Loss for the Prince, page 3
It took months to reach Asia. Sasuke was right in that Souley couldn’t have made such a trip on his own. En route, terrible winds and great waves threatened to swallow the ship, but the captain wisely navigated the deep waters, endless blue from horizon to horizon, and his crew worked tirelessly.
By this time Souley understood French, the language of the merchants of the Ivory Coast, and he was on a French ship. The captain, a pale stern man with sharp eyes entombed in a wrinkled face, had at first been somber about the men Souley slew boarding the ship. But during such a long journey, the old French gave into his curiosity.
Late at night, the captain smoked from his pipe and let Souley sit in his cabin. The old man spoke of his youth, sketching Souley in a book. “When I was young, I dreamed of being an explorer, to discover wild new lands and find adventure.” He prodded Souley with questions and wrote the answers in his book.
Some days into the journey, Souley heard from Sasuke again and was so elated that he nearly collapsed on the deck of the cargo bay he’d been staying in; but Sasuke had bad news. Someone had taken him prisoner, and he too was in a cargo bay of a ship but cased and chained, he didn’t know where he was being taken to.
Some more days later, before Sasuke got ill and stopped talking to him, he said, “I think he’s going to China. I can feel his sail turning.”
When Souley told the captain of the new destination, the captain said, “Ah, that’s good news. I was wondering for days as how to best approach the Japanese coast; they don’t care much for foreigners. China is far better, she has free trade and open waters unless you’re Japanese or Russian. Your friend is probably at Canton, their international port.”
When they arrived at Canton, the captain scoped through binoculars, the old man living out the explorer dreams of his youth, and exclaimed, “I found him!”
“Are you certain?” asked Souley.
“Yes, that one.” He pointed at a speck among the many other specks, equally small and all colorful; like tree barks thrown in a pond the merchant ships littered the harbor.
“How do you know?” asked Souley, narrowing his eyes at the speck.
“He’s flying a crusader banner. They don’t exist anymore.”
“Bon voyage, Souley, son of the sands!” The old captain waved his hat as Souley rowed away in a small wooden boat, keeping his promise to let the crew go unharmed when they reached their destination.
Captain Beaufort, the old man, lived to be even older and wrote daring adventure books, translated into many languages. In one of them, there was a drawing of Souley, but Shen had them expunged from history.
Souley snuck aboard the ship, using his claws to climb the wooden hull, then he crept into the cargo bay where he thought Sasuke would be.
There he saw many people in cages, all reaching a hand through the bars, all begging to be freed, but he didn’t know which one was Sasuke.
“Sasuke!” Souley called with his voice because he didn’t know what his friend looked like. A man, that was all Souley knew of his appearance.
“Sasuke!” No one answered. “Sasuke, it is I, Souley. Where are you?” He’d called in French because that had been the only language he’d spoken out loud in centuries.
“Pity,” he heard and turned to see a Swahili woman in a cage. Her once expensive garment had turned raggedy but the gold she wore around her neck still shone. “You’ve just missed him, Su-llii.” Even as she spoke French, Souley knew she was Swahili. They lived along the east coastline, and even preceding the arrival of the pale men, the Swahili hunted and captured humans, selling them to the ships arriving from the middle east.
“If it’s him you seek, I could help you find him,”— she raised her cuffed wrists— “for a price.”
Damn your soul to hell, thought Souley and left her to rot in the cage. Another woman grabbed his leg, begging in a tongue Souley didn’t understand—he left her as well. He only sought Sasuke and left them all in their cages.
Not like the sands of Sahara, the water of the Yellow Sea was neither yellow nor warm. Dawn was breaking and the sky was grey overhead.
“Sasuke!” he yelled in his thoughts. Thrashing wildly, he coughed up the salty ocean. Souley used to know how to swim as a man, but as a heavy beast he was drowning. “Sasuke, thief!”
Upon returning above deck, Souley found thieves had taken the small boat the old captain gifted him. They were rowing away in his boat, and he’d jumped into the water not realizing how cold it would be, not realizing how heavy the beast was.
“Sasuke, thief! Someone is stealing our boat!” He didn’t want to die before rescuing Sasuke and frantically slashed at the water as if it was an enemy he could kill. “Sasuke!”
“Souley, are you a bear?”
“Sasuke, thief!”
Not thieves, but Sasuke and Giselle. She’d been pointing at him and screaming, which was the expected reaction Souley got from others… but Sasuke reached a paddle to him.
“Get on the boat, Souley.”
In the company of Sasuke, Souley could account for time much better.
They, along with Giselle, spent the next two months stealing a bigger boat, sailing back to Japan, and touring the trees nearby where Sasuke said he used to live, a province by the sea called Aki.
After traveling through the forest for days, Sasuke pointed to one tree no different than the others, and said, “There she is. Sorry, I’ve lost my way. The terrain has changed noticeably in the past two hundred years.”
“What do we do with the tree, Sasuke?”
“Not the tree, Souley, but the earth beneath her. Can you dig from here to there in a straight line?” asked Sasuke, pointing to yet another tree.
Souley complied without inquiring further and found a chest not long after he started digging. There were many more chests, buried under many more trees, all containing gold, and a few with strange cups in them as well. Giselle was fascinated with the cups and tried taking a couple, but Sasuke took them from her and tossed them aside. He’d been speaking to Giselle the whole time, but turned to Souley to explain, “They’re a common item where we are going.”
“Where do you get such treasure?” asked Souley about the gold.
“Not treasure, Souley. It’s just gold, and it was gifted to me by the Chinese, a long time ago,” said Sasuke, laughing about something known only to himself.
Even though Sasuke claimed gold wasn’t treasure, he knew the value well as he bartered with it, buying himself large ships along with soldiers and seamen to sail them.
“You don’t buy men, Souley. The gold is merely a compensation for their troubles,” said Sasuke. “They’re warriors and it’s an era of prolonged peace in Japan. They’re bored and I’ve promised them adventure, battle, and a chance at glorious death. That’s the real prize.”
Souley didn’t care for the amassing number of strangers all gawking at him, prodding him with the butt of a spear in amazement, and murmuring amongst themselves in their foreign tongue.
“What do they say?” Souley asked.
“They think you’re a strange type of bear, that’s all.”
To keep his promise of adventure and riches, Sasuke plundered the Chinese shores and merchant ships at sea. Increasingly rowdy in front of his soldiers, called samurais, and telling jokes in his own tongue, he’d become another laughter in the mirage. Disappointed, the beast retreated to himself. But in the flickering of the mirage, sometimes he dared to dream.
Jarring pale completion against midnight black hair as long and luxurious as River Niger herself, and large brown eyes under soft brows—Sasuke was a sight to behold even when he frowned, which he often did. Trotting around in his armor, attire, and sword, Sasuke was a strange new bird dancing a mating call, displaying his spectacular feathers of colors.
Souley had been gawking at him when Sasuke came straight for him, and not one of his samurais. His eyes turned dark to talk because Souley still didn’t understand his spoken speech.
“Souley, I’ve found him,” said Sasuke, silent even as they were face to face. “He’s in Russia, pretending to be a little girl.”
Now they would sail up the Sea of Japan and dock in a Russian port, and leaving the samurais behind on the ships, Giselle, Sasuke, and Souley would jump through Giselle’s portal into the heart of the vast and cold land of the Rus. Giselle would later claim that it was Sasuke who taught her to portal carrying others, but he merely finished what Constantine spend months teaching—with violence. Souley knew because Sasuke told him, but Giselle would always deny it.
When Souley questioned Sasuke’s decision to leave behind his men, he’d said, “Where’re going to scout, Souley. I only want to see his position and numbers.” But when Souley fell out of the sky from a dark tunnel of wind, he was immediately greeted by a little girl with red curly hair screaming her head off. Wailing as an alarm, her pitch was eardrum piercing, and Souley readied for an army to come charging for surely the entire world, even in Mali, heard the girl scream.
Uprooted trees and boulders, larger than a man could lift, flew at them—a barrage. A boy, barely into manhood, with red hair and black eyes, snarled, displaying sharp fine fangs like Sasuke’s, not numerous and dull like Souley’s.
Sasuke shot arrows, Giselle poofed in and out of the realm, appearing from all sides, and Souley charged. The boy being alone, and they three, they overwhelmed him eventually, but Sasuke said, “It’s the girl, not Constantine. Let the boy go.” Souley had been holding the boy down whilst Sasuke conversed with him in thoughts.
Souley obeyed and they returned to the ship through Giselle’s doorway.
On the ship, later in Sasuke’s cabin, Souley asked, “Why did you think it was Constantine?”
“She has the same powers as he.”
“Aren’t they dangerous?” asked Souley.
“They’re just children,” said Sasuke, casually stripping off his attire in the presence of the beast—he was never afraid of him. Daily, Sasuke would sit around in a loincloth cleansing himself with a bucket of warm water. Scrubbing and washing always, the same was true of his soldiers.
They wiped the deck, polished their armor, and oiled their weapons insistently. They were on a ship, in the ocean, but didn’t want water in the blades—a strange bunch they were.
To not be odd watching Sasuke rub himself with a wet cloth, Souley chatted. “Tell me about him, this Constantine.”
“He shall die poorly, that’s all you need to know.” This was true of Sasuke during the so-called Elder War: he was the aggressor.
Yes, Constantine had crucified villagers on the islands, appalling to Souley at the time, but when he learned to read, in a multitude of languages at that, he’d see into the history and realize the same was true of warlords themselves—including Sasuke. They were creative with their cruelty, and crucifying villagers was a mundane affair. Yet, there was no wrath upon his own; Sasuke didn’t sail across the ocean, march through Russian winter looking for each warlord who’d ever killed a villager.
He was a foreigner, that was the problem, Souley surmised later. Constantine was a foreigner who’d offended Sasuke’s pride. And it was also Giselle. Constantine beat her trying to teach her a new thing. Stubborn she was, just like Sasuke, and probably resisted learning.
History wouldn’t remember the truth because Shen was a propaganda machine, and those who understood Sasuke—his samurais—were all dead. Their descendants now lived in Aoiro, worshiping Sasuke as a living god. He had become one of the many false gods.
True God existed. Men misused their free will to stray from God, and left to their own accord all their souls would be lost, destined to hell—Constantine understood this. He sought to start the world anew by using Elders as the four horsemen of the apocalypse and sailed around the world collecting them. A curious mind, he was studying Talents, but many resisted, including Giselle. And for her, Sasuke started the Elder War, because Constantine’s war hadn’t been Elders but with humans, and had he not harmed Sasuke, Souley would have no quarrel with the priest.
Sasuke had smiled just then. Wringing water out of his long black hair, his eyes were dark, speaking to someone else, so the smile hadn’t been at Souley, but that hadn’t mattered. So this was what love was: unconditional compliance. It didn’t matter that Sasuke never wanted him, it didn’t matter that he was always wrong, because Souley would rather lose his eternal soul and drift alongside Sasuke, on the wrong side of history, than enter heaven on his lonesome.
Chapter four
Man
Souley was off the swaying and cramped ship, and finally walking on soil, noticing how good it felt to have steady earth underneath his paws, but his joy was cut short during the first night when it turned intolerably cold and Sasuke wouldn’t let him burn a fire.
“I don’t want local attention until I know what I’m doing,” he said.
In the morning the ground sparkled. Yellow blades of grass had white crystals on them and Souley, seeing such a thing for the first time, asked, “What is this, Sasuke?”
“Ice, Souley. The ground froze over at night, and this is their fall. We can’t be here when their winter settles, the men don’t have provisions for such weather.”
‘The men’, Sasuke would say often, always concerned about the soldiers; Souley was cold too, but to him, Sasuke said, “Quit shaking, you look ridiculous.”
When Giselle was cold, he sought shelter in a Russian village, continuing to find value in his gold despite having claimed it was ‘not treasure’.
The Russian wooden house had a large brick stove inside, where Sasuke started a fire for his wife. A thought speaker, Sasuke found a way to communicate with the locals and found out the Russian king was at war with his neighbors.
“That’s good,” Sasuke said. “Their resources are rationed, and attention is diverted. They won’t care about us so long as we don’t make trouble.” It seemed strange to Souley that a king didn’t notice a large group of strangers roaming about his lands, but Sasuke laughed about that. “Human wars require tens of thousands of men at the least and for a country this size, probably hundreds of thousands. Compared to that, we’re a meager number, Souley. We are not a threat to the throne or their sovereignty.”
On the day they were waiting for Marcus, Souley sat across the table from Sasuke in a Russian log cabin and looked at the small bowl Sasuke handed him. Black and spotted like an animal hide, it was a thimble in his beast paw.
“It’s tea, Souley. Try it.” Another curious habit of Sasuke’s, he carried small—small even for him—cups and spoons and he made tea. Souley tried the tea, it was awful and needed honey. A Russian home had honey and sugar. Because the cup was too small, Souley tried to add honey into the pot and drink from it but was scolded by Sasuke as if he’d sinned against God.
“Stop that!” He snatched the cup away from Souley.
Sasuke had been pacing around in his armor since early morning, inspecting this and that, but Souley understood his friend was anxious and attributed the hostile demeanor to the bad mood.
“Why have you called this stranger if you don’t trust him?” asked Souley because the anxiety had been about the stranger, a general with unknown temperament and a far greater number—according to Sasuke himself.
“Russia is a colossal landmass; I can’t look for Constantine on my own.” But he wasn’t on his own, he had Souley, a thing Sasuke appreciated less and less with each passing day.
A whoosh, and Giselle appeared from her portal inside the cabin. She warmed her hands by the fire and spoke to Sasuke, who then grabbed his long sword. The shorter one was always with him, but the longer one, he would leave by the door when he entered a place.
“Let’s go, Souley.”
“The three of us?”
“Yes, it’s a short distance. She can carry us both unless you prefer not to come, then I’ll take Red with me.” Sasuke didn’t allow his men to speak their names, not even amongst themselves, and referred to them by common things such as Red, Leaf, Stream, Wolf, and often resorting to ‘Hey, you over there,’ and waving them over. When Souley asked about this, Sasuke had said, ‘Constantine can cause men to go mad if he knows their names and faces.’
‘How about me?’ Souley had asked.
‘You’re not a man, Souley,’ Sasuke had said, but perhaps seeing how that hurt Souley, he added, ‘I meant human. His powers are more perilous for humans, all right? I don’t have time for you to turn sour over mere words.’ That had been the first of many hurtful things Sasuke had started saying to him, and now he stared at him impatiently, with Giselle’s doorway already opened inside the log cabin.
“If it’s a short distance, isn’t it better to take your soldiers along?” asked Souley, only concerned for his friend’s safety, but Sasuke snapped and yelled at him.
“If I take a large number along, not only will it consume time to travel, but it will turn into a grandstand taking days to negotiate down! Quit questioning me, Souley! Follow my orders and call me commander, learn that word in Japanese. Come with me now or be gone by the time I return.”
Souley stepped through the gateway because that was his love: unconditional compliance.
Bustling like a marketplace the encampment was enormous, taking up an entire valley, a sea of rust-colored tents. Souley had never seen so many people in one place, not even in the cities of the Ivory Coast, nor in Timbuktu of the Mali Empire.
In an enclosure, a great tent like those of traveling entertainers, there was a man seated like a king under a red flag with a golden eagle. The Swahili woman from the ship stood at the side of his chair alongside a tall soldier carrying a boomerang on his back. There were numerous others in the tent, all armed, and Souley had been scanning them when Sasuke quarreled with the stranger—about what, he didn’t know. But seeing the stranger march around like a short fighting cock, waving a naked sword at Sasuke, the beast roared. That was the end of the meeting.
