The Forty Knives of Fifty Theives

Chapter 4

Chapter IV

Sand storms began at the high ground then rolled over the desert sweeping through towns and villages. Any wayward traveler would be lost in the wind currents of dust and dirt and would eventually die. They're like a desert tornado. Many storms have been known to wipe out towns with poor structures. They blind you then take your life and carry you away as if you never existed. The storms can be massive or they can be small dustings that start nowhere and end nowhere. Many occur without reaching the paths of travelers but some who are unfortunate are caught in the winds. The sand stings your skin and flies into anything uncovered. So close your eyes and duck you head down like a bull about to charge an opponent.

These storms have been known to carry large amounts of the desert sand to another spot miles away from where it originally layed. They've sometimes uncovered the lost treasure of the desert. Other times the have created dunes, small canyons, or hills. One hill is a famous one created by a sand storm. One hill with a black stone emerged from the sand. The stone is the top to a familiar castle, it is merely the tip of a tower, the rest buries deeper in the earth. The town that had lived on the desert below the castle had been moved to a more plentiful spot. Despite the abandonment and thousands of pounds of sand the castle can still be entered. One of the offspring to the castle's protectors lives inside and comes and goes every few nights. From the black stone he goes down and up stairs many times. Cracked stone steps and walls. Torch light awakens the lifeless castle lies dormant under the desert sand.

Josh

We had arrived at the army base a day after Frisco had left. We made the journey across the desert floor without anymore trouble. I had switched places with Megan after the third night and I let her ride behind me again. As I expected she had rested her head against my shoulder again and that had been the main reason why I hadn't let her ride before, that and the fact that I didn't want her jumping off the horse again. Megan behaved the rest of the ride. She even stopped asking so many questions. I thought maybe something was wrong, perhaps she was thinking about her death again. To drift her from that path if that's where her mind was I came up with a game. You had to guess of an object the other person was thinking of by asking twenty questions or until you got the object right. It had to a yes or no question and could no be 'what is it?' Megan caught on real quick and asked really good questions. When she had guessed what the object is and got it right on her third question I was convinced that she practiced asking questions on her spare time, meaning she must have a lot of spare time. Soon the game strayed from asking about what an object might be to what the other person's life was like. I felt obligated to know a good amount of who this mystery girl was, anyhow if I was going to train her I had to something. Megan told me about her brother, Naric, and her parents. She strayed from mentioning a lot about her father, all she had said was that he was dead and had taught her most of the stuff she knows. I had glanced at Jed a few times to see him oblivious to our conversation. Megan told me about her families business in sheep wool, and her cozy little home with the flower beds and hills with pastures. As she described her little stone modeled home I felt sorry about how we had torn her from her quaint little cottage and her simple life. She told me that her biggest fear back home was being recruited; I wished I hadn't been involved in making that fear real.

When it was my turn to be asked questions she just asked the simple question, 'what was your life like' and I was off talking about my home. I lived in a village not far from our Nation's capitol Alberlin. My home was a crowded market place with many merchants. Being so close to the capitol many men worked in the mines instead of the army but soldiers always came to recruit young. I was an orphan; I snuck around and lived on veranda of some sorts that had been half wrecked when a building collapsed on it. No one moved the wreckage and no one disturbed it so I found an opening in the wreckage to see it was like a dome inside made of splintered wood.  It wasn't the best living conditions but it was better than none. For a living I stoll food off of a vendor's cart when he wasn't looking. No family in town wanted to home the young orphan boy who starved in a wrecked building, I was a reject as Megan called it. I was twelve when the army soldiers came into town that day I was recruited. To be recruited at my age you hade to be very special, what I did that caught the eye of the soldiers was steal. One day I was tired of starving, tired of being tired and tired of living without purpose. So I robbed the market blind. I told Megan of the young boy who hung from the roof of a store and took the finest Persian gold from the jeweler's cart, who took the ripest apple, the sharpest blade, and the most fragrant spice right under the vendor's noses. I even stoll a soldier's sword while he tried to spot me on the roof.  Megan furrowed her brow as I talked on. With the eyes of the soldiers on my every move they followed me to my hideout and I was confronted and offered a position in the army. I was made a spy. The young boy from the streets was fourteen when he went to the Persian palace as a scribe and stoll important battle field documents and carried them safety to our army's lines. On more occasions I stoll what was commanded of me to steal. I was a master of thieves. Then my days of a spy and thief became numbered and now they rarely send me beyond towns in our Nation. Now I teach recruits who turn up dead in the month.