Tales of Ruma by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Azure Keep
Published: 2018-05-08T00:00:00+00:00

Three days of travel lay behind Kaiterina’s column of warriors. She glanced back at the double-line of warriors that had so loyally followed her on Athena’s mission. Each woman’s spear pointed at the sky. Each shield hanging from the saddle flashed in the sunlight. Their helms, similar to those worn by the Spartans, were crested with bristles of deepest purple.

“Why are we doing this?” Seleena ran a smooth, dark, stone along the edge of her makhaira, it’s curved blade glinting in the evening sunlight. She was Kaiterina’s Captain of the guard, and held a senior seat on the council, second only to Kaiterina herself. She was also the only warrior Kaiterina had ever known who could sharpen her sword from horseback. Those under her command often joked that she must have been born with a blade in her hand.

The steady wisk —wisk —wisk of metal upon stone had kept a tempo with the clopping of one-hundred horses that had naturally matched up their tempo on the journey north. She knew they were road-weary, and she would be a poor leader if she didn’t feel the tremors of disquiet running through her troops.

“An old debt…” Kaiterina replied, “and the stain of a betrayal I need to wash clean.” She shifted her hips as the stallion beneath her moved around a divot in the road. The lands around them where lightly forested with oak and cypress, broken by small homesteads, olive groves, and grape vineyards. The land seemed peaceful enough, but they hadn’t met a soul upon the road since the day before, further to the south. They had come upon a troop of actors who knew nothing of the lands further north, other than warnings that it was unsafe in the lands north of Dojran Lake, which they’d passed earlier that morning.

“That’s what you said before.” Seleena’s tone was neutral. She wanted an answer, but she was ever a faithful servant.

“The reason hasn’t changed,” Kaiterina insisted.

“I have no doubt, but you’ve asked us to leave our homes and risk our lives for a debt we know nothing about.”

“Are you saying you don’t want to go?”

“You know me better than that, K.” Seleena replied with wounded resolve. “I will follow you anywhere.”

Kaiterina nodded. A more faithful captain she had never known. It was time to tell Seleena at least some of the truth. She deserved that much. “What do you know of the war between the Olympus and the Titans?” she asked.

“Only what my grandmother told me—tales of gods gone with the sundering.”

“Do you believe in them?” Kaiterina asked. “In the Old Gods?”

“I don’t even believe in the new ones. I have no use for either…. I would think you knew that.” Seleena inspected her blade, thumbing the edge cross-ways from hilt to tip. “I know you used to. K, we’ve built everything we have—with our own hands, our own blood. You made that possible. But belief? It is beyond me.”

“Belief….” Kaiterina let the word roll around in her thoughts. “If only it were as simply as believing or not.

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