A Greater Lesson

Chapter 20: Truth

Garis walked in just as soon as Rivka had left.  He closed the door behind him and folded his arms as he stared down at me.  I thought he would speak, but he just walked over to me and crouched down to the ropes.  He pulled out his dagger and slipped the blade under the ropes.  I stared at the man who had started it all.  This man was responsible for all the pain in Rivka’s life.  He was responsible for killing her family and destroying her home.  He was the reason she lived in a tree trunk for three years with nobody but a jaguar.  She had become so hardened and untrusting.  She would never be the same, and this man was responsible.

He tilted the blade so that it pressed against my skin.  He looked up and stared me in the eyes as he jerked the knife up slicing my arms along with the ropes.  I yelled and clenched my teeth in reaction to the pain. 

“Oops,” he said without shifting his gaze.

I gathered myself and asked him a question.  “Everyone’s out with Rivka?”

“Just you and me buddy.”  He smiled.  My anger burned inside me.  I couldn’t stand to see Riv’s pain, but it could never go away because of this man.  As soon as I knew my hands were free, I jumped up, grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him in smashing his face against the pole between my arms that I had been bound to.  He collapsed cursing and looked up at me with a bloody face.  I turned to reach for his dagger only to find it still in his hand.  He leapt up angrily and pushed the blade towards my chest.  I grabbed his fist and pushed it aside as I brought up my other hand and grabbed his throat.  I let go of his arm and gave him a hard cross to his cheekbone.  I caught him as he fell and dug my knee into his stomach.  He dropped the dagger and collapsed a second time.  I snatched it up and grabbed his arm.  I twisted it hard behind his back until I heard something crack, then I grabbed the ropes that had been left on the floor.  I quickly wrapped and knotted it around his wrist and brought it up around his neck.  He struggled to escape but the position of his arm made it impossible to do anything. I brought the rope around his neck once more before bringing it to the other arm and tying his wrists together.  I pulled him back close to me and set the dagger to his throat.

“You will regret everything you’ve ever done to harm anyone, but first you will tell me where Kolan’s daughter is!”

He laughed weakly.  “And what makes you think I would tell you that?”

I slid the blade to the side slightly to create a small sever in his throat to prove I would do it.  “The fact that if you don’t, I have absolutely no problem with killing you right now.  I have every reason to, so either you do one good thing before you die to attempt to redeem yourself, or you die a lowly murderous scumbag.  You choose.”

He paused for a moment to catch his breath.  “Well done, Zorxik, but there’s still one problem.  I have an army, you have a girl.”

I pushed the blade harder into the opening I created making him cringe.  “I don’t see them.  Besides, which do you think they will choose?  Killing us out of fear, or killing you and accepting our gold?  They have nothing to gain by killing us, but with you out of the picture…”

He thought for a while before deciding to speak.  “We don’t have her, okay?”

I scoffed.  “Well done, I already know that.  Tell me something I don’t know.  Is she alive?”

“Look, I don’t know.  We sold her a long time ago, after we killed his wife.  We didn’t want to have to lug her around with us, especially for that long.  But since there’s no evidence that we killed her, we decided to use her against Kolan.  We don’t know where she is.”

I thought for a moment, but didn’t move my blade.  “Where did you sell her?”

He sighed and thought with effort.  “It was, it was somewhere up north I think.  Actually, I think the deal went down somewhere back by the shop, yea, the one you burned down,” he interjected annoyed.  “But they said they were travelling far north.  I didn’t want him to accidently find her.”