Nicolai kneeled to the ground. He reached down to feel a slight depression in the grass before him. It was slight, with the blades bent just a little more than they would have had a slight breeze been present. Nicolai tore a few grass leaves and lifted them to his nose before dabbing them on the tip of his tongue.
“I used to be so much better at this,” he said to himself.
The tracks evaded him. In his early years, when he was but seven or eight, he could follow a hare through a forest for hours. Now, having lived in Knight's Harbor, his senses seemed lost.
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The previous night the Czarian he had subdued had confirmed his worst suspicions. It wasn't that he had confessed. No, that would have been much preferred. Rather, he had taken the quill Nicolai had given him and jabbed it in his jugular. Not even two minutes had passed before the Czarian died.
That night, with the corpse lying in a pool of his own blood, Nicolai learned first hand of the iron will that permeated every seasoned Czarian Guard. Even Boris, whose espionage on behalf of the Old Council had hardened him, lit a cigarette to calm his nerves.
"He was no emissary," Boris said. "He wasn't sent to intimidate."
Boris shook the tip of his cigarette over the body. Ashes fell to the Czarian's face, little flecks that shone in the pale candlelight of the flat.
"Why now? Why here?" Nicolai muttered.
"There are thousands of Chenians packed into every square block of this ghetto. What are the chances that a Czarian would find you?" Boris asked.
"What?"
"Were you followed?"
"No."
"I suppose not. If you had been, they would have seen you hand that wood splinter to me, and then I would have been in danger. No, he was here before all that, waiting for you. What else are you not telling me?"
"I told you everything."
"No Chenian boy is worth such trouble to exterminate."
"Just as I said. I don't know why he was here. Perhaps Petrov did. Or Leo or Fyodor. Maybe that's why they left."
"Doubtful. Petrov would have said something to me sooner if he thought he was in trouble."
Boris turned to the two other Chenian men he brought with him. They shifted uneasily, unsure of whom to side with, their loyalties torn between two comrades.
"Dump the body under the docks. The sea gulls will feast on it for weeks before it's discovered."
Glad to oblige and remove themselves from the tension, the Chenians lifted the body up and headed for the door. Boris waited until they left, all the while staring at Nicolai, searching for the slightest hint of a lie in his face. Once the door closed he resumed his interrogation.
"You said you were a friend of Petrov's."
"You know I am."
"Yet he has never mentioned you."
"You say that as though you spoke to him often."
"Often enough."
"From what Petrov's said, all you old men do is play cards, eat angelinos and talk of the old country."
"Such a coincidence that he has gone on the same day you finally show your face."
"I know what you are trying to say. So stop right now."
"Where are you from, Chenian?"
"What does it matter?"
"Tell me."
"Sarbin."
"How convenient. A frontier town wiped off the map."
"Don't you dare speak ill of it."
"And your father . . ."
"Victor."
Boris paused. Even though their argument had escalated to a series of shouts, that spoken name had cut through the air, resonating throughout the apartment. Boris, now more surprised than suspicious, began his conversation anew. The questioning continued, but with a subtler tone, one that reflected an underlying sense of admiration.
"Victor," Boris said, the name held by his lips. "Not such a common name in Sarbin, on the Great Plains. Only those most loyal to the Council, who had served as Shepherds guarding the Frontier, could earn such a strong name. Men such as your father."
"Yes," Nicolai replied. "I suppose."
"I knew him. Not well, mind you, but I knew him. How old were you when . . ."
"He passed?"
"Yes."
"Ten, maybe eleven," Nicolai lied. In truth, he was not sure how old he was when his father died.
"Do you remember him well?"
Nicolai went silent. How often had he searched his mind for any hint of a clear memory? All of what he could recall was hazy. Blurred. Not a clear thought existed regarding his past. Most often, when he was able to remember, it was in his dreams. Such nighttime visions were a mixed blessing. Fond memories of children collecting eggs from hen houses or of maidens picking wild strawberries were blended with horrific images of flames and rotting corpses. Nicolai would awaken in a cold sweat, unable to determine if his thoughts were based in reality or conjured up by his perverse imagination. The past eluded him. Even his own parents seemed like apparitions whom he could neither clearly see nor hear.
"No. I remember the Sacred Plains. Running. And finding Petrov, who had just been rescued by his uncle. Before that, things are . . . unclear."
"And yet you were able to wrestle an intruder who had the element of surprise. You speak with a careful and concise tongue, gifts no doubt from your father."
"Perhaps."
Boris drifted toward the table where the inkwell and quill rested. His fingers hovered over the spots of blood, which had already begun to coagulate.
"Whatever your past," Boris resumed, "Whatever it is that you can or cannot remember, it is no coincidence that a descendent of Sarbin and a Czarian Guard found themselves in the same room together in this foreign land. There is no doubt that the other Guards who accompanied the deceased to Knight's Harbor will come once hours pass and they have not received word from him. Assuming they are still here and not after your friends."
Nicolai froze. With his friends gone, it had never even occurred to him that they might be in danger. He had never doubted their safety for a moment. Although they lived in squalor, amongst those who would sometimes rob their own people out of desperation, the idea of harm befalling one of them had been absent from his thinking. Even riots at the checkpoints or harassment from the Shavice were not enough to cause Nicolai to worry. Despite their occasional tempers and disagreements, they had always been capable of avoiding danger, whether it involved slipping out of a tavern during a brawl or avoiding inspections by the Shavice. Their cunning and wit had served them well in Knight's Harbor.
But the threat of the Czarian Guard, however, was not one that Nicolai could dismiss so easily. If his recent brawl was any indication of their intentions, he knew that his friends would not have the opportunity to read a particular situation and escape. No, whoever these Guards were, they would be ready to end them quickly, as they had tried to do to Nicolai that night.
"Boris," Nicolai said, "If Petrov told you anything about where he was going . . ."
"No, I am sorry, son. He said no such thing."
Nicolai paused. His friends, should they still be alive, had no idea of the approaching danger. Whatever misfortune they would face would be one of complete surprise. They would be defenseless, without hope, yet another three victims of the Guard.
"Perhaps we can go to the taverns, or the stables, or the docks," Boris said. "Maybe one of the porters or the barkeeps overheard a snippet or two."
Boris grabbed Nicolai by the arm, to usher him out the door, but Nicolai was already gone. Within a flash, he had raced down the stairs, the walls and railings a blur behind him, as Boris' voice trailed behind.
"Nicolai! Nicolai! Where are you going?"
Had Nicolai processed the words and spewed forth an answer, it would not have reached Boris, for he simply sped forth too fast to speak audibly. Within a moment the cold night air hit his face as the fog clung to his forehead like morning dew.
In his nonsensical dash, only one notion dwelled in his mind. It was of Fyodor, the only one of them who was capable of falling into a drunken stupor with just one shot of grog or pint of ale. Only four days earlier, they had gone out to a tavern to celebrate him earning a moderate raise from his job as a shipbuilder's accountant. Nicolai remembered it as one of the best days they had had together in months.
One hour into their revelry, Fyodor was stumbling around the tavern, trying to sing and dance at the same time. He succeeded at neither. All he managed to do was to bump from table to chair to table, spilling grog in his wake, as he muttered the words to the Bolski ballad, with his own improvisations thrown in where appropriate.
"I say, to all you . . . Hail to the First Nation. The men of the Frontier. Who landed, landed where, the shores of Sagemark, on sands of dreams. No wait, we didn't land on sands of dreams. We smuggled into Casis."
Casis. A small port town north of Knight's Harbor. A three-day journey. It was where Nicolai and his roommates had first set foot on Maricanian soil.
Casis. That name dwelled in Nicolai's mind the entire night. It hung over his head as he broke into a stable to retrieve a horse for the ride north. It haunted him as he snapped the reins of his newfound black steed, hurrying it through the outskirts of Knight's Harbor. With every passing moment, every motion that propelled him closer toward the possible location of his friends, the very concept of that port town grew increasingly distracting.
The vision of a small hamlet nestled against the inlet of the sea. The gentle clapping of white caps against fine grains of sand. The smell of salt air blended with hints of coastal honeysuckle and mint. These memories deterred Nicolai from focusing on the reality that existed in the present, so that he nearly ran his horse off the path several times. After the fifth such incident, in which a nasty turn in the road had almost led him face first into a white thorn bush, Nicolai pulled back on the reins. His horse halted on his hind quarters, kicking up his front legs as Nicolai clutched his saddle with his thighs. When the steed had calmed, Nicolai looked around to see if he could gather his bearings.
The situation looked grim. It wasn't that Nicolai couldn't see. In fact, the misty haze that Nicolai had ridden through earlier had cleared, to the point that every leaf and branch was cast in a soft gray glow. Even the road before him was bathed in moonlight.
No, it wasn't a lack of visibility that gave Nicolai pause or a poor sense of direction. Rather, a creeping sense of anxiety, a ghost of the past, filtered through Nicolai's mind. The vivid memories of Casis, of their landing in a foreign land, were gone. What replaced them, what froze Nicolai, was a sense that something so similar had happened to him before.
He had experienced his share of hardships with his friends before. There were so many instances in Knight's Harbor alone that he could recall. If he thought back further, he could remember their arrival in Maricania and their voyage to their new home. He even fondly remembered Petrov's Uncle Tobin, and how he had sent them off from Chenia for a better opportunity overseas, a foolhardy feat in itself.
But beyond that, his memories of Chenia, whether cherished or not, were broken. Hazy. While some remained clear, they existed in isolation, often jumping into his mind at random moments throughout his days. There was no chronological order to them, at least not one Nicolai could gather. Despite his best efforts, only snippets of his youth remained in his mind. Weeks would go by without Nicolai being able to recall even what his own father had looked like.
Yet, in the middle of the night, far from anything familiar, Nicolai sat on his horse, with subtle hints of the past haunting him. He was paralyzed by memories which were unclear. Only the fear and anxiety that accompanied such thoughts was ever-present, vivid and alive in a way his past was not.
Nicolai shook his head, trying to physically expel the demons from his mind. Why am I feeling this way? he asked himself. What's happening to me? Something just isn't right about this situation. I've experienced such things before. But where? When?
Nicolai's horse stirred. Then whinnied. Nicolai patted its neck. As he stroked the horse's fine, silky mane, words gushed through his mind, a river of meditative thoughts:
Do not chant,
nor sing,
nor speak.
Let not one word echo
through the caverns of your mind.
Allow wind and leaves
to strum a chord,
listen to the choir
of stream and stones,
the symphony
of crickets and toads.
For this is the music
Ada and his angels
play for our Shepherds.
Nicolai pulled on the reins of his horse to turn it in a circle. He looked about him. No one was to be seen. Yet the words flowed as if someone was reciting them. They were calm and hypnotic, an answer to his prayers that quelled his anxiety. Nicolai knew he did not compose such a poem. It was too rehearsed, too structured and all too familiar to have been his creation.
He looked down at his hands, at the horse beneath him, and the road on which it stood. Everything seemed clearer, more defined. It was as if Nicolai had awakened from a good night's rest. Nicolai didn't pause to question his newfound sense of peace. Rather, he clipped his heels into his horse, so that it bolted forward on the road ahead.
As the horse raced down the path, Nicolai kept his eyes wide open, concentrating on what lied ahead. While his thoughts no longer meandered and his anxiety had disappeared, he couldn't help but ponder:
From where had such a meditative poem come?
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