Bamboo
Zeregan`s face split in a wide grin as his father handed him the saber. He ran his hand gently up the scabbard of cured riverling hide with gold fittings to the golden hilt, wrapping his immaculately manicured hand around the crimson-corded grip and admired the rare sapphire set into the pommel.
“This, my son, is your birthright. It has always been a Lysasu tradition that the first son of the family be gifted with a ceremonial saber upon his coming of age. It signifies your first step on the road to taking over the family business.”
The patrician`s eyes were on his son`s face, but the son`s were fixed upon the sword, his hands poised to draw the blade. Old Alymoneus put his wrinkled hand atop his son`s right, halting him.
“I focused my youth on the business,” the elderly ylian continued, “and only saw fit to take a wife when I realized all my efforts would be for naught if Dakkru took me with no heir. This leaves me little time to tutor you and for that I apologise.” He then let his son extract the length of finely honed steel from its sheath, which Zeregan did eagerly.
“Like this sword you must be sharp. Sharp of mind. As a merchant you must be shrewd. And like the sword, always keep your reputation clean and untainted. A strong and sharp core within an attractive sheath.”
“And finally,” he cupped his son`s jaw in his hand and drew it up until the eyes left the sword and met his own jaundiced ones, “Finally: we are merchants, not warriors. Draw this sword only in defence, if ever. Glory lasts, but it does not make life any more comfortable for you, your kin or your descendants. Wealth: that lasts. Remember this.”
The Lysasu heir had rushed from his father`s estate as soon as he had been dismissed, the ornate gift attached by gold-woven cord to his fine leather belt. Within the city plaza he quickly found his friends and to their jealous amazement brandished the magnificent weapon before them, though was careful not to draw it before any of the city guard.
Naleru awoke to the whistle of an axe descending and she smiled contentedly. It terminated in a splitting crack and she pulled herself from the bed. She and Dusen could not afford an ultic and so had to make do with their small one-room adobe hut for the time being. She did not know how long it would take them to save up enough, but they had promised not to start a family until they could. The young clamod fenki pulled on her clothes and opened the shutters to let in the pale dawn light of the Crystal. Dusen was stood outside, his muscular arms rising and falling, an old axe held tight in his hands, splitting bamboo. She smiled as she watched her husband work. He was a craftsman of, in her opinion, considerable skill; making shutters, buckets and even various pieces of furniture from bamboo to sell in the Ojaveda markets. It didn`t pay much, but he enjoyed the work. He had a creative nature and she loved him for it.
She watched him from the doorway for a few minutes, he seemingly not having noticed her presence though she knew he had: he began to swing the axe harder, faster, flexing the muscles under his sleek black fur unnecessarily and flourishing the axe until she could not help but giggle at his performance. He turned to her with a grin, dropped the axe and embraced her lithe form.
“I`m hungry,” he breathed in her ear.
“Well, you`ll have to wait. I need to go to the glade and dig up shoots or there`ll be nothing to eat.”
“Who`s talking about food?” he replied with a feral smile and squeezed her in his arms.
She laughed and ducked out of his embrace, waggling a finger reproachfully. As he too laughed she picked up her spade and bucket, both products of her husband`s hand and set out for the bamboo forest. She heard the chopping begin again as she left.
Zeregan and his cohorts, fueled by their parents` riches and a flagon each of wine, had set out through the countryside between Hydlaa and Ojaveda. Kirgoes, the son of a successful brewer, had heard tales of the fenki dancers in the enkidukai city and had cajoled the other youths into making the journey. Out of breath by the time they had swaggered up the snaking road to the city flanked by bamboo forests, they wiped sweat from their brows with linen handkerchiefs worth more than the monthly salary of the city`s own guards and looked about lustily.
After some hours of bacchanal adventure their swagger had turned into a stagger and their moods darkened. They found themselves wandering down one of the city`s back streets seeking shade from the scorching midday sun and the onset of hangovers.
“What in blazes is that god-awful sound?” cursed Zeregan, holding one hand to his head and looking about for the source of a rhythmic thock! Thock! Thock!. The sound came from a few dozen meters up the street where a black-furred local stood at a workbench outside a low house, hammering.
“You there! Stop that!” called out the drunken ylian to no avail. Zeregan clicked his tongue irritably and Kirgoes jogged away from the group toward the menki at work.
Dusen hammered the peg into place, securing the two lengths of strong bamboo. He then picked up the rest of the structure and began to fit the new piece into place when a hand closed on his shoulder and spun him round. It was a young ylian, no older than fifteen or sixteen, he judged. The youth`s eyes were glassy and his breath reeked of alcohol.
“My friend told you to stop that racket, damn you!” he slurred but Dusen shrugged off the hand and went back to his work. It was slowly taking shape, looking somewhat like a short framework trough.
No sooner had he raised the hammer again than he was spun around once more, violently and pushed back against his workbench, his work falling to the ground with a crack.
Dusen was a kind and hard working enkidukai, his sole pleasures being his work and his wife. Usually he was possessed of much restraint, but he snapped and struck the boy lightly across the head with the hammer in his hand, sending the ylian unconscious to the ground. Pulse racing he turned as three more ylian youths raced toward him bellowing, the middle one brandishing a saber that gleamed in the Azure Sun`s light. Dropping the hammer he grasped his old axe that leant against his bench and swung it, burying it in the chest of the first. It stuck fast and no matter how hard he heaved at it he could not withdraw it before the saber struck him down. A scream from further up the street was the last thing he heard, a slim, dark figure racing toward him the last he saw.
The death of a poor craftsmenki at the hands of the heir of a rich and influential merchant went uninvestigated.
Zeregan awoke, his head pounding as it did most mornings. But this morning his bed, made of the finest sponge imported direct from the nolthrir cities on the lowest level of Yliakum, seemed hard and lumpy. Something poked his ribs most uncomfortably in his back and he tried to roll over but couldn`t. The sun was also blinding. One of the maids must have come in and flung the curtains open. Stupid wench. He moved his hand to close them but found his movement arrested again. Cracking his eyelids he found not the silken canopy above his bed before his bloodshot eyes, but the blue morning sky. He knew he had drank too much the night before, that much was evident from the throbbing in his head and the churning in his gut...but had he failed to get home? He was sure- No, wait. He remembered staggering out of the tavern. Th` Broken Door. Only the second time he`d been in Ojaveda, months after he`d had that chance to test his birthright. Yes...that was it, he`d staggered out and there`d been that shadow stood outside. Lithe and covered in silky black fur. He couldn`t help but grin as she had beckoned to him...
He frowned. For the life of him he couldn`t remember what had happened after that.
The smell of cooking then reached his nostrils. Something being boiled. Sweetish. It made his stomach growl and he tried to sit up but failed. Looking to his left and right he found he was lying on the grass and that his hands were bound with finely woven ropes, stretched out and tethered to thick trunks of bamboo that shot spear-like toward the Crystal overhead. He tried to move his legs but they too appeared to be tied. Panic and his gorge rising he pulled at the cords to no effect. His breathing quickened and he raised his head to find a black furred back facing him. He could see a campfire past it and a wooden frame holding a pot over the fire.
At the sound of his struggling Naleru turned to face him.
“Who are you? Set me free at once, fenki!”
Her green eyes bored into his and she spoke in a voice laced with bitter anguish, “I am the widow.”
She then squeezed his cheeks with one hand and forced a short pipe of bamboo into his mouth, looping a cord round the back of his head, gagging him.
The clamod then calmly turned back to the clay pot that hung over the campfire and stirred the contents with a wooden spoon. After a moment she looked up from her cooking and regarded the forest of tall, slim, notched bamboo that surrounded the small glade. But for the crackle of the campfire, the bubbling of the pot`s contents and the whisper of the wind through the trees, the forest devoured all other sound.
“Bamboo is a wondrous plant,” she said almost conversationally, still looking at the trees. “It`s a grass, you know? Not a tree.”
Zeregan panted, his breath escaping past the hard wooden gag and continued to struggle, wincing as he tried to roll and his back hurt again.
“My late husband wove those cords. They won`t break. He was a fine craftsman. He knew the strengths of bamboo.” She then looked at him, “Do you know we enkidukai use bamboo for all sorts: constructing our homes, our furniture. It is exceedingly strong yet flexible. And, the shoots are delicious if you get them at the right time.”
She stirred the contents of the pot and extracted a slice of boiled bamboo shoot, the white of bone. The fenki gently blew on the steaming piece and ate it, savouring the taste.
“You have to get up early in the morning and study the ground. You look for where the soil is ever so slightly disturbed. That`s where a shoot`ll push up in the day. You know bamboo can grow more than half a meter in a day?”
“But like I said, you have to get the shoots early. If they break the surface they harden. They really harden...Like that one under you.”
The End
