Song of the Scar: The Red Horn Saga: A Prelude by J.R. Mabry & Mickey Asteriou

Author:J.R. Mabry & Mickey Asteriou [Mabry, J.R. & Asteriou, Mickey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Xenophile Press
Published: 2021-06-17T04:00:00+00:00

When Tunar arrived, Arrunwolfe was sleeping. That’s all right then, Tunar thought. It will give me time to review my notes from yesterday.

In truth, he would welcome the morning silence. Dafe had given him a particularly sleepless night, and Ariis was threatening to quit. Tunar felt a moment of vertigo as it seemed his life was spinning out of his control. At least here, in this room, he knew who he was and what he was about. This chair he knew. This window he knew. This work of words and their meaning he knew and loved. This human…he realized he both knew him and did not know him. Perhaps it was time to learn more—not just about his language, but about him.

Tunar’s thoughts drifted, and eventually he slept, upright in the chair, catching up on the sleep he’d missed the night before. When he opened his eyes, Arrunwolfe was eating a piece of toast with jam and smiling at him.

“Arrunwolfe, I’m…I’m so sorry.” He spoke in the human’s language, although Arrunwolfe might have managed so simple a sentence in Silnadin.

“Please don’t apologize,” the human said in his deep, growly voice.

The man had been strong once, and slowly he was becoming so again. Soon, the doctors wanted to have him walking, strengthening his legs once more. They already had him exercising his arms.

“Do you mind if I finish eating as we start our work?”

“No, please,” Tunar said, gesturing at Arrunwolfe’s plate. The philologist opened his notebook and turned to a fresh page. He dipped his quill in a pot of ink that stood on another tur nearby. “I’d like to go in a new direction today.”

Arrunwolfe nodded, chewing.

“Instead of simply indexing words from your language, I’d like you to tell me a story. I want you to tell me where you come from and how you got here.”

Arrunwolfe froze. Then he resumed, chewing more slowly, as if a blanket of caution had just been pulled over him. “I knew that, eventually, we would come to this,” he said.

“Is it a painful subject?”

Arrunwolfe nodded. “It is.”

“Would you rather we saved it for another day?”

Arrunwolfe paused. He seemed to be thinking about it. Then he shook his head slowly. “No, let’s…just get it done.”

“All right.”

“There will be a lot of new words,” Arrunwolfe said. He almost sounded like he was apologizing, which made no sense to Tunar. The philologist lived for new words. “Perhaps you could write them down and we’ll go back and fill in the meanings later.”

“That would be fine, although I may stop you if I cannot follow the story.”

“Fair enough,” Arrunwolfe agreed. He set the tray in front of him aside.

Tunar realized that Miraven was not there. On the one hand, he was relieved the lieutenant had not seen him sleeping. On the other, he knew the soldier would be sorry he missed the story he was about to hear. “I’m ready when you are.”

“I am a captain in the Colonial Defense Force. We were fighting an alien species called the Prox—”

“Fighting them where?” Tunar asked.

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