Chapter 1

The following characters appear in this chapter:

Nikshith

Chief protagonist, 5’-7’’ tall, 135 pounds, 75 years old, gray hair, gray eyes, his name means Sharpness

Abbot Kadan

Leader of the monastery, 5’-8’’ tall, 140 pounds, 39 years old, brown hair, blue eyes

Bataar

Mongol swordsman, king’s guardian, 6’-2’’ tall, over 200 pounds, about 36 years old, long black hair, brown eyes

This chapter opens about an hour after the events in the Preface in the land that would eventually be named Hungary.

My eyes popped open! It was late afternoon by the sun, and I was still lying where I had ambushed the raiders and had died. I was shocked beyond belief.

“Was this the afterlife that the priests talked about?” I wondered out loud and was shocked again by the sound of my voice. I sounded younger than I had previously. On checking my clothes, I found them sticky with drying blood, and slashed where their swords had cut me. On checking myself, I could see where I had been cut by their swords, but even as I watched, the marks of the sword cuts faded and vanished.

“What is going on here?” I wondered but had no idea or explanation. It wasn’t until I looked around that I discovered the other things. There were two other bodies here. The one was the one that I had stabbed. He had fallen off his horse and died. His body was lying where he had fallen, and he wasn’t getting up. He was very dead. The other one, whose leg I had nearly cut off, was also nearby. He had apparently bled to death. Both bodies appeared to have been relieved of anything valuable. They did still have their clothes, which were in better shape than mine were but no cleaner.

Since they no longer required clothing, and mine were all cutup and bloody, I quickly appropriated clothing and boots from the two of them to make myself presentable. It wasn’t until I was redressed that I started looking around for my sword and discovered that it was ... gone! They had stolen my sword! How dare those bastards! I would track them down if for no better reason than to retrieve my sword. Also to get revenge for those in our village who had already died and for those who would die this winter from the cold and a lack of food.

Still, if I was going to get revenge on them, I would need a weapon or weapons and to be able to follow them quickly. Presently, I had neither and no way to acquire them. What to do was the question.

This was when fate again smiled on me for the second time that day. The horse that the second man had been riding wandered back and sniffed at his body but backed up and snorted on smelling the blood before turning away. Thinking this was my lucky day, I approached the horse with my hand out. I had donned a good bit of the fellow’s clothing, and the horse seemed to recognize his scent and allowed me to approach him.

Speaking quietly to him, I was able to reach out and secure his bridle. An inspection of his side revealed that the cut had not been very deep, and it had clotted and began to scab over. I also discovered several other things. The first was a sword in its scabbard on the other side of the horse, a bedroll, and grain in a bag to feed the horse. There was also a canteen with water in it.

I fed and watered the horse before deciding what to do next. I was worried about my people and decided to follow their trail to see how they were, and if they had reached safety. However, it wasn’t a good idea to ride the horse yet as I didn’t want to open the wound again. We would need to follow on foot. After I had decided that, we set out and quickly found that the raiders had not followed my people after killing me. There were no horses’ hoof prints following their trail past the ambush site. Perhaps the loss of two men and a horse had convinced them that it wasn’t worth chasing them any further.

As darkness approached, I found a stream and fed and watered the horse again before making a cold camp for the night. In the morning, I followed the trail of my people and approached their camp in the forest that afternoon. I was still walking with the horse following me. I was not greeted with any respect or joy by those there.

“What do you want barbarian?” demanded the new leader of the young men. They had haying forks and clubs and were eyeing me suspiciously.

“Karmas, it is me Nikshith. Do you not recognize me?” I called having stopped some distance from them.

“Nikshith is dead. One of us saw the rabble kill him. Go away, or we will kill you,” Karmas called to me. Such was their appreciation of my sacrifice, I thought.

“The riders have turned back. You may be able to return to the village in a few days or a week. The loss of two men and a horse was apparently enough to convince them to turn back,” I told them before turning around and leaving those ungrateful former neighbors of mine. I still had raiders to deal with and a sword to retrieve.

After walking for two days, on the morning of the third day I inspected the horse’s wound. It appeared to be much better, and that day I rode back toward our village. Arriving near my old house close to sundown, I carefully approached the remainder of the village.

Several barns had been burned down. The small chapel of the new religion had also been burned. The priest had escaped with the others from the village. Many of the houses had broken doors and window coverings. There were the bodies of the four young men who had stayed to delay the raiders near one of the burned barns, along with the bodies of several cows and pigs that had been killed and left to rot.

As it grew darker and I had nearly finished my inspection, I saw a light in the open window of the house where the brewer had lived. This instantly attracted my attention as it meant that someone was still here in the village.

Approaching the house so as not to be seen by those inside, I was able to determine that several men were in the house from the noise they made, and that they were drunk.

The brewer was the wife of one of the farmers. She made several varieties of mead and some ale. I’d had both while working for the Germans along with a beer that they brewed. What she made was not the best quality, but it was better than nothing at all.

It was quickly apparent that there were three of them in the house and that they had been drinking for a long time. Not much stealth was required to sneak up on them, spring inside and kill all three of the drunks with the sword that had been on the horse. There was still some of the mead left, and I drank some of it before leaving to take care of the horse. The bodies would wait.

In the remaining barn where I put him up for the night, I discovered why three of the raiders were still here. There was only one other horse present. It didn’t matter now, as none of them would need a horse again.

After caring for both horses, I searched some of the houses for what food the raiders had missed. There was little enough remaining, and it was dark by now. Returning to the barn, I spent the night sleeping in the hay loft near my transportation.

In the morning, I found some eggs that the returning chickens had laid and cooked them for breakfast after caring for both horses. The bodies of the three raiders I tied to the front of the brewer’s house as a warning. I also searched a number of other houses for things that I could use on my travels, as I still intended to retrieve my sword. I knew of places where some of the villagers had hidden things to keep them safe. The raiders had missed most of those places. I found several sets of clothing and footwear, a couple of blankets and some food. I would use the wounded horse as a pack animal and ride the other one for now. Before the sun was halfway up the sky, I was on my way again.

It wasn’t hard to follow the trail of the raiders. They left burned buildings and dead bodies everywhere they stopped. I did notice that they avoided the fortified houses of the nobles and the castles of the governors and the king. As I followed them, I stopped to help a number of people and villages along the way, and acquired various items from those who would no longer require them.

It was a month and a half later before I caught up to the raiders, as that was when I approached the area of their final battle. It seems that the local nobles and the king had taken notice of their presence and the trouble they were causing. They had set up a trap for them near a new half completed monastery. It was a tempting target for the raiders as it had no defenses and only some monks and a number of laborers. There was sure to be food, drinks, and money there.

Instead of an easy target, they found a hundred or so of the king’s nobles and their men-at-arms along with the king himself. They were not given a chance to withdraw or retreat as a part of the king’s forces had been hiding in the forested area that they had passed on approaching the monastery. The battle had been very recent ... like the previous day, and the bodies of men and horses still lay on the battlefield where they had fought and died. It was a grisly sight.

The smell of the dead bodies lying out in the sun was horrific even in the fall, and the gang of vultures feasting on the dead made it difficult to search the area. Still, I was determined to look for my sword if it was still here. Many weapons and other things of value like armor and any good horses had already been looted by the victors.

The search required most of the remainder of the morning, but I eventually found the remains of the one who had my sword. It was an empty victory. The sword lay on the ground near his corpse broken in two. That was the only reason that it hadn’t been looted like the other usable weapons.

Looking up in disappointment, I noticed that one of the monks, who I had seen earlier, was still watching me. I walked over to him carrying the broken sword.

“You have spent most of the morning searching for something, my son. Is that it?” he asked as I approached.

“When the raiders attacked our village several weeks ago, I and others attempted to stop them from following us as we fled. During the fight, I was hit in the head and knocked out. They must have thought that I was dead from the amount of blood the blow caused me to lose. They took my sword and left me there with the other dead. I have been following them since recovering. It appears that my sword was not as good a weapon as I had supposed,” I told him holding up both halves.