A King and Queen were nowhere to be found. But a young woman stood in the centre of all the wondrous things, outshining their beauty by any mile.

‘ My lady’ said Hinn as he crouched once again, though this time there was no suggestion of foul play.

‘ You will leave this city. Now.’ Said the girl.

The mercenary leader laughed like a goblin.

‘ You misunderstand the situation my lady. The truth is unfortunate but true all the same. We are here to join up with some of your Deetan dunderheads; then we are too march on Gojo. You see, my lady, we have already left.’ Said the leader self-importantly.

Soph looked around. The mercenaries had ambled into the throne room as Hinn had made his speech and were now filching wine from servants and leering at Soph’s maids.

She didn’t like this one bit but unfortunately there was nothing she could do.

It took five hours for the Deetan squadron to prepare for battle. A battle that known of them really wanted to fight. But it was not the common soldiers place to speak up among princesses and mercenaries so the score of turquoise clad foot soldiers joined the mercenary crowd knowing well that what they were about to do would be an open betrayal of the Bajans.

Soph watched with her people as their only defences shuffled off into the dawn-approaching night.

Hinn gave Soph once last smirk before turning to follow his band.

‘GOJO HERE WE COME’ he shouted into the half-light.

From the top of the castle Soph watched until the lights were eaten by the fiends of the shade.

She turned to one of her servants.

‘Udaa’ she said.

‘Yes, my lady’ came the reply.

‘Send word to Gojo along the coast. Warn them of the impeding attack. We must hope that the arrows are ready’ said Soph in a businesslike way.

She had never been to Baja but she knew that there had once been an alliance between her people and the mountain-people and for her that meant something.

She knew that the Deetan-Kruan alliance existed for two reasons.

The main one being that the Deetans were afraid of an invasion from the dastardly Kruans. The other reason being that the Kruans needed food and resources to keep their war machine operational. The fertile fields of Deet provided the goods needed for protection while the crazed minds and well-placed sabers of the Kruans provided said protection.

It was a two way agreement that confirmed the insecurity of the Deetan government. They truly believed that their people weren’t strong enoughto stand up to the Kruans while the Baja, a relatively small and sparsely populated province, the people believed in their military and followed their leaders unwaveringly.

All the talk of gangs and alliances and wars and betrayals that ricocheted of the walls of Deet only succeeded in disvaluing what it meant to be a Deetan.

People either believed in the Kruan regime or had resigned themselves to the fact that their farms were supplying a systematic takeover of the island.

Soph closed her eyes. She hoped that things would be all right. That the Kruans would fail and that Deet could go back to be being the industrious province that is used to be. She hoped a lot of things.

But right now she hoped Hinn got an arrow twixt the eyes.

Luus stood at the head of her troops. A bumpy plain lay before the Bajan Arrows. Luus guessed that the Kruans were marshalling about ½ a mile from where the Bajans had made camp. A hillock protected the camped Bajans from view. With any luck the Kruan scouts wouldn’t have picked up on their presence but, she reasoned, luck was a mistress that was hard to come by nowadays.

The rest of the contingent were mostly sleeping underneath the shade of a few tarpaulins which had been brought from the markets of Forgandillon.

‘ Ahh’ Luus said aloud.

‘The markets of Forgandillon. The breeze whisking through the Bajan peeks as the sun casts its evening ginger luster down onto the secluded city.’ She reminisced.

‘But here we are on the plains of southern Hhhu fighting an enemy that does not relent and that seeks to take over the entire island’ she shouted.

Luus was fair even in anger but a few drowsing troops couldn’t help feeling scared for the Kruans.

Luus un-slung her bow from her shoulder and straightened her bow arm. Before selecting a crimson-fletched arrow from her sheath she glanced in the direction of her home: Baja. The last free province. The other provinces weren’t free anymore. Deet had become Krua’s sponsor while Hhhu had pretty much done nothing to stand up to the draganians and allowed their borders to be crossed.

Luus turned back to the only direction that mattered now: Krua. Appropriately the Kruans appeared to have camped in the rough direction of their own province, though, she thought do the Kruans even have a province any more or have they resigned themselves to the ways of home-stealing?.

The arrow was fletched from a Jalcon of Mount Forg. The bow was that of legend. The archer was of skill.

Luus loosed the arrow. She twitched her arm muscles and dropped the bow. A favourable wind had aided the arrows flight. A cry out into the evening alerted, though it seemed she barely needed alerting, of the accuracy of the shot.

Shouts, bellows and screams followed the cry. It sounded like a force was mustering in the waning light.

Luus marched back into camp and shouted to her comrades. “The Kruans have been alerted of our presence. Although, hopefully they shall be stalled by the death of their boss. A draganian is only as strong as its leader but a band of arrows is as strong as its leader!”

‘Hasten Bajans!’ she cried as the archers began to get ready to fight.

One minute later and the Arrows were prepared. A line that lined the bottom of the hillock. Luus stood at the centre.

The sound of swords on shields and of war-cries was growing louder.

The Bajans waited for their captain’s command.

The draganian came closer.

Dust began to rise over the grassy dune.

Some weird drum beat thumped in time with the ever-closer footsteps.

The Bajans crouched at Luus’s signal.

‘It came from this direction. It musta’ said a gruff voice.

‘Whoever spiked the boss it gonna pay’ said a similar voice.

Still the Bajans crouched.

‘Stop babbling and get searching. We gotta find the killer. Probably one of those Hhhuoni rebels. If it is I’m gonna chop them up’ said a third more cunning voice.

Grit and sand started to slide down the hillock as the Kruans moved closer and closer to the edge.

Luus drew her sword silently. The front twenty-five Bajans followed her lead creating only the tiniest disturbance in the dusty air.

‘Look over there!’ one of the Kruans shouted, pointing at something that looked, he thought, a lot like a bundled up sheet or tarpaulin.

Luus looked back at her fifty arrows and said “Now Bajans”.

A silent wave of twenty five crimson flies pierced through the air and hit the front line of Kruans. Meanwhile the Bajans climbed the slopes and reached the top just in time to see their fellow troops’ arrows do their work.

As evening grew in to night the arrows and swords of the Bajans began to shatter the Kruan’s resolve. With their leader somehow dead back at camp and all his lieutenants either dead or running away the surviving Kruans ran back the way they had came.

Five of the Bajan’s were dead. One hundred and sixty three Kruan carcasses adorned the sloped of the hillock and the plains above and below.

Luus, 18th Captain of the Arrows, looked west. Jocu was out there somewhere, she thought.

‘Possibly safe but probably dead.’ said Luus aloud.

‘We’ll meet again, vagabond. But for now, just you keep safe.’ she said into the evening mist.

CHAPTER FOUR- Voices On the Borders

There had been no footprints on the road. No sign of the killer. The only option Jocu had as the light danced away was to find civilization somewhere in this lonely part of the island.

‘Ha! The island of Poig.’ thought the aspiring warrior. “If this is an island then my name is Ugge Husvajet and I”m the king of the beyond. Ha-ha.’ Jocu muttered to himself.

‘I mean: where is all the water, the rivers, the tributaries and the sea? This place is so dry that you could cook your breakfast on the dirt.’ Jocu looked around, peering through the approaching gloom. There was a lone holly tree to his right, a bush of what looked like heather to his left and absolutely bugger all behind him or in front of him.

Five days he’d been tracking now. Five days. All the provisions that Luus had given him had run out leaving Jocu with a sense of constant hunger. He could feel his appetite using his fat reserves to fuel their reactions and he was not too happy about it. You see, Jocu prided himself on being a stocky lad and if that stockiness was called into question or decreased by any external or internal occurrence (a lack of food: external, an elephant appetite: internal) then Jocu would get annoyed.

Therefore Jocu was annoyed. He glanced to his left and his right and then patted his stomach in a reflex action to feeling hungry. The leaves of the holly tree were swiftly changing from jade green to lime green and would soon be taken by the night. The last beams of light retreated from Jocu’s eyes as finally and suddenly the sun buggered off.

Literally nothing stirred around Jocu. No sounds. No smells. Only a sphere of darkness remained on the Hhhu-Krua border.

Jocu through down his pack and hunted with his feet for soft earth. He found it and crashed down onto it like a tired meteorite. Jocu’s thoughts drifted off into the night. Suddenly, as soon as he closed his eyes, there were sounds coming from everywhere: voices from his past, voices of nature and, perhaps, voices of his future. Outside off Jocu’s head the ecosystem was a graveyard; an abandoned friend; a silent island of its own. But inside the confines of Jocu’s cranium people were speaking, time was passing and Jocu could see light.

The people of Jocu’s dreams told him a secret and the secret was this: there was a stash of mint cake and a flask of spring water hidden in one of numerous pockets of his sack.

Breakfast was assured. Everything was good.

The next day’s weather was fine; a bright iris of the primary colours that seemed un-touchable. Jocu slept on as the rest of the creatures of the ecosystem awoke and started to go about their business. Out of the heather bush came a hare-like creature. The leaves of heather rustled as the creature brushed past before going back to their original immobile state.

The small creature went up to Jocu and proceeded to nudge his left forefinger with its nose. Jocu slumbered on, regardless. The hare-like thing moved backwards on its pads and then charged at Jocu’s arm. Jocu still slumbered with no regard for the hare creature. The creature was starting to get annoyed. It wished this git would wake up and go away. The hare began to back-track until it was practically in the heather bush. Any second now the hare would strike. “One” said the heather. “Two” said the holly tree. “Three” said the wind. The creature darted forward with the speed of a hare and the agility of one too. Seconds before the furry head connected with the upper arm, Jocu woke up.

Hearing the sound of sand being scattered he turned to see a small hurricane coming his way. He jumped up and immediately wished he hadn’t. Every joint in his body clicked and slid in protest of their wake-up call.

‘Bloody hell’ he said.

The hare-like creature realized that it had accomplished its first goal in wakening the human. The next task was to get the human to leave this hill and to never come back. Unfortunately the hare-like creature could not outwit the human physically: hare-like creatures are not known for their insane fighting skills. That didn’t matter though, the creature thought as it scuffled around in the shade of the holly tree to Jocu’s right. The human must leave, now!

Jocu picked up his sack and took out some of the provisions that he had been told about in his dreams the previous night while taking no notice of the small fur-ball that seemed to be thinking intently to his right.

After fifteen minutes of breakfasting, Jocu put his gear back into his sack, stood up and hoisted the rucksack on to his shoulders. Instantly, a dull pain took his shoulders like a slow-motion tidal wave as the straps dug into his raw shoulders. Three days tracking the assassin had taken its toll on Jocu’s physical attributes: constantly running and carrying an extremely heavy pack was not easy.

‘But if I’m to become one of the Baja Arrows then I’m going to have to be tough.’ said Jocu.

Jocu closed his eyes and thought of his mum and his friends and the people he would know and through sheer thought transformed himself from a dazed, tired wreck into, once again, an arrow.

At that moment the sun rose and the rabbit-like creature disappeared, confident that the intruder was about to leave the clearing. The sun was the light of the island. It was orange and yet it was all colours to Jocu’s eyes; a globe of sapphire, scarlet and jade that enveloped the landscape that lay out in front of the young teenager from Forgandillon.

Jocu tightened the straps of his rucksack and took the first steps of the new day. He went faster and faster along the west-leading path like a cheetah accelerating to its prey. Suddenly there was no pain; there was no weariness in Jocu’s joints. There was only the hunter and the quarry.

150 miles to the south, the corsairs were leaving. Of the seven brigand ships in the harbour of Qorz, five of them were under Anzr’s command. They were: The Irixur, The Ouvalda, The Tlasmeldon, The Teog-Riz and the flagship The Qorz The two other ships were both unsuccessful in the ways of plunder and gold and so had not been added to The Qorz’ vanguard. The names of those two ships had been forgotten by Anzr because those who Anzr didn’t have “business” with were not worth remembering. One of the stand-alone ships was called the Nhusdala and the other was called the Oabern.