Saigan: Killer’s Glory

Things that happen in a bar, as they say, usually don’t end well. I wish my sister had known that. It would’ve been a lot easier for us all if she’d just let a couple of idiots go instead of doing something about them.

She’s not like any of us though, so of course she’d go after them. It’s in her nature to defend when offended, and offend when defended.

Everything started on the last Holy Night. I was at home with Saud and Sahn, my parents and her guardians. Sahn asked me in the evening to go down to Saigan’s Shoppe and ask if she would like to have dinner at home. Sahn was making one of Saigan’s favorites; salted pygmy pork and sage, so she assumed Saigan would come.

I went down to Feroa’s—our village—main street and meandered along, saying hello to the local girls and asking a merchant how much grain was going to cost come next season. Upon entering the Blacksmith’s Shoppe, a wave of heat washed over me as usual. I blinked to bring moisture back to my eyes and called for my sister before venturing further into the stifling Shoppe.

“Saigan! Where are you?”

“Aye, I’m by the furnace,” came my sister’s solemn reply. She rarely talked, and I considered myself lucky to be in her family, for she almost never talked to anyone who wasn’t me, Saud or Sahn.

I stumbled my way to the furnace, where a sweating Saigan was busy heating up a large, curved sword; the weapon of choice in the Northern Desert lands. I shouldn’t know that, considering Feroa is in the Western Lowlands, but Saigan…she’s different, remember?

She’s not my actual sister. When I was about ten, she sort of wandered into town and collapsed on our doorstep, exhausted from something she’s kept silent about all these years. My parent’s took her in, and, thanks to Sahn’s motherly nurturing, she soon regained her strength.

She never talked. Never said a word about her past. Just assumed that after she came here, her own life began. We’re not even sure what her real name is, because she only smiled slightly when Saud suggested a random name.

Of course, she might not talk also due to the fact that her accent is a little strange. She slurs things together sometimes, and I’m willing to bet that is the Desert accent. She would be blissfully stupid to go about town talking in Desert tongue when we were at war.

I know a little more than my parents though, I guess. She speaks to me sometimes, when we’re alone, about completely curious things. The sword she was making? There were about a hundred of them in the Shoppe, all crafted by her. When Jon, the actual blacksmith, saw all of them he exclaimed, “Aye, what’re all these damned Desert swords doing in here?” so that’s how I know Saigan’s…not from around here. There wouldn’t be hundreds of desert swords in the Shoppe if she knew nothing about them. They’re hard to make, apparently. It takes a lot of time to master them, she says, but she always says she was twelve when she came to Feroa, so who knows?

“Sahn wants you to know you’re welcome to join us for dinner tonight,” I told Saigan, hesitating on the date. Immediately her narrow maroon eyes peeked up at me from behind her shield of sweat-matted champagne hair. She stared for a moment before taking the sword out of the fire and setting it down on an anvil. The metal glowed a bright orange.

“Tonight?” she said, her voice scratchy from disuse. “What is she making?”

“Your favorite,” I enticed, smiling to show her it was safe; no one had followed me into her Shoppe. “Come on Sai; you know you’re welcome every night. Why don’t you ever visit anymore?”

Saigan poured a cup of water over the sword, not even grinning in satisfaction when the metal sizzled and contracted. We both knew why she hardly ever came home anymore. Still, Sahn and Saud asked her at least once a week out of desire to spend time with a child they’d raised for the past eight years. Saying anything about why she never came, however, would be a major no-no in my book though. As long as we were safe, no one ever needed to know.

Big mistake, I know.

“Well, I’ll try to make it,” Saigan compromised, her dead eyes meeting my own brown ones head-on. “Don’t wait up for me though. I might be too busy to make it anytime soon.” It was true; Saigan and Jon had a lot of work to do in their Shoppe before next week, when the Emperor’s commander was coming to order a few hundred swords for our men waging war against the Northern desert and all its affiliates.

Word had gotten out about Saigan’s swords via trade routes along the coast, and it had been decided that in order to defeat the enemy, we would have to use what the enemy used against them. Saigan, apparently, was the only one inherent enough to actually still make swords of Desert descent without fear of being executed by the law.

To build a Desert sword is treason in time of war, apparently, but not when we are in dire need of the weapon itself. And since we do not trade with the Northern Desert anymore or its’ affiliates, it is very hard to come across the long curved swords anymore.

I guess that’s why they wanted Saigan back.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

“All right,” I replied, edging out of the Shoppe. “But if you don’t come you know that once again, you will have disappointed Sahn and Saud.”

Saigan ignored my warning and dunked the entire sword into a bucket of icy water from the Ro River. Chunks of ice still protruded from the Ro during this time of year.

“I will try to make it,” she declared softly, but her voice told me that she would take a very long time getting back home. She always did when she happened to come to dinner. Whatever she did with the rest of her time was none of our business apparently.

I accepted that though, so I nodded in response and headed for the front entrance. Knowing Saigan, she would come. But dinner would be done by the time she came home.

“Tachs,” Saigan called my name from the furnace, and I paused, waiting to hear what she had to say. She spoke so little, so every word she said mattered to me. “Be careful tonight. They’ve begun to move.”

I knew who ‘they’ were, but I wasn’t sure if she was correct. The Emperor had only declared war a few months ago. Wouldn’t the Northern Desert take longer than a few months to mobilize?

“How do you know?” I asked her curiously. Saigan’s eyes went back to her work and she examined her sword with a shrewdness I hardly ever saw in her.

“Can’t you smell them?” she replied bluntly. “Each night their scent has been getting stronger. Take Sahn and Saud away from Feroa if something happens by tomorrow night.”

“Tomorrow?” I inquired, taking a step back inside. “So soon? Saigan, how long have you known about this?”

“A week,” she lied, and we both knew it was a lie, too.

“Why have you told no one? You’re putting lives at stake.”

Saigan pressed a hand to her left shoulder, where the one thing that separated her from us lay; the seven pointed star brand of the Northern Desert tribes.

“Whose lives?” she asked, and I instantly had no reply. “This war does not depend on me, Tachs. If no Lowlander has figured it out, then I as a ‘Lowlander’ have not figured it out either. But…” She glanced up at me uneasily. “Warn someone if you desire. The Emperor will need all the help he can get when they come.”

I backed out of the Shoppe and hurried back to our home, trying to bury the information she’d given me deep inside of my mind. I certainly wanted nothing to do with the war either, of course, but I was only sixteen. I was hardly considered an adult still.

Once home I told Sahn that Saigan would try to make it and headed to the room we had once shared until Saigan began staying away from home at night. I scuffed open the balcony window we had and sat down, letting my legs dangle from the sill. Beyond our home was Feroa. It wasn’t a small town, but it wasn’t huge either. There were a couple roads and a couple of trades.

Farmers and merchants stuck close to the Ro River, along with the fishermen. Saud, my father, was out on the River at the time, since he had chosen fishing as his trade. Guards and warriors stayed close to the main roadway that passed through the village. They came and went, but a few stuck around for a few years at a time. When I turned eighteen, I would become one of the guards. Right now I was just training.

Blacksmith and Woodsmen had their own little Shoppes in town, and anything else was placed randomly. The temple, like all other villages, was placed in the Northern corner of Feroa and the General of the town was located in the Southern corner. It was the basic layout of a Lowland village.

Beyond Feroa lay the small Hajj mountain range. If one were to travel beyond that, they would find themselves in the Lowlands Capitol of Pietrah. Sometimes, if I stared long enough, I thought I could see the Temple of Zhor from my bedroom. It was the tallest structure on the Continent, and priests and priestesses from all over the land came to see it.

Of course, now that we were at war no one of Desert affiliation was allowed near the Tower, but that was for their own protection. Knowing Lowlanders, any Desert man would’ve been shot had he dared to get near our most sacred place.

XX

Unfortunately for Saigan, as I was contemplating her news in my room, she had headed out of the Blacksmith’s Shoppe for the day and was headed for Feroa’s tavern. She did it regularly, but she never drank much. Sometimes it took her an entire night to down anything she’d ordered, because she’d be so lost in thought that the drink was hardly important.

She went to her usual spot in the back of the tavern and pointed to whatever a customer near her was having, as was her customary way. Once her drink arrived she sipped at it slowly and stared at the tavern’s floorboards while the bar filled up.

She never noticed the armed men who came into the tavern until it was too late, I guess. They took one look at her and knew she was of Desert descent. It wasn’t hard to tell who was of what descent anymore; Lowlanders married Lowlanders, and Desert men stayed with their own. I, like everyone else, had always thought it odd that Saigan had come to us then, but nonetheless she’d become one of us.

So when one of the armed men stood next to her and yanked her out of her seat by the arm, obviously half the local men in the tavern were going to become offended, as was she.

“Aye, what’s this?” asked the armed man. “What’ve we got here; a pretty little thing such as yourself all alone? Ah, a Desert woman nonetheless! Where’s the rest of your pack?”

I wasn’t there, but I’m sure Saigan’s eyes must have set themselves upon the armed man with a fury.

She yanked her arm out of his grip and glared, not daring to say a word. A few of the men in the bar started to explain that no, Saigan wasn’t from the Desert, and that she was one of us but the armed men just laughed.

“You’re all blind then, eh? She’s plainly from the Desert. Come along men, chain her up and get her back to the ship. We’ll have her tossed back with her own lot by tomorrow night.”

Something about that mustn’t have set well with Saigan, for her fist impacted with the side of the armed man’s nose a second after he’d finished speaking. The man howled in pain, but that did nothing to help the bleeding.

Another armed man grabbed her and held her tightly, demanding to know what she’d gone and done that for. Saigan did not speak to them. Rather than satisfy them with words, she became limp in the man’s arms. At the first sense of submission the man let down his guard and Saigan dropped away, kicking the poor fellow down to the floorboards.

Customers in the bar began to say that this was a public place, and fighting wasn’t to be tolerated so she would need to take her fighting elsewhere. Saigan had no time for their advice however. The rest of the armed men were advancing upon her quickly, so she used what her people were known best for; their speed.

Leaping in between tables, Saigan made a beeline for the entrance. She thrust herself out into the streets and began sprinting away from the tavern, away from Feroa.

But leaving Feroa was not an option. Not, she knew, when her own kind were coming there. She skidded to a halt at the edge of the Ro River but found any kind of warning she gave would be too late now.

Long Desert Pirogues had already begun rowing upstream, bound and determined to make it to Feroa. Masses of rowers kept the sleek boats moving, and Saigan knew she had to either distract them or keep them away from her family.

She could always do both.

So, gathering her energy, she dashed back towards our home, but by the time she got there she was already too late to tell us to leave.

Once she’d escaped, the Emperor’s armed men demanded to know where Saigan lived, and a local informed them. The men raced up the hill to our home and, when they did not find Saigan, tied my mother up in the kitchen.

I of course went downstairs and tried to free her but it was no use. They ended up tying the both of us together.

By the time Saigan got to us, one last armed man was ready for her. The second she opened the front door he clubbed her and sent her to the floor unconscious.

And so it seemed we were all doomed, but…things never end so miserably.

I would tell you how this all ends, but that would spoil the story.

This is about Saigan. About how she had to go back to the Northern lands, and how she conquered the world as far as I’m concerned. She did so much for us, yet we never saw the signs until she left.

This is the story of Saigan De Feroa, adopted daughter of Saud and Sahn De Feroa, child of Desert descent, conqueror of the Kudan Ocean, conquistador of the Barren Plains, and heroine of our time.

XX