Across a thousand yards of open field with uneven tufts of green grass and dark clouds overhead, a massive wall of stone with towers and crenelations like teeth along the top rose up from a river, easily a mile end-to-end.
Carthia.
As with the Lake of Doom, nearly-naked native women were out grazing their flocks, some with goats, one with about a dozen wooly bison and their calves. To our left, the jungle claimed the edge of the grass up to the black river spanned by a stone bridge tucked beside the walls and more open plain beyond. A streak of dark gray clouds reached down from the sky and brushed its fingers upon the forest. To our right, hills carpeted with trees rolled into the distance, and the gray-purple rock wall of the Terbulin ridge reached defiantly beyond the jungle's grasp and faded into the mist. Ahead of us, behind the outer wall was a cluster of towers reaching for the sky with more crenelations encircling the top and narrow slits running down the sides.
And what if Miyani didn't join us here?
Did she stay at the Lake, and would I ever see her again?
I turned to look behind me. Clusters of those red-and-green grassy stalks crowded the view beyond a few feet, and leaves rustling in the wind overhead joined the chorus of insects, chirps, and calls of the primeval forest beyond.
Perhaps it was for the best. I most definitely shouldn't have said that to her. How could I have been so stupid?
That look of shock on her face.
I should have learned the words to wish her a safe journey instead. Father in heaven, keep her safe? For me?
For now, Davod, Geraln, Ales, Faren, Rock, Kelint, Northstar, and I made our way across the irregular black slate road towards a world at war, with black magic, monsters in the woods, pirates, runaway slaves, and other outcasts.
The road led us across the field to the front gate. Kelint tripped on a slab of road and nearly fell over. He was busy watching one of the goatherds, a girl with dark-green skin, yellow eyes, and long white hair in a thick braid down her back. She was dressed as all of them, with a flap of cloth hanging from her belt front and back leaving her bare feet, legs, hips, belly, back, and… generous breasts out in the open.
Kelint shook his head and tried to laugh it off. "Gods, I could get used to this place!"
Another pair of ladies about fifty yards to our left waved at us as we passed. The younger one had an infant sleeping on her shoulder, and the older one had a long spear. While the older one shot her gaze at the forest nearby and took the spear in both hands, the young mother smiled and nodded at Davod, who nearly tripped waving back to her.
Ahead of us, a procession emerged from the archway at the main gate. Men who looked Herali, olive-green skin and long, straight, dark-green hair wearing chain armor, and women with dark-green skin and white hair, mostly naked as the others walked with three empty, bison-drawn carts. Women walked alongside the beasts with sticks in hand while the men walked the perimeter with weapons ready, keeping their eyes outward. While one of the men kept his eyes on the bush with his hands on his weapon, one of the women came up and stroked his bum. He leaned down and kissed her lips, and they kept walking.
As we drew close, we saw something long and bulky lying across the stone slats with a thick tail that reached onto the wooden bridge. Its heavy, armored, gray-black barrel of a body rose up about knee-height with four clawed tree-trunk hands out at its sides. It had to be at least six yards from the front of its snout to the end of its heavy tail. Two eyelets sat atop its head, and several fangs stuck out from its gargantuan mouth. The largest alligator I'd ever seen was in Kyoen, and it was a third as long.
Rock's eyes bulged. "Holy fuck what that is being?"
Faren smirked and answered him. "That's a sign. It reads… 'No Swimming.'"
We stopped a good ten yards from the monster, and a man's voice called out from above the gate. "You'll have to pay the toll!"
Up on the rampart, two Herali men gawked at us and sent words in our direction while laughing among themselves. "Yeah! You'll have to feed him one of you!"
Another man came out from under the archway and glared up at our tormentors. As soon as they saw him, they looked away and wandered off.
This man was average height with a sharp jaw and lean build. His skin was dark, not so dark as the others, but darker than ours. His hair had a sandy-green color like Rock and Northstar, but his eyes were bright yellow. His sharp features and widow's peak hairline placed him into his thirties, with wide, full lips and high cheeks. A bright-yellow silk loincloth with silver embroidery along the edges hung front and back from a leather belt, and a scabbard with bands of polished silver inlaid with diamond-tree stones hung to his knees. Other than that he was as naked as the women down to his bare feet.
He also wasn't drenched in sweat like we were.
He wasn't bulky, but refined, chiseled muscles graced his knees, his stomach, his chest, shoulders, and arms. He had a handful of circular scars on one thigh and a line of scar on his opposite shoulder.
"Come around this way," he spoke Herali with a hint of accent and moved his arms in an arc around the No Swimming sign.
Davod refused to take his eyes off the monster. His voice oozed apprehension. "Are you sure?"
The man smiled. "His teeth are on that end. Isn't that right, Peti?" He pursed his lips and cooed, then crouched to gently slap the alligator's massive tail. The thing didn't move.
We took his suggestion and walked around, and Peti didn't react to us, either.
Ales remarked, "he must like those stones. He's just basking."
We gingerly stepped around him onto the wooden planks and rushed to get clear.
Through the archway I heard men grunting and sticks clattering against one another. To the right, through a passage between a large stone building and the gate, was an open field where lines of men, Herali like us, attacked one another with long staffs tipped with padded cloth at one end. A series of pops sounded off, and in another section of the clearing was another group of men lined up with bows who shot at an opposing line of burlap men raised on stakes some twenty yards away. At the end of the yard, mortared gray and yellow stones of the outer walls rose up from tall grass.
Our host led us towards an imposing structure of the same yellow-and-gray stone three stories high with wrap-around balconies on the second and third floors covering a verandah at the ground level. Walls weren't more than a line of open archways, some of which had sheer curtains to obscure the interior. Looking down upon us from the second floor balcony were three people, a man and two girls.
The man was Goloagi and taller than the girls by a head. Lines of silver dotted his otherwise dark-green, curly hair. He had a long nose with a rounded bridge, and his square chin seemed locked in place. He wore no shirt, but a long, black rectangle of a loincloth with gold embroidery, and about his shoulders was an ornate silk scarf with bands of colors behind black lettering to indicate his rank, the Imperial Voice.
To his left stood a girl with skin the same color as the man who'd greeted us at the gate—dark, but not so dark as the others. She had eyes of deep amber, and her hair was streaks of white amid dark-green in braids that incidentally covered her bare breasts and dangled down to her waist. The only clothes she had on were a white silk loincloth with a golden flower print that hung to her knees, a silver pendant of a crescent moon, and leather sandals that webbed over her feet and up beyond her ankles.
The other girl was one of the natives. Noticeably shorter than the other, her skin was the same green shade of black as Miyani, and her eyes were lemon-yellow. Her ivory-white hair fell behind her shoulders in a feral mass. She'd dressed in a white cotton sleeveless robe of a dress with a plunging V-line at the center of her body and had a hem that scarcely covered her incredibly muscular legs.
Then came a screech, followed by a rapid thumping across rustling leaves.
To the left, an open expanse cordoned off by a line of pillars with no fence between them held groves of coconut trees, large shady trees, thick underbrush, and a small shed. From this area, a blur of a thing zoomed towards us kicking up clods of mud behind it. It was one of those lizards like the one Miyani rode, only small, scarcely knee high with bright green scales, flitting about on two gangly legs. It raced up to Davod, bobbing its head about rapidly and chirped, sniffing all up and down his leg before bounding over to Faren. Faren could scarcely greet the creature before, moving its snout around frantically and sniffing everything it could reach, it darted over to Northstar to sniff at him.
"Don't try to pet her," the man grinned, "just stand perfectly still."
I looked up, and the girl with the white dress had leaned over to rest her arms on a handrail. She watched the small creature flit among us with a wide smile across her strikingly beautiful face. She turned to look off to her right.
Another lizard stepped towards us, only much bigger. This one stood as tall as Blue, probably taller, and was light brown in color with a dark-brown diamond pattern on its back. It let out another screech and stopped about ten feet from where we stood.
The little one bounded over to Geraln, sniffed his feet, then his knees, then jumped up at him several times and chirped in rapid succession. Geraln looked down, furrowed his brow, then looked up at me as if to beg me to rescue him somehow.
The man laughed. "She likes you!"
The big lizard took two more steps towards us and screeched again, holding its body still while snaking its long neck so as to turn its head towards the little one. A flap of skin under its neck wiggled as it let out a string of clicks and groans.
I'd encountered enough bears back home to know that if there's a straight line between a mother and her cubs, you'll want to stay as far away from it as possible. I stepped back and glanced up at our three onlookers, who kept their attention on us.
The little one flitted about as though the big one wasn't there growling and chirping to get her attention. She darted over to Kelint and sniffed his feet. Kelint tried to back away, but the creature followed him, craning her tiny neck up to sniff his knees before frolicking over to Ales.
The large one stepped forward to stand between me and the rest of our group, turned her head to fix one eye on me and the other on her child, then let out a sharp caw followed by more clicks.
The little one turned to face her, opened her tiny jaws wide, and hissed before rushing over to Rock to sniff up and down his leg. Rock lifted his meaty hands and looked down as the baby ran in circles around his feet.
The big one got down on all fours and let out a loud screech, then started to rush towards the little one.
The baby ran straight to our host and jumped into his waiting arms. He caught her and lifted her up, laughing while the little thing nestled her tiny head in the crook of his neck. The mother then stood on her hind legs and pulled her head back while the man brought the little one over. The mother brushed her lizard face in the man's cheek, and he reached out to allow the little one to climb onto her back.
As the mother lizard carried her child off into the tree area beside us, the man turned to us with a big smile. "So," he clasped his hands. "Who's ready for orientation?"
Ales looked at Faren with his brow furrowed. Rock glanced at Northstar who swallowed, clenched his jaw, and turned to Kelint, whose own eyes were wide. Geraln stood still with his fingers trembling and turned to Davod, who looked at me with his mouth gaped.
I turned to look behind me. Beyond the stone archway, the black slate road crossed a thousand yards of open field and led to the thick forest that blanketed hills for untold miles before the purple wall of the mountains rose up to pen the thick clouds overhead. Beyond those mountains was a home we would not see again unless we survived this war for two years.
I scanned the forest edge in the faint hope that she was finished with whatever she had to do and would join us. I watched, standing alone while my friends moved on, scanning for some sign of her.
"Caleb!" Davod's voice shook me from my trance. "Come on, man!"
In the distance, the tall towers were shrouded in a dark mist that came down from the cloudy sky. Then I realized the mist was approaching me. Quickly.
All my friends were safely within the arched building. I ran, but didn't make it. Bullets of rain pelted my face, my body in the few yards I had left such that by the time I joined them, my hair clung to my shirt like glue over my shoulders and down my back. I had to pull it forward to wring it out. Water splashed onto the stone floor, and the man raised an eyebrow at me. "Try not to do that inside, please."
"Sorry."
Davod slapped my arm and chuckled, shaking his head and grinning at me.
Outside, white lines fell heavy from the sky, and a chorus of violent rain clattered into pools throughout the grass. Inside, the air felt sticky and hot. Three walls were nothing but open archways separated by thick columns of gray-and-yellow stones mortared together. Half of the archways were covered by sheer curtains that lifted with the breeze brought in from the rain. Elsewhere, a wooden partition, painted in a variety of colors with some kind of abstract imagery, accordioned across the floor leaving space enough for a stone staircase leading upwards.
The man led us towards a wooden table with a large open book and a heavy wooden chest, and sat down. "My name is tagaŋu, by the way. Who's first?"
"First for what?" Ales said.
The book sat adjacent to a glass vial with a long white feather reaching up from it. Taganu rifled through the pages. Names. Rows and rows of names filled the pages, most of them crossed out. He came to a page where the names ended, leaving blank space. Then he picked up the feather, tapped it against the rim of the vial, and looked up at us in expectation.
"I'll go first," Davod stepped up. "Davod of Gath."
The man wrote. "Who's your Naveris?"
Davod glanced at me, shrugged, then spoke. "Runya of Gath."
"Any special skills?"
Davod shrugged. "I smith."
Taganu nodded and wrote that down. Above Davod, at least half a dozen names had already been crossed out. "Next?"
Davod looked at me and shrugged me forward, but Ales stepped up. "Ales of Suuya, Naveris is Tanee of Suuya."
The rain outside was as it had been that morning. Hard. It wasn't a few minutes before it stopped completely. That same morning, she'd come in through the gate at the castle, her skin glistened with water droplets all over, and that little cotton flap clung to her sublime round arse. God, how was such a girl possible?
Woman?
I needed to stop. Geraln was right; my focus should have been on surviving this war, not obsessing and saying inappropriate things to the natives.
Taganu looked up at Ales.
Faren stepped in before he could speak, "I'm sorry, but I have a question. We were brought here by one of those sekiwa ladies; her name is Miyani. How, uh… how… um… Does she come this way often?"
He glanced at me for a moment, then turned back to Taganu for an answer.
The man looked Faren up and down before leaning back and smiling at him. "You'll probably see her again at some point." He turned back to Ales. "Any skills?"
Ales shrugged. "I sail, I fish. I clean fish, I cook fish, I eat fish. Very good at eating fish. Lots of practice."
Taganu nodded. "The yasivuŋa used to make a squid souffle that was just unbelievable." Then he shrugged, "they probably still do."
Ales's eyes perked up. "Is it anything like the one they make in Tobor?"
Taganu smiled and nodded. "Similar. They spice it differently; soak it in lemongrass and basil, and not so heavy-handed with the nice pepper. Next?"
"Geraln of Gath."
"Naveris?"
"I don't have one." He shot a glare in my direction and locked his jaw. I looked away; several spiders had woven their webs across one of the archways. Strings of tiny droplets fanned out towards the columns making an otherwise invisible wall.
Taganu smirked. "You're going to be popular."
Geraln turned to him. "What do you mean?"
Taganu raised one eyebrow and spoke through a wry grin. "I'm sure you can figure it out."
Geraln shook his head. "I don't know. What do you mean?"
Taganu laughed. "Let's see here… there's been a war going on for ten years now; there aren't many men left. What's one thing a woman can't do without a man's help, except for the complication of there being some Naveris coming over the mountains to claim your child. I'm sure you can figure it out."
Geraln's eyes bulged as he began to put the pieces together. He looked at me in shock. I could tell he fought it, but a grin curled his lips.
Taganu looked at him directly. "Any skills?"
Geraln's eyes were fixed at some point that didn't exist in our world. He shook it off slightly and turned back to Taganu. "Huh?"
Taganu chuckled and spoke to him through a wide grin. "Let me give you some advice: there is no greater curse than to get everything you think you want, so be careful. Any skills?"
Geraln shrugged. He hesitated, so I spoke up for him. "He took gold at the knowledge tourney in Heralia City last winter."
Geraln shook his head and blushed. "I didn't take gold."
"He took crystal."
"That's even better," Davod added.
I continued. "And he was personally invited to dine with the Duke's family."
"He invited all the contestants. It wasn't…"
Taganu wrote that down. "Next?"
Kelint wedged his small frame between us and stepped up. "Kelint of Dignestran. Naveris is Gitteilat of Dignestran. For skills, I took first at the Ulum County archery championship three years running." He then glanced around at Geraln, Davod, and myself with a smug grin.
Like that mattered.
There was something about her face I couldn't get over.
"Next?"
Rock and Faren both stepped up. They glanced at one another, and Faren waved him on.
"I naming Rock of Tortiess."
Taganu wrote that down. "Do you observe the Naveris tradition?"
"Yes, she is naming Sanjani of Disgestran."
Taganu glanced up at him and raised an eyebrow. It was Kelint who filled in the details, "that's my sister."
"Any skills?"
Rock bobbed his head back and forth. "I am building places."
"Next?"
"Faren of Suuya, Naveris is Shiree of Suuya. Skills…" Faren scrunched his chin and looked at Ales.
Ales grinned. "Purveyor of fine… herbal intoxicants?"
The two shared a laugh. Geraln, Davod, and I shared a light giggle of our own as well.
Taganu tilted his head to the side and wrote in his book. "Nothing wrong with that, normally, but remember we're at war…"
How would Miyani feel about that? Would she be put off, or would she smoke with him?
Faren nodded. "I know."
"... if it takes you a fraction of a second longer to react to something, that fraction of a second will get you killed. That detail on the road you weren't paying attention to may be a spike trap; if you're lucky, you'll only lose a leg. Men who stay alive down here stay sharp at all times. Do you understand?"
Faren shrugged. "I haven't smoked since before we came to the pass."
"Good. Because even the gators in the moat can tell when a man isn't walking right. Next?"
That left me and Northstar. Northstar glanced at me and urged me forward, so I stepped up. "Caleb of Gath. No Naveris."
"Any skills?"
A growing obsession with a girl I had no way of talking to, though that probably didn't count as a skill. "Not really."
Davod spoke up with a firm hand across my back, "he's a medic."
"Yeah," Geraln confirmed.
"I'm really not."
Davod insisted, "yes, he is."
Taganu passed his yellow eyes back and forth between us, and Geraln spoke up. "Write that down. He's a medic."
Taganu then looked at me directly.
"I have some… limited… medical training. That's all, really."
With that, the man tapped his finger down the list, counting out the names, then looked up and counted us. Then he faced Northstar directly.
The tall, lanky Saeni turned to Rock, who explained. "Sha-ando ke zana to na'veris to basi go-ovo."
He pulled his lips wide and thought for a moment. "Eh…"
Kelint answered for him. "His name is Northstar, her name is Wind, and he's a weaver. He makes tapestries, rugs, and things."
With that, Taganu put the feather back into the vial and blew on the fresh ink before pulling the book to the side. He then unlocked the chest and pulled up a brown burlap sack tied at the top that chinked when he set it down. He then opened it and turned it down, and a sizable pile of coins clattered all over the wooden table. He dug his fingers through it, pulling out a pair of sixteens and set them aside. Then he set aside another pair, then a sixteen, three fives, and a one, then six fives and two ones, until there were eight piles of different coins, each totalling thirty-two kren. "Your first month's wages."
I reached for a stack, but Geraln protested. "Thirty-two kren for the month? That's it?"
Taganu excused himself, "soldiers' wages are set by your Emperor."
Geraln looked around wide-eyed. "This is ridiculous! What are we supposed to do with thirty-two kren, man?"
Taganu shrugged. "Buy something? I don't know. Come this way."
We left the through archways on a different side from the one we'd come in. We hadn't filed out in a proper line, but rather as a cluster. Ales walked through a different archway only to reach his hands out vigorously, trying to peel the spider web from his face. Outside, there was a path of beaten grass through the field towards the cluster of old wooden buildings. While Taganu stepped his bare feet through fresh puddles without a thought, water soaked through my boots and seeped into my toes.
I heard a splash behind me, followed by Geraln crying out. "Really, man?"
Rock had jumped into a puddle, splashing everyone around him. His answer for Geraln was a big smile across his meaty face. Davod tried to get around the puddles by stepping on the thicker grass, only to fall six inches into a deep pocket of mud. Men filed out of a stone shed from having waited out the rain and resumed their training. Some of them waved at us as we passed.
"These are the barracks." We came to the center of a wide corridor of beaten grass abutted on both sides by rows of long, dark, wooden buildings atop stone piles with some feet of clearance above the ground. Several of the planks had worn away from rot towards the bottom or were decorated with green moss, and each had a few steps leading up to an open doorway at one end. The old, water-logged wooden steps bowed and creaked as we stepped up, and a family of small pigs scurried beneath the building.
Inside, the air was hot and stuffy, and carried the stench of mold. The wood floors protested loudly at being walked over as we traversed a long, narrow path through rows of beds stacked two high with the lower on the floor. Light came from a series of windows that lacked any closure beyond the spiderwebs stretched across. In one corner, a trickle of water from the rain moments before ran down along the wall and pooled on the floor before draining through a hole in the wood.
Taganu reached down to grab a pack that had been left on one of the beds along with a stack of fresh laundry. He tucked that under his arms and pointed as he spoke. "So… the spiders are your friends…"
"What?" Kelint gaped.
"If the web looks old, clean it out so they can make a new one. Always check for snakes; the little green ones you need a rod to chase them out; the others you can pick up like normal."
Geraln gaped. "What do you mean pick up?"
"If you see any fat white ones with a yellow diamond pattern, bring those to the kitchen; they're delicious. I'll show you where that is later. Go ahead and pick a bed, any bed. None of them have names. You should be able to leave your things here; no one will disturb them."
"What about that guy's things?" Ales pointed to the pack he'd picked up moments before.
"He's dead. Over here…"
He walked over to a wall beside the entrance. Faren and I lingered, staring at the empty bed where the pack had been removed from. We glanced at one another; he had a sense of foreboding on his face.
"Gentlemen?" he said. Beside him was a board with several columns separated by thin wooden lines, with rows under each holding blocks with names written on them. At the top of each column was a chore—laundry, dishes, cleaning, bath water, and so forth. "Every morning, the slots get emptied. First one to put their name up gets first pick. If it's full, pick a different one, and if you don't pick you get whatever's left over. Over here…"
I understood. Whoever didn't pick got shit-pit.
Beside the chore board, a small table held ceramic jars and a stack of oily rags stained with rust. "If you brought a eupin bow, oil it up daily or the wood will split in this humidity. Those of you who brought chain armor, especially during rainy season, dry off the links completely before oiling them because they'll rust as well. Use plenty and don't worry about your shirt; oil comes out easier than blood."
I looked at Kelint. He let out a slow exhalation and ran his fingers through his hair. We were all silent.
"This way."
We followed him towards the end of the corridor. My eyes once again passed over the vacant bed before following Taganu over to a side room with several large, wooden tubs.
"Bathe daily," he held up a finger. "Bathe with a partner. I know men bathing one another is weird in your culture, but do it anyway. Those little white bumps under your skin, those are worm eggs. You can get them out with your fingernail, but do it before they hatch, trust me. There's also ticks, leeches, fleas, foot rot, and thorns that'll make you very sick. You see a rash, anything unusual, see the medic."
We all glanced at one another. All our eyes were wide with horror.
With that, he led us outside once more, where the muggy air was a welcome respite from the stale mustiness of the wooden barracks. He led us to another building, but pointed to the one next to it. "Caleb?"
"Yes, sir?"
He laughed. "You don't have to 'sir' me. That's the medical ward. Go see Dr. zʊɣi and ask her to assess your medical skills when we're done. This way is the mess."
The mess was a large building with an open area filled with numerous long tables. A stairway beside the kitchen led to a loft area that overlooked the common area. "Officers dine up there, you all will stay down here."
There were two men throughout the common area. One of them was wiping scraps from the tables onto the floor, while the other followed him with a broom. A third man was in the kitchen area standing over a large, steel cauldron with steam coming out of it. He was Herali, but covered in scars and tattoos, and he looked at us with one eye—his other eye had a black patch over it.
Taganu gathered us around him. "Breakfast at daybreak, dinner after the gate closes. Food in the Old City is much better, but that'll run you a few kren."
"What did you just say?" The tattooed man stood behind a low counter, propped up on his outstretched hands.
Taganu grinned. "I was telling these noobs that the slop you call 'food' would be more suitable as bedding for chickens."
Geraln and Davod glanced at one another and laughed. Rock translated for Northstar, and they laughed as well.
"Oh," the one-eyed man nodded with a wry grin of his own. "I thought you were insulting it. Never mind."
From the loft dining area, another man shuffled quickly down the stairs.
He was fairly tall—not so much as Davod and Northstar, but still tall, and lean. He had the same olive-green skin as us with long, straight, dark-green hair he'd let fall behind his back though his face bore the age of a man into his forties. His brow, his lips, seemed fixed as though he hadn't smiled in years. He had on a torn white shirt pulled reluctantly over his shoulders and left open revealing hard muscle all up and down his chest, with a black loincloth with gold trim that hemmed about his knees held up by a simple leather belt.
Taganu nodded to him as he approached, then turned to us. "One more thing, and this is important. The women here…"
Eyes perked up throughout our little group. Taganu, however, looked serious.
"... it's a different culture from what you're used to. I'm sure you've noticed."
Of course. Girls of every age walking around bare-chested, that was going to take some getting used to. Every man in our group smiled and blushed.
Taganu continued. "Some of them can be very… let me simplify it this way: she comes to you. Stick to that rule and you'll be fine; she comes to you. If she doesn't, another one will. And if that doesn't work, brush your teeth—sometimes that helps. Anyway, the Marquis wants a word with you all. After that you're welcome to enjoy the city."
With that, he turned and left.
This other man, the Marquis, glanced around among us with a frown. His voice had a raspy, breathy tone to it. "A couple months ago we had a guy, had a thing for one of our sekɪwa. She didn't want nothin to do with him. He refused to leave her alone, so her vɪta'o knocks him down, rips out his liver, and eats it right in front of him while he's still breathing."
The Marquis then looked each of us in the eyes before finishing. "Welcome to Carthia."
Then he walked off.
Everyone turned to face me.
Northstar turned to Kelint and asked him in Goloagi. "He says what?"
Kelint plastered a wide smirk all over his baby face with a glance in my direction. "That girl brought us over here, the one this guy Caleb been drooling over? Stay away from her."
Geraln corrected him with a cruel grimace, "that's not what he said! He merely said that if Caleb spoke to her again, that lizard was going to eat his liver; that's all."
Kelint laughed. Faren slapped my back and corrected both of them with a smile. "A better translation would be, 'rip his liver out, and then eat it.' Get it right."
Geraln chuckled while Northstar looked at me with a smug grin. At that, all of them walked off while Davod stared at me and shook his head, nearly laughing. "Only you, man! Only you!"