Seeds of Tarako: Chapter 1

THE EXILE

Ten Years Before The Escape

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The sun was dying a bloody, silent death behind him, casting long, crimson shadows at his feet. Those shadows climbed the helm and the banister, falling to the ship’s deck and the blood and flesh that covered it. They were close enough to shore now that seagulls came to pick at the parts that decorated the deck, the stairs, and sideboards. Rats lapped up the blood, the pieces of rotting meat gnawed on by the last survivors of the voyage.

Tarako looked down at it with a kind of bland detachment, a severing of any meaning to the idea that his countrymen had pursued him this far from his home to end his life. He rested his eye on the last two remaining members of the navy sent after him, and he fought to summon up some pity.

He had bound them to the mast by chain and rope and forced them to work the riggings and the sails. He promised them things he was not going to deliver on, things like sleep, things like healing, things like survival. None of those lies bothered Tarako, for they had been sent by his enemies to murder him, enemies too cowardly to make the trip themselves. They were fodder for other men, why not him? Why should he respect the dung thrown at him? Why should he let these few live?

He remembered the way his own men sounded as they died. The sound of it would haunt him forever, he was sure of it. No screams. No begging. No sign of pain whatsoever. Just a grim silence punctuated by the occasional cry of his name, as if his name was the only thing they need carry into Hell with them. These two had killed many of his men. They would not live to brag about it.

In the distance he could see the shore coming and wondered if he was on course. The maps had been destroyed when his ship was attacked. The villains rushed his chambers with torches, successful in burning away all his navigation ability. Since then, it had been guesswork. He pointed the prow where his goddess told him to, but had no real way of knowing how close he was to land. Did his goddess want him to wander in this ship aimlessly on the swells, calms, and storms of the ocean? If Juhut wanted that for him, she could have it. He would weather everything, turn the helm when she told him to, and his constant prayer guided him to the horizon before him.

He watched the land come for him without knowing what he was aiming for. He had hoped for Cesper. The tundra would go well with his temperament, desolate and unforgiving. He would do well in a land so bleak and violent. But now as he approached, he felt apprehensive about where he might be landing and what its people might be like.

The land grew closer and he saw little vegetation, saw few things worth seeing. He snapped out a command and his workers hauled rope. He swung his helm and the ship turned to ride the coastline in search of any place to port.

For two days he skirted the coast, looking for any sign of life but finding nothing. He saw no sign of city or harbor. In the black of the second night, when the ocean was ink and the sky a shroud, he saw a fire and headed for it. The closer he got, the more he saw he was headed toward a city, the fire high in the sky. As he drew close to what he saw was a harbor, on a cracked and broken dock stood a figure waving two torches back and forth, creating some macabre fan of flame.

Tarako looked up to what he could now see was a lighthouse, and steered his ship toward the dock where the figure waved torches wildly in the air. He slowed. The torches dropped to the stone dock. The figure was crusted with sand and grime, its hair matted and filthy. It looked to have never taken a bath. It wore nothing but a shredded loincloth, a filthy rag that showed that this creature had been voiding itself in its loincloth without making water or defecating in any proper way. Brown feces ran the inside of its thighs down to its knees.

Ropes were tossed and it bound the ship to the cracked dock. Tarako dropped the gangplank and walked to stand before the creature that waved him in. The man looked up with shattered and ragged teeth through lips chewed to bloody mash. He ran clawed, blackened fingernails through his face, carving lines of blood as he backed away and Tarako stepped onto the dock.

“You’re here.” There was an accent. This was obviously a human. Tarako did not know human accents. He still didn’t know where he was. The man grabbed his ears and pulled, his splintered nails ripping the cartilage straight from his skull. He ripped both ears off with his bare hands and ragged nails as he screamed, “You’re here! She can forgive me now!”

Tarako extended his clawed hand. “Who? Who do you speak of, human? Who can forgive you now?” But as Tarako looked into this insane man’s eyes, he could tell the words were not getting through. Even if this man’s brittle mind was capable of understanding real words, his ripped ears were filling with blood. Tarako realized grimly there was no reaching this creature.

“She can forgive us now. She can forgive me now. Us? Me? Us?” He looked up with pleading eyes as if questioning.

Tarako could only look down and shake his head.

“Me?” As the man reached to his side, Tarako only then realized he was armed. Tarako ripped the drokker from his back, took one step forward, dropped to his fighting stance, claw out, sword back, lips curled, and the figure just stared, almost like a child. He pulled the rusted, jagged knife, half broken in the middle, and said, “Juhut. Juhut can forgive me now, right?”

Tarako could only stare, and the man screamed. The sound was lunacy. The sound was piercing. The sound possessed a moan to it. It was a cacophony of pain, mourning, and madness that made no sense. It lifted in the air, exploding in all directions. Tarako had never heard anything like it.

The madman drew the blade across his filthy, sand-crusted throat, slicing open both jugulars and cutting through the trachea. He looked up with a bloody smile through chewed toothy lips, and dropped to his back, his feet kicking, his hands gently folded on his chest. It was as if the hands knew peace, the flailing legs finding none. Gripped in the man’s hands was his grisly weapon, his rusty, serrated fate. He smiled at the sky as he died, but his eyes stared in horror as the torches he laid between sputtered and spat.

Tarako stood over the man and stared down, looking into his eyes. “Servant of Juhut, do you see her now? Do you see the Skinless Goddess?”

The man coughed blood and nodded.

Tarako laid his massive, fur-covered hand over the man’s face. “If he pleases you, if he has served you properly, Mother Juhut, I pray you give this man any peace you can. If his debt to you is not paid,” Tarako closed his eyes and in his mind saw the skinless form of his goddess reclined on a pile of dead bodies, “then torture him until he bores you.” He opened his eyes and smoothed back the man’s ragged, filthy hair. “I do not know if she has forgiven you. But I will pray she does.”

He dropped his drokker’s blade into the man’s heart, the blade slicing clean through the chest, out the back, into the stone dock, all the way to the handle. Tarako jerked the blade left and twisted his wrist, and the far end of the dock shattered with the might of the blade. The dock sank into the bubbling water. He looked up to the lighthouse, a tall tower framed in four arches with a wild bonfire burning, and saw a silhouette against the flames. He heard in the distance gibbering laughter and a howl. Both arms lifted high to the air forming a V. Then he watched the figure run, jump off the top of the lighthouse, and vanish into the black. He heard no scream as it fell. Whatever figure just jumped off that massive lighthouse had done so in complete peace.

Tarako snarled at his workers, strode to the mast and pulled his drokker. With one savage sweep of his sword, he severed the chains that bound both his slaves. They dropped to their knees, thanking him for his mercy, but Tarako had left all mercy at home with his love and his lands. He grabbed both souls and, with the rope, bound them together at the feet. He jerked them as he pulled them to the side of his ship, and looked over as he bound their hands to one another.

“My men worked as a team. They ate as one, drank as one, slept as one, and thrived as one. They were family and they did not deserve to face the death you gave them. I will show you mercy if you prove to me that you as well can work as a team.” Tarako grabbed the man and threw him over. The woman was instantly ripped over the edge with him.

“Swim as a team. You have but ten feet to make it. Move as one or die as two, it means nothing to me,” Tarako said. The two thrashed in the water, pulling the other down in their frantic efforts to escape drowning. He watched them drop below the surface and flail in the water, then grew bored and walked away.

He pulled his sword, looking at its reflection for his condition. His tiger face was covered in dry and matted blood. His fur was filthy and he stank. He looked around and hissed. Tarako the tiger raksa swiped a clawed hand across his face and grimaced. He sheathed his sword, then leapt over the side of the boat. He needed a bath, but first he needed to find out where he was. And it might be a walk, but he needed to find others.

---

He ate their food. He sat at their camp. He riffled through their belongings and claimed what he wanted. He looked at the dead laying around him and the two men he left alive and snarled at them.

“Please don’t eat us,” a man begged. He had taken a punch from Tarako right in the gut. With his strength, that meant the man’s liver had ruptured and he had very little time to live. He already looked as if death courted him.

“I do not eat thinking men,” Tarako spat. “To do so is a crime against Juhut law. But that same law gives me dominion over all that I conquer. That means you.” He pointed his blood-stained claw at the two men in turn. He looked to the second man, obviously smarter. The man had surrendered, given his weapons up, handed over everything he had and dropped his head. He had yet to look up from the ground. Tarako liked him.

“It is not your fault that you died,” Tarako said. “You are inferior in race. Small, with little muscle and no claws. You are human and your kind is built to be led, not for the leading.” Tarako lifted his hand, summoning the power of the Juhutian monks, and bowed his head. The slight glow that took to his claws as he held his hand before them lit the area in lurid blues and grays. “Juhut forgives you for your weakness. And she summons you home, where you will serve her and her worshippers for all time. Do you wish to die in peace, in battle, or in rest?”

“Rest sounds good,” the wounded man blubbered.

“You would say that, wouldn’t you? Juhut will make a slave of you for your cowardice.” Tarako stalked around the fire as the man’s face twisted and rippled in fear. Tarako reached down, gripped the man’s skull and, with one great flex, shoved his thumb claw straight through the face, shattering his nose, his skull, and sinking into his brain.

“What would Juhut make of me?” the other man asked. He seemed at ease, as if his death was not looking at him. Tarako realized it might not be.

“It depends on what you want,” Tarako said. “Depends on what you ask for.”

“How about some of that feral scrat? What if I asked for some of that scrat you are eating?” the man said.

“I would feed you when I am done. For as the mightier, I get to eat first. If there are any morsels for you after I have fed, then you may have what is left.”

“Fine. I can wait. And you are obviously the mightier.”

Tarako looked at the man very carefully. “The workings of flattery are a coward’s tool. It will get you no ground with me.”

“Well, if it is flattery to state the obvious, then call me a coward,” the man said.

Tarako stared at him a moment longer before biting down on the head of the creature in his hand. He delicately popped the skull in two with his teeth and sucked at the brains. When he had freed it, he spat the rest away and chewed slowly. “This scrat is very interesting to eat. I can taste the subtleties of its fear and its affections. Tell me, human, have you ever tasted the love your meal had in its heart when you ate it?”

The man shook his head. “I have not.”

“You may lift your head. I fear not your gaze,” Tarako said.

The man looked up. He met eyes with Tarako and grimaced, shook his head and smiled. “You are magnificent. Never seen one of your kind before. Heard of a raksa that lived in Scorch for a while, but never thought I would see one. Not out here.”

“This raksa you have heard of, is he tiger?”

“No.”

“Feline?”

“Baboon.”

“Oh, the monkeys are foul to the bone. No honor and very little brains. They are one of the junk breeds,” Tarako said. “Now, when you say you did not expect to see one here, what did you mean? Where is here?”

“You don’t know where you are?” the man asked.

Tarako gritted his teeth. He looked around the tumbled city, at the great pillar hundreds of feet tall that had collapsed to form the wall at his back. The empty sand-filled streets that stretched out before him, and the tiny dung fire that sputtered at his feet, then shook his head. “My situation is such that I find myself in an unknown land after wandering the sea for many months. I can tell from the sand around me that I have not landed in Cesper as was my intention. Tell me, where am I?”

“You are in the city of Shynere in the nation of Syphere, on the continent of Perilisc,” the man said. “How about that scrat?” He motioned to the half-eaten food Tarako still held in his hand. Tarako tossed him the beast and the man ate slowly, picking around the bones as was the way with his race.

“Why is this place so decimated? Where are the civilized people?”

“This city was blasted by the hundred-year storm. One-hundred-year-long sandstorm, can you believe it? It has only been over for twelve years now, but it dropped all of this side of the nation to ruin and dust. We live in the corpse. They say his name was Brazen. He was a priest of Bumko…maybe Backo? No, no, Bluxho. They say his family had been destroyed and humiliated in one of these towns. Everybody has a different theory on which town. I say town, but I guess they were cities back then. So Brazen escapes, goes off and Bluxhos his way up through the ranks, comes back for his revenge. Do you know the goddess Bluxho?” the man said, looking up at Tarako.

The question was nonsense. No deity mattered except Juhut. “I would not soil myself with knowledge of other gods or goddesses.”

“Oh, oh, okay. Well, he Bluxhoed himself to the top. Brazen got an army. He attacked the entire western side of Syphere. Hundred years. I don’t know how the man survived a hundred years but, there was a hundred-year sandstorm. It decimated everything. I heard a creature from the ocean, lots of tentacles, lots of eyes, finally climbed onto land and went into the sandstorm. Supposedly Brazen and this monstrous leviathan from the deep fought for years before Brazen was killed. Legend says the creature just climbed back into the sea and went on with its life. There’s a cult of people—I don’t really believe in cults,” the man said.

Tarako’s hand almost pulled his drokker to slice the man in half. But he stayed it. There was something about this man, something around the eyes that made him unthreatening. The man extended his hand, fingers splayed.

“Alright, so I said cult,” the human said. “You got a look on your face like your next meal was gonna be my heart, and now I’m afraid to finish.” The look on his face was comical, and the most fascinating thing about it, Tarako realized, was that this man was not afraid. There was a kind of humble bravery to this human. He started waving his hands in the air calmly. “So, can I talk about cults and creatures from the depths or should we just talk about the fact that you just sucked a feral scrat brain from a skull as if it was nothing at all?”

For one tense moment, they stared at each other, then the human smiled.

Tarako burst into laughter. He shook his head. He pointed clawed finger at his new servant. “No, no, you will talk of cults. Just know there is only one true cult.”

The man put his hands out to stop Tarako from speaking. “Iron Leaf, Juhut.”

Tarako was on his feet, his blade in his hand.

“Of winding roads we walk,” the man said. “To lying folk we talk. Toward a death we stalk. To our great deeds we flock. And though we fear, and though we weep, we will not stop. We do not sleep.”

Tarako stepped forward. His foot stomped the fire, but he did not care. The man laid back in the sand, arms wide, hands flat, and Tarako pulled his drokker. The tip dimpled the man’s throat. “How do you know that mantra? When have you heard those words?”

The man looked up at him with utter calm.

“You started speaking of Juhut when you entered our camp and started killing my comrades. I dropped my sword because as I looked at you, I did not fear you. You spoke of Juhut. The name meant nothing to me. And then I heard your poem.”

“Mantra.”

“Yes, mantra. I heard it. I guess as I’ve lived my life,” the man looked Tarako in the eye. Tarako knew from this angle his face was nothing but darkness. But still, this man’s eyes stared directly in his own, as if he had the ability to look into darkness and see. “I just imagined that a man with a mantra like that, I would not kill.”

“What is your name, human?”

“Peloton Half Shirt, son of the storm.”

“Why do they call you Half Shirt?” Tarako dropped to a seat in the sand beside Peloton. He looked at his dung-covered foot from when he had stepped into the fire. Peloton handed him a rag and he began to clean his foot.

“Hand me that drinking skin and I will tell you,” the man said with a grin. Tarako had to admit he was beginning to like this human.

Tarako tipped back the skin and drank long and hard. When he was done, he corked it and tossed it to his side. The man snapped it up and drank.

“For your kindness and mercy, I will regale you with the tale of the mighty Half Shirt and the way he earned his fine and glorious name.”

“Kindness? You look upon me,” Tarako said, extending his arms, “and you see kindness?”

“You gave me the water, didn’t you?”

Tarako laughed. “You may continue, human, on the story of Half Shirt.”

Half Shirt jerked his thumb in the direction of Tarako. “See? Kindness.”

Tarako laughed. “Please continue.” The laugh overtook him. “I have to hear the story. Please tell me of the legendary Half Shirt.” And in that moment, it was no longer an entertaining tale. This man was not his equal, but worthy of sharing a fire. Worthy of a skin of water. Tarako rested his forearms on his knees, turned his head to his side and looked Half Shirt in the face. He embraced a solemn tone. “Your mighty name, I would hear of it now.”

Half Shirt made a fist, pounded his chest, and said, “I am honored to tell you of my legend. Please pull close as I continue.”

Tarako closed his eyes. He knew the tale was likely bragging and boasting, that the truth lie in the shadows of the magnificent tale he was about to hear. But he would let the lie ride and he would see. Maybe a great tale would entertain him for this dreary night. And it was good to hear another man’s voice.

“Fine then, Half Shirt, tell me this epic tale,” Tarako said.

“Found this torn shirt once. Liked the colors, so I put it on. They all started calling me Half Shirt.” The man spat a bone in the fire and nodded. “True story.”

Half Shirt held a serious face and looked him in the eye. “We do not sleep.”

Tarako looked at the man a long beat before throwing his head back and laughing. He roared out in gales of laughter and grabbed his belly. After firing his laugh into the night and hearing it echo back to him, those echoes brought him further gales of laughter and it was a long time before he regained his composure. Tarako held a hand over his mouth, calmed himself, and looked at Half Shirt.

“You found a shirt?” Tarako said.

The man nodded. “The colors were great.”

Tarako chuckled. He laughed a long time before he settled his gaze on Half Shirt. “You, I will not kill. I think you will be a boon to the world. So as a gift to the world, I will give them you, for the world has brought me fortune and grace on many occasions. You are my gift back.”

The man nodded, pulled a bit of scrat out of his teeth.

Tarako yawned. Half Shirt stood, walked halfway around the fire and looked Tarako in the eye.

“If you sleep, I will watch over you. I will make sure nothing happens to you. You look tired,” Half Shirt said.

“I will sleep, but I warn you I was raised in the monastery of Iron Leaf, the cult of Juhut. I can smell danger like a man might smell a corpse. If you try to harm me, I will know it.”

“Then I believe my job will be an easy one.”

“One more word of caution,” Tarako said. He pulled his drokker off his back and set it, sheath and all, on the ground before him. “If you touch the handle of this sword, it will kill you. If it talks to you, you must stuff torn shirt in your ears. If it tells you its name, kill yourself. I say this to you because I like you, Half Shirt. I would hate for you to have your soul devoured.”

Half Shirt stared at Tarako before smiling. “You’re jesting?”

“I am not.”

---

Tarako opened his eyes and was hit by muted light, the day harsh and wicked. Above him had been erected a pole and a tarp to shade him from the worst of the sun. He looked at it and decided he would take Half Shirt with him. He would make a good servant.

The two of them left the camp that evening. Half Shirt told him it was best to travel during the night. So while they waited, Tarako erected a small shrine in a partially collapsed building Half Shirt said had once been a school. The shrine he decorated with the head of one of the men he killed the day before, and after hours of praying, the head burst into flames and opened its mouth.

“Where do I go?” Tarako asked.

“Head east.” As the face began to speak, the eyelid ripped up and peeled up, exposing raw meat. It peeled back across the top of the scalp and down the back of the neck. Tarako heard the wet piece of flesh plop against the sandy floor. “Leave this place behind. Do not darken its cities. Do not haunt its crypts.”

The left ear ripped off. It rolled its way across the front of the face, peeling skin as it did. The other eyelid, the nose, the other cheek, it ripped all the way around the back until it reached the strip that had been freed moments before, then it plopped to the ground. “Take the road east until you find Prox. There I will give you a man to fight.” As the skull spoke with the voice of his goddess, skin continued to peel and rip. Scalp rolled back as Tarako bowed his head, closed his eyes.

He waited until he stopped hearing meat hit the sand around his idol. Then he looked up at the raw face. He spoke a quiet word of prayer as he thought of the skinless goddess he served.

Tarako nodded. He pulled a small bit of tobacco from his leather pouch and filled his pipe. He lit it carefully and blew the smoke out over the head. As the fire died, the head curled up like a bit of burned parchment. Tarako continued his smoke, thinking of the woman he had left behind, her white fur, lean muscled body, her narrow shoulders and the black stripes that slashed across her skin. He’d always wondered at the stripes that began at each shoulder and ran down under the armor. Did those two stripes meet at a point between her breasts, or did they fly away in some other pattern? He drew in a deep lungful of smoke and went to her face, letting his mind stare at her again.

He exhaled and pushed all images and thoughts of her from his mind like the smoke being pushed from his body. The king who wanted him dead, would he still be furious, ranting at his own failure and Tarako’s exile? To execute someone of Tarako’s rank he needed more votes than he was able to muster. The allies Tarako left behind, would they face that wrath, the wrath of that king?

Another deep inhale of smoke. Let the thoughts of anger of his king, let the worries for his allies back home swirl in his lungs. He exhaled and poured them out into the air.

There was still the mission he clung to. But so much had to go, and so much had to happen. He drew in deep on his pipe. He thought of the impossible question and the fact that he had finally found its answer. Grisly and horrible, he had laid it out before the king. Rejection and revulsion had not affected his resolve. If there was a way home, if there was a way back to power, then he would set that mission into motion. The fate of his race depended on it.

He blew out smoke, cleared his mind and focused again on the words his goddess had just spoken.

East.

When the embers of his pipe were cold, he let Half Shirt take him into the desert night.

Half Shirt was strong, Tarako was in a hurry, so he commanded they run. The heavy war cloak Tarako wore was good against the cold night of the desert. He kept his run a slow jog and the desert sands passed under him.

“What do you know of this Prox?” Tarako asked.

“Prox is in the nation of Tienne. Prox is home to a tyrant. He is a foul man, dangerous and dark. If it were not for your insistence, I would advise we move south and ignore the city altogether,” Half Shirt said.

“I do believe my goddess wants me to fight this man,” Tarako said.

“The tales say he carries an axe that cannot be rivaled and the man is mighty beyond any telling.”

Tarako laughed. “Oh, Half Shirt, you seem to have forgotten I am a monk of Juhut and this man is only human.”

“You would do well to remember that humans have heroes, too. And that raksas are not the only mighty beings in the world.”

“Do you wish to back these claims up with your steel?” Tarako said, pulling his drokker. The moment the moonlight hit the blade the temperature dropped 20 degrees. The blade hissed and frosted over, and Tarako heard his name whispered as if from far away. But Tarako knew it was not far away.

“First of all, these are not claims, they are just facts. You are not the only mighty warrior in the world. You have to know this. You have to know there are men out there who will defeat you?”

“I am a tiger raksa. I have no rivals.”

“Well, if we are going to fight the Axe, then I guess we will see.”

“What is the second thing?” Tarako asked.

“Excuse me?”

“You said first thing, but you never said anything about the second.”

Half Shirt laughed. “Well, second is, I can’t back up any claims with steel as you have not given me my weapon back.”

Tarako looked at the man loping beside him and laughed. He tossed him the chipped and battered sword and shook his head. “That weapon is a disgrace.”

Half Shirt laughed. So did Tarako.

---