by Lee LaCroix
Chapter Eleven
The next morning, Kayten awoke to find Novas and Garreth in the common room just sitting down to a breakfast of orange cheese, crusty bread, and the remainder of their deer jerky. A gentle breeze wafted through the room that day, and they allowed themselves a few minutes of lounging to prepare themselves for the day after they had finished their meal. The study became busy with activity as Garreth restrung the two bows, and Kayten and Novas spent some time cleaning and polishing their blades to a suitable shine. The trio left the Salty Dog before noon and headed north again to the leafy passage and the makeshift training yard.
Garreth escorted Novas and Kayten over to the ring where Berault was rallying the newer trainees of the blade before the ranger went towards the archery range to continue tutelage of some of the bow-wielding acolytes. Berault lined the novices in the ring into formation and turned to face them.
“While you’re all aware that I could beat you to death with this cane, for the interest of proper style and execution, one of your own will be leading the group today. I’ve given Eyrn permission to use as many of those signature sword slaps as necessary to keep you all in formation,” Berault boasted, chuckling as he twirled around his walking stick and then clenched it in his hands.
Eyrn entered from outside the sparring pit and presented himself to the students with a bow. Eyrn, a regular and veteran of the ring, needed no introduction and launched into the sword drills right away.
“Do as I do,” Eyrn commanded.
Novas was glad to see that he was not grouped with a band of seasoned experts, and he did not feel out of place with his coarse movements and uneven strikes. While some of the participants were youths like him, there were also older tradesmen and a woman who appeared to be a labourer of sorts. The formation was not perfect; there were many stumbles and instances of improper footing, but Berault paced around the group and tried to offer personal suggestions and practical criticism.
“Straighten your back! Keep your head up and your eyes forward!” Berault barked as he pointed his cane in the air.
In less than an hour, the basic sword drill of five techniques in combination was executed with a relative fluency. Novas tried to understand this practice, which put the sword between its wielder and its adversary and tried to cover a range of spaces from head-to-toe and side-to-side. He imagined an adversary in front of him and practiced a series of strikes against it. It seemed obvious to him that the technique was an offensive maneuver, for the footwork demanded the wielder move forward with the swings.
The students were continuing to practice in formation while Eyrn stopped and peered into the distance behind. His gaze shifted in and out of focus, and his face took a momentary slackness of surprise. Berault looked over at him and then the entrance of the training grounds where Eyrn nodded towards. A band of men had arrived and were pooling near the opening, and a clatter emerged that sounded like more were stomping down the passageway by the second. The guests wore not the mix-match clothes of the commoner but the decidedly dark of a familiar foe. The few in their crowd wearing the ash black bandanas over their faces was a sign enough. As the crowd of students turned around, a tinny bell rattled from the direction of the shed. A man dressed in black and white finery appeared at the front of the mob and stood with disinterested look on his face.
“That’s Lord Vyse!” one of the trainees gasped from the crowd.
“That’s the leader of the Blackwoods,” growled another.
He was much more youthful than Novas or Kayten could have presumed. There was no way he could be middle-aged. Yet, he was no child. His hair was black, shoulder length, cropped along the sides, and pulled back in a short tail, leaving some wisps to dangle around his face. He had pronounced cheeks and a firm jaw line but a soft chin. He was wearing a white dress shirt and a black neck ornament. He wore a black pant with shiny leather shoes, and his dark overcoat had a swirled design of dusted sunsteel. He faced the mass of them and pulled at the edges of his gloves.
“We’ve come to reclaim that property that was stolen from the kingdom. All these armours and weapons once served to protect her Majesty, and they shall do so once again. Let us return them to their righteous calling, or we will forced take them from you,” Lord Vyse orated, his speech loud and bold, as he addressed the courtyard.
A few wide, toothy grins and low snickers emerged from the unruly crowd behind the man.
“This equipment was proudly worn by members of the Crown Aegis and was passed down to this place by their former owners. All of these arms were worn under tan tabards with pride and forged by the same line that survives inside this shop. You have no claim to them,” Berault shouted as he hobbled to the front of the students to respond in turn.
Any noise from the cloud of Blackwoods stopped, and silence overtook the courtyard. Novas’ senses were flared with anticipation; he felt the tenseness and animosity that was gathering there. He looked into the crowd and was met with cold, dead eyes and fiery, red ones. Novas tried not to flinch when he noticed some eyes were fixed upon him. He could feel the tension in the mob. To him, it resembled the stealthy hunter who had closed in on its prey and lay in wait before the final leap. He crept over to Kayten and put a hand to her shoulder.
“I don’t think we should be here, Kayten,” Novas whispered to her.
“Where else should we be?” Kayten questioned as she stared down the Blackwoods.
The red flowed through her skin, and the grip of her sword became comfortable in her hand. She began to breathe deep as she searched the crowd and everyone around her.
“We know your true purpose, old man. You cannot keep your secrets from everyone. This rebellion ends today,” Vyse stated as he drew his lengthy and ornate rapier.
The crowd behind him withdrew their weapons: an assortment of lengths in swords, spiked and blunted clubs, warhammers, axes not designed for the chopping of wood, and a diverse mix of daggers.
“You die first,” the Blackwoods leader commanded as he pointed his sword towards Berault, and a vicious look narrowed his eyes and hardened his face.
Before anyone could act, a weighty knife flew past Vyse’s head and sunk deep into Berault below his left shoulder, knocking him off his feet and onto his back. Berault landed with a painful wince, pulled the dagger from himself, and then tossed it aside. Eyrn and the students rushed to move forward but halted as they were met by the leader’s commanding palm.
“Stop! Or we finish him. Just let us take the gear and go,” Vyse declared as the knife thrower moved out of the crowd to the front of their pack with another blade twirling in his hand.
“Never,” Garreth whispered as he unloosed an arrow from his bow, which flew over the length of the courtyard and sunk through the heart of Berault’s attacker.
Together with Garreth, a group of five bowmen released a volley of arrows onto the massing crowd, and those victims fell backwards onto the ground and onto their comrades.
“Kill them all,” the Blackwoods leader ordered with a wave of his hand before he turned and disappeared into the charging crowd, his dark overcoat billowing behind him.
Guttural cries rang out as the Blackwoods ran forward against the rain of arrows, and Eyrn, Novas, and Kayten ran forth to take Berault off the field before the Blackwoods would reach him. They dragged Berault with all their strength and desperation despite his agony and bleeding. With the sound of daggers falling around them, they all seemed seconds away from the wave of black death. They had almost reached a wall near the ring when the yells became terribly loud. Instead, the yells of the mob were overpowered by the powerful roar of Mont as he charged into the Blackwoods. When three Blackwoods fell dead, cleaved by his first swing, the rest of the recruits charged into the fray.
“Fall back to the armory! Defend the entrance!” Berault barked as Eyrn shouldered his weight and moved him into the building.
The rebels formed a half circle with their backs to the shed and let the opposing force flow into them, t
rying their best not to become flanked or surrounded. Berault’s men and women were outnumbered, and if not for Garreth’s pre-emptive strategy, they surely would have been overwhelmed. It seemed the numbers of the Blackwoods were never ending as they continued to flow through the courtyard’s entrance and continued to be thinned out by Garreth’s archers. As the Blackwoods arrived on the bleeding edge of the battle, they met the line of men and women itching to test their strength of their blades and resolve.
Kayten was no exception, for she fought with personal affront to the attack on Berault and yelled with primal fury. Despite her rage, she was fought with awareness and did not let herself be lulled away from the line of her allies and used the comrades at her back and side for support. However, she did not know how lucky she was. While some attackers fell to her furious blows, her footwork was untrained and her skill undeveloped; the Blackwoods could have scored a mortal blow on her if not for Novas’ precise bow fire from the shed behind. The bowmen were fortunate they fought on top of an armory. Garreth was prepared for siege the second he had seen the ill-garbed move through the alleyway and tossed as many bundles of arrows as he could find onto the covered slope of the armory roof.
The two hunters were in their element, and their quivers were as full as they could be. With their hearts pounding, and their breathing slowed, they fired arrow after arrow into the surging waves of moving targets just like their hunt of game had trained them. The chaotic movement of the participants on the battlefield kicked up the dirt from the ring, churning up thick clouds of dust that settled over the battle.
“Fall back inside!” Garreth ordered as the dense fog took the visibility from the archers.
He wanted their advantage to remain effective even if it meant firing arrows into shades and shadows. Moments later, the rebels were breast to breast holding off their assailants as they raced in from the cloud. There was a great deal of unarmed melee, for there was little room to swing weapons around, and the few with shortswords fared best. Berault commanded them to overturn the desk and the pikes be mounted to it, and the few Blackwoods that remained charged to their dooms, impaling themselves before being kicked to the ground.
The Blackwoods had stopped their advance long before the dust had settled, but the rebels still held their position with a tense grip on their weapons. The rapid patter of footsteps and the chant of battle cries were replaced by a chorus of agonizing groans and the dragging of bodies. When visibility returned, the courtyard was stained dark and red like a slaughter of crows. As the survivors left the barricade inside of the armory, they were dismayed that there were so few of them remained in comparison to their morning routine. They had hoped some had fled, or that some were still hiding, but they knew that could not be true.
As the remaining rebels oversaw the carnage of the battle, a stream of townsfolk began to appear at the alley which then stopped at the horror of the site. Many gasped and held their hands to their mouths. Some pointed while others turned to flee. A few men even kicked the corpses of the Blackwoods. One woman in particular fell to her knees, screamed aloud, and then was taken away by another. Before long, the courtyard was filled with the common folk of the Lower Quarter who were driven down the alley by the fleeing Blackwoods and the clattering commotion. Garreth left his post on the roof and headed into the armory where he was relieved to find Kayten inside with Berault, who was receiving first aid for his injury. The wound was closed and salved, but Berault still seemed lucid and was pale as a dead man.
“Go find the others!” Berault ordered with a set of hacking coughs.
Eyrn walked out with bandages over his right eye, but not enough to hide the scar that ran down his face parallel to his nose. Novas walked alongside his father as they searched through the bodies. Not far from the armory, valiant Mont was slouched against the wall where they had originally placed Berault. Although he was cut asunder, his face was set and solid. With the rage that consumed him gone, Novas hoped that he was at peace.
Novas saw that battle favoured no one and spared very few. As Novas thought that all that blood had been spilt over forged metal and over ownership, his hate grew over such a petty idea. Garreth grieved to see that too many trainees were not ready for this battle. He mused to think that many more would be standing if they fought on the battlefield of their choosing, but he knew that was a luxury often unfulfilled. He was heavy with sorrow because they all had died over a feud for weapons and armour and over a cause not their own. They had been murdered, he thought, and they would be avenged.
The remaining rebels stripped the fallen Blackwoods of their possessions. The small wealth that few of them held was collected, and the equipment in decent condition was taken to the armory. The armory gained many weapons but lost too many good men and women. The process of collecting the dead was grueling and time-consuming work. When the Queen’s Aegis did not arrive to address the aftermath, it was left to the rebels to clean their courtyard. Garreth did not forbid his son to help in this task this time, and all their hands were dirtied before the end.
It took three large carriages to hold all the dead Blackwoods, who were carried down the alley, onto the street, and then thrown upon the wooden beds without regard. The process had blocked the street, the crowd of denizens still flocked to survey and converse about the scene, and there were also raised voices in outrage alongside those of horror and lament. People spat and threw buckets of offal upon the carriages of Blackwoods as they were hauled towards the harbour. The few victims with relatives claimed the bodies of their loved ones and were taken away. The rest of their fallen allies were wrapped in cloth by diligent hands, handled carefully by the strength of their respectful neighbours, and were escorted by Eyrn to a graveyard outside the city where a crowd of people partook in the burial ceremonies traditional to the region.
With deep mourning and genuine curiosity, Novas followed the procession out of town. The true depth of sadness did not reach him until he had walked on the main street where loud weeping and tearful shrieking was prominent. A lifeless arm hung from the side of one of the wagons where the body had come loose from its cloth wrapping by the trembling of the cart on the cobbled road. A woman dashed out of the sidestreet crowd, ran up beside the arm, and held it by the wrist in front of her vision. She lifted her other hand to her mouth to contain a gaping sadness and glared at the ring of her husband on the finger of the corpse. She bound her hand in his, cold and rigid, and then fell to her knees, letting the ring fall into her hand as the wagon pulled them apart. Before Novas had passed her, she was raised to her feet and escorted off the street with a sulky choking following in her wake.
The procession continued out of town, made its way down the Great South Road a ways, turned east onto the grassy plains, and then stopped at the edge of a meadow that lay in front of the first of the bordering forests. Where they decided to start the burial, there was a tree which was branchless for some height, about the height of a man and then some, and shot out in all direction with an abundance of leafy offshoots, forming a near half circle of foliage. Novas helped himself to a shovel and assisted the volunteers in creating the rows of graves necessary. In the midday sun, it was tiring work. There were no complaints though, and no one said a word; the burial was monotonous and impersonal. The sun was setting when the final grave was packed down, and the red sun threw its orange rays onto the field, the spectators, the tree, and the grave markers.
“I am but a swordsman. I do not wish to speak for all these dead. Are there any among us who would bless the fallen with parting words and bring closure to their lives ended so abruptly?” Eyrn intoned as he stood front and center of the graves, facing the crowd.
There was a dull murmur amongst the crowd. It seemed each person, man and woman, young and old, looked to each other for a volunteer, but none arose. Eyrn waited for a speaker to step forward. When none did, he summoned his courage and drew a quick breath.
“You have been taken from us today, all those who now lay in the ear
th. Not because you chose to stand, but because someone did not want you to. You rose up today to end the injustice that burdens our people and have paid the ultimate sacrifice to see this change begin. I know even though you are dead and cold, there is a fire inside all of us that you have lit, one that inspires us to action, not only for the loss of you, but to prevent the losses of tomorrow. This fire burned inside you the moment you stood and said that the Blackwoods have gone too far, and that this was the final stroke. With your death, you have passed this fire to us, and we will not see it extinguished until the tyranny of the Blackwoods is dead and gone. For as long as we sorrow and we anger, you will never be forgotten. When we have rid our land of Malquia of such evil, your memories may rest in peace,” Eyrn spoke.
Novas was humbled by the depth of his comrade’s words, for not even his own feelings drew past simple feelings of loss and hate. There was a collection of positive affirmation from those who had gathered, and no more was said. In groups of one’s, two’s, and three’s, the crowd began to trickle off and head back to town. Eyrn was offered a lift back to town in exchange for his words, and he extended the invitation to Novas as well. They both spoke no words to each other, but shared a glance; nothing more needed to be said.
Novas found Garreth in the harbour, personally overseeing the dirty work, where barges splashed with oils were set out to water filled with the slain Blackwoods. Novas held the torch that lit a clothed and doused arrow, and Garreth fired the flaming bolt. It soared into the sky like a second sun and fell like a shooting star, lighting the Blackwoods and the boat aflame. The two waited there with a crowd of supporters and sailors till the barge cracked, fell apart, and then sunk into the sea.
