Death Walks Beside Her: The Kotidor Chronicles, #1

By JW Warner

deal with this crap later, blah blah blah. also remember to update the search terms and key words and the ebook release date thing. yadda yadda yadda is this freaking long enough yet? please let that be the case, woot woot toot toot

• Language: English
• Publisher: Shadow Spark Publishing
• Release date: Mar 25, 2021
• ISBN: 9781393716419

JW Warner

JW Warner graduated from Rutgers College with a degree in English. After a long career as a federal investigator, and overcoming cancer, he traded in writing reports and training materials for fantasy novels. He lives in New Jersey near New York City with his wife and three dogs. death walks beside her, the first installment in his upcoming ya fantasy quadrilogy, The Kotidor Chronicles, will be released in march 2021. he can be found on twitter @jackwarner16, & on instagram @ru77jw

Book preview

Death Walks Beside Her

Book One of The Kotidor Chronicles: Sparrow

JW Warner

Maps

Duogrour 121520.jpgNisab 121520.jpg

Maps by Paul W Sutton

Cast of Characters

Takael (tock AYE ell ) and her family:

Her brothers: Marek, Darak, Tekurk, and Turork

Her father: Takark

Sister-in-law: Daryael

Marael and Darak, her niece and nephew

"Hired men"

Osoric

Vertark

Pilark

The Novices:

Spitfire (Sa’ana)

Raven (Aqqa)

Sparrow (Takael)

Bear (Eyoherk)

Tall Boy (Khrystark)

Quickling (Niedarak)

Ashari

Sword (Zark)

Nightstar (Sharael)

The Kotidor

Lo Ta’av

Megistael

Trygrar

Ikovark

Sol-leks

Johonark

Bortork

Nevark

Kobiek

Tov

It is good to have an end to journey toward,

but it is the journey that matters in the end.

–Ursula K. Le Guin

Prologue

It was well after Mid -Day when they rode down from the hills onto a long finger of land between two bodies of water.

Takael looked about her, taking in all that she could. She knew that her Master would question her closely that night about what she had seen and what she had learned. While her Master did not cuff her about if her replies were inadequate as the older novices had whispered they might do, she’d been forced to spend a few nights without a blanket for being unprepared for an evening’s questions. Takael had no desire to do so again.

On her left, Sparrow, as her Master called her, spotted a brackish pond. The water looked stagnant, and plants stuck up here and there, which were not commonly found in marshes or swamps. She reckoned this to be what farmers called a harbinger creek. With no stream feeding it or natural source, the pond was just a catch basin for spring rains. If the water level fell, leaving only mud, it would be bad. If the pond had been replaced by dry, hard ground by late summer, that would be catastrophic for animals and local farmers.

Out to their right flowed the Yu’an-Nisab River. The Great Eastern Bay’s mouth lay more than three hard days’ ride behind them, but the river ran wide even here, straining its banks. The water ran muddy brown, high and fast, still fed by melting snow high up in the Mountains. Sparrow could not swim across here. She almost certainly could not paddle a canoe alone across the current. If her Master asked her how to cross, she could only suggest that the village they traveled probably had a ferryman.

She noted that while the long finger of land too narrow for a full-sized wagon (and even a dog-cart would have to be carefully managed), the path had been packed hard, the soil a dry mix of sand and clay with only a few small weeds scattered along the way. Why would it be packed down so? He might ask her. Takael’s guess would be fishermen and waterfowl hunters plied this path for prey and then continued towards the village ahead of them.

They had not come far from the narrow path to the higher, wider land when her Master called for a halt.

Sparrow, he called to her. See what you can find us for our supper.

She dismounted and made her way down towards the river. Sparrow sat, motionless until some birds came close in the shallows where they found shade. She dispatched one, a nice-sized male, with an arrow through its head. She did this for several reasons. First, while she’d never been very spiritual or religious, Takael knew she should be grateful to the gods who provided animals and fish for the table. The poor creature had known neither pain nor fear. He was looking away when the arrow flew towards him, and his life had ended instantly. His soul passed over to the other side as mercifully as possible.

She also enjoyed any chance to demonstrate her prowess with her bow. Takael was not a large girl, and she was unlikely to grow into a large woman (hence her novice name, Sparrow).

Her teachers made it clear to Takael her great skill with a bow would be how she would survive on the trail, and, in her heart of hearts, taking a waterfowl at twenty paces with a single arrow provided a way Sparrow could show off for her Master.

Returning with her catch, she saw her Master had made a large fire. A huge fire! One of the very first skills Sparrow had been taught was making a small fire, enough for warmth and ward off beasts, but one barely visible unless an interloper came close. This fire was of a size and intensity that Takael would build if she’d fallen through the ice and her wet clothes were freezing to her body.

Was this a trick? Should she question her Master? She decided not to and simply came back into camp bearing her prey. Ah, good! he exclaimed. I’d seen some of these in-flight on the river earlier and thought how tasty one would be.

When he cooked the fowl over the flame, he allowed the fat of its body to drip freely into the big fire, sending up acrid gray smoke. It seemed as if he wanted to loudly proclaim their presence. There were times when the Kotidor made their presence known – but Sparrow had not seen another person since shortly after they started out that morning.

They ate most of what she’d killed. Then, after watering and feeding their mounts, Takael salted some meat for the next day, took the bones and other inedible parts, and tossed them into the river for the fish. The sun was low in the sky when she returned, only to find her Master feeding even more wood into the still huge blaze.

Rather than the usual nightly questioning of Takael, her Master set about gathering sticks and grasses and constructing two piles not far from the fire. One was as long as he was tall, the other Sparrow-sized. Even before he’d thrown their blankets over the piles, Takael realized what he was up to, finally.

There, her Master proclaimed. We’re ready for our guests.

They picked up their bows and moved out about 25 strides from the edge of the firelight, half a dozen strides apart, and settled down. The fire was between the two of them and their steeds.

Takael learned hunting from her brothers in her seventh year. Sitting still, but ready and unmoving, came easily for her. She’d learned in her Kotidor training how to shift and shake her muscles with little noticeable motion. She could sit this way through a whole night if necessary.

It didn’t take long for two figures to loom out of the darkness, bent on killing the two piles they presumed to be the riders. At almost the same instant, Sparrow and her Master drew back their bows. At this distance, the bone, sinew, and wood composite bows could easily drive an arrow through light armor, let alone the leathers or quilted jackets of bandits.

Sparrow? her Master’s whisper carried on the wind, barely audible. Do try not to hurt our mounts? In the darkness, she grinned, and then Takael put an arrow through the torso of the man closest to her.

History Lesson #1:

The Eastern Empire

Over two centuries before Takael was born, Emperor Pyothor the Merciless expanded the Empire to the Eastern Sea. This necessitated a brutal twelve-year war that saw the subjugation of half a dozen minor kingdoms and the pacification of several nomadic hunter-gatherer peoples.

When the Empire touched the shores of the Eastern Sea, Pyothor demonstrated the cunning for which the official Chronicles called him the Wise. He consolidated all the conquered territory into a single huge province, which he dubbed Nisab (great or immense in the local language). Pyothor then appointed his ambitious younger brother as Lord of Nisab and charged the younger Prince with building a proper Provincial capital.

Cynical historians point out – with reason – how Pyothor effectively banished his younger brother not only physically far away from the Capitol but also far away from contact with the military commanders and noble families one would need to cultivate to pursue a coup against the man sitting on The Orchid Throne. On the other hand, it was not as if the Emperor had slapped his younger rival in the face. At the time work began on the Provincial capital, the Province of Nisab accounted for nearly a quarter of the Empire’s landmass. Even when Takael was born, Nisab still made up approximately one-sixth of the total area of the Empire.

Sprawling in size, Nisab could not be called particularly populous. Two centuries after the conquest, fewer than one in 20 Imperial citizens lived in Nisab. Pyothor wrote the land was a vast wilderness interspersed with humble villages, an accurate description. Nisab provided the Empire with fish, fur, stone, timber, and gold, but not people.

In the 848th year of the Empire, Takael was born on her family’s property in the woodlands of Nisab.

Chapter One:

Colliers

Takael was the youngest of five surviving children and the only girl.

An older brother, the third son, came down with a fever and passed to the other side before the end of his second year.

The infant, who would have been Takael’s baby sister and her mother, died together on a catastrophic winter’s night when Takael was in her second year. Her oldest brother, Marek, later told her somberly, You don’t know how lucky you were to be a baby and unaware. Our mother screamed horribly for hours, while our sister went without ever making a single sound. Father took their bed out of the house and burned it in the yard. He spent the whole winter sleeping on the floor.

Growing up motherless did not impact the young Takael that it might have a townsfolk child. Life in the woodlands was hard, too hard for niceties of what some considered women’s work in the big cities. Everyone in the household mended clothes, cleaned, washed, and cooked. Takael would have learned these things even if she were born a boy child.

Though a girl, Takael still needed to learn the woodlands’ survival skills, as her mother had before her. In her fourth year, her brother Darak took her to the streams and taught Takael how to fish. In her fifth year, Takael learned how to plant, tend, hoe, and harvest the ground crops, supplementing the game and fish her family took from nature. The legumes, gourds, turnips, and other products of the soil were primarily Takael’s responsibility.

As her brothers began preparing her to learn hunting in her sixth year, Takael revealed her gift.

The woodlands folk used a longbow, typically a full head taller than the hunter wielding it. One of her father’s hired men made a gift for Takael of a perfectly sized bow, and Takael carefully carried out the words of her brother Marek: Imagine you are in a room, and the only light comes from a single small candle. Now, imagine the candle is blown out. The instant you see in your mind only darkness, let fly! Her very first arrow hit a target a full 20 paces away. Her brothers and the hired help cheered the little girl.

Then she put in her second. Darak, in his twelfth year at that time, backed Takael farther from the mark. Her arrow was aimed properly, but she failed to account for the distance, so her shot fell short.

Practicing archery became Takael’s constant pastime. Even on the coldest winter days, unless it was snowing, she would try to find the time to shoot at least a dozen arrows. In her ninth year, on a visit to the Harvest Festival in the village of Daekarsk, Takael won the Silver Cup in an archery competition with grown women who’d been handling a bow for many years.

While Takael learned how to trap and snare smaller game and once watched as her father, brothers, and father’s apprentice took down a huge elk with spears, she did her best hunting with her bow. At first, she could only take small birds and animals, but by the time she won the archery contest, Takael could effectively bring down larger waterfowl and some woodland creatures with only an arrow or two. She also learned how to clean and prepare furs and pelts, either for clothing for the household or to bring to the Harvest Festival and trade.

From the time she reached her seventh year, Takael’s brothers tormented her by wrestling – and often overpowering – their diminutive baby sister.

Darak was her first tormentor. Her brothers frequently wrestled with each other. One day when Tekurk (who was less than three full years older than his sister) seemed to be doing well fending off Darak, the older boy said, It’s time we stopped babying our sister. He then ordered Tekurk to attack Takael.

Despite watching the boys wrestle many times, Takael quickly discovered she had no idea what to do and react to the holds and moves. Tekurk tossed her about with only minimal effort, leaving Takael crying.

After being humiliated by Tekurk, the little girl found herself the frequent target of Darak, a squat, powerful lad. It was only later when she was much older, that Takael understood why Darak picked on her. He would apply the same hold, using the same move, every time he grabbed Takael until she figured out how to counter or thwart him. As soon as she did, Darak would immediately do something different. Just before they left for the Harvest Festival, where Takael would take home the Silver Cup, she finally beat Tekurk at wrestling for the first time, tying him up with her arms and legs until he surrendered.

Always a clever girl, Takael said to her brother, You let me win, as she pulled him up. He was the brother she was closest to and of whom she was fondest. She had no desire to embarrass him or subject him to the taunts of their older brothers.

Yes, Tekurk replied. I feel sorry for you always getting beaten by Darak.

Among her brothers, Turork, the third living son, was assuredly the outlier. Like Takael, he bore more of a resemblance to their mother’s family. Most Nisabans had black hair, the color of ravens. Some, including Takael and her brother, had dark brown hair. In candlelight, or at dusk, all her family’s hair looked to be the same hue. However, in the bright light of day, it became obvious that Takael and Turork’s dark brown hair had just a light hint of reddish highlights visible in the summer sun. Like their mother and many Nisabans with brown hair, Takael and Turork’s skin tone looked a bit lighter than their father and brothers. Unlike Takael, though, his personality and disposition were very much like their mother’s. Turork took her death hard, almost as hard as did their father. Never the outgoing type, he became more withdrawn after their mother died.

His gaze is always on the far horizon, Takael once heard her father say to Marek. One day, he will leave us. He will become a sailor or move to the city and apprentice to a blacksmith or goldsmith. But wherever Turork’s path may lie, his home will always be here. We will always have a bed for him and a place at our table.

Takael’s father adored his only daughter. Nisabans considered it bad luck to name a son after his father, as it implied a certain haughtiness the gods despised, but like many men, Takark gave his first daughter the feminine form of his name. Her brothers did not resent their father’s doting on their sister, although Darak would tease her, it’s because, with every passing year, you grow to look more and more like Mother.

A tiny version of Mother, Marek would add with a laugh.

As much as her father adored her, his work often kept him apart from Takael. The demands of his work took up a great deal of his time most of the year. Her people were colliers, makers of charcoal.

With the new moon that followed the first small spring flowers, they would go out into the forest to cut down trees. It was not necessary to fell that many trees. Harder than bringing the trees down was cutting them down into short lengths. These billets were made into a pile and then left there. The wood had to age for a year, so when the trees were cut down and reduced to a pile of short sections, the billets were simply left to cure.

On the way back, the crew would stop by a pile left the year before, load it into wagons, and bring it back with them.

Once back, the crew began making a circle with the year-old wood. The ground on which the charcoal was to be made was raked clear. The cut sections of wood would be stood up on end around a chimney pole, which was simply a long tree branch stripped of its bark, driven into the ground at the center of the pile. They built a triangular chimney around the center pole. The chimney itself was loosely constructed, so while it would not fall apart, it would also not block the airflow, which was crucial to the charcoal-making process. The triangular chimney was only constructed about halfway up the middle of the pile of the wooden sections. The woodpile was usually two layers high, but sometimes a third was added.

Next, the crew would cover nearly the whole pile with a small layer of dried leaves or pine straw. Then a deeper layer of dirt was shoveled over the leaves or pine straw. Hot charcoal embers were dropped into a layer of kindling at the bottom of the triangular chimney, starting the fire, which would slowly change the aged wood into charcoal. Once started, someone had to check the pile several times a day and during the night.

Takael and her brothers would be allowed to stand watch during the daylight, but once the sun went down, the watch would be kept by a hired man or an apprentice. If there were two apprentices, the task of watching the pile at night would fall to them.

As the wood became charcoal, the pile would lose height and breadth. This process had to happen evenly, so the pile sank around the chimney pole, rather than collapsing to one side or another. Dirt might be shoveled onto sections sinking too fast, or, in more extreme circumstances, Takark would place a wooden plank atop the pile and jump up and down on the plank to straighten the height of the pile out.

It took about five to seven days for the charring to reach the billet footing of the pile. At that point, there was some instinct, some artistry, in reading the pile and sensing where the charring process was. Takark would walk around the pile, sniffing, peering into any new gaps, and perhaps poking a bit with a rake.

As soon as the raking on one pile was about to begin, the hired men, Marek and Darak, would take the wagons back into the forest to cut down more trees and bring back another year-old pile that had been aging where it was felled. The crew who remained behind would slowly rake the pile apart, spreading it out so it was only a single layer thick; this work supervised by any apprentices. The pile would be left until the wagons returned with another load of wood to be fired. Once the work on the new pile began, Takael; her brother Tekurk, and one or two of the hired men would carefully load the charcoal into a wagon by hand. When a layer was finished, pine straw would be placed on that layer to form a cushion, and then more charcoal placed in, again by hand. The loading of the charcoal might take two full days.

Once the wagon had been loaded, the charcoal would be taken to sell. The first load each Spring went to the village of Nanisab, the closest community to Takael’s family homestead. Nanisab was not a large village. One blacksmith served both the town and the people who lived in the woodlands east of the North Yu’an River. While the wagons were away, the next pile was set up and fired.

The second firing of the year was always a large one. It would be taken to a larger village known as Fish Arm. Before the Conquest, the town, situated on a broad arm of the river, had a Nisaban-language name. During the years of the Imperial invasion, the town was given a new name by the soldiers and officials of the Empire. The Nisaban equivalent was roughly translated as Fish Arm, reflecting the wide turn in the river and the fact that in spring, hundreds of fat fish gathered in the bend before moving upriver to spawn. Not long after the Conquest, the locals began referring to their community as Fish Arm. By the time Takael was born, no one recalled what the original name had been.

In this way, Takark’s family spent their time between spring and the early autumn making charcoal and taking it to market. As Takael became older, she had more and more chores to take up her days – tending the crops, fishing, mending, collecting pine straw, helping cook for the hired men and apprentices as well as her family. She made sure to get in archery practice every day. Takael made her own bows and arrows. Occasionally – and unwillingly – she would wrestle with her brothers. She remained diminutive. Whenever she was around woodlands girls or townsfolk girls her age, Takael seemed to always be the shortest in the group; however, she was also very physically strong for her size. Her brothers no longer taunted her when they wrestled because if Takael became frustrated or angry, she would throw punches. They’d learned their little sister’s fists could cause lingering damage.

Collier’s work was always hard and occasionally dangerous. Dull saws and axes posed hazards, the former getting stuck in the wood then causing the sawyer to tumble when the saw came free, the latter bouncing off a knot or thick bark before striking the cutter. Takark, a third-generation charcoal man, had a reputation for knowing techniques or tricks that made the work less dangerous. Thus he usually had one or two apprentices each season. The reduced risk didn’t alter the fact the work was strenuous and required several months away from home. Many hired men did not come back for a second season. Their work, while quite hard, paid well. Woodlands folk of Nisab did not have many options to earn coin. Takark was proud of the number of young men who used their colliers’ pay to buy a boat, a farm downriver, or something that made their lives better, with wages he’d paid them.

Besides hired help, in most years, spring brought one or two newcomers who presented themselves as apprentices. Often these were boys from larger families who hoped for a more prosperous way of life. Some did not make it through a season, but Takark never turned any of them away. Takark once had a female novice, but girls seeking a life away from the farm sought work in the towns. The farrier in Nanisab, for example, had been the middle girl in a family with vineyards in the woodlands.

As metalworking and blacksmithing techniques grew better and the population grew, more charcoal did not mean the price went down. More charcoal meant someone else could take up the hammers and tongs of the blacksmith.

Takark would be considered prosperous for a woodlands man. The main house on his property had an upstairs where his children slept. There was also a second story at a right angle to the stable, which housed the hired men and apprentices during the charcoal season, then used as a hayloft during the winter. Besides the stable and large house, Takael’s family had a barn with a dozen goats that provided milk. Takark’s grandfather had begun making charcoal by first felling the trees closest to the family’s original cabin. The final cutting each season would be one that expanded the property further. Takael planted and harvested her ground crops on the cleared land, as her mother had before she died. In this way, their property grew larger each year. Their land was level, located on a natural shelf where the hills paused before resuming the climb upward to the peaks and valleys of the high mountains.

Takael loved being out of doors, especially when permitted to perform some tasks all by herself. Each season brought more responsibilities. While Takael enjoyed going into towns, especially for the festival time, she felt hemmed in, smothered, to be in a place where you could reach out your window and touch your neighbor. She told her brothers at festival time, the girls in the towns dressed differently than when she saw them on trips to take the coal to market. Takael told Marek, It’s as if they want to look like some other person.

When a woodlands girl was young, she wore her hair long, keeping it a good bit longer than shoulder length. As her first child’s days grew closer, a pregnant woodlands wife would cut her hair back, so her neck was bare. Woodlands men tied their hair up but kept it at a length that cascaded over their shoulders when it was let down. When a man lost his wife, he would cut his hair back, even shorter than his wife’s in her first pregnancy. In this way, a hatless man with short hair demonstrated he was in mourning. Takark kept his hair short until his dying day.

Like most woodlands’ children, Takael always carried a knife, and of course, she carried her bow whenever she could. The woodlands’ predators – wolves, bears, and tigers – avoided humans and were only dangerous if cornered or surprised by a person suddenly appearing close to them. In hard winters, though, the deer and other creatures would come closer to humans’ homesteads, especially where farmers had left remnants of the harvest in the field to nourish the soil. In such times, wolves crept closer to the dwellings of the woodlands’ folk. Tigers were very rare in this part of Nisab. One would have to go far upriver into the high mountains and the deeper forest to encounter a tiger.

In the Nisaban custom, a person’s age was described by their coming birthday. That is, on the first anniversary of a Nisaban’s birth, he would be said to be in his second year.

Takael’s twelfth year would be the most eventful of her life.

There was still snow on the ground when Marek began to build himself a small house on the family property. He’d begun courting a town girl named Daryael. According to woodlands custom, when Daryael was visibly