Free The Staff of Sakatha by Tom Liberman Page B

that giant of a head must have been a traumatic experience.”
    “You don’t know the half of it, Mikus,” said Jon as he got up to help dig out a small fire pit. “I’m a twin.”
    “There’s two of you?” asked Mikus and shook his head in disbelief, “I can’t believe a woman could survive such a birthing.”
    “My sister is not as big as me,” said Jon, “she only comes up to here,” he said pointing to his lips.
    Sorus, knew his own height of six feet and realized the girl was half a foot taller yet. “Yeah, a real shorty I bet.”
    Jon laughed, “She always complains there aren’t enough tall boys in the world but I don’t think she means it. She loves to fight more than me and is already a gray captain.”
    “Aren’t you a captain in your army,” said Mikus as he turned to face Jon.
    Jon shook his head sadly, “My commander says I have to learn discipline before I can be a captain. I think he’s still mad about me and his daughter.”
    “I don’t even want to know,” said Mikus as they put the kindling in a pile and the young squire began to scape his knife over a metal plate, which instantly produced a shower of sparks that caught light to the kindling, and soon a roaring little blaze was going.
    “Those rabbits good eating?” said Jon with a motion of his head to the bunnies that romped all over the field.
    “Three Maria’s,” said Sorus with a grin. “I don’t know why they call them that but they’re fine eating. They’re all over the foothills like this,” he went on. “There’s another kind too called Mountain Rabbits that are a little bigger with big white tails. We’ll bag a few this afternoon after lunch if you want to try them. Do you have rabbits up north in Tanelorn?”
    Jon smiled, “I don’t think there’s anywhere with rabbits. Speaking of rabbits do you have gnolls down here,” he continued.
    “I’ve heard of them,” said Mikus. “Great hairy beasts, ten feet tall and they like to laugh in this crazy way, right?”
    “They are big and they are hairy but I don’t know about ten feet tall,” said Jon, “at least not where I’m from anyway. We have an expression up in Tanelorn that the bunnies made me think about. Rabbits breed like gnolls!”
    “There must be a lot of them then,” said Mikus with a smile. “How come they don’t just overrun Tanelorn?”
    “I fought a dog-man once,” Germanius rumbled up from the depths as he stirred some vegetables into the water not yet aboil. “Not much bigger than Jon there,” he went on, “but a wild creature he was, he fought with an obsidian blade, the stone swords are sharp but brittle. He smashed it against my shield and near broke my arm but I managed to best him in the end.”
    “Where was this?” asked Jon.
    “Eh?” said Germanius as he went back to the vegetables.
    “Where … did … this happen?” Jon said in a loud voice.
    “No need to yell,” said Germanius and then gave Jon a wink. “The old man is only mostly deaf, not completely.”
    At this all three of the youngsters laughed aloud and Sorus urged the old knight to continue, “Come on Sir Germanius, tell us the story.”
    “You youngsters always humoring an old knight,” said Germanius with a smile as he attended to their lunch with great diligence. “It was well west of here, in the territories of the orcs, Grelm it is now, but before that it was something else, I can’t remember. I couldn’t have been much more than twenty or so years old. There were reports that the old masters were stirring and me and some of the fellows went into the orc lands looking for any them.”
    “Old masters?” whispered Jon to Sorus who replied with a nod of his head.
    “I’ll tell you about them another time. Brutus Brokenhand was their slave and he escaped and founded Elekargul,” said Sorus and turned his attention back to the old man who himself had paused in his story for a brief moment to fish out a small onion and pop it into his