Mickey Reichert: Flight of the Renshai

"Git 'way, boy!" one snarled, features close-set and sneering. "Or ya's next."

Calistin ignored the threat to continue studying what remained of the battle. The young men all wore stained and ragged clothing, their expressions fierce, aside from the one on the bottom. He turned Calistin a pleading look with large, light-colored eyes.

"All right," Calistin finally said. "I'm game. But I think you'll need a few more punks to make it interesting." He met the child's frightened gaze. "Your current fight doesn't seem very challenging. Why not use this one against me, too?" He gestured at the cowering boy, still pinioned beneath his attackers.

The biggest of the young men rose, towering over Calistin by a head and a half. "Ha, ha, ha. Thinks lots a yasself, don't ya, boy?"

The question seemed ludicrous. "Of course. Why wouldn't I?" Calistin smiled. "And I'm not a boy. I'm a man, by Renshai law."

The largest paled visibly in the moonlight. The others looked at him for guidance. Then, one of the ones holding down the boy, a powerfully built youngster with a wicked scar along one cheek spoke up, "Renshai or no, Parmille, we's kin take him."

The one assisting him hissed, "But he's blooded, Avra. Blooded."

Calistin waited with calm patience while the group discussed whether to attack him. He did not bother to correct their misconception. Hundreds of years before his birth, when the Renshai spent most of their time battling Northern neighbors or slaughtering their way across the Westlands, they achieved adulthood at the time of their first kill rather than by testing. Western beliefs remained rooted in the ferocity of those long-ago days. If these young men chose to believe a myth that made Calistin seem more dangerous, he saw no reason to dissuade them.

The one called Avra rose, revealing a lean, muscular figure as tall as Calistin's father. "Blooded's he?" He jerked a long knife from the folds of his ragged tunic. "Then let him bleed."

Other knives in other hands joined him, some with clear reluctance. The remaining youth still holding down the boy looked from his charge to his leaders, clearly uncertain whether to join the fight. Calistin judged their competence in that moment and found it lacking. Avra had strength and Parmille a hint of dexterity; but the others looked slow, cloddish, and weak. Calistin did not worry about any of them, even en masse. He wondered only why the redhead did not seize this moment to disarm his last tormentor. Perhaps he has serious injuries.

Calistin anticipated a sudden attack that never came. Instead, the young men gathered just beyond the range of a sword stroke, leading with their knives. They clearly had experience working together. Leisurely, Calistin watched their every movement, more bored than excited or amused. He did not yet feel threatened, so did not bother to draw a weapon.

"C'mon, Renshai," Avra sneered, his stance low and his movements measured. "Ain't ya even gonna defen' yasself?"

"Defend myself?" Calistin addressed Avra, though his gaze followed every man. "Against what?"

The last of the toughs released the boy on the ground. He slammed his heel into the boy's gut, driving breath from his lungs and sending him into a curled knot of pain. Only then, the last punk joined his friends. He hurriedly produced a short, crude blade.

Avra made a curt gesture. " 'gainst this!" All six lunged at Calistin in a ragged semicircle.

Calistin drew and cut. His blade wove between his adversaries, now licking through a grip, now tapping a hilt. He finished in the same fluid motion, his sword back in its sheath, their knives thumping to the ground, and every young man staring at his hand. Most disarming maneuvers would have claimed two or three fingers, and the Renshai finesse left them too startled to move or speak.

"More?" Calistin suggested as the group backed carefully away from him.

As one, they turned and fled, abandoning their knives, and their victim, in the dirt.

Calistin could have caught at least one hilt before it fell, but he had chosen not to do so. Renshai honored the blades of sparring partners and respected enemies, but these rowdies deserved none of his consideration. Instead, he stomped their blades into the dirt.

Finally, the redhead stood, face smeared with a sticky combination of blood, tears, and snot. A snarl of carrot-colored hair fell over one large eye to a mass of freckles on his cheek. A crooked nose gave his face an odd, lopsided look. Remarkably skinny, he looked more like a straw doll or scarecrow than a living boy.

Calistin spoke to him in the Renshai tongue, "My name is Calistin." Any tribesman would already know of him, but he could think of nothing better to say.

The boy took no notice of the words, though he apparently accepted them as a show of friendship. He ran to Calistin.

It was clearly a nonthreatening gesture, yet Calistin did not know how to react. He remained still as the boy hurled himself at Calistin and wrapped scrawny arms around him. "Thank ya's, thank ya's, thank ya's! Ya's 'mazin'! M'hero, thank ya's, thank ya's thank ya's!" He spoke Western with the same Erythanian accent as Parmille.

He's not Renshai. Calistin's interest in the boy evaporated. He tried to walk away, but the death grip on his legs made that impossible. "Go away."

The boy's grip tightened. "I owes ya m' life! M' life! Thank ya's so much, m'lord. M'savior!"

Calistin blamed exhaustion for causing him to make such a ridiculous assumption. His own father had no Renshai blood at all yet sported the reddish-blond hair usually associated only with Northmen. He wondered why it had never occurred to him to ask about Ra-khir's coloring in the past. Not that it bore any significance; nothing mattered to Calistin but his swordwork and becoming the best. "Let go of me."

The boy's voice muffled as he buried his face in Calistin's tunic. "I owes ya ever'thin'."

Calistin tried to pry the boy loose without aggravating his injuries. "You owe me nothing. Go away."

"Ever'thin'. I owes ya absolutely ever'thin', m'savior."

Tact and politeness had failed, so Calistin went for shock. "I only saved you by mistake."

"By mistake?" The boy looked up suddenly. "It don't-I means it shouldn't matter if-" A light dawned in his pale eyes. "It's 'cause a m'orange hair, ain't it?" He smiled broadly, his mouth enormous. "Ya's thinkin' I's… thinkin' I's…"

"… Renshai. Yes," Calistin admitted, managing to free one leg. "But you're not, are you?"

"Don't know. I's might be bein'."

Calistin rolled his eyes. He would not ordinarily waste this much time on anyone. "You'd know if you were."

"Mebbe not." The boy kept a death hold on Calistin's left leg, and the Renshai finally noticed the crimson mess the boy had smudged along Calistin's clothes where he had buried his face in gratitude. "I's been 'lone 'long's I kin 'member. Avra an' them ones ain't likin' me 'cause they says redhead Er'than'yans gots Renshai blood in 'em." He grinned. "An' 'cause I's taked this off 'em." He held up a wad of something white and green that reeked of rot and foliage.

Calistin made a mental note to ask Ra-khir about red-haired Erythanians when he found a chance. It might explain how Calistin had inherited so many of the ancient Renshai features despite his father. "What in Hel is that thing?"

"Cheese," the boy said triumphantly. "Want some?"

Calistin shoved the proffering hand away. "I'd rather eat my own puke."

The boy shrugged and raised the mass to his mouth.

Torn between revulsion and morbid curiosity, Calistin waited a full beat before slapping the moldy, unrecognizable lump from the boy's hand. "Don't eat that. It's disgusting!"

The redhead yelped and finally released Calistin. He hesitated, clearly torn between obedience and hunger.