Refugees

  Refugees

  Mud, Rocks, and Trees Series Book 1

  By R.A. Denny

  Copyright 2017 R.A. Denny

  All Rights Reserved

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  CONTENTS

  Title

  Prologue - Gold

  Chapter 1 - Mud

  Chapter 2 - Trees

  Chapter 3 - Mud

  Chapter 4 - Rocks

  Chapter 5 - Mud

  Chapter 6 - Grass

  Chapter 7 - Trees

  Chapter 8 - Mud

  Chapter 9 - Rocks

  Chapter 10 - Trees

  Chapter 11 - Mud

  Chapter 12 - Trees

  Chapter 13 - Rocks

  Chapter 14 - Trees

  Chapter 15 - Grass

  Chapter 16 - Trees

  Chapter 17 - Rocks

  Chapter 18 - Mud

  Chapter 19 - Trees

  Chapter 20 - Mud

  Chapter 21 - Trees

  Chapter 22 - Mud

  Chapter 23 - Grass

  Chapter 24 - Rocks

  Chapter 25 - Mud

  Chapter 26 - Trees

  Chapter 27 - Mud

  Chapter 28 - Rocks

  Chapter 29 - Mud

  Chapter 30 - Trees

  Chapter 31 - Mud

  Chapter 32 - Trees

  Chapter 33 - Grass

  Chapter 34 - Trees

  Chapter 35 - Rocks

  Chapter 36 - Mud

  Chapter 37 - Trees

  Chapter 38 - Rocks

  Chapter 39 - Trees

  Map West

  Map East

  Character List

  Also by R.A. Denny

  Copyright

  To my son Ryan who encouraged me to do what I love and patiently helped to make my dreams come true.

  And many thanks to the talented people who kept me believing:

  Ryan, Amanda, Cleve, Drew, KC, Mark, Brian, and Eva

  Prologue

  Gold - Bladar

  Bladar glanced around one last time to be sure he had not been followed. Seeing nobody, he strode the last few feet to the stable door and pushed it open. He was met with the familiar aroma of horse sweat, manure and hay. As he stepped inside, the horses within began tossing their heads, stamping their hooves and snorting through their noses, breaking the silent darkness. One rammed her chest against the stall door. Bladar froze. He reached inside his long brown robe, his face still shrouded in the shadow of its hood, and grasped his axe handle, as his eyes adjusted to the dim light and he strained for any sound of human treachery. His spies had assured him that only one man had entered the stable, but spies like any man can be bought for the right price.

  “Do you always have that effect on horses?” a man’s voice called to him from the back, followed by a chuckle. Bladar relaxed a bit, but still clutched his axe under his robe.

  “Never. But, I do not cage my horses,” he said.

  Bladar clucked gently to the horses, trying in vain to quiet them. His senses were still on alert as he approached the tall man with the curled beard who was standing near the back wall where the horse tack hung, cloaked similarly in simple brown wool. It appeared that the man had, in fact, come alone. Bladar pulled back his hood to reveal a distinctive hooked nose on his face and a mane of hair between the closely shaved sides of his head.

  “Or, maybe the mares think you’re a stallion,” the bemused Zoltov said to his face.

  Bladar prudently ignored the disguised emperor’s insult. Yet even after all these years, it awoke in him the old desire to bury his axe in Zoltov’s face.

  “It appears the horses sense some danger of which we are unaware, Your Majesty. Horses are smarter than people.”

  “Some people, perhaps,” the ruler of the Tzoladian Empire retorted, yet as he spoke, he lifted his right hand with his fingers apart, making the gesture to combat any evil portended. Another horse snorted and pushed against her stall, oblivious to the ruler’s sign.

  Bladar held out a rolled parchment to Zoltov, who had known him immediately because of his hooked nose, though they had not met face to face for many years. Bladar wondered about the need for such secrecy in this meeting. The two leaders usually communicated through messengers.

  “Here is that which you seek.”

  Emperor Zoltov took the parchment. He quickly tucked it away inside his long coarse robe, without reading its contents, and without saying a word.

  “I await your instructions,” Bladar said. His piercing eyes calmly met those of Zoltov.

  Swallowing hard, the emperor considered for a moment and then retrieved the item he had just put away, slipped the string off, and broke the clay seal. Next, he unrolled the scroll and glanced at the writing.

  “I thought the Society never wrote their secrets,” the emperor commented.

  “I…requested…that he transcribe it for you.”

  The emperor nodded in approval as he raised one corner of his mouth in an uneven grin, then looked back at the scroll and silently read:

  In the last days, when the new star glows in the skies;

  Out of the depths of the rocks we call. Hear our cries!

  As earth’s secrets unfold, he who sleeps will arise;

  Three seals guard the land where the hidden treasure lies.

  Rock soars out of the air; trees float over the seas;

  Every man in the city buried by mud flees;

  So, let the Word be spread, so let the Truth be known

  When the son of a duck, the heir, takes the throne.

  Through the bog roll the stones, through the log flows a breeze;

  Build the Kingdom by gathering mud, rocks, and trees.

  Emperor Zoltov tried to hide his shaking hands as he looked up from his reading. The prophecy confirmed his worst fears. The brother he had buried alive, who haunted his dreams, was going to arise from the tomb and claim revenge by gathering together mud, rocks and trees. Zoltov decided it would be too late to act, if he waited until after the new star appeared. “Did you read this?” he asked.

  “No.” Bladar stared into the emperor’s grey eyes, standing straight, with dignity.

  Zoltov decided that the leader of the Sparaggi had probably never learned to read, even if he had been a royal hostage in Tzoladia as a boy. “Very well. Take proper care of the man who wrote it.”

  “He has already taken care of himself, Your Majesty.”

  “Then he has saved you the trouble. Have the seeds been planted for ‘The Emperor’s Harvest’?”

  “Yes.”

  “Very well. Begin the Harvest immediately.”

  “Consider it done,” Bladar said.

  The emperor produced a heavy bag and placed it on the floor between them. “The balance will be based on how many webbed feet you bring me. It’s simple: the more feet, the more gold.”

  It occurred to Bladar that he could kill the emperor now, flee on one of the horses and set the others free. But, he had no desire to settle in the city as the new emperor, and he could think of no one else he preferred on the throne, as long as the emperor continued to supply him with gold.

  “It is always a pleasure to serve you.” Bladar gave a quick, almost unperceivable bow and prepared to leave.

  “One more thing,” the emperor said. So there was more. Bladar had thought there would be more.

  “Do you remember Baskrod?”

  “Our old teacher? Not someone easy to forget! Do you think he is still alive?”

  “Find him. There may be a duck boy almost the age of a man with him. If so, capture both of them. If they possess a blue cylinder seal, take it. If not, torture them to find it. Once you have the seal, kill them. Bring the seal to me, in person, alone.”<
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  This was what Bladar had expected. He had to work to keep his eyes from smiling. With a stone face he lied, “I was rather fond of the old teacher. Why should I do this? What’s in it for me?”

  “Metal stirrups made by the rock men. Enough for all your horses.” The emperor removed a finely wrought set of stirrups from the wall behind him and handed it to Bladar.

  “And my men?” Bladar asked as he admired the stirrups.

  “Enough for their horses too.”

  “Do you want me to kill the old man and the boy quickly or slowly?” Bladar laughed.

  “That’s up to you. Be creative. Just bring me that seal.”

  “You’ve got a deal.” The two childhood enemies shook hands.

  The clandestine meeting was over. Bladar hefted the bag of gold and turned to go. As he walked out, he noticed that all the horses had grown quiet. Yet, their agitation lingered in Bladar’s mind. They sensed something, but what it was he did not know.

  Chapter 1

  Mud - Amanki

  Baskrod, the old fisherman, had repeatedly warned me of the approaching danger, fervently entreating me to escape even if nobody else followed, but I had chosen not to believe him. I did not want to leave behind our land and the home that had been my father’s and his father’s before that. Like the other villagers, I preferred to soak in a comfortable mud bath of denial.

  I’ll never know exactly why I left the house that evening, though every detail of the night is forever baked into my mind. My family was sleeping on the flat lower roof of our home, with the hope that the winds might take pity upon us and send us a fleeting breeze to cool a few beads of sweat for even a second. The full expanse of the sky seemed to be lying on top of me, pressing the heat into my body. My sweat collected on my back and then dripped off onto my reed mat as if the sky had squeezed the drops from me.

  I had dreamed that same dream again: the one where I rode a strange creature that Baskrod called a “lion,” through the streets of a great city. Now I lay awake studying the pictures Baskrod had shown me in the sky. The stars seemed brighter and closer to the earth than usual. I located the Lion Constellation and traced the path of stars that formed the body. They spread out to the east, as if crouching to leap into the western sky.

  The sound of my mother stirring nearby seeped into my thoughts. She rose and padded across the rooftop, placing her small webbed feet carefully, so as not to awaken my brothers, my sister and me. She was probably thirsty. I knew I was. I thought about following her, but instead returned my attention to the stars which formed a bridge across the sky.

  When she returned, she knelt beside me and handed me a cup of water. “Try to get your sleep Amanki. In the morning, the harvest begins,” she whispered.

  “All right, Mother. Thank you.”

  I drank the water, and pretended to go back to sleep. In Arvuk, sons of farmers grew up, found a wife and then farmed the field that their father’s fathers had farmed. They did not study the stars, except to learn basic things like when to plant crops. My desire to learn had always made my mother fear that I would try to overreach my position in life. To do so was a dangerous thing. My yearning to know more tugged at the ropes that anchored me to all that was familiar. Yet, I had been unwilling to leave with Baskrod, at least until after harvest.

  I withered under the heat until I heard the deep, even breaths of my mother’s sleep return. Then, wearing only my knee-length linen tunic, I carefully picked my way across the rooftop past her and my siblings, down the stairs, and out into our courtyard. Quietly, so as not to awaken the oxen and sheep sleeping in the backroom, I paused to pour another drink of water from one of the clay jars in the corner. Feeling refreshed, I headed outside, away from the clusters of brick houses and into the fields of barley that had ripened to the point that the color matched my hair.

  On that cloudless night, I was restless. Every year, the closer to harvest time, the more intensely I felt the tension in my shoulders. It was as if I was carrying a bale of barley on my back. Much of the hard physical labor was over, so one would think I would relax, but I knew that if the wild winds were to awaken, it would be on a night like tonight. Those gentle, cooling breezes we longed for could come and flee, intensifying without warning, letting loose the boozing Berserker. When this happened, the storm god would fill the cup that was our land until the river was so inebriated that it swirled over its low banks forgetting all inhibitions in its drunken rage. Older villagers told of times when the Berserker had whipped Ansul, the river god, into such a frenzy that he had swallowed the houses, crops, and lives of entire villages. Homes that had kept people safe one moment had disintegrated into a muddy goo the next.

  I was anxious for the dawn to come. Then my brothers, cousins and I would grab our sickles and begin swiping the grain together. At last, the air would be filled with the happy songs of harvest.

  As I walked between the irrigated fields, I paused to scoop up some cool mud with one of my duck like feet and then poured the wet earth across the top of the other. The mud felt soothing on the broad webs of skin connecting my long toes as I stretched them. Looking up, I gazed out across the moonlit land. Like dough that had been rolled out flat to the ends of a hearthstone, the mud covered plains spread to touch the sky at the edges. Unless men could find a way to divine the future, the sky would never offer enough warning to them. The killing storms always moved in so quickly that nobody could outrun them. Here in Arvuk, there was no higher ground to which we could escape.

  I shifted my shoulders and focused on the stars above. That’s when I first saw the new star, shining brightly. It appeared out of nowhere. This was not the barley star, which had risen in the sky the week before. No, this was different. This star was in the Duck Constellation just as Baskrod predicted. It must be the star from the prophecy, I thought excitedly. It was brighter than any of the other stars and almost seemed to breathe. Baskrod would want to know about this star.

  I changed my path and turned to follow the sun baked trails between the irrigated fields, toward Baskrod’s hut, which was in the reeds by the river just beyond the northeastern edge of the village. A dream had first led me to Baskrod when I was a small boy. Every summer since, I had spent many happy mornings after the harvest was complete, fishing with Baskrod on his boat in the Lanaduk River. On those trips, Baskrod had taught me more than just how to fish by throwing a net and how to sail by watching the stars. I had learned about the waters below and the waters above, but I still longed to learn the deeper secrets hidden in the canopy of myriad stars and in the caverns of my repetitive dreams.

  Although Baskrod was like a grandfather to me, the other villagers had always disliked him. Their hostility had formed not just because he was a foreigner with slender feet and un-webbed toes, but because he worshiped Adon, a faceless god who ruled over all. Each year, after the harvest festival, Baskrod appeared bringing fascinating stories of faraway places. When the time came, I hurried down to the village courtyard knowing I would find him cheerily selling fresh and dried fish from baskets, as he stood leaning on his fishing trident. He wore a white fringed robe of linen over a red tunic of shimmering cloth, and a red cap of felt with its top curled forward. His white braided wishbone beard almost reached his waist.

  After staying for a turn of the moon, Baskrod sailed away, but always reappeared the next summer as promised. I listened with interest as he described strange lands where huge trees and rocks practically reached the stars.

  But this year, so much had been different. He had arrived early, before the harvest. Standing in the courtyard, he had warned passersby that fleet footed enemies would descend on the people of Arvuk, skin them, and drink their blood. What made matters worse, he attempted to convince the men of our village that these destroyers were being sent upon orders of Emperor Zoltov. For years, my people had lived in peace along the Lanaduk River under the protection of the great emperor, because we always paid the full tribute of barley. The emperor would have no reason
to turn against us, especially just before harvest. It made no sense at all.

  Frustrated when nobody would listen, Baskrod had stopped selling fish. Instead, he stood shaking his trident in the air as people passed by: “Run for the water! Escape while you can!” he cried.

  I had asked Baskrod if he had foreseen in the stars the arrival of these demons. With a faraway look on his face, in a haunted voice, he had answered, “No, I have seen them on the ground. Amanki, you must believe me. Leave with me, while you still can.”

  I would have more easily believed his prediction if he had divined it from the stars. My mother and oldest brother ordered me to stay away from him. They, along with many others, thought he had either lost his mind or had become a dangerous dissident. I did not know what to think, so I chose not to think. For weeks, my denial had felt like soothing mud, but it was really a quicksand that had sucked me down into its depths.

  If only we had believed.

  When the deluge came that night, it came more quickly than the Berserker. I had almost reached Baskrod’s hut with my news of the star when I heard from the north a distant noise like thunder that just kept coming. The ground shook below me. I froze in fear. In the light of the moon, the field seemed to wash toward me. A wave of beasts covered in mud rapidly bore down upon me. Blood rushed to my feet. My heart started pounding. I took off in a run, but in my haste, I tripped. I landed headlong in a shallow irrigation ditch, splattering mud everywhere.

  They were upon me. I heard the stampeding beasts’ hooves beat like drums to my back, side and then front, above and all around me. I lay flat, not daring to look up. Clods of dirt hit my backside, and the mud in the ditch oozed across my body as I prayed to Adon that I would not be crushed. The beasts snorted, grunted and yelled, their voices at times sounding almost like us.

  Soon these sounds were joined by frightened screams coming from my village. I didn’t dare to even breathe. I wanted to get up and run back to my family, but kept telling myself, Wait, be still, wait. As I lay in the mud, terrified, for what seemed like the turn of a new moon, I realized that I had left my house without my slings, so I had nothing to use as a weapon. I felt like a coward. I could at least try to warn the others. But no, the time for warning was past. Baskrod had tried, and nobody had listened. Now, like the Berserker himself, the beasts had overflowed across our village, leaving us no time to escape.