Chapter 5 (continued)

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                  The Tale of the Twins Siti

"As I said, Urki and I were born but moments apart. I was the elder, Urki, slightly the larger. Our parents were fairly well-off. Nothing particularly special, except that they were our parents which made them very special to us. My father was a merchant. He was roguish in an honest sort of way and had an incredibly inquisitive nature. That translated into his business by pushing him to become an importer. He sold an amazing assortment of exotic goods from faraway lands, anything that caught his interest. At different times his stock encompassed all sorts of different goods, including scrolls and books as well as spices, objets d'art, and fine imported arms and armor.

My mother was a warm, loving woman who cared for us and ran our father's home. We were wealthy enough that she had two servants to assist her in her tasks, a housekeeper and a tutor who was responsible for educating Urki and me. The housekeeper was a gregarious old soul who bustled about chattering away all the time and who treated the two of us as if we were her own favorite grandchildren, catering to our every whim and spoiling us with bits of fruit and sweetmeats between meals when our parents weren't looking.

Although he was married to the housekeeper, our tutor was a different sort. Gruff and quiet, he was a self-educated ex-guard officer from the merchant marine. Unlike his wife, he never spoiled either Urki or me. Instead, he pushed us to the limit of our abilities in every way that he could. He taught us to read, to cipher and even to dance. He taught us the ways of the sea and how to sail small craft. He taught us how to use weapons and when to use them. He taught us folklore and herb lore. The gods only know how he came by some of the knowledge that he possessed, but he knew more about a wider assortment of things than any other single person I've ever come across.

Unfortunately, Urki and I were not always ideal students for him, however. We were after all children and rather mischievous ones at that. Whenever we tried to escape the lessons he had set for us though, he somehow always seemed knew what we were up to. That was especially true when we were very young. Whatever plot we hatched died at its birth. No sooner had we devised a plan for mischief and begun to implement it than he would appear, quash it and give us a quick paddling and set us once more to our schooling. As we grew older, we would occasionally get away with something. Whether that was because we were actually devising cleverer plans, or because our tutor allowed it as a sort of confidence-builder, was something we never knew.

We still don't. Our tutor, like the housekeeper, and like our beloved parents is, you see, dead.

We were all citizens of Meratz Khahok in Jillette. Ah, I see you've heard of it. Urki and I were only eight years old when the raiders came, but we still understood the gravity of the situation when we saw the harbor going up in flames. Our father had left early that morning for his business and still hadn't returned home when the onslaught took place as the sun went down. I don't know whether he was at the harborside warehouse or at the shop in the center of town. Neither my brother or I ever saw him again after he broke fast with us, and we never learned for certain whether he was slain defending the city with a sword in hand or whether he was burned alive in the fires which raged through the city that night. We don't even know with surety that he really did die. But since we have never met anyone else who survived the quayside conflagration or the assault on the city center, it seems very likely that he perished.

The only reason Urki and I didn't is because of the combined efforts of our mother and our tutor and a kind-hearted pirate. Yes, a kind-hearted pirate. I know that sounds far-fetched, but despite the barbarity and depravity of the raiders who burned Meratz Khahok, there was one among them who was unwilling to slaughter children.

Let me tell you more about what happened and you will see for yourself. You must know the general outlines of what happened in Meratz Khahok. Nearly everyone does. An enormous fleet of raiders assembled and sacked the city. They sacked it as no city has ever been sacked before or since. Looting and pillaging were the order of the day along with side dishes of slaughter and kidnap. The raiders sliced through what resistance there was like a knife through butter on a warm day.

They reached our home quickly because it was relatively near the waterfront. Our mother and Dalbrek, our tutor, fought to defend us. Surprisingly, they fought off the first wave even though they were badly outnumbered. Our mother's love and Dalbrek's training and skill with a cutlass stood him and us in good stead. But no efforts, however, heroic, could stem the tide of the pirates that day. Eventually sheer numbers overwhelmed them and us. Dalbrek fell to a crossbow bolt and my mother was taken and raped both before and after they slit her throat. It appeared that Urki and I were to be next in line to feel the swords and steel of the pirates.

Astoundingly, one of their number intervened. Younger, and perhaps a bit less hardened than the most of the rest, Suryn -- that was his name as we later learned -- couldn't stomach the rape and murder of a young boy and girl. He tried to talk his mates out of their intent by suggesting that better could be had elsewhere. They just laughed at him. One of them went so far as to say,"Boy, if you haven't the stomach for this end of the party, perhaps you like to put on a skirt and join the other?" The rest howled at the jape and one even stripped the skirt off of my mother's corpse and tossed it to Suryn.

He grew still and silent as the sea in the center of a hurricane for a moment -- but only for a moment. "So," he said, "you think to make both them and me your play toys, eh? You forget yourself. Well, perhaps we'll play a little game of my devising first. Instead of you doing for the children as you've done for their mother, we'll play a game I call pin the tail on the jackass. The rules are simple. Whoever thinks they've spotted the jackass will stick its tail with a pin."

All the other pirates looked at him as if he was crazy. "What the 'ell are you on about, mate? What jackass are you talking about? There are no farm animals here. Are you daft?"

"Let me demonstrate," Suryn replied. "You see there are many types of jackass in the world. Some have four legs and some have two," he said as edged closer to us and, not by chance, to the two who had insulted him as well.

"The object of this game is to make the jackass jump and bellow when you pin his tail," Suryn cried as he suddenly -- I see you've guessed it -- jabbed one of our tormenters in the buttocks with his cutlass. The blackguard who fell afoul of our benefactor's blade, squalled an oath and leapt as if struck by lighting as Suryn's point sank at least three inches deep into the meat of his arse.

The others stared dumbfounded at first at this, and then a repeat performance as Suryn did the same to the one who had tossed him our mother's torn and bloody skirt. The rest stood stupefied for a moment and then burst into loud, drunken laughter as the two who had felt Suryn's steel hobbled about moaning curses at their young, erstwhile comrade.

"Now that's the way to make a jackass move," guffawed one.

"Suryn, laddie, you are alright," called another.

"Let's go find some more lubbers to play this game with," suggested a third.

With that they dragged their wounded comrades off in search of more sport and more booty. Suryn stayed behind. He looked at us with a level stare and said, "Well, little ones, it looks as if I have two choices. I can leave you here to fend for yourselves. In that case, I can see two futures for you. One, you will either stay here or run off somewhere. In either case, you will almost certainly be caught by another band of my none-to-gentle comrades and killed. The second of the futures I can foresee for you should I leave you here on your own is for you to somehow escape their tender mercies and survive, in which case you will be orphans adrift in a pitiless world in the even more pitiless place that this city will become after we are through with it. Either future seems a shame after I risked my neck to save your hides.

My second option is to take you along with me as `pets.'" Seeing the look of trepidation on our faces, Suryn said to us, "I know, the thought doesn't exactly fill me with glee either. However, it seems to be a better choice than leaving you for the wolves of humanity to feed off of."

It didn't strike us at the time, for we were very young and very frightened, but in looking back Suryn was obviously far more well-spoken than one would expect your average pirate to be. As it turned out, even after we did recognize that he was an educated man, we never quite figured out why. Perhaps he was a noble's son who had fallen on hard times or in with bad company. Perhaps he had educated himself by reading on the long voyages between pirate raids. Or perhaps that facet of Suryn's is just this storyteller's conceit or a way of covering up some sort of brutality in the man that I don't want to remember because he saved our lives.

Whichever, it doesn't matter for the purposes of this story. Suffice it to say we were taken on board one of the pirate vessels by our savior who turned out to be its second mate. Indeed, as luck or fate would have it, he was soon to be its captain in all but name. After the raid on Meratz Khahok was finished, the first mate never returned. He must have been one of the relatively few pirate casualties in the sack. Another was the captain of the Black Swan, as the ship on which we found ourselves was called. Although he wasn't dead, he had taken a blow to the head which left him unconscious much of the time and lucid almost none of the rest.

Their wounds proved fortuitous for us, for no one on board questioned Suryn's acquisition of two new "pets." He was effectively the commander of the ship and, as on all pirate ships the captain's word was law. Not only did the pirates not question our presence, they soon came to view us as mascots and good luck charms for Suryn led the ship in a rapid series of successful raids that provided the crew with massive amounts of booty the likes of which they had never seen before. As a result, they, like Suryn, took us under their wing and began to teach us bits of the lore which each of them had picked up during their lives.

And a diverse set of lore it was. Of course, we learned more about obvious things like navigation and sailing than Dalbrek had taught us. We also learned to pick pockets, to dance jigs, and to play dice. We learned the right and wrong ways to tie knots, and were taught the best way to skin a monkey. We learned to cook, drink, to curse and sing and more. But most of all we learned more about how to fight.

We learned how to fight with our fists. We learned how to fight with our feet. We learned how to use swords of all kinds. We learned how to swing an axe and to shoot a bow. We learned dozens of styles of knife fighting. We learned two-swords style combat and shield use. We learned how to use spears and arbalests, mattocks and catapults, bolos and boomerangs. In short, we learned how to use just about every weapon you could possibly think of. Some we learned better than others. But we learned all of them well. In almost all, we eventually surpassed our teachers. It seems we have a natural talent for mayhem.

That talent lead us to where we are today. Eventually, we left Suryn and his band of cutthroats. We had little taste for raiding for we never could truly believe that piracy wasn't somehow wrong. Despite all the romantic tales of injustice by monarchs and judges with which many of the marauders plied us, our own first taste of piracy had convinced us that nothing justified it. It had taken our parents and our friend and teacher. It had robbed us of our childhoods and of our home. While not all those who embrace it as their trade are evil, piracy in and of itself is evil.

So Urki and I left the Black Swan and we never looked back. We initially took jobs as guards for merchant caravans and the like. Although a few traders were reluctant at first to hire two teenagers -- one of whom was a girl -- to protect them, we usually could convince them by letting them pick one of us to fight the best guard they had with the weapon of his choice in a test of arms. Although it may surprise you, neither of us ever lost such a contest. We never met our master with a weapon among the caravans, and found that few were even our equals with even a single weapon. After a year or two of making our way in the world in such a manner, we moved on to work as city guards. Later, we began to work for nobles as bodyguards.

Each new occupation taught us something new. While caravan guards we learned to ride and some more herbal lore. As city guards, we got to know more of the interior of the world than we had been able to ken while on the Black Swan. As bodyguards for the nobility, we learned court custom and etiquette. Still, especially for me, none of those jobs gave much satisfaction.

Urki has always been more easygoing and happy-go-lucky than have I. He gets along with just about anyone -- especially women. Wherever we went and whatever we did, he could make a place for himself with little trouble. I, on the other hand, though I am not always comfortable admitting it, have always been a bit more dour. I don't get close to people quickly or easily. I don't think that I have ever truly felt at home since we were taken from Meratz Khahok. That has always made me a bit restless. Eventually I have always wanted to move on and Urki always chose to come with me.

Over the last half dozen years or so of our lives, we have wandered Seremoreh doing whatever we pleased. We were good enough at swordplay that we made a fair amount of gold as guards and soldiers, so we have little need to hire out any more. We have adventured on our own far and wide and made any number of acquaintances over the years. Astall is but one of them. There are others all throughout the lands. Fortunately, whatever trouble we have gotten ourselves into so far, we have been able to get ourselves out of. I hope the faring against Iskander is no different. Gods willing it won't be, but then I've never thought particularly prudent to rely on the willingness of the gods."

Enki snorted and shook her head as she finished, "That's our story in a nutshell. I'm sure you'll hear more of its details during our travels since our destinies seem to be intertwined for the time being. We'll be spending many nights aboard ship it seems with nothing to do but spin yarns and Urki and I do have a tale or two that is worth telling."

Enki smiled at the single member of her audience. Wolf had a strange look on his face, something between sympathy and sorrow. He hadn't said a word during her narration and he still didn't seem to have one to utter now. Still his look communicated more to her than most people did in a thousand words.

Enki felt more than a little disconcerted. It wasn't the usual sort of reaction to her story, but then she didn't usually tell many the tale on first meeting. "Well," she said, "I think I hear the sounds of the others beginning to rise. I think I'll go check on Urki and see how he is doing."

With that she beat a hasty retreat and disappeared around the corner which led to the stairwell. Wolf steepled his hands together as his physiognomy took on a speculative cast. "It seems this trip may prove even more interesting than it already promises to be. Not only is it apt to be deadly dangerous, but the company is proving to be quite a collection of truly fascinating people," he murmured.

The ranger shook his head with a sigh. "I just hope we all survive," he added to himself. "But that, I suppose, is a bit much to ask."