Engraved - The Hunted Warrior

Chapter 3 Khalesar

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The mourning for the dead lasted four days, as was customary for fallen warriors. The Empa Clan was small. So many not returning from a raid affected everyone personally. Wailing was heard from every tent. They would all have to be strong once the four days were over, but for now people stayed in their tents weeping and praying.

Alam's time was spent in the tent he shared with Khalesar, the clan's healer. She was one of the oldest people in the Empa Clan. Her face was lined with deep wrinkles, and lately her shoulders had started to stoop. Despite her advancing years, and a body that was stiff, her mind was still sharp as a knife.

The tent was the only home Alam had ever know. It, like all tents on The Endless Plains, was round with shoulder-height wooden slats to give structure to the walls, and an oval door-flap for entry. Next to the tent's centre pole, their bucket sized cooking stove lay cold with a tidy pile of kindling on one side, and their sole clay cooking pot on the other. Other than the stove, Alam's bed, Khalesar's bed, and two wooden chests, the only furniture in the tent was a small, short legged, square table that Khalesar used to mix herbs.

Alam gazed lazily at bundles of dried herbs that hung on the wooden wall slats next to his head. He lay shirtless on his pallet bed so Khalesar could tend to his wounds.

"Mother," he said to Khalesar who was changing the bandage on his thigh. "I don't think I should be a warrior."

"Really?" She turned her smiling wrinkled face to him. "Why is that?"

"First of all I can hardly stop myself from shaking before battles. Tajar was joking that I looked like I was going to wet myself. I almost did."

"Every warrior feels that way. They simply learn how to hide it," she replied.

"That's what Urlock said, but I'm not sure," he disagreed. "Urlock and Serik are so calm they look like they have just woken from a nap."

"It is called acting, dear."

"Secondly," said Alam, plowing on, "I'm having nightmares. I keep seeing the face of the man I killed in our raid. Even when I am awake I see it happening over and over again. I can't help wondering if someone is mourning him just as we are mourning those he killed from our clan."

She stayed quiet so Alam continued.

"Thirdly, I disobeyed Chief Urlock's instructions twice in two days. The first time my actions cost the lives of some of our clan. I don't know if I will ever be able to look at the faces of the family members of the warriors who died in that first raid. If I had just done what Chief said maybe they would still be alive. The second time I was carried away with the emotion of the battle and ran after that stupid box though he told me not to."

Silence stretched out in front of them. Alam could tell by her expression that she was thinking carefully of a response. Finally she spoke.

"Alam, I am glad you are having nightmares and visions during the day because it means you are still a whole man. When we take a life we also lose some of our own life force. If you did not have regrets about killing there would be something wrong indeed."

"That is what Urlock told me."

"If he says the same as me he must be wise," she joked.

Alam pressed on. "But I have been trained since a child to be a warrior. And that means killing."