Kern

Kern was in a clearing behind the elephant preserve practicing his asanas as usual. He liked this clearing. No one else ever came here because of the stench of elephant dung. He didn’t mind the smell. Hastinaga literally meant “City of Elephants and Snakes,” and the smell of elephants and their offal was the smell of home to him now.

He liked spending his days away from other people, especially other children, because they were too puerile and immature for him and were always obsessed with things that made no sense to him, like playing pointless sports and engaging in useless games. To little Kern, this was play, being out in the bright summer sunshine, wielding his wooden sword, repeating his asanas, perfecting them.

He was dressed in only a dhoti, exposing as much of his body to the sunshine as possible. The feeling of the sun’s heat penetrating his pores was wonderful. He felt energy seeping into him every hour he spent in the sunlight; after a whole day, he felt almost . . . powerful. If only the sun could shine all day and night, every day and night, he was sure the energy it gave him would make him stronger. For now, the long fifteen-hour summer days were a godsend; he intended to spend every possible minute out under the sun, and he could feel the rays invigorating him, empowering him.

He had learned an interesting new asana that morning, after watching the yoddhas on the practice field, and was trying it out. He used a wooden sword he had made himself, deliberately shaping the shastra from tough, heavy sal wood instead of the usual balsa wood, to make it feel and weigh more like a real sword.

He had completed his warm-up exercises and was now putting himself through niuddham, concentrating on the movements. He was accustomed to spending several hours this way, repeating a sequence of asanas, then varying them in subtle, minute ways to account for a variety of factors: wind direction and force, ground, temperature, the possible height and bulk of his imagined enemy, the enemy’s angle of approach, force, intensity, the number of opponents, their weapons, their ages, their sizes . . . He repeated each of these variations over and over until he was certain that in those circumstances, against those opponents, using those weapons, that angle and force of attack, he would be able to counter and overcome. He was focusing mainly on defensive moves because that was what the masters had been practicing this week. He hoped they would move on to offensive asanas soon. He liked offense better than defense. Anyone would defend themselves when attacked. A warrior’s purpose was to attack, overcome, conquer.

He was so absorbed in his asanas that he didn’t notice the others until they were only a dozen yards away. It was careless of him and ironic in a way; here he was, practicing defensive asanas, but when an actual threat approached, he failed to heed to it. He observed the figures and made a mental note to never let such a lapse occur again in the future.

The intruders on his privacy were several young men, about a dozen of them ranging in age from eight to fourteen. He had seen some of the older ones before, engaged in activities that his father called “nefarious.” Kern wasn’t sure what the word meant but knew it didn’t signify anything good. He knew that Adran used words like that when he didn’t want Kern to know what he really meant, but just by using such words, he conveyed to Kern that it was something that elders considered bad.

The boys approached across the open field in leisurely fashion, sprawling out in a wide, irregular formation. Some of them were smoking that odd-smelling stuff that his father and mother also smoked at night—what they called ganja. The boys were smoking it in the form of little tubes of tobacco leaf rolled tightly and lit at one end. They were passing the tubes to one another in a certain pattern, the older, bigger boys keeping them longer and sucking for longer before passing them to the younger, smaller boys. At least two of the boys didn’t get to smoke any at all, and hung back behind the others, looking beaten down and miserable, their clothes even more ragged and filthy than those of the others.

The leader of the group was easy to make out. He was not the largest of the boys, nor the eldest, yet everyone deferred to him. He had a small chillum all to himself which he shared with no one, his clothes were new and of richer material, and he wore gold jewelry on his ears, around his neck, wrists, and arms. He also carried a real shastra: a shortsword with a jeweled hilt that he wore on a special leather belt around his waist. The two biggest and oldest boys—men, actually—walked on either side of him, both armed with longswords, plainer and without any jewels or decoration, their muscled bodies dressed in clean, crisp anga-vastras and dhotis, not as rich or fine as their master’s but not like the dirty rags of the other vagabonds with them.

Kern observed all this in a single sweeping glance. He lowered his “sword” and returned his breathing to a waiting pattern as he had seen the masters do between sessions. This kept the body anticipatory and capable of being brought into play quickly, but not at full alert—somewhere between a resting heart rhythm and an active one. He said nothing. He spoke as little as possible to strangers, so little that at times he had been assumed to be mute by people unknown to him. From the very beginning, he had known that most arguments could be resolved by silence: if you did not engage, you could not lose. You only engaged when you wanted to destroy your enemy. This was true of arguments as well as physical combat. Never start a fight unless you intend to win it. And winning for a warrior could only mean the destruction of your opponents. Anything less was a fool’s victory.

“The little cub that thought it was a lion.”

This came from the rich boy. He was holding his little ivory chillum cupped in both hands, sucking on it every now and then, puffing out little circles of smoke. He was as stout around the waist as anyone Kern had ever seen, plump in the way a poor boy could never be: corpulence brought on by sheer excess. Kern stared at him with frank curiosity. How much must one eat—and how rich must one be—to become so large? And doesn’t all that bulk hinder him when moving, running, jumping, fighting? Despite the beautiful sword at his waist, Kern suspected the rich boy was no warrior caste. A warrior would never treat his body thus. The body is your first and greatest shastra, the masters taught. It was a warrior’s most valuable weapon.

“What are you doing here, little cub?”

Kern knew the question was directed at him but did not answer. He was used to strangers asking him questions. He never listened to the questions themselves. The words were irrelevant: it was the question behind the question that one had to listen for—the meaning and true intent behind the words.

This rich boy wasn’t interested in what Kern was doing here. He was interested in Kern himself.

The rich boy stopped about three yards away. The two muscular young men stopped too, one on either side of him. One of them eyed Kern’s wooden sword, assessed it to be of no significant threat, then ignored it. The other one kept looking around, sweeping the surrounding area. Kern liked their single-minded efficiency. They were both of a warrior caste for sure, and both clearly had experience with violence.

Kern glanced at the other ten boys; they all bore the marks and signs of fighting, both from recent encounters and older ones, both with and without weapons. He observed all this in a single glance, as easily as other children his age might notice other children’s ages and toys. He saw, too, that at least five of these boys—three of the bigger ones and two of the smaller ones—were seasoned fighters, with their numerous scars and bruises suggesting frequent conflict. They had seen things as well; they had a look about the eyes and in the way they held themselves that spoke of hard lives, struggles endured, hardships suffered, and abuses inflicted, both upon and by themselves. All of the boys had some part in the “nefarious activities” his father spoke of, but it was those five, as well as the two seasoned fighters, who were the main threat. The rich boy’s sword ought to have qualified him too, but he appeared so unfamiliar with actually wielding the blade that Kern discounted him. That was a mistake, as he would soon learn, for everything and everyone was a weapon, and not all weapons were deployed physically.

The rich boy finally realized that Kern was not going to answer. He lowered the chillum and glared at Kern.

“I asked you a question, boy. Answer.” Except he didn’t say “boy,” he used a vulgar word that Kern didn’t fully understand but which he knew was not a polite word to use for anyone, especially not a son of a respectable charioteer, a charioteer to royalty. The use of the abusive word didn’t upset Kern, but it did tell him something about the character of the rich boy. Only a weak person hurled abuses without provocation.

Kern didn’t answer. He maintained his breathing pattern while watching the other boys. They were moving away, almost casually, but he was watching them out of the corners of his eyes and could see them circling around him on both sides. They were cutting off his retreat. In a few moments, he would be surrounded, with no place to run. He didn’t mind that. He had no intention of running. This was his clearing, and it was late morning, so he had a full nine or ten hours of beautiful sunshine left. He wasn’t going anywhere.

The rich boy handed his chillum to one of the other boys with a sharp look that Kern interpreted as a warning not to partake. The boy held the chillum in his cupped hands the way Kern had once held a sparrow with an injured wing that he had picked up to examine out of curiosity—as if it was fragile and would break if held too tightly. The other boys were milling about with apparent aimlessness, but their eyes kept cutting to Kern, and he saw the growing curiosity in their faces as they tried to intuit his true nature: Was he a boy playing with his elder brother’s practice sword, perhaps? A little thief who had stolen the wooden shastra? An acolyte from a forest gurukul who was playing hooky?

“How old are you, boy?” Rich Boy asked. This time, he didn’t wait for Kern to answer—or not answer—and turned to one of his two bodyguards. “Farsha? What do you think? Five? Six?”

The bodyguard shrugged his powerful shoulders. “The way he holds that shastra, at least seven or older. But his size and height make him look younger.”

“Younger.”

Rich Boy turned his gaze upon the boy who had spoken. It was one of the older boys, one of the five big louts that Kern had identified as a potential threat. He had circled around to Kern’s left side, and was standing about three yards away. “He’s the son of a charioteer. No more than five, if that.”

Kern tilted his head sideways to look at the boy who had spoken. He did this for two reasons: it gave him a deeper peripheral perspective of the space behind himself, where several of the boys had drifted around to close the circle, and because dogs did it.

Kern liked dogs; they couldn’t concentrate on one thing for long, slobbered a lot—especially on your face—and would eat just about anything, but he liked them all the same. They had a drive and intensity when excited about something that he admired. He liked the way they tilted their heads when you spoke to them as if asking, Huh? What was that you just said? Kern liked talking to them. They listened even though they didn’t understand most of what you said. It was by watching dogs that he had learned that it was the tone used—the emotional state and body language of the person speaking—that was more important than the actual words spoken. Dogs listened and understood far more than most people. People, on the other hand, only pretended to listen, but really they were just hearing whatever they wanted to hear, busy listening to the voices inside their own heads. If they’d actually listen, as dogs did, they wouldn’t need to talk so much. Dogs conveyed most of what they needed to say through looks, expressions, and brief sounds. People, on the other hand, could use scrolls of words without saying anything useful. Even his father said so. “Courtiers . . . all they know is talk!”

“A charioteer’s son? This ruffian? You must be joking.”

“I wouldn’t jest with you, Masher. I saw him going back to the charioteer quarters just the other day, at sundown. He was carrying that same wooden sword.”

Masher, the rich boy, looked at Kern with new interest. “A charioteer’s son? What is he doing with a practice sword, then? Hey, boy? Who did you steal that from? You’re a charioteer, aren’t you? Your kind aren’t allowed to handle shastras.”

“Except to pick up and hand to their masters,” said another younger boy. This one had a mean look to his pale features. They were all pale and fair-skinned, several with light colored hair too. This one had eyes as blue as the sky above. Kern saw the way Blue Eyes touched a long object he had tucked into his dhoti. A blade of some sort. He guessed they all carried shastras of some kind, though only the rich boy, Masher, and his bodyguards carried proper swords. One of the smaller boys carried a makeshift bow made of balsa wood with a few reed arrows, which would hardly bring down a crow, but at least one of the bigger boys (standing behind his right shoulder) had a small throwing axe, and one of the others (directly behind him) had a long chopping knife. Two of them had slingshots, one the kind that you held in one hand and pulled on with the other, the second the kind that you swung around with one hand then let go.

Kern only had the practice sword.

And himself.

Masher grew impatient of waiting for Kern to answer and gestured to the bodyguard who had spoken. “I don’t see any master around, do you? This charioteer boy shouldn’t be carrying that sword. This is why Hastinaga is going to the dogs. These lower castes all think they can do whatever they please. As if we all exist to serve their whim and fancy. Farsha, go take that from him.”

The bodyguard frowned. He looked at Kern. “It’s just a wooden sword, sire.”

“I don’t care if it’s an elephant’s stinking penis. If I say go get it, then you go get it.” Masher turned to the boy to whom he’d entrusted his ivory chillum and took it back from him. The boy’s tense expression dissolved in a look of such abject relief, it made Kern smile. “What in the name of the gods are you smiling at, charioteer? Did you see that, boys? He’s an arrogant one. I tell you, these low castes should be whipped every day just to remind them of their place in society. Because the Krushan don’t enforce the ancient customs, the world is going to hell. My father says that in Emperor Shapaar’s reign, every low caste who didn’t fall to the ground and kiss the earth when a higher caste passed by was executed on the spot. That’s how you keep these bastards in line. When I become king, I’m going to make every one of these wretches sport a mark, carved into their foreheads the day they’re born, so they never forget that they were put on Arthaloka to serve and suffer, not smile and strut about playing at being warrior castes like this insolent charioteer. Farsha, go get that boy’s sword, or I’ll put my sword up your backside and push it out your face!”

Farsha grimaced, sighed, and moved toward Kern. His sword remained in its scabbard at his waist. He must have felt that this little charioteer needed no more than a little physical intimidation. Probably felt sorry for him. Kern could see it in his eyes. He had intimidated, bullied, beaten, abused, broken, and even killed too many times for his spoiled young master before. Farsha was starting to feel that maybe he should change his employer, but Masher’s father paid him well, and he had access to the boy’s well supplied wine and ganja stock. (Not to mention the girls.) Kern read all this in the young man’s eyes and in the way he reacted to his master’s threat. It was like seeing into the man’s mind.

Kern raised his face, looking up at the sun, which was almost directly overhead now. He felt the blessed heat of the noonday sun wash over him, into him, and drank its energy with every pore, every inch of his skin, through his eyes, his nostrils, his mouth, his ears, sucking it in as avidly as Masher was sucking in the intoxicating smoke from his ivory chillum. Kern drank in the energy of the noonday sun and felt his body sparkle with energy.

He was ready for the first bodyguard when the man reached out, intent on violence.

He was born ready.