"The Forgotten Hero"
The inspector arrived at the site today. A messenger brought Sergei Iventz the word yesterday. He buffed a mirror with his furred forearm, and then rehung it on the wall to check his appearance. His brown fur and tail were groomed well. Above his long snout, his butter yellow eyes were clear of fatigue. His hands ran over his best Acolyte's robe, reassuring himself it was clean. He hoped he looked good enough.
To be allowed to study the artifacts and knowledge of the Ancients, one must enter the priesthood. Only the Spirits held the key to understanding the forebears of the modern day, and they had a monopoly on the study of the past. Sergei had yearned for that study since he was a cub.
It was said the fully initiated learned to understand the Spirits. To everyone else, they were just the oldest and most powerful force in the world. At night the junior students whispered to each other about them. The Spirits were the parents of the Ancients, they said, and they struck their errant children down with the Harrowing for disobedience. He wasn't so sure. The Spirits didn't seem that vengeful to him.
He checked the place settings on his rustic table, and sniffed at the pot of warm rabbit stew to the side of the fireplace. His bread hadn't risen well, unfortunately. Luckily, he wasn't being judged on his skills as a cook, but as a scholar. As an advanced Acolyte, he was given the responsibility of overseeing this archeological dig near the Lupine/Homan border. It was near the boundary of what the Ancients called Europa and Eurasia.
Many Acolytes had worked this site before him, and many would work it after him. He'd completed his mandatory solo year here, uncovering several minor artifacts. He was nervous because this inspection would be the first time he was eligible for a nomination to the priesthood.
Sergei padded out to look for his visitor and nearly jumped out of his fur, because she was there! Meters from the door stood a gray furred Lupine fem. The priest had a shock of longer blue hair at her forehead, the legacy of some faddish artificial genes passed down from the Golden Age. She surveyed the site and the caretaker's shack with a humorless, almost grim expression.
She turned her ice blue eyes to Sergei, and they raked him as he stood there. He stepped over to offer his hand, welcoming her to the Ramstein site. Her grip was brief and impersonal, but he felt the strength of her hand. What a warrior she would have made.
"My name is Tassa Steneva, your inspector," she said. "I thought you knew I was coming today." Her low voice expressed volumes of annoyance. With another critical look at the carefully maintained site, she brushed past him to enter the shack. She stood in the doorway for a long moment, scanning this area as well. He saw the blue was on her tail-tip, as well. Entering, she sat at the table, pointedly waiting for him to serve her.
There was an aura of disappointment around her as he offered her a bowl of the stew and some bread. He didn't get much for himself. He wasn't hungry anymore.
What did he do that was so wrong?
The meal passed in uncomfortable silence. Sergei racked his memory. He'd heard of this fem. She was said to be a fair inspector, but also tough. When she gave her recommendation to an Acolyte, they seldom failed to pass their Candidacy for priesthood.
He'd gotten the toughest inspector, and he'd already offended her. He wouldn't give up, though. He tried to manage his wildly flaring emotions, and only spoke to her in respectful tones. She wiped her mouth on a cloth when she finished, and nodded to him. It was the first positive reaction she'd given since he'd discovered her outside.
"You have potential as a cook," she said, "but none as a baker."
A cook! That was not what he wanted to do with his life, and she knew it. Her nostrils flared at the scent of his outrage, and her cold eyes glinted dangerously. He stepped back from her after gathering the dishes, keeping his tail low while he cleaned them.
"Your Journals, Acolyte," she said. "We'll see if you document your work as well as you cook."
Sergei passed her the small stack of books he'd triple checked in anticipation of her arrival. She sniffed disdainfully at their battered appearance, and he inwardly winced at the thought of every ink-smudge and grease stain inside them.
He sat down at the other end of the table, and looked across the single room. His sleeping pallet and the table took up most of the minimal living area of the shack. The rest of the room was held tools and shelves of artifacts in various stages of restoration. That's where the inspector would look next.
Inspector Steneva had a small book of her own she referred to often. The only time her expression changed was when she apparently found something in error, and gave a small malicious grin. She made an entry of it in her book when she did, something that happened with alarming regularity.
She questioned him about several points from his journal, the last concerning his activities during a rare summer storm. "Why didn't you record your progress digging for several days after that storm was over, Acolyte?"
"May I refresh my memory?" he asked. She shoved the journal over to him. He scanned the pages and handed the book back to her. "I was taught not to dig when the soil was like mud," he said. "I waited for the dirt to dry out, and repaired stakes around the site. "I also worked on cleaning my finds," he gestured to the other side of the room.
"It's this lack of dig progress I referred to, Acolyte," she said, "not your indulgences in out-of-season activities. During the summer, you dig. The rainy season is when you do restorations."
She was completely unreasonable, but he wouldn't argue with her. "Yes, inspector," he said, with as much dignity as he could manage.
"Then why didn't you follow the rules?" she demanded. "This isn't a critical site, and we expect you'll make some mistakes. You could have dug anyway. Isn't it possible to find artifacts, even in wet soil?"
"Yes, ser," he said respectfully, "but not wise."
"You were given the procedures for a reason," she chided.
"That's true," he said. "But I believe that one must use their own judgment sometimes. I treat this site as if the most critical finds could be made here. It is impossible to do that if I have to dig in mud. A mud-saturated artifact like paper or cloth could be destroyed before I knew it was there. I felt discretion was the better course."
She made a 'humph' sound and got up to inspect his artifacts. She moved slowly from item to item, making notes. Looking here at a Homan jawbone laid beside some tiny picking tools where he was carefully removing the encrusted rock. And there, at a rusty metal plate soaking in a weak acid solution that he hoped might loosen the rusty scaling.
She stopped for along time at a painstakingly accurate three-dimensional model he'd made, alongside drawings of what he thought might be under all the intervening dirt. He heard her pen scratch and draw in her notebook. She seemed to be sketching some it. He wondered if that was a good sign.
Sergei lit the oil lamps and tended the fire as dusk settled around the shack. He watched her study the results of a year of his life. He knew this inspection was a test of character as much as of procedure. Every Acolyte was given the basics, and then sent alone to a site to make of them what he or she would. They either learned what could not be taught, or they didn't. Right now his chances didn't look too good.
He carefully kept his chin raised and his tail down in submission. It was easy to do with her, she was taller than he was, and out-massed him easily. Among Lupines, the mels had at most a slight size advantage over the fems of the race. Fems were just as welcome to be soldiers in the Zahr's Army, and often were more feared in battle.
Tassa would have made a wonderful officer with that build, he thought. Her pale coat of blended white and gray was striking, and the blue tuft at her forehead and tail-tip would make her stand out in a press. He tried not to notice her shapely form. Her nose was quite sensitive, and he didn't need that complication with this inspection.
Sergei snapped to in the present realizing he'd been vacantly staring at her. She'd turned back to him sometime during his reverie and now regarded him with a stern but quizzical expression. "What?" she said.
A tilt of his head and a low sweep of his tail conveyed his wordless apology for his rudeness.
"Well," she said. "You're certainly an odd mel."
He sighed. Just to make things worse, now she thought he was daft.
She sat down at the table across from him after blowing out the lamps in the work area. "Have you ever seen any maps of this place prior to its burial?" There was a hint of accusation in her voice.
Sergei looked blankly at her for a moment. "Of course not. It's not possible to make such a map without conjecture, considering the site is still mostly buried."
"This place was buried long before the Golden Age," she said. "The Ancients never bothered uncovering it. But there were records passed to the Spirits about the positioning of the buildings here."
"My diagrams," he said. "Was I close?"
"Suspiciously so, Acolyte," she said. "Are you sure that no one showed you what this place was like?"
"I'm sure," he said firmly. "My sketch of the possible original layout of the buildings came from the diorama of the mounds, my training and from guesswork. Your suspicion that I'd seen a map I take to be a testament of my intuition and accuracy." He risked leaning toward her, allowing his ears to come fully forward for emphasis. "That is my work alone." She flicked an ear back, and watched him with narrowed eyes. He plunged on with a pang of fear. "I think it's wrong to send us out without all the information available." Having spoken his mind, he sat back again.
"It's not for you to criticize the way of the Spirits," she snapped. "If we gave you all we had, how would we learn what you could find out? This is about what you know and can discover. Not about what we know."
She sighed then, and yawned hugely. Sergei realized it was hours since supper and she'd walked kilometers to get here. She looked over his pallet, and put more logs on the fire. "I trust you have an extra blanket to sleep on?" she said, archly assuming the sleeping arrangements.
"Yes inspector," he rumbled, and got out his best spare blanket from his trunk. He stripped off his robe and curled up on the far side of the shack. It was cold over here, away from the warmth of the fireplace. He was hungry too. Now, he missed the full serving of stew he'd denied himself earlier. He'd be harrowed before he'd complain to her, though. Controlling his urge to toss restlessly, he willed himself to sleep.
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Go to TFH part 2
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