Book Preview - Bardic Tales From Ar'rothi

Chapter One

“I don’t care whether you get up or not.” Nashotah, headwoman and chieftain of the Shona tribes stood over her young friend, Seshawah, who lay face down in the yellow and gold leaves carpeting the forest floor. White-barked Rowenleaf trees surrounded the small clearing where Nashotah had brought her would-be apprentice to test whether she had the mettle to be a Shona warrior.

For the tenth time, or the fifteenth, she’d lost track, Seshawah pushed to her hands and knees. Exhaustion threatened to defeat her. The stillness of the forest amplified each burning breath as she fought to exchange one painful lungful with another. Their sparring had silenced the usually boisterous creatures of the forest—the raucous crows, blue jays, and insects that were so plentiful this time of year.

Blood ran from her nose, a direct result of her own clumsiness after Nashotah had repelled her latest attack. Several leaves hung plastered to the gooey red mess covering her rounded cheeks and chin. Sitting back on her haunches, Seshawah pulled the leaves away one at a time, letting them drop onto the new deer hide leggings she’d so proudly worn into the glade that morning. They were filthy now, covered in mud and stained with blood.

Her hands, gritty with the moist dirt lying unseen beneath the covering of leaves, smelled of old campfire and decaying wood. Now that she focused on the ground beneath her knees, she could make out the remnants of a long-disused fire ring. Her gaze traveled up to the tunic her mother had given her on the anniversary of her twelfth naming day. It, too, was covered with blood-orange mud that nearly hid the red droplets that ran from her nose to her chin and down onto the symbols of health and strength embroidered into the soft doeskin tunic.

Fighting to hold back tears, she glared up at the woman who would decide her fate. Either Seshawah would pass this test and become a warrior apprentice, or she’d be relegated to embroidering ceremonial garments alongside her mother and grandmother. She ran her hand across her mouth, and when it slid through the mud and muck, she dipped her chin onto her shoulder to clean away the worst of the grime. She glared at the woman standing between her and a lifetime of dreams. “You think I’ll quit, don’t you?”

“I don’t care whether you quit or not. It’s of no consequence to me. Either you get past me, or you don’t.”

Seshawah turned her glare on the firepit but continued to study Nashotah out of the corner of her eye. She didn’t see the healer who’d tended her hurts and supplied her grandmother with herbal tinctures to ease her aching joints. Nor could she make out the diplomat in those high cheekbones and full, proud lips, the one who verbally sparred with Anacafrian kings and defended her lands against those who would exterminate her people.

No, the dark, brooding eyes staring down on her gave truth to the words, “I don’t care.” Seshawah knew that if she had any hope of studying under this woman, the chieftain and warrior she’d adored and idolized her entire life, then she, Seshawah, needed to be the one to care.

But what was the use? Every time she attacked the woman, Nashotah sent her tumbling head over heels to the forest floor. Nashotah hadn’t shown anger—never anger when testing a warrior. Anger only came if you cared.

Seshawah cradled her left arm in the pit of her stomach. She’d lost the use of it two attempts ago when Nashotah had blocked Seshawah’s descending staff with one hand, ripped it from her grasp, and snapped it around and down onto the girl’s unprotected elbow. Feeling gradually returned, and she worked her fingers to stem the tingling radiating down the length of her arm.

She focused beyond the warrior to a lock of braided horse tail attached to a low-hanging branch. “Did Tisneé have to touch the braid?” Tisneé was Seshawah’s adult brother, the last warrior Nashotah had mentored. He was now a young chieftain and healer, respected by his peers and consulted by the elders of his tribe.

“Does it matter what path Tisneé walked?” The woman’s eyes held a tiny sparkle of amusement when she continued, “If I say yes, what does that tell your heart? That if Tisneé could touch the ribbon, then it’s possible you can touch it as well?”

Since that was precisely what she’d been thinking, Seshawah bowed her head and tried to stop the single tear that trickled from the corner of her eye. Getting beyond Nashotah was an impossibility, a chasm so vast that no one, not even her brother, could cross. Her staff lay between the back of her thighs and her calves, where Nashotah had tossed it after countering her latest attack.

“Seshawah.” Narrowing her eyes, Nashotah caught and held Seshawah’s gaze. “Every warrior’s path is different. To say you can succeed because another has walked before you is nothing more than a fool’s madness. And you’re no fool. What is it you want, Little One?”

“To be a warrior.”

“Do you want to be a warrior, or do you simply like the idea of being a warrior? If it’s the latter, then what comes of having the skills but not the warrior’s heart? What then? Then you’re nothing but the culmination of a dream, and the reality of our dreams is rarely what we expect it to be.”

Fighting back tears, Seshawah pulled her staff

 from behind her knees, planted the tip in the ground, and used it to push to her feet. She stood facing her hero, swaying on her feet, not sure whether she could summon the strength, or the courage, to attack her again. Her voice broke as she held the spear in the air. “Why tell me to bring this as my weapon when you know you’re the best with the spear? Not just in Bodaway’s camp, but in all the tribes? You’ve guaranteed that I fail! How can I beat you? I can’t! That’s how! Is that what you want? For me to fail?”

Disappointment and…was that pity she saw in Nashotah’s eyes, nearly broke her determination, her dream of becoming a true Shona warrior.

Seshawah's story continues in Bardic Tales From Ar'rothi.