rest of the Arambans who were in green so much darker than Timir’s new robes, they might as well be wearing black.

“It’s been over before,” Timir replied, sounding absent-minded.

The man in purple swore. Timir thought it sounded too coarse to be high Aramban. What followed was a chant though. He knew this because his skin began to tingle and the hair on his arms stood on end. Magic!

To Be Continued…

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New chapters are published every Monday. (May 18 onwards)