Spear of Destiny James Baldwin (free romance novels .TXT) 📖

right to do so. The death of my family was tragedy enough: if the plague had spread from clan to clan, everyone would have been lost.”

“I don’t see anyone,” I remarked. “No fires, no houses… and we can literally spot for miles out here.”

“I know,” Vash said quietly. “And I have a bad feeling about it, too.”

There were no signs of life—human or animal—as we closed in on the quest marker. We didn’t see anything else until we were over the hills—and found ourselves in a pocket of warmer air that flushed over us like an exhaled breath. Sprawled below us was a huge Tuun village. There were least sixty yurts down there. They were arranged in concentric circles that radiated out from one central camp. Dozens of fires lit the night sky. There were sheds and corrals, and herds of sleeping camels, goats, and aurochs standing in their pastures. The air shimmered like a mirage where the heat rising from the bustling village met the chilly ceiling of sky above.

“Well, that explains things.” My gut relaxed as Karalti dipped a wing, giving the settlement a wide berth. “The clans came together for a moot.”

“Yeah! That’s a good thing, right?” Karalti chirped. “If people moved here, they must have put your family to rest. They wouldn’t live in a place that’s haunted.”

“That is no trade moot. That is a town… but why is in the same place that my family made their winter camp?” Vash stared at the tents and corrals in disbelief. “Perhaps some monks and priests found their way here after all. People wouldn’t live here if the dead weren’t put to rest.”

“I guess we’ll find out.” I zoomed my vision in one of the cooking fires. There was a group of six people around it, clapping and singing along with a man playing an erhu, a long-stemmed, two-stringed fiddle with a small box belly. “Looks like there’s people still awake. We can talk to them, see if we can find out who’s in charge?”

Vash nodded. He clenched and unclenched his jaws, the muscles popping in sharp relief as Karalti coasted down in a gentle glide, and landed behind a hill not too far away. We wasted no time in vaulting down.

“It’s too warm,” Vash muttered, already shucking his coat down to his waist, where he wore it like a thick woolen kirtle. “It’s like summer. There’s no snow around this camp. The herd should be living off snow and having to scratch for roots by now, but look.”

He pointed toward the short, tough steppe grass that grew out of the hard ground all around us.

“Can mages control the weather, out of curiosity?” I shucked my own coat off, and folded it into my Inventory. We were well within my temperature limits here. On the ground, it was only -10 C: about 14 F.

“There are no mages here, I guarantee it. Our people have no love of sorcerers.” Vash sniffed the air, looked up and down, then kicked a rock away from him. “If they are herders like the ones I knew, they will be glad to see a Baru and his apprentice. We’ll have teeth to pull, medicines to administer, camels to soothe. How does that sound, Karalti?”

“I dunno if I’ll be any good at soothing camels right now,” Karalti replied, trotting along beside me. “I’m about two or three days off my next heat, and all I can think about right now is food. It’s hard to soothe something when it knows you want to eat it.”

We followed a short, overgrown rocky trail to the first of the signal fires. There were no guards other than shaggy Tuun Mastiffs who ran toward us, barking with their hackles raised. Children played by the fire, squealing with laughter as they acted out scenes with straw dolls shaped like hookwings and wooly rhinos and sabretooths. One man was dozing in front of the flames, his coat hanging off one shoulder, his arm resting in the open front of his jacket like a sling. Three older women sitting at a table in an open tent ate roasted barley flour and tea, talking and laughing. A smith worked an open forge, his jacket hanging open around his waist like Vash’s.

“Hi there, boy.” I crouched down and cautiously extended my hand to one of the dogs, an enormous beast with dirty white fur and big sagging jowls. He edged forward, sniffing curiously—but as his nose touched my fingertips, a small jolt of static snapped between us. He yelped and backpedaled, his tail between its legs, then put his head down and skulked away. The other dogs began to bark furiously, but didn’t stop us as we pushed into the camp. A few people looked up to see what the fuss was about, but no one came forward to greet us. They just kept on doing what they were doing.

Vash strode over to the forge. The blacksmith sung under his breath as he worked, rhythmically striking a hot piece of iron over and over again, shaping it into... something. I wasn’t actually sure what he was working on, because it didn’t resemble anything in particular.

“Hail, forgemaster.” Vash called to him gruffly. “I am Vash Dorha, a Brother of the Dark Moon come to offer aid and request hospitality. To whom do I speak?”

“A baru?” The man jerked his head to the east, and continued hammering. “Matriarch’s tent is that way.”

Karalti and I looked at one another. As healers and midwives, baru were generally greeted with open arms in a Tuun settlement.

Vash crossed his arms. “I gave you my name. What’s yours?”

“Jorgo.” Bang. Bang. Bang.

“Your clan name is Jorgo?” I asked.

The smith paused, his brow knitting in irritation. His iron had cooled, and was now too stiff to continue shaping.

“Yes, you skinny piece of fox shit. My name is Kun