Chapter 4: Talking

If I only have feet, I will continue

If I only have arms, I will continue

If I only have teeth, I will continue

“Wowowowowow, calm the hell down, we can’t just ‘start making weapons’”

“What do you mean we can’t ‘just make weapons’? I thought that was the whole reason you brought me here. To help you forge better blades or at least fix the dull ones,” Srishta replied, offended.

“Yes, but first we would need a plan on how to handle this situation. I don’t want to just barge into the village with swords and fight them to the death. That is barbaric and not how our lineage handles those things.”

“Ok, so what is the plan?”

Chairo stood still for a second, she actually didn’t know what the plan was. She never actually got that far into her thinking. She kind of always thought, ‘one day, we’ll find a way to kill this bastard’, and it kind of stopped there. She never thought she’d meet someone randomly in the middle of this desert steppe who could actually help them. Now she thought about it, she started to doubt. Can he even help them? He hasn’t proven anything yet. “He isn’t a mole, definitely not,” she thought but to her that didn’t meant that he would be useful. It simply meant that he wasn’t a mole.

“Prove yourself first,” Chairo said firmly, with a bit of an arrogant tone under her voice.

“What do you mean? I told you I make weapons,” Srishta reacted confused, he was quite fired up to start and make some weapons. Now he suddenly has to ‘prove himself’?

“Prove yourself by actually making a weapon, something strong that could help us.”

“So I give you a weapon, any weapon and that would be good enough for you?”

“Yes,” Chair answered with an unyielding tone. “You will absolutely have to prove yourself first”

“Ok,” Sristha walked away from the stones they were sitting on around the campfire at their encampment and found the nearest stone, he picked it up. He came back, sat down and gave her that stone.

“Here is your weapon”

Chairo was absolutely enraged, she suddenly stood up and screamed. “YOU THINK WE CAN HELP OUR PEOPLE WITH THAT, I KNEW YOU WERE A JOKE,” she screamed at him completely outraged.

Yet, she saw a glimpse of that man again. She might be screaming at him, she might be outraged but she saw it again. This man, rigid in what he believed with all his might. This man with multiple facets that showed a facet of him she barely saw in the short time they have known each other’s existence.

“This is a weapon,” repeated Srishta, “it might not be a great weapon but it definitely is a weapon nonetheless”

“Is this some kind of nonsense lecture that you want to throw at my head, you want to feel smart. Is that it?”

“No, you asked me for a weapon so I gave you a weapon. If I threw this full force at your head from this distance, would you get back up again?”

“Yes! I absolutely would!” She answered immediately and that caused Srishta to laugh.

“Really, you think you would get up from that?” Sristha was in a massive laughter.

“Yes I would.” She responded back, impervious to his laughing.

Srishta’s mood shifted, again she saw a glimpse of that man.

“This is why, I make the weapons and you do not. You would absolutely not get back up again. Have you ever seen a man bleed out? Not just bleed but actually bleed and die?” He looked serious.

“There’s this one time…”

“You can admit you haven’t, your eyes have not seen a man die, maybe a few animals here and there but definitely not someone looking and talking like you. Those eyes wouldn’t look like that if you did.”

“So what, you did? You don’t seem like it, while crying all over my ‘dull’ blade,” she looked at him, expecting some kind of frustrated or angry response but he sat there as if reminiscing those times he did.

“Yes I have, I definitely have. It does something to you, deep inside. It also does something to your eyes, I couldn’t explain it. I know your brothers have, am I correct?”

Chairo was completely silent. She did not know how to answer this without revealing too many family secrets.

“Look, I may not be the most courageous man out there or the strongest or the smartest but it all doesn’t matter because that is not what I do. I do not go out to the battlefield and fight, I would have to be courageous for that. I do not go out and write books, I would have to be smart for that. I go out and make stuff, I go out and discover stuff. I need good eyes for that, you pick up things and then realize how to use them. That’s what my eyes are for and indirectly it also means I can pick up certain things, like the eyes of others. If you could make weapons as good as me, you would know this stone is a tremendous weapon. Either way can we finally start making weapons or what is the deal here?”

“Okay, let’s make weapons then,” Chairo answered, beaten down.

“Ok, so first show me your current weapons so I can fix them up or see what you are working with.”

“I will get them for you”

“Also where are your brothers at? Still hunting? I’d like to also talk to them from time to time, they seem like great guys.”

“What am I not good enough for you?”

“You definitely are,” he winked, this was also a side that she had never seen of him, she did not mind it though.

Chairo went out and got all the weapons that they got from their village and that they stole from places around their encampment to prepare for the big fight. It wasn’t much even if it was quite a lot of effort to gather them all here.

“Soooo, it isn’t much I see,” Srishta said quite disappointed.

“It’s better than nothing,” Chairo answered a bit sad looking at the sad pile of weapons they collected.

On the pile of weapons there were two dull blades without a hilt. They were just literal blades lying on the floor. There was a dull sword. A basic spear and a halberd that was in quite a good shape.

“That is really all you have? You have 2 blades without even a hilt, why are you even keeping them?”

“We thought that they could become handy later, we don’t know.”

“So you don’t really have anything that is shorter? I mean the halberd does seem in perfect state and it looks very well done, it even has motifs on it.”

“Yes, it’s my dad’s or was my dad’s…”

“What is this big bad guy actually holding as a weapon? Is he even that strong?”

“I wouldn’t call him strong, he just took in a small village that had no military might at all. Any actual properly trained soldier from the army could take him down. He just showed up there because he knows we barely have any contact with the government.”

“Why do you guys not have any contact with the government? Couldn’t you call a few soldiers up or ask some help? You said one well trained soldier could do the trick so I don’t see why I have to help here.”

“It is because we are not part of the government, we are a ‘rogue’ village. We don’t pay our tributes, we can’t really pay our tributes… It’s a long story I guess. I am pretty certain the government has paid Brad Tren to actually come to our village and terrorize it to push us and pay our tribute. We have gotten people from the government passing by here scarcely to ask us to be part of the government so we pay our tribute and we get protection.”

“So why did you guys not do that?” Sristha asked the question while finely inspecting the weapons. Looking at them as if they were a piece of art. Even the dull swords he took a very close look at to see precisely how it was made.

“We didn’t do that because they just want us as puppets to use and to pay, what’s the point of that? They are also indirectly terrorizing a village just so they can get puppets. They know they can’t control Bran Tren but he’s still out there to push us out there and be pawns, they know we’re smart enough to not mess with the government.”

“That is a fair enough assessment. So once we deal with this guy, we’ll have to deal with the government is what I am hearing?”

“Yes, probably,” Chairo answered waiting for a negative response.

“Ok, so for now we just have to make weapons that work and in the future we’ll have to make really good weapons.”

Chairo adored that answered, she smiled. Srishta couldn’t see it through the veil that she was still wearing.

“You know you can take that off right?”

“Oh I forgot I still had it on,” Chairo took off her veil around her face.

The face she showed completely shocked Srishta.