"Oh, Master Chá." The wife of the Zovárd chief blinked in surprise at the man who appeared out of nowhere.
"Good afternoon. I have a word with your husband." The master declared, and the lady swallowed hard, but bowed anyway and led the guest to the house where her husband was.
"Master Chá has come to visit, dear." Said the woman with an unflappable face when she opened the door to the room where Zovárd Urias was reading a letter.
"Ah, thank you, dear Lelle. Bring him in." Master Chá did not need to be led, when he heard the voice of the tribal chief, he immediately entered the room and, without bothering about etiquette, closed the door in the face of the tribal chief's wife. "How can I help you, master?" Urias stood up and bowed to the chán man, which caused Mo Ching's lips to twitch, but he did not make any other movements.
"It's about Suk." The man stated, thanks to which the Zovárd man looked up at him in surprise.
"What about him?" He took a big swallow before Mo Ching sighed.
"You were one of the most normal of the hegins of the previous generation. Don't try to tell me that you didn't find out that Suk was connected to the Athamanas and that's not why you grounded him." The old man put his hands on his hips.
"Master can see right through me even now." Urias smiled and lowered his head. "The chieftains want to take action against the Athamana, I don't want him to get in trouble. If that means getting him to kill me, I will do it." He shrugged, but in the next moment his former master slapped him.
"He's not a child anymore and he can take care of himself, you fool. His team is on its way. I got an urgent letter from them. So I thought I'd save them the trouble of coming here. I'll take the boy, Urias." Mo Ching expressed a contradiction in an intolerant voice, then turned around and left the chieftain alone, using his own tracking system to find Suk's room.
"Master Mo? What are you doing here?" Suk blinked when the chán man opened the door, but the older man just grabbed his ear.
"I'll take you to the others. Your punishment is over. Rahul was kidnapped by the southerners. You have no time to waste. I don't have time for you." The man growled, then he took out a scroll and dragged Suk by the ear into the passage that appeared on the wall.
"Master, master, please, please let me go!" Suk whined with narrowed eyes.
"I brought him. From here it's up to you." Master Mo released Suk.
"Thank you." Razvan said seriously, but the chán man just waved and turned around to return home, muttering abandoned attempts and grumpy curses under his breath. "Benkó, make a tower to Citar and Wandi." The team leader gave the order.
"Immediately!" Benkó straightened, then knelt down and started building the tower. "Got it." He squealed after a few moments, and when everyone had surrounded him, he pulled out one of the outermost bricks of the bottom row and moved it to the top. In the blink of an eye, the team was transported from the swamps of the Zovárds to the small clearing where Rahul had been kidnapped that morning.
"Boss!" Citar jumped to his feet when the team appeared.
"Bo..." Wandi didn't have a chance to say anything more. One moment he was still standing next to Citar, and the next his back was against a tree, a hand was on his throat and the leader of the Athamanas looked with burning eyes at the danovus, who slowly turning blue head under his hand.
"Didn't I entrust them to you? How did they take him?" Razvan didn't raise his voice, but the low whisper was enough to make the rest of the team nervous.
"Boss, maybe..." Teveli began.
"Quiet!" They could almost feel the tension in the air when Razvan called out. "I'm not talking to you!" He slowly looked over the team from the corner of his eye. "I asked something!" He turned back to Wandi, who, despite being strangled, looked at the leader of the team with a motionless face. "You said you don't care about the rules. How did such a danovus not notice the ötandis?" The team leader hissed.
"They probably used their secret technique, I didn't hear anything. I accept responsibility for my omission." Said the danovus seriously, when he was able to breathe.
"But..." Citar stepped closer to the pair, but this only made Wandi look at him worriedly.
"Do not say anything." The danovus squeezed out the words between his teeth, and Razvan looked suspiciously first at his prisoner, then at the Bolacsuk boy, before slowly lowering his hand and laughing.
"He was on guard, huh? That's why you didn't notice!" The team leader bit his lip, then took a deep breath that seemed to shake a little. "Achilleus, I want a road plan. Rahul asked what Öbcserdin is. The ötandis will probably take him there. We are at a disadvantage, they are probably on horses and carts. We don't have a connection with the ötandis, so we can't use the seven-mile tower." He squeezed his eyes, then clenched his fists and shook his head. "Excuse me, I have to let off steam, I can't think clearly." He said as he turned on his heels and left the clearing.
"You better not go after him." Wandi took Citar's arm, when the Bolacsuk boy started after the leader of their team.
"But we can't leave him alone." The boy said nervously, and Wandi smiled faintly and patted Citar on the shoulder before walking past him.
"I'll go after him. Get something to eat until then. We will need the energy." The danovus looked over the team before going after Razvan.
The forest was not at all scary for a hegin. At the moment, however, it was quite a cause for fear that a very nervous Razvan was walking in its paths. At least that's what Wandi thought when he started after the leader, but to his greatest surprise, he barely got half an arrow's shot from the camp when he heard the voices.
"Damn it! That the..." Then words left the boy's mouth that no one had used for a thousand years or so, the words of the old language, back from the time of Athira. Wandi heard the crackling of bark, then the sound of leafs crackling, and then the sound of crying reached his ears.
"Everything will be fine. Rahul is a resourceful boy, there is no need to fear for him." Wandi said in a low voice, as he sat down on the ground next to the scarred Razvan. The leader of the Athamanas wiped away his tears with a grumpy face, tried to calm his breathing and straighten his tangled locks. Neither of them said anything for long minutes. The two boys sat silently next to each other and stared into nowhere between the trees.
"I'm sorry for what I did in the clearing. It was unfair, just..." Razvan finally sighed, but he didn't finish when Wandi started shaking his head.
"You don't have to explain. If I were you and Citar was taken away, I…" He chuckled here before shaking his head again. "I wouldn't have let myself live if I were you." He finally said calmly, before standing up and holding out his hand to the leader. "Come, Rahul is waiting for us to save him. We need to come up with a plan, and for that we need our leader." Razvan nodded with a serious look and accepted the hand extended to him.
"Let's go." He nodded before smiling.
"What came to your mind?" Came the quiet question, before Razvan's eyes flashed with some unknown light.
"Just a little saying that we used to say with Svihák when we went on some mission." The boy noted.
"What kind of saying?" Wandi asked, but he was already smiling.
"Let's go and bring the wrath of the Godwhip into the world." Razvan headed back to the camp so that they could set off to rescue Rahul as soon as possible.