The next day, Kingsley went back home. Her job was to tend to her people and to lead anyone else across the Fluvius River. We said goodbye and wished her well. I felt sad to see her go, and more afraid of the monsters. Teacher Grimshaw could hold his own in a fight, but not like Teacher Kingsley could.

Despite that fear, we were free! I was out of Tauron land where I was hated, ridiculed, despised, and seen as less. Even Shalin and Hector, as sad as they were about the death of Cas, felt the freedom. It was bittersweet, I could tell, but it somehow lessened their sadness.

Grimshaw said it would take us a week to travel to Solom, and then another 3 days to get to the school. The first three days we travelled the land, Yeshua went from a verdant land to a hardscrabble one. It started to get colder despite early spring getting warmer. It was almost as if we were passing an invisible line where it was temperate to now a colder land. Grimshaw said that past the capital of Yeshua there was a rather large forest again. We switched from travelling at night to avoid patrols in Taurus to travelling the day to avoid Monsters that grew dangerous in the night. We still had many monster attacks.

We let Grimshaw take the lead in all of them, but he encouraged us to fight as long as it was safe. His typical tactic was to make illusory copies of himself that would distract the monster so we could flank and attack the monster ourselves. Over the three days, I received a total of 75 XP from my part in the fights against the monsters. After discussing it with Grimshaw, I increased my first revelation, Tal’Lat the Protector to level 3. At level 2 the shield offered 3 hitpoints of protection, and I could choose to use zeal or willpower to invoke the shield, almost doubling the number of times I could invoke the shield in a day. At level 3 it offered a total of 4 protection. It also gained an extra effect. Any melee or unarmed attacker would be shocked for two seconds and would be unable to control their movements during that time. This only was in effect for the first hit the shield took. It was amusing to watch the monsters shake uncontrollably, giving just long enough to land an undefended stroke on the monster. I only had to use the shield once in the three days, as I was only directly attacked once. Grimshaw demanded that I gather my amount of zeal back up to 7 if I could.

Grimshaw told me, late one night, that I would be able to gather more zeal in a day if I taught the scriptures, led prayers, or converted unbelieving Gar’shan back to God. “All it takes is to kindle faith in God, and He will reward you with zeal.” It wasn’t just simply done, though, I had to learn to be a channel for zeal and for God. The Teacher School would apparently be teaching me how to do that as well. I asked what the school was like. Grimshaw warned me not to expect too much. It would involve maybe 10 other young teachers at the most, and we would be receiving individual instruction on fighting, scriptures, insurrection, meditation, leadership and medicine.

Grimshaw explained that we would all be Teachers, or leaders of the Gar’shan. We would be the center of faith for our people. We would teach children how to read and write, heal the sick, be the first line of protection, and be the sword of the young saint fated to come to the land. We were what stopped the corruption of our faith and the dying of our culture. We were the repositories of knowledge in the dark time, and much was put upon our shoulders to bring our people forward to a better future.

In short, we were a stopgap measure to bridge the time before the fall of Solom and the future rise of Solom as a free nation once more. We were surrounded by enemies. Taurons, who enslaved us and Yeshuans who oppressed us. It was odd, though, that Taurons found us to be little more than playthings, and Yeshuans viewed us as weak allies fighting against the Taurons. They both dismissed us. They were unaware that the agents of their death were amongst them now. I wanted to be that sword, to be the reason we became free of slavery and oppression. I wanted a free Solom and I would fight for it.

On the third day, we ran across a group of battle hardened Yeshuans. We were walking through the chilling, barren land when we heard a horn blast in the distance. Grimshaw stopped us. He pointed out the group of Yeshuans coming our way.

“That would be a Yeshuan war party. They caught site of us. We will stay here while they come towards us. We will be respectful to them and will not try to fight them. They do not view us as enemies, but more like people they can abuse for a little merriment. Don’t let pride get in your way. If this is like most other war parties, they will be dangerous enemies that I am not sure we can get rid of, not without blood and loss. They will know some of us are newly freed, and they will find that amusing.

“Shalin, rub dirt over your body and hair. Make yourself as unappealing as possible. Vin, you too. Hector and I are old enough that we won’t be as… tempting. Hector, you will control your emotions, if you want Shalin to survive.”

Hector gave Grimshaw a glare, but finally nodded.

“Remember, Yeshuans do not believe any of us are worthy of a soul. This means they are ruthless. It is only the Queen’s law that will keep them from murdering us or doing us harm in other ways. And that is a thin barrier at best.”

We watched, nervous as they came towards us. There were 7 of them. All of them were bulky and dangerous looking, They each had a sword on them and they looked like they could use them. They all had Yeshuan feature, brown hair and eyes. They obviously had a leader. She was just as tall and bulky as the men wore. While they all wore leather armor, she had metal armor. They all held deference to her. She looked like she could kill anyone with a look, and that was without taking her sword and armor into account.

When they got to us, they started inspecting us immediately.

“4 Gar’shan, walking alone in the middle of Yeshua. One of them faithless” one of the men said, referring to my bald head which only had a few weeks of stubble on it. One of the men came up to Shalin and looked at her closely, while another came up to me.

“Two are young and supple, but dirty and smelly” the man called out while groping me to check my ‘suppleness’. He seemed a little upset at my smell, and backed away, as did Shalin’s man. Her face was beet red, and I was unsure if it was that was due to anger or shame or both.

I swore to myself that if the men touched her again, I would attack. I caught Hector’s eye and we seemed in agreement.

“What are 4 Gar’shan doing walking in the middle of Yeshua, barely three days from the border.” The leader looked at us appraisingly while she talked.

“Yeah, did you guys just escape from Taurus” asked another man.

Teacher Grimshaw responded. “Greetings, may the Queen’s shadow cover us all.” At that they all stood to attention, and I realized it was Grimshaw’s way of gently reminding them of the Queen’s laws. He continued. “We just left Taurus. Two of us were already freed men, and two of us escaped, robbing Taurus of a good deal of money.”

The Yeshuans reacted. They didn’t know much about us. But they knew freed Gar’shan usually meant half-saints. And half-saints could fight well and were rumored to do magic. Both of these rumors were true, of course. Teacher Grimshaw, in a passive way, made them aware that we were a dangerous group.

‘I see,” said the leader. “and you are planning to go where?”

“Directly to Solom to bring the two newly freed Gar’shan to our strongest community so they can get them adjusted to free living. And another to drop off for training so that he may join the fights at the border. After I am done in Solom, I am going to back to Taurus to help free more slaves.”

“That backpack is rather nice for a Gar’shan to have.” One of them men pointed to my backpack. I grew concerned. My backpack and its contents were my only real possessions.

“Yes, we stole it from the Taurons. But it is rather travel worn by now. We killed the Tauron who owned it. It was young Vin’s first Tauron kill. Surely you would let him keep this prize, as it was earned in blood.”

“Since it was earned in blood, he may keep it. The only good Tauron is a dead one, congratulations on the kill, young man.” The leader lauded me, and I nodded. Teacher Grimshaw just sinned by lying. But then, he also helped to steal from the Taurons and killed them too. Perhaps these things were fine because it was done to people not Gar’shan?

“I suppose we shall let you on your way, since you bring value to the Queen. I see all of your swords are Tauron in design. You must have stolen them from patrols. More dead Tauron. We were going back to the capital; we shall stay with you for a few days. Just to make sure you get a good start on your way to Solom.

And that is how we were escorted from 145 kilometers inside the territory of Yeshua for four days until we got to the capital.