The Thorian Sagas. 1. The Trader.
And change, it will.

“But first, my son. You took out a ‘Rogue’. You know what that means. You may make a request that will not be refused. What is it that you most wish?”

Stoker sighed heavily.

“It will not be granted, Father. It cannot be. I know the law concerning ‘tributes’.”

“Why not? Thorians made those laws, and Thorians can break them. Such a wish, if honestly asked and for a good enough reason, has never been refused before. Ask it, my son, though I can already see what it is that you want.

“Usually the Thorian council would have to decide upon that, as it hinges upon a treaty, but in this case, it can be granted, as it comes from your heart."

He waited for his son to say what was in his thoughts.

“The lives of eight tributes depended upon what you did here. The council would not hesitate to grant whatever you ask, and neither will I. So, ask.”

Stoker looked at Erianne, and then at his father.

“I would like this tribute to be freed from that obligation to the treaty.”

His father laughed.

“Is that all? You ask so little. Then she is freed from it, though she already was freed the exact moment she killed that bear. At that moment it was all taken out of our hands, so you may as well make another wish.”

Stoker frowned, feeling Erianne’s hands flinch upon his face as she continued to bathe him, sensing her gratitude to him that he was thinking only of her.

It had been that way almost from the first moment they had met.

Could it be that simple?

“You seem surprised, my son. You shouldn’t be. We’ve seen this, between the two of you, developing over the last few days, even from the moment you left Dorian.”

Of course they had! His thoughts had been out of control.

“I ask nothing else, Father.”

“As you wish.”

Everything was changing around them, even now. Everyone could sense it.

“The ramifications of what was done here today, will echo through this land for a long time. You may not see it yet, but you soon will. I can see some of it even now.

“The city of Fenn will be the first to feel it. They will not like that. Now they need to find three tributes to send out, and not just the one they’d expected to provide. They will plead that this is a violation of that treaty, though it isn’t, but it will not end there. I suspect that there is much more to come out of this moment.”

He considered, and then laid out more of what he could see.

“Erianne may choose to return to her city, which she now has the right to do. She is an Alpha Thorian, having killed a ‘Rogue’, and with all of the privileges that go with that title. It does not matter that she left it as a tribute.

“If she returns, those in Dorian will see this as some treachery on our part, and will plead that the treaty has been broken. They may even quote it to us…

‘No Thorian may enter the city except to pick up tributes.’

“Not that she will be bearing arms. Further, if she chooses her right to then sit on the Dorian Council and to ‘lead’, as her rank permits, then she will cause further uproar. They are jealous of the little power they have, those Dorians, and would not like to lose any of it.”

He sighed.

“A Thorian, living in their city? Ruling it?

The treaty will have been broken then. Who could have foreseen anything like this happening? And that, will be only the start of it.”

It would be the excuse for war.

He turned to Erianne and looked at her as he puzzled through the chain of events that had led here.

“Dorian sends out one tribute; you, instead of two, in an attempt to inconvenience us in one small detail, and sets all of these wheels in motion. Did they know what they were doing, I wonder?”

He dropped back from his speculation.

“But we have not finished yet. What further turmoil can we unwittingly unleash from this moment? I am sure there will be more to come.”

The thought did not seem to put him out so much.

“And now you, young woman, Erianne? You killed a ‘Rogue’. You did something no woman has ever done before, taking out an animal such as that. It would certainly have tried to kill you all. What wish can I grant you?”

She seemed lost. Not believing that such a privilege also extended to her.

He helped her.

“You may do as my son did. That is a right that goes with killing a ‘Rogue’. You may ask for anything. Your dearest wish. To return home, perhaps? Though you already have that freedom to choose.”

She seemed lost, but her eyes never wavered from Stoker.

He felt he should remind her again.

“You are no longer a tribute, but an Alpha Thorian. You, and what you now are, will be known to all who meet you. All doors will be open to you. There are privileges to go with that, including your freedom from being a tribute, though that would have ended in another couple of days anyway, though not quite in the way it did.”

She seemed confused, though she had seen all of this in Stoker’s mind.

“You may ask anything. You may sit on the Thorian Council with us. You may choose to live anywhere in this domain. Even to return home to Dorian, as I said, though as you also heard me say, that as an Alpha Thorian, you may not be welcomed there, though they can do nothing about it. You will be the first Thorian ever born in their city? Unthinkable! For them! I wonder how they will handle that?”

He spelled out what he could see, even repeating himself.

“The treaty would be broken by it, and that is something they have been trying to do for a very long time.”

He shook his head.

“Who could have believed that it could have been achieved by something as simple as sending out one tribute, instead of two? Had they sent two, then I doubt my son would have been so well distracted, as he was, and you would not have lost a day’s travel, as you did. Nor would you have encountered any of this.” He swept his hand around the busy room. “It is an interesting thought.”

He smiled. “It will mean, war, of course.” That thought again.

Erianne did not like to think of that. Could she have caused a war?

“But it would be more of an annoying insurrection than a war, if there can be such a thing. The Women will unite and rise up against us, as they do from time to time to blow off their frustrations with their easy lives. Then we appear; put down the revolt without harming anyone other than to bruise a few egos, impose a heavy-handed peace again, and write a new treaty, as we seem to do every few generations.”

He seemed amused by it.

“The ramifications following it could be awkward, but if you were in Dorian, you would decide how your city would be run before that happened, so you might be able to stave it off, as that is where it is beginning. You would need to renegotiate a new treaty with us, and knowing what you know now of us. That might be difficult for us. Yet interesting.”

He found that, amusing too.

Yes, the possibilities could be interesting. If it could be confined to just one city.

Erianne was still not sure what was being said, or what it meant.

He smiled at her.

“However, one thing we would insist upon in a new treaty, would be ‘forty’ tributes each year from each of the cities, and not, thirty. That would be the settlement we would seek.”

He threw that thought at her.

She smiled back at him and raised an even more rebellious thought.

“Why not more than forty tributes? Why not let those women see what we have seen… what is out here, in truth, and not what they have been told to believe? The cities might empty of their women if they could see what I see, and have seen, and what I now understand.”

She threw in more.

“Open up the cities to trade with each other, and to travel.”

Her strange thoughts took even him off guard.

“If my sister Dorians had seen what I have seen in the last few days; The gentle consideration, kindness, what it means to be under the protection of men such as this one, and these others”—she looked around, blushing at her strange thoughts, never having seen such men before— “you may find that you would be inundated with voluntary ‘tributes’. The cities might empty of their women overnight.”

He could almost see it.

“Your city councils would not like to give up their power so easily.”

“I have one question, Sir, if I may?”

He nodded and waited for her to ask it.

“Tributes have been going out from our cities for generations. How is it that none of them ever chose to return to the cities and tell us what awaited them? How they now live? We assumed and were told that it was because they… could not.”

She now knew that was not true.

He smiled at her. “In a short while, you will be able to ask them for yourself when you meet them. They are now wives, and mothers, and they are happy where they are. They are our wives, and the mothers of our children.

“The mother of my sons, and one daughter, also like you, is a woman who looks much like you, but she was once a tribute from Fenn. You may ask her that same question.”

He explained further.

“All tributes go out into the wastelands where we meet them, welcome them, unseen by anyone in the city, and they enter our society where they are treated as honored guests. They may choose a husband when, and how it suits them. We wait upon their pleasure.

“We are a society of men. Whereas you, in the cities, see ten females born for each male, and are societies of Women, we see it the other way around; more males are born for each female, so we value women highly. We lose many males before maturity to bears, and to the life we live. Life in the mountains is rigorous and demanding, but it lets us know that we are truly alive with every passing moment. Without the injection of new life into our ranks, which the tributes represent, we would be a dying society.”

Erianne was not the only one paying attention to everything he was saying.

“What you describe is much like in our cities, Sir, except for the hardships that you face. The cities may be dying too… but they are dying of inconsequence and irrelevance. There are many women, but few men; and none like any of the men I have seen over the last few days. If the women knew what awaited them out here, they would fight to leave the cities, and would not be so afraid of Thorians.”

She became emboldened.

“You say I am freed from that obligation that took me from my city?”

The older man nodded.

“Stoker freed you, even if killing that bear had not.”

“If I am free, as you say, then I think I will not choose to go back to my city, though I would like to see to my mother again. I choose to stay with this man, and see to his wounds, if I am allowed to do so, and I would like to be in his life and with him for as long as he will have me. I want nothing else.”

She hesitated, but not for long as she looked at Stoker, letting him see what was in her heart; knowing what was in his.

“I want this man. I ask for nothing else.”

There was a sudden silence throughout the room, before the activity picked up again.

“If that is your choice; to stay with him, then you can. But being free, and an Alpha Thorian, you already have that choice to do whatever you wish to do, even to be re-united with your mother. We will send for her and invite her. It will be her choice to leave or not to leave, so it will be outside of the treaty, and the councillors will not dare to stop her.”

He looked across at his son.

“What say you, Stoker? She wants you. Of all the things she could have asked for, she asks only for you. Did she learn so much about you so quickly?”

She had!

“I accept everything, Father.”

“Of course you do, you’d be a fool not to. Such a love comes but once to any man. But even that, is not the end of it.”

He turned back and addressed the other tributes.

“You helped in this fight against all of your better judgements. That took courage. You pushed your fears aside.

“As your reward, though the outcome may not be what one might hope; you, all of you are also freed from being tributes. As honorary Thorians, which you now are, the choice of your future is yours to make.”

He added another consideration.

“Fenn, will not like this. Ah well, that treaty needed to be rewritten.”

The Weldon and Sinden tributes had already decided, having seen and heard what had transpired, even understanding most of it.

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“Sir. We have already decided.”

She looked around them and saw them nodding to her.

“We choose to remain as tributes. We will go on to Fenn, and leave with their tributes to go out into the wastelands, whatever they are.”

They had also heard what would be waiting for them now. Men like these, even some of these men. Men who set the mind churning in a strange turmoil and had their hearts and pulses racing in anticipation. Feelings they had never known before.

Their futures would be nothing like what lay behind them in any of their cities. It was time to go forward and embrace this future, as Erianne had.

Stoker’s father laughed again.

“And war is once again averted and postponed, but it will come.”

And it was not far off. Those ships had already set sail, heading for Fenn.

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