Soldier of Dorsa Teaser-Trailer

I’m an enormous fan of The Walking Dead.  *Enormous*.  Enormous enough I actually have a bobble-head doll of Glenn on my desk — a doll I bought in Senoia, Georgia, where they film the show.

Enormous enough that I get frequently reminded by the gf, “You’re a dork, you know that?”

(Oh, and regarding that:  Last year, they showed the season finale of TWD and the season premiere of FTWD at the theater, and since one of the participating theaters was five minutes from where I live, DUH, I had to go to that.  I reported to the gf that I’d gotten myself a ticket and, offended, she wanted to know why I hadn’t gotten HER a ticket.

“Because you don’t like The Walking Dead,” I answered, confused.  The Great British Baking Show is much more her style, though admittedly she also has a twenty-year obsession with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which I respect.

“That doesn’t mean I didn’t want to go with you,” she said.

“But… you’re not going to enjoy it.”

“I’ll enjoy watching *you* enjoy it,” she responded.

I shrugged and got her a ticket, actually somewhat pleased that she wanted to join me for the special event for big Walking Dead dorks.

She fell asleep fifteen minutes into the season finale.)

Anyway.  Back on topic.

One of the things The Walking Dead does every year is release a teaser-trailer at Comic Con for the upcoming season.  It’s always the first trailer of the new season, and I, as a huge Walking Dead dork, await it eagerly each year.

In honor of TWD, I present you with this teaser-trailer of Soldier of Dorsa.

I provide it not because it’s Comic Con, not because I’m thinking ahead about marketing, not because I want to capitalize on Princess of Dorsa’s success.  I provide it because it’s Saturday morning, I don’t have any clients to train, and I’m sitting in my bed in my pajamas, procrastinating before I get down to the real work of the day.

And *no*, I am not actively working on this book right now, so don’t get used to this sort of thing.  This is probably all you’re going to get for at least three or four months.

Without further adieu…

~ SOLDIER OF DORSA OPENING ~

THEN

“What is the art of the sword master?” the ku-sai asked.

Joslyn did not know.  But she was afraid to admit she did not know.  She stood in the little clearing in front of his hut, a short sword dangling loosely from one hand.

“The art of the blade,” she said at last.

“Wrong.”

He attacked — a blur of whirring steel that came so quickly she scarcely had time to lift her sword before he disarmed her.  Her short sword clattered to the ground; her sword hand still vibrated from the shockwave his blade had sent through hers.  She reached for the dagger at her other hip, but the flat of his blade came down on her wrist so hard that she was sure he’d shattered it at first.  Instinctively she pulled her hand back with a sharp breath, and with a fast flick of the tip of his sword, he caught the hilt of the dagger and flung it out of her sheath and ten feet behind him.

Joslyn bent to retrieve her sword from the ground, only to feel the cold edge of the ku-sai’s curved blade against her throat.  It barely touched her, yet she knew that if she moved even half an inch, it would slice into the artery that pulsed just beneath her skin.

“I have killed you,” said the ku-sai.  “Come back tomorrow when you have the answer.”

He tossed his sword into the air.  It spun end over end, a spinning killing machine glinting in the sun.  Then he snatched it by the hilt midair and sheathed it at his waist.  Without another word, he turned his back on Joslyn and walked away.

Hot tears threatened, but Joslyn wouldn’t let them fall.  She hadn’t come all this way just to cry like a little girl when the ku-sai turned her away.

She didn’t pick up her own rust-spotted sword from the ground until he disappeared into the hut and closed the door behind him.

What is the art of the sword master? she asked herself.  What is the art of the sword master?

Joslyn looked down at her pitiful short sword.  It was completely unlike the ku-sai’s sword:  His was a broad, curved scimitar, polished so well that it shone like a mirror, brilliant as a magic sword from one of the Terintan tall tales told around the evening campfire.  To say her sword was “common” was a compliment it didn’t deserve.  It looked older than the ku-sai himself, the steel blade notched in places and dotted with circular spots of tarnish.  She’d stolen it off a drunken foot soldier of the Imperial Army that she’d met on her journey north.

As best as Joslyn could figure, she was about fourteen.  It was an age that might still be considered “young” for more privileged girls, but Joslyn’s fourteen years had made her old enough and hard enough that she knew the drunken soldier had intended to rape her as soon as he got the chance.

She’d slipped away from him before a workable plan could blossom in his mind, watched from the shadows of the tavern as he drank more and more with his mates.  Then she followed him into the alleyway and hung back as his speech slurred and his mates disappeared one by one with women they might or might not pay at the end of the night.  Finally, the soldier passed out in the alleyway, a pile of garbage serving as a makeshift pillow, his feet dangling dangerously close to the small gully that carried the neighborhood’s sewage.  Joslyn kicked him lightly to make sure he was really asleep, then stole the sword as a punishment for so much as having the mere thought of asserting himself over her.

It was fair to say that she hated the soldier.  It was fair to say that Joslyn hated many men — and many women, too.  She didn’t need to know their names to hate them.  She knew the names of some of them, including other men like the soldier.  She’d been forced to learn their names because she hadn’t been as smart then as she was now, when she hadn’t known enough to slip away into the shadows as soon as she saw that look on a man’s face.

She examined what had been the drunken soldier’s short sword as she remembered how she’d acquired it, used a fingernail to scratch at one of the tarnished spots.  The spot came off without too much effort, leaving a smudge of black grime beneath her nail.  Joslyn retrieved the dagger next, the only item she’d managed to take with her from her former master when she ran away.  It, too, was tarnished.  The blade was dull, hardly good enough to slice bread.  Perhaps the ku-sai would show her how to make it sharp again.

If the ku-sai would show her anything at all.

Joslyn sighed heavily.

What is the art of the sword master?

She sat down cross-legged on the ground, opposite the ku-sai’s wooden hut.  She sat far enough from the hut to be respectful, close enough to show she would not leave.  Beyond the hut, the sun had begun to disappear behind the mountains, the last oranges and reds of the day melting into the sky.

Joslyn rested the sword across her lap, and with a tattered corner of her tattered jacket, she started to scrub at the tarnished spots.  When she saw the ku-sai tomorrow — if she saw him — he would see that her sword gleamed as brightly as his own.  Perhaps then he would know that she was serious about learning his craft, the art of the sword master.

She fell asleep a few hours later in the same spot, curled like a comma against the cold earth.  She clutched the short sword to her chest in the same way other girls a little younger than herself might have clung to their dollies.

Joslyn had never had a dolly.  But she had this sword, and that was enough.

It would have to be enough, since she had nothing else.

#

Joslyn woke with the toe of a soft-soled boot nudging her side.  She struggled to open bleary eyes.  The cold had kept her from sleeping most of the night; she’d only finally fallen asleep in the hours just before dawn.  Now she was groggy and stiff as the unwelcome toe prodded her awake.

“What is the art of the sword master?” asked the ku-sai.

He looked bigger than he really was from her prone position against the earth.  In reality, the ku-sai was a small man, only a few inches taller than Joslyn and almost as skinny.  The rising sun was directly behind him, making his white beard and bald head glow unnaturally.  When she was little, the tinker’s wife used to entertain Joslyn and her older sister with tales of desert angels who would descend from the clouds and grant water to the righteous, and that was what the ku-sai made Joslyn think of now — an angel who had walked out of her dreams and become manifest.

“What is the art of the sword master?” repeated the ku-sai angel.

Joslyn lifted a hand halfway, though she didn’t know what she was reaching for.  “Please…” she said, though she didn’t know what she was pleading for.

He only stared at her, face hard and severe.

“The art of the sword master is…” she said, groping through her bleary mind for something that might satisfy him.  “Defense?”

“No,” he said, and walked away.

Joslyn spent the day foraging around the hut for what little food she could find, since the ku-sai had offered her none.  Behind his hut was a smokehouse that gave off a mouth-watering smell of meat, but she knew better than to enter there, just as she knew better than to disturb the ku-sai’s clucking hens or the fat eggs that probably laid in their hen house.  The ku-sai came out to feed the hens at one point late in the morning, speaking to them in a cooing, soothing voice that contrasted so sharply with the tone he used for her that he seemed to not be the same man.  She couldn’t quite understand what he told the hens; he addressed them in a Terintan dialect she hadn’t heard before.

In the forest behind the hut, Joslyn found some half-rotten acorns, which she dined on with enthusiasm, squatting beside the small game trail and digging out the acorn meat with her increasingly grimy fingers.  She needed to backtrack today, find the stream she had crossed on the way up the mountain, and refill her water skin.  Maybe she would take a bath while she was there.  If she could smell herself, so could whatever animals roamed the mountainside at night — lions, most like.  Maybe wolves, too.  Certainly foxes, though they probably wouldn’t bother her.  But as long as she was sleeping outside, it would be better not to attract their attention.

Nevertheless, she dreaded the necessary dip into the mountain stream.  It was spring, and the mountain’s daytime temperature was warm enough for her, but once night fell, she was likely to freeze to death if any part of her was still wet.

Best to do it sooner rather than later, then.  While the sun was still strong.

Joslyn sighed and got to her feet, brushing the crumbs of the acorns on her dirty trousers.  Her stomach rumbled, protesting that the business of the acorns was already over.  Maybe she would find more on her walk to the stream.  She adjusted the short sword in its makeshift sheath at her hip and headed down the trail.

What is the art of the sword master? she wondered as she walked.

#

The third day was not unlike the first two:  She woke up cold and stiff, confronted with an empty stomach and the ku-sai’s question.

“What is the art of the sword master?”

“Protecting others,” she said on that third morning.

“No,” he said.

“Disarming the opponent,” she said the fourth day.

“Strength,” she said the fifth day.

“Agility,” she said on the sixth.

“Perseverance,” she said on the seventh.

“Why does it matter?” she asked the ku-sai on the eighth day.  She was cranky and exhausted from lack of sleep, emaciated from lack of food.  At least she was clean, had fresh water, and a polished short sword.  She’d torn off a corner of her jacket and used it now to scrub the sword clean and bright every morning.

But she couldn’t eat the sword.  Nor could she use it well enough to kill anything she could eat.  Joslyn despaired that she would starve to death before the ku-sai ever accepted her as an apprentice.  When he asked his question on the ninth morning, she said simply:

“I don’t know.  Teach me the answer.  Please.”

And finally he said something besides “No” or “Wrong.”

“I will teach you nothing until you answer my question correctly,” he said, and walked back into the hut.

Joslyn sat cross-legged on the ground and cried.

#

Between her own foraging and the local squirrels, all the acorns within a reasonable radius of the hut were gone by the end of the ninth day.  She’d tried eating bark a few days before but found it impossible to get down.  She’d also had the smallest bite of a mushroom, worried that it might be poisonous, and sure enough, she felt immediately light-headed and spent her afternoon nauseated and dry-heaving after she’d emptied her stomach of water.

When the toe came into her ribs the morning of the tenth day, it seemed to take all of her energy simply to open her eyes.

“What is the art of the sword master?” the ku-sai asked.

“I don’t know,” Joslyn whispered.  “I don’t know what the art of the sword master is.”

He walked away.  Joslyn laid her head back onto the earth and fell asleep.

#

She needed a bath again, but couldn’t summon the energy to make it to the stream on the eleventh day.  She needed to go there; there was nothing left in her water skin, and water was the only thing fooling her belly into thinking she had eaten.

I have come all this way only to starve to death on the side of a mountain, she thought bitterly.

The ku-sai had been her last hope, a myth whose thread she had followed north, across deserts and savannas and the foothills of the Zaris Mountains.  She’d stopped in the village at the foot of the ku-sai’s mountain twelve days ago, seeking to barter one of her meager possessions for a little food and a little information.  She’d managed only a crust of moldy bread and the instruction that there was an odd, grumpy old hermit who lived in the saddleback between this mountain and the next.  He might be the one she sought.

Or he might just be an odd, grumpy old hermit.

Not that it mattered, they said.  Finding his hut wouldn’t be hard, but he wouldn’t teach her.  Many who were certainly more worthy than she had tried before, and he had refused each of them.  Some of them were even highborn young men who’d taken their lives in their hands by traveling south or east or west from the Empire in the days before Terinto had been conquered.

The villagers looked Joslyn up and down, and she knew what they saw:  A girl.  A runt, undernourished and small for her age.  And if she was unlucky, they saw a runaway slave.

Joslyn only spent a day in the village, thanked the tavern owner who’d given her the scrap of bread, and headed up the mountain with only her dull dagger and tarnished sword, angling for the saddleback where the hut was supposed to be.

She would find the ku-sai.  He would train her to be a sword master, like he was.  She would do this, because what else was there left for her to do?  She could not go to any place with people; the slave hunters might find her and take her back to her owner.  She would die before she went back to him.  She’d thought she might have a different destiny, a destiny of laughter and love and security with her Anaís, but Anaís had left her for the stable boy, leaving Joslyn only with a flower by way of apology.

The ku-sai would accept her as a pupil.  Or she would die on his doorstep.

“What is the art of the sword master?”

“I don’t know.”

#

“What is the art of the sword master?” asked the ku-sai on the twelfth morning.

Joslyn somehow managed to push herself up into a sitting position.  Her eyes had sunken into her skull; the skin around her cheeks clung to the hollows; her lips were thin and chapped and stretched into a perpetual grimace.

Nothing but skin and bones.  People had said that to her before, of her before, but they had always been wrong.  She’d been hungry all her life, but this was actual starvation.  Real starvation.  Her skin and her bones were truly all she had left.

Her heavy head wobbled on her weak neck, but she looked straight into the ku-sai’s golden-brown eyes and croaked out:

“Death.  The art of the sword master is death.”

The ku-sai did not move for a moment.  He said nothing.  Then he walked back into his hut, and Joslyn collapsed onto the ground.

A few minutes later, the ku-sai returned.  He carried a wooden plate of scrambled eggs in one hand, in the other was a thick woolen blanket, its color the same green as the budding trees.  He dropped the blanket next to her and rested the plate of eggs on top of it.

“Eat slowly, young kuna-shi,” he instructed.  “If you eat too fast, you will only throw it all up again.”

Then he walked back inside the hut.

Joslyn didn’t understand what was happening.  Had the old man taken pity on her?  Why had he brought her the eggs?  Was it a trick?  Did the eggs contain a poison that would finally kill her?

Kuna-shi.  Again, there was that Terintan dialect she didn’t quite understand.  “Shi” meant child.  What was kuna?

She sat up again, glancing suspiciously at the eggs.  In the end, she couldn’t fight her hunger.  She picked up the plate and shoveled the eggs into her mouth, slowly at first, then faster and faster.  She’d eaten half of the eggs before her stomach cramped and she remembered the instruction about not eating too fast.

She put the plate on the ground, forced herself to rest her eyes for what she guessed was an hour, then ate the rest of the eggs.

Her stomach tried to reject the meal.  She could feel it working, clenching around the eggs as it tried to remember how to perform the task of digestion.  She wanted to throw up, but she didn’t know when she would get a meal again.  She clenched her jaw and managed to keep it down.  When she was sure she wouldn’t lose the eggs, she wrapped the blanket around her and fell back asleep.

Death was the right answer, she thought as she drifted off.  Of course.  What is the art of the sword master?  The art of death.

No wonder the sword master had not taken on a pupil before.  None of them had been willing to stay until the brink of starvation, when the word “death” was the only correct answer to any question asked.