The Book of Terrus: A Land of Sunlight

Chapter 1 - A Soldier's Place

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When Tarun Thrymmson had dreamt of his future only two weeks ago, it had not looked like this. Now all he had left of that future were his dreams. That might explain why Tarun had come to both hate and love the long, empty hours of night.

            A voice had awoken him, dragging him from dreams of The Academy in Amenthere. Tarun imagined the famed home of Goran's brightest minds as a stately place, filled with smooth stone floors that echoed in the dignified silence beneath the footsteps of passing scholars. What awaited Tarun as he blinked his eyes open were musty darkness and the snores of five hundred men.

            They had arrived at Geristan almost five days ago. The men of Trosk, now officially drafted soldiers in the royal army, had been exhausted, footsore and shell-shocked. Most of them had never even been on the western side of The Teeth before. Some like Berin, the surviving twin son of Trosk's former tanner, were still nursing injuries from their ill-fated 'battle' with the Fourth Company. Borse had had to half-carry Berin for the last stretch of the journey into Geristan.

            One of the very first things Captain Jerriod did once the men of Trosk were inside the barracks on the edge of town with the gates shut firmly behind them was to issue them uniforms. Even before eating or sleeping, they were given a new set of clothes and ordered to change right there in the yard. Tarun had disliked the red tunic, stamped ostentatiously with the symbol of the crown, on sight. After days on end of trekking along The Old Mountain Road and sleeping by the roadside though, at least the uniform was clean.

            Further adding to the indignity of it all were their accommodations. Tarun might have expected as much from a military barracks, but that didn't make sleeping in a cavernous thatch building filled with stacked bunks any easier. At home, he and Marden had shared a room, but that was different. Here, surrounded every night by just about every one of his neighbors and strangers alike, Tarun found it very difficult to sleep.

            Sleep didn't come any easier whenever Tarun's mind found its way back to Marden. He still remembered the way Lhara's face had crumpled, tears tracking through the grime on her cheeks when she told him the news that their elder brother was dead.  It still didn't feel real. Maybe it was having left Trosk so abruptly after the fighting ending, but for some reason Tarun kept imagining that Marden was alive and well back at home, preparing to marry Yelaina and take up a place at Calder's table in The Giant's Shoe. To even contemplate otherwise...well...Tarun did not want to, and so he didn't.

            It seemed one person at least did not share Tarun's approach of tending to grief by ignoring it. Tarun recognized the voice; oddly clear in the vast darkness of the bunks, as Calder's. The innkeeper had alternated between blubbering and listless shuffling the whole way from Trosk to Geristan. Yelaina, Marden's intended and easily the most beautiful woman in all of Trosk, had been Calder's pride and joy. Now though he seemed to speak into the night with a strange animation.

            "Now don't you worry...yes I know it's not...won't be long you have to wait..."

            Tarun didn't know who Calder was talking to, but the snatches of conversation he caught didn't make much sense. The only thing any of the men of Trosk had to look forward to now was the day they were freed from their forced service, and that most certainly would be a long time in coming.

            As Calder prattled on, Tarun became increasingly sure that the innkeeper was talking to himself. It wouldn't be long before the one-sided conversation drew whoever was on night watch into the bunks to investigate. That would likely mean soldiers crashing around, barking demands for quiet and consequently no peace to be had. Calder needed to wrap up his babbling, and soon. Rather than do so however, it seemed he only became more animated with every passing minute.