Peacekeeper's Plan Read online

  Peacekeeper’s Plan

  Book Two

  Peacekeeper’s Passage Series

  By Wayne Meyers

  Copyright ©2020 Wayne Meyers

  https://WayneMeyers.com

  [email protected]

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  First Printing: 2020

  Cover design by Y. Nikolova

  Edited by Sally Shupe

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to all my children. May you always find the strength to overcome life’s challenges, the wisdom to make smart decisions, and the compassion to accept the fragility of others. Always be gentlemen and ladies. Work as hard as you must to obtain your dreams, but find time for yourselves and your loved ones along the way. Life is about balance and tenacity, belief in yourselves, and the love we share through every celebration and crisis.

  Contents

  Chapter One—My First Year of Training

  Chapter Two—Babette

  Chapter Three—A Girl Peacekeeper

  Chapter Four—Lost Bracelet

  Chapter Five—In the Basement

  Chapter Six—The Tunnel

  Chapter Seven—Exonerated

  Chapter Eight—My Face Betrays Me

  Chapter Nine—A Desperate Search

  Chapter Ten—A Dangerous Choice

  Chapter Eleven—Close Call

  Chapter Twelve—First Kiss

  Chapter Thirteen—Mixed Signals

  Chapter Fourteen—A Special Technique

  Chapter Fifteen—Joys of Jumping

  Chapter Sixteen—Reconciled

  Chapter Seventeen—A Troubling Conversation

  Chapter Eighteen—The Guildless

  Chapter Nineteen—The Pouch of Beans

  Chapter Twenty—Tree Claw

  Chapter Twenty-One—Interrupted Confession

  Chapter Twenty-Two—An Errand in Solace

  Chapter Twenty-Three—Love Lesson

  Chapter Twenty-Four—Stairwell Surprise

  Chapter Twenty-Five—A Wild Night Out

  Chapter Twenty-Six—An Unfortunate Misunderstanding

  Chapter Twenty-Seven—Growing Up

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  BOOKS IN THIS SERIES

  Chapter One—My First Year of Training

  I stepped around Spaldeer's punch, redirecting his arm with a circular motion of my palm. At the same time, my opposite hand lashed out catching his jaw with a solid blow. If not for the cushioned gear about his face I might have done some damage to my smaller friend and guild brother. As it was, his head whirled about, and his body spun after.

  A merciless grin split my face. “I did the creeping panther technique perfect that time! Let's try again.”

  Spaldeer collapsed on the hard-packed dirt in the middle of the courtyard and yanked the gear from his head, revealing layers of plastered short dark hair. “I think not, altbrud. We've already spent the entire evening practicing this one technique. Even the sun has graciously set. It's time for bed.”

  Excitement coursed through my body like an electric current. “But I finally did it right. I have to keep going, or I'll forget.”

  Spaldeer leaned back on his hands and snorted, his face pale beneath the nearby flickering oil lamps. “You don't disremember anything you've mastered. Quite an achievement considering how intense they’re driving you.”

  Realizing how exhausted I felt after a long day of chores and training, and remembering that Spaldeer tired quicker than me, I relented. Consigning to memory my exact body placement, I collapsed next to him and stared up at a three-story red-bricked dorm building that blocked the dwindling rays of sunlight from the courtyard. An identical building rose up behind me. Beyond these were another four, and between them they housed all the apprentices of Solace’s peacekeeper’s guild.

  The dirt was still hot from the heat of the early summer’s sun and felt good upon my tired, aching back. Crickets chirped and the honeyed perfume of blossoming flowers filled the air. Excited chatter echoed from all around us through open windows and other courtyards. My eyes closed as I let it all wash over me, saturating me in the comforting sensations of home.

  Far beyond Solace’s wall on the outskirts of the city limits was a town called Tataling, where I had grown up with my mother and abusive stepfather before Journeyman Krellus brought me here almost two years ago. I was twelve then but had turned fourteen a month ago. It was hard at times to remember what my tiny room looked like, but I never forgot my mother’s smiling face. Those moments were too far and few between to cast aside. I couldn’t wait to graduate to journeyman in eight more years, when I would be allowed to see her again.

  “You are right, Spaldeer. They have taken my candle for training and burned it at both ends. It’s almost a relief to have Journeyman Krellus away these past few weeks. Even so, I can't help loving what we study. My heart fills with each new technique conquered, but before the pride simmers, I am searching for another. Sodalus says I absorb fighting like a sponge.”

  “Captain Sodalus, now. Well, after the journeyman swearing-in ceremony in two days,” Spaldeer reminded me.

  Crossing my legs, I nodded. “That’s right, I’d forgotten. I shall miss seeing Captain Jabben patrolling about the dorms.”

  “Journeyman Jabben, soon.” Spaldeer chuckled. “That will take some getting used to. And soon he’ll be patrolling the streets of Solace instead.”

  “True. Keeping the citizens safe instead of us lowly apprentices.”

  It was acceptable for apprentices to call each other by name, but apprentices were required to address a journeyman as such, or a master as master. If you forgot, the person in question would quickly remind you, usually by throwing you to the floor and placing their foot against your throat until you apologized.

  Spaldeer cracked his knuckles while stretching his arms out before his chest. “Artelus is not pleased with Captain Sodalus’ promotion. Did you see that sour look on his face when the announcement was made?”

  That recent memory made me smile. “Artelus would have become a second-year mid if he hadn’t been left back for destroying your things when you first came here. Now Marcos and Brentor have caught up to him, and they’re all in the same training class together.”

  “Better them than us.” Spaldeer sighed. “Hard to believe it’s been an entire year already since we became first-year low apprentices.”

  “I wonder why Artelus has left us alone all this time? After I attacked him, he swore to come after me.”

  He’d also said I wouldn’t get up again the next time, in a voice filled with hate. Although he’d beaten me off bloody, the simple fact that a lowbie had dared attack an older apprentice had unnerved him. Typically, it was the older apprentices who picked on the newer in between classes. By fighting back, I had shaken up the system, and by being seriously beaten I had brought the matter to light for the masters to take better notice. And take notice they did—it was made crystal clear that any higher apprentice caught abusing a lower would suffer grave consequences. That had dampened Artelus’ fun.

  Come to think of it, it was not just Artelus and his friends who were refraining from the long-standing custom, but also most high- and mid-apprentices, even those who had never been cruel and were only trying to pass along knowledge
as the tradition intended. A peacekeeper needed to learn to always be ready for an attack to avoid being taken by surprise when patrolling as journeymen. It was unfortunate how a callous few had twisted it into bullying.

  Spaldeer echoed my own unspoken conclusion. “He knows they are watching him closely and will bide his time until they stop. Like a snake, he will patiently wait until the moment presents itself, then strike. You must always be on guard, especially when alone.”

  “You are right, as always.” I leaped to my feet and held out a hand to help pull him up, swatting away the inevitable cloud of gnats that always came out after dark as the sweltering heat from the day cooled. “Come. If we’re not going to practice, then let’s head back to the dorm where we won’t be nibbled to bits.”

  He clasped his hand to mine and allowed me to yank him upright. “As you wish, though the insects seem to prefer your blood to mine.”

  “That’s because I am sweeter than you.”

  Spaldeer snorted. “Did you really just make that statement with a straight face? As moody as you can be?”

  I put an arm about his shoulder as we walked toward our dorm building. “A year you say? How ever did you manage to survive that long sharing a room with me?”

  “That is a great mystery I shall have to review in great detail before I can answer you.”

  “Wonderful. I can do more stretching while you study this.”

  His laughter filled my ears. “Or you could just, you know, do nothing.”

  I shook my head. “Now that is one technique I will never master.”

  It was a mild late-spring night, and I inhaled the sweet fragrances of flowers from the gardens with pleasure as we walked. Other people moved about the peacekeeper guild grounds as well, coming and going from fighting practice or chores, or perhaps from studying at the library. Most were walking toward their respective dorms as we were.

  From the other side of the grounds came the grunts and groans of a journeyman sparring class, but these familiar sounds no longer registered in my ears. On some nights, the harsh commands of a far off journeyman training his class late into the night lulled me to sleep.

  Fighting fascinated me without end. The ability to manipulate your body in different positions to offset another person's attack and overcome them was a powerful opiate. For every technique I learned, I knew a counter-technique existed, and for the counter, a counter-counter, all played against one another in the perpetual dance of mind, body, and reflex that defined sparring.

  I felt alive in ways I had not known possible, even in my first weeks of actual training when it consisted of nothing but stretching and exercises. It was a relief to have become an actual part of the class instead of sneaking around watching them, as I had when I first arrived at the guild a year too soon to formally begin training.

  The workouts had proven difficult, but through perseverance our muscles grew hard and lean. Our teachers rewarded us with newer, more strenuous routines. Each new exercise worked a different set of muscles, ligaments, and tendons, and while challenged with the new, we still had to repeat the old, increasing the time of our workouts a little more each day.

  Several new apprentices had been unable to keep up and were evicted from the guild to find something better suited.

  Not satisfied with my own progress, I badgered Spaldeer to work out with me during every waking moment. Being good-natured he complied, though I knew he would have preferred burying himself in a book or simply doing nothing at all, something he had told me he missed dearly.

  To his credit, he had proved an ideal roommate. He pushed himself beyond his own initiative to please me simply because he felt as roommates, we needed to be there for one another. He never complained about it, and in fact directed his usual cheerful disposition to whatever challenge I coerced him into helping me tackle, no matter what his own needs or desires might have been.

  After the lights went out at night and we lay in our beds too tired for sleep, we talked of our past lives as Marcos and I used to do when we had first roomed together. I told Spaldeer of my abused mother and deceased father and how I had come to the guild, while he spoke of his own parents and siblings, and how it had been growing up in Solace. We found many mutual interests and passions, such as our hatred of bullies and desire to protect others from such creatures. He had always been smaller than other boys, and as a result, picked on since his first day of school. How lucky I had been to find an alternate path through private tutoring, but for him, he'd had to endure much of the same, perhaps worse, for his entire education. How he retained such good humor I could not understand.

  A few times we had spoken in hushed tones of the quiet hospitality apprentice, Col, and his suicide when caught stealing a restricted fighting manual. We wondered who he had been working for and why he’d taken such drastic actions when discovered, but since no answers to either question was forthcoming, his tragic action faded into the backdrop of everyday routine. Neither of us had thought to bring him up again in months, and I had only done so now as part of the greater recollection of events over the past year.

  It was true that I was often moody, and outright bad company on some days. Spaldeer could always tell when I needed to be left alone and simply put up with my growling and irritability without comment or reprimand, patiently waiting for whatever black cloud hovered over my head to pass. Usually, it was because I was having trouble with a new exercise or technique, and I would not become decent company again until I could execute it with absolute perfection. I was hard on myself, and worse on those around me, but he never complained.

  On this night we both fell asleep almost immediately. My last memory was hearing Spaldeer’s gentle snores while exhaustion took me.

  The next morning, I awoke at dawn in a good mood with the recollection of mastering that latest technique first and foremost in my thoughts. I was looking forward to demonstrating this after breakfast to Wohl, the high-apprentice who had supervised most of Spaldeer and my training for the past year.

  We joined the throngs of other apprentices who streamed loudly from the dining hall and headed toward their respective morning classes. Some would start off with classroom study in the library or administration building to cover topics such as basic law, history, and physiology, while others such as Spaldeer and myself began with physical training outside in one of the various courtyards that separated the apprentice dorm buildings. After lunch we would switch places.

  The apprentices were divided into three categories that determined status and class placement: low, mid, and high. Each took about three years to complete before promotion to the next level. After completing their second year as high-apprentice and passing the exams, one would then move on to low-journeyman, which involved patrolling Solace and guarding various buildings including our own guild and the gates leading through the high walls surrounding Solace. Some journeymen remained within the peacekeeper’s guild, while others moved into garrisons stationed within the city, depending on available space and need.

  There were a dozen low-apprentices in my class who studied under Wohl’s tutelage. All besides Spaldeer and myself were finishing their second or third year as low-apprentices while we finished our first.

  We approached our usual training courtyard two dorm buildings over from the dining hall and sat down in the dust to stretch with the others. Wohl paced back and forth along the line humming to himself as he watched us. He was generally in a cheerful mood, though his eyes were always narrowed, as though some brooding problem troubled him just beyond resolution. Even so, he was patient, kind, and an excellent teacher. There was much I had learned from him.

  The other eleven apprentices sat with one leg forward and the other tucked beneath them, leaning their heads as close to the extended knee as they could manage. As usual I was surprised to see that some could not place their foreheads firmly to kneecap, despite having been in the guild for two years or more. It had been hard for me at first, but I had worked at it every day until I
could reach the desired position.

  Wohl saw me stretching and hurried toward me with an odd expression. My mouth opened to express my excitement at having mastered that last technique, but he spoke up in a tight voice before I could get a word out. “Hofen, the High-Master has summoned you. Go to him at once, without delay.”

  Chapter Two—Babette

  Iset off for the administration building at a rapid trot, dismissing Wohl’s odd attitude. He hadn’t seemed annoyed at me, so I wasn’t too concerned, but clearly something troubled him.

  The quickest route to his office took me through another courtyard where a mid-apprentice class was in session. The apprentices were standing in little groups talking with one another, which was odd. Classes were regimented and strict, and break time was accompanied by some less strenuous activity such as stretching. As I circumnavigated the courtyard, I realized their instructor must have stepped away for some reason without at least assigning an activity. Wohl never permitted us leisure time during class. He said we were here to learn how to protect our lives, and he took that responsibility very seriously.

  An older apprentice named Herthel stepped in front of me and blocked my path, forcing me to stop. A few of his classmates filled in the space around us, so that I could only go backward. “Hey, lowbie, who said that you could walk by our class without permission?”

  I clasped hand to palm and bowed at the waist, maintaining eye contact. “High-Master Chendor is waiting for me.”

  “Oh, High-Master Chendor, is it?” Herthel laughed, glancing around to seek approval from his jeering classmates. They urged him on with hoots and snorts of laughter. “And what would someone of High-Master Chendor’s station want with a lowly dirt farmer’s son like you?”

  My lips tightened, but I maintained a neutral voice. “I will find out once I see him, so please step aside.” With that I tried to walk around him, but he pushed me back. There were more mid-apprentices behind me now, preventing me from retreating as well. I began to get angry. “Look, I will come back here afterward and finish this, but High-Master Chendor is expecting me so I must go now.”