106 Between a Rock and a Hard Place

"Brother, what will we do now? This is terrible!" When Sawo was interrupted by the noisy shout, he had tried his best to relax his battered body, eyes closed and back leaned against the wooden wall behind him. When he opened his eyes, he saw his cousin, source of the noise, pace around the dirty cabin while the unhinged warrior threw glances of hope in his direction.

"No need for panic, cousin," Sawo answered, as a tranquil smile played around his lips. "Everything worked out to satisfaction, did it not?"

"Satisfaction? Satisfaction!?" While one of his hands held back the unkempt strands of hair from obscuring his view, Tawo paced back and forth in their little hut, clearly still affected by the excitement they had gone through only hours before. "We will get killed, brother. You understand that, do you not? We will die, all of us. Have you not seen how the king's guards handled our attack?!"

"A fine warrior you are. This here would be why I am the elder brother, why I take charge. Not to worry though. In time, you will get used to proper battle."

Sawo reminded the silly youngster that his subjective impression didn't represent reality. When he thought back to the noise and smell of the underworld wafting across that battlefield, the terror of the night all around them, Sawo himself went weak in his knees. Even so, the former lord was a man of endless optimism. Thus, he sat up straight again, determined to calm down his cousin further. He would once again be the one to lead their family forward. Not to mention, all the running in circles really started to get on his nerves anyways.

"Everything went just as planned, so why complain now? Just as I said, we left the secret message at one of the bandit's caches along the way to make contact. The northern river king got our message and assembled the bandit kings together. Their charge on the labor camp might not have been enough to take out the foreign dogs of that false king, but at least we gave them a good punch. And when they breached that prisoner camp, we freed a lot of our old warriors as well. Those dogs would do well to remember this lesson: Never again shall they mess with the great Sawo or his family. Now that we are free men once again, we will do nothing but unite our forces with Harkay, that town in the mud. Our troops united, retaking the city will be an easy feat. Remember that we still hold the minds of the city people. Once we arrive with our forces, the good folk of Saniya will simply reopen our gates to free themselves from the tyrannical rule of the false king."

Never would Sawo's unbreakable heart allow himself to give in to tyranny. He would fight for his freedom, for his right to rule, at any price. Even so, there were always those who would fail to see true determination and grit for what they were. Those souls less noble than himself would not serve as an obstacle however, or so Sawo thought.

"What're you talking about you arrogant fop!?" A massive noise returned from outside the walls, to speak for those poorer minds without vision.

"Ah, Kullu. Please enter." With a smile, Sawo welcomed his servant into his private cabin. Back in Huaylas, the young man named Kullu had been a simple lumberjack under the employ of his warrior family. Although Kullu had always been a bit of an oaf, the man possessed great strength since childgood, far beyond his peers. Thus, when Sawo had been appointed as administrator of Saniya, he had taken the lumberjack along on his journey, to handle the rougher tasks required of a ruler.

"It's not 'Kullu' anymore. I'd rather you'd call me river ox."

Ultimately, Kullu had proven invaluable to Sawo's rule when he had established himself as the first of the river kings. However, in the process he had lost much of his seemly humility.

"You dare talk back to your master!? Do not forget who brought you to where you are now!"

"And where is that!?" Kullu barked back. Shocked at his servant's repeated disobedience, Sawo took a few seconds to recollect his thoughts, long enough for the bandit chief to calm down as well. "I'm sorry, master Sawo. Still, where are we? Stuck in a swamp, outlaws, with no way out. And what do you do? Sit here, and plan to take over the world. At least master Tawo is man enough to face the facts and look distraught."

Dumbfounded by the bite which rang from the bandit's tensed body, Sawo once again failed to react. This time however, his cousin sprang in to save him any further insult and embarrassment.

"How are your men, Kullu? In the chaos of our escape, under nothing but moonlight, we failed to see much of the actual fighting. Still, the noises of battle had us worried."

With a heavy sigh, Tawo let himself down and sat cross-legged on the rough hemp carpet which covered the ground. Like everything else in the hideout of the ox bandits, the cloth was covered with a thin film of moisture. However uncomfortable their surroundings were to Sawo, the servant must have been used to it by now. After all, he had already spent close to a year in the area.

"It's not good. I alone lost sixteen people. Caught or killed. No matter what master Sawo says, those kingsmen were good. Proper soldiers. And we attacked a fortified position against an army like that. I'm not sure we killed even a single one of them in return."

As always when he was in frantic thought, which the nervous Tawo was often, Sawo's cousin rubbed his mustache in an attempt to smoothe out the unruly bristles. "What about the other kings?"

Kullu looked back up to the second of his masters, with dull eyes framed in dark rings.

"...no better, master Tawo. Even my own men talk of revolt, let alone the other river kings. Those guys have no loyalty to Lord Ichilia or masters Sawo and Tawo. They're locals after all. No idea how we get out of this. All the others are fed up with their lot. From the south, that Harkay town collects more and more people and increases its influence... And from the coast, those new roadways spread out like a plague, with our people squeezed in the middle. Our space gets smaller, and we can't do a thing. And now all of us have lost this many men, things just keep getting worse and worse."

"No, wait," Sawo finally interjected, startled back to life by Kullu's bleak interpretation of their circumstances, "what about all the men we broke free from the prison camp? There were almost five hundred warriors in our group, all of them cultivators. Would those not more than replace the numbers we have lost in the attack?"

With a smile forced out of sadness, Kullu turned to face his first master again.

"Hahaha. Master Sawo is joking. We never breached the labor camp, not really. Rather than free all prisoners, our attack opened a small hole in their defenses, only for a bit. All in all, we got out no more than forty men or so. Even from those, it looks like most ran away out of habit rather than from conviction. A good number have moaned that we shouldn't have come, that they'd rather go back to the camps, to safe labor and good food. I'm not kidding, our position is hopeless. Did you know, there's been talk about handing you over to the new King Corco, to strike a deal and get treatment like the others in the labor camps."

"What!" With a mighty shout befitting of a great lord, Sawo stood and built his imposing frame above his meek servant.

"How dare these lesser men even think about taking advantage of this great lord! They should just wait, as soon as I have the forces of Saniya under my control once again, I will return the favor with salt and sulfur! Kullu, your great loyalty honors you. Once I regain my rightful place as ruler, you will be rewarded handsomely."

Sawo had expected a great reaction from his precious bestowal of favor. Kneeling, profuse words of thanks, even tears wouldn't have been exaggerated.

However, what answered Sawo was far from what he had expected. All his servant did was look up to him with the same tired face as before. No worship, no anger and no mockery. All feelings inside the lumberjack seemed to have died off.

"Master, this is no time for grand speeches. What can we do in our state? I'm only one man too. The other river kings won't play along and neither will my guys. Without the men, we have nothing. Now that our plan failed so much on only the first step, no one is willing to follow any longer."

"What do they mean!? All we need to do is convince Harkay to join us, right before we take Saniya back from the hands of the usurper. The good men of Harkay will wish for a mighty ruler like myself, a true noble who can instruct them in the secret arts of cultivation."

"And I say no one will follow!" Still seated, the servant shouted at his lord, who was once again too shocked, too surprised to react. Far quieter than before and his head lowered, Kullu continued.

"We all had faith, we all believed that things would go just as master Sawo had said. But, even at the first hurdle we almost failed. We've lost far more men than we have rescued, and the ones we took don't want to follow anyone here. Now that they have heard how well the new lord of Saniya treats even traitors, our own men are making trouble too. How can we convince that Harkay town to follow us if we can't even get our own guys in line? Take it by storm? Impossible." With a shake of his head, Kullu answered his own question, before he looked back up to his nominal master.

"We have barely two hundred men left. In our state, how would we take a fortified town of several thousand? Even I know that we can't, and so do the others. Not to forget: Once we get near Saniya is when our real problems start. This time, the king's guard only had fifty men, but you said they had five hundred back in Saniya. How can we ever fight that, when even fifty are enough to make us run for our hide?"

Although he had a hard time refuting his servant, giving up was the last thing Sawo would do, always. He would never give up on his dream, never give up on the chance to get them all a better life, the life they deserved. No matter what, Sawo would find a way to free them from the tyranny of the lords.

"No problem. Once they see the chance for a reversal, the people of Saniya will stand up and support the return of their good lord Sawo," he explained once more with a confident smile. Out of nowhere, his brother took all that energy he had saved over a lifetime of caution and shot it across the room, right into Sawo's mighty gut.

"Stop lying to yourself, brother! Even the worker slaves love that king, and those used to be our own warriors! No one will stand up against Corcopaca, the rightful king and heir of Sachay! Nor for a failed upstart from the north!"

At last, the former lord began to understand his position. Corcopaca was no false king. Instead, he had spent most of his youth in Saniya. In comparison, Sawo's connection to the city was laughable. Now confronted with the truth, Sawo realized: He wasn't mighty and he wasn't destined. No matter what he did, he would fail. No matter what he did, they were all fated to be nothing more than servants and slaves, eternally left impotent at the whims of higher-born men.

With all strength sapped from his body, Sawo fell on his knees, back into the rough, moist carpet. As his unfocused eyes stared into the distance, he heard Kullu speak up again, his voice relieved that he hadn't been the one to tell his former master the harsh truth.

"That's just right. We can't take the town, or the city. As things are, we'll be squeezed to death between both. The others are desperate too, that's why they had the idea to take master Sawo to Saniya in a bargain. I was the only one who disagreed." Once more, Kullu took a deep breath, to ready his next words. "I'm here to talk to master, to ask master once again to lead the way for us. I'm just a dumb woodcutter. I don't know anything. That's why I can't think of stuff like this. If it's master Sawo, he can come up with a plan, any plan, to satisfy the other kings, a plan to show us the way and give us hope, just like before."

"I..."

Although Sawo had registered his servant's words, he had no power to answer. Rather than his perfect planning, it had always been his eternal spring of supreme confidence that had pushed them on to greater heights. Now that his cousin had finally burst the bubble, the deflated Sawo couldn't even muster a reaction. Rather than be the anchor they would need, Sawo only stared back at Kullu, to mirror the bandit's desperation. No one moved inside the room, the quiet only broken by the beads of dew dripping from the ceiling.

If only that damn king didn't exist, I could... in his anger, Sawo despised the man who had replaced him as lord, and stumbled upon the solution which had eluded him all this time.

"I have a plan!" he said at last, shooting up onto his feet once again. Eyebrows raised and eyes beaming, Kullu looked up to the former lord again, as did his younger cousin Tawo.

"Truly?" the river king asked.

With only his eyes, Tawo asked the same question of his big brother.

"It will be easy," Sawo said with a steady voice, "I heard that a good number of villages have received invitations for a harvest festival in Saniya, and that they even get to meet with the king."

"It is true, the workers have talked about it quite a bit. A great honor for the village chiefs," Tawo added.

With a nod, the elder cousin continued. "A few villages with invitations are a bit further out in the marshes, within our sphere of influence. All we need to do is get to one of their representatives and either capture them or convince them of our cause. Can we do that, Kullu?"

"Maybe," the river ox said with a frown. "But what then?"

"Simple, once we have the invitation, we can get inside Saniya without suspicion. We could even be let into Rapra Castle, close enough to King Corco to take him out. With the king removed, the people will have no choice but to once again turn to me. Who else would they follow? All kings besides Corcopaca are northerners. They're nothing but enemies, and as lord I always treated the people well."

"Wait, then does that mean master Sawo will sneak into the castle himself?" Although Sawo was about to nod in response to Kullu's question, he was interrupted. Before he could even register what his cousin was doing, the former lord saw the dreadful conclusion to his plan unfold before his eyes.

"No, it has to be someone who would not be suspected." Tawo chimed in. "Someone who has not been seen by King Corcopaca yet, but who knows the layout of Saniya and Rapra Castle. A man who can keep to the royal decorum and gain the king's favor, to close the distance."

With a heavy voice, Tawo spoke the final verdict, and sealed his fate.

"It has to be me."