Eohan wondered if Roark was truthful until Elpis pulled away from Theklas with an eye roll. Sie grabbed a stack of cards from the cupboard and then pointed at Eohan and Roark and the table. Sie flapped hir hands like an open mouth and said, “Progenitors.”
That needed no translation.
*
Chapter 8
Persidal Valley in the Realm of Larcia
At the first light of dawn, Eohan felt Roark’s warmth move away from him in Theklas’s comfortable bed. Not wanting to feel Alana’s wrath again, he quickly rose and nearly stepped on the telchine family who slept on mats on the floor.
Before dressing, he glanced in a mirror at his ribs and throat. Alana had not left marks.
“It isn’t even sore.”
“I told you she always measures her blows. She wants to teach you to fight, not hurt you,” Roark said from behind him.
Eohan dressed first in linens, a layer of woolen and then an outer layer of rich green velvet edged in black as a Guild Honor Guard. He looked like a respectable gentleman, but somehow Roark wore it better. He wondered what Nalla would think of him in this costume.
“She wouldn’t think of it at all,” Roark said. “She’s a sailor; her main concern is if it’s warm. You could report that it is. Especially with the gloves and cap.”
“It’s sarding annoying when you do that.”
Roark eyed Eohan’s reflection in the mirror. “At least, I’m not pining over someone I spoke to for ten minutes.”
“Boys, you need not wake our hosts,” Alana whispered in warning as she applied lanolin to her face. “They were kind enough to leave us cheese and oats. Ensure you break your fast.”
“Sorry, Aunt Alana,” Roark said sweetly.
She painted her lips and eyelids. “Use lanolin or wind will burn your cheeks and lips, boys.”
Though Alana included Roark in the order, Eohan knew she directed him. Roark wouldn’t need to be told. He glanced at Alana’s face again. Neither smiling with exultation or frowning with anger, she seemed almost passive. He wondered what that meant.
Once they left the chandler’s home, Alana took Eohan by the elbow and put him on her left, Roark drew close to her right side as they walked. “The first battle will come today, dear ones. We cannot stop it any more than we could stop a wave in the ocean.”
“So fretting comes to naught,” Roark recited. “Yet we always do.”
*
The fragrance of cedar, hay and fluffy, freshly-washed feathers enveloped Eohan. Queasiness crept from his chest into icy aches in his joints. “I only have to hold on to Celena’s bridle. She’ll do the rest.” He tightened his grip as the land pulled away from his feet and the strap on his cap pressed against his chin, the wind threatening to rip it away. He closed his eyes as they smashed through a cloud. He opened them as he felt the gryphon level.
As the young mare was taught to do, Celena followed the matron of the family who bore Alana. Examining the sharp beak and claws, muscular wings that pushed wind into his face, he thought, If I see Cloudy again, I’ll never fear her. Beside him, Roark rode Celena’s sister, Calendra. His expression was too relaxed to be astride a beast who could bite him in half.
Flying ahead of the company on Celena’s father, the Viscount Melittas held the telchine’s banner aloft. Sie shouted words of freedom and ancient homeland until hir company clamored to their feet, creating a din of sound and motion. Looking at the telchine marching below, he knew some would die, and their leader did not care. Queasiness burned into sadness.
The telchine’s clay-colored flesh was protected only by woven blue and green cloth armor, but they moved with the beat of the drummer behind them. They sang to their land of Si Na: The Giver of Life. They begged Hir to remember them even if they should fall in the foreign Realms, their woven green and blue standard waving in the wind.
Eohan felt a tremble deep in his belly as they crossed the Expanse to the Realm of the dwarves. For a moment, the two Realms overlapped. A flash of light blinded him, and a loud pop rang out. The valley was full of yellow daisies hemmed in by primordial forests growing up the side of ancient granite mountains.
The sky was moist and cold, but wind dried out Eohan’s eyes. He licked his parched lips and tried to wipe his freezing cheeks on his tunic sleeve.
Black smoke filled the air. Below, the telchine burned a farmhouse. The thatched roof ablaze, a dwarven female ran with two small children in tow, while a few adult farmers tried to protect the farmland. As commanded, the telchine consumed everything in their path with flames. The farmers burned to death, their screams terminated as they crumbled into gravel.
From the east, a small contingent of dwarf soldiers rode towards the burning farms. The telchine army raced towards them, and a hurricane of chaotic violence morphed the field of daisies into a plain of fallen granite and clay. Muscles aching and unable to catch a full breath, Eohan could barely recall how he came to be with this strange pair of Fairsinge Nobility, in this strange Realm, on the back of a gryphon.
Wondering if he could help, Eohan clenched the reins tighter. He almost turned towards the field below.
“Roark!” Alana screamed from above him.
In less than a heartbeat, Roark was beside him holding Celena’s reins still and straight. He spoke to the gryphon, “Forgive me, great lady, I feared your rider might lead you astray.”
“I follow my mother. Not the War Ender astride her, Nestling.”
“Thank you, lady, that’s good to know.” Roark inclined his head. “If you distract my aunt again, I’ll kill you,” He hissed at Eohan. “We are here to stop this war.”
“Why doesn’t she stop it!”
“This is a battle, not the war,” Celena said, “My mother said it won’t last longer than an hour at most.”
“But how many will fall?”
“Hopefully enough to make our client listen to reason,” he said sadly. “Do as you’re bid. You don’t want to see my aunt furious. Or the gryphon’s mother.”
Though he was inwardly afraid, Eohan muttered, “She’s just an old woman.”
“She’s an old woman who could easily trounce us both with one hand tied behind her back if she wanted. Her experience bests your strength.”
“And I will crush your disobedient bones in my beak if you order me out of formation again,” Celena said. “I’ve never tasted Fairsinge. I doubt my mother would be too disappointed if I ate you.”
“If you eat him, I want a bite,” Calendra added.
Roark laughed, but Eohan wasn’t sure the gryphons were joking.
*
Though he spoke cross words, Roark understood Eohan’s sentiments. By their reputation, the chivalrous gryphons also experienced agony at the chaos below. He did not see the battle. Instead, he watched dwarven mothers running with babes in arms and children in tow while a few farmers tried to protect their farmland and cattle. Not only did the farmers fall, but so did at least one woman and her child. Their screams echoed in Roark’s heart as the air around them burned. The telchine fires ate everything in their path. Flying above the battle didn’t make Roark clean.
As Calendra swooped lower, he saw a face stare upwards before crumbling into granite. An unknown young dwarf reached towards his enemy in the moments of death. As dwarf blood ought to do, it clotted into sparkling crystals. The shards sprayed nearby telchine and dwarves injuring them. He grumbled under his breath, “Why won’t Auntie just let me kill hir, then this could be over and done.”
He pushed one self-loathing thought deep in the depths of his heart. If the dwarves contacted us first, I would be on the other side killing the innocent telchine and burning their farms.
Alana’s plans ended the fighting before the dwarves could bring reinforcements, but battles often bore a filthy chaos that couldn’t be contained. Assassinations were so much cleaner. He wished he could tell Alana that. Maybe she would die of old age before he had to tell her that he didn’t want to be a Guild War Ender. He had
no stomach for the loss of innocents. He didn’t want to lose her or disappoint her, but he would do both eventually. Then she would treat him like she treated everyone else.
*
With the Larcian dwarves slow to retaliate, the telchine easily won the first day. The few surviving dwarven soldiers limped west back to their fort as the telchine made camp in the scorched valley.
After the battle, as Alana instructed, Melittas flew above the troops, flying the banner of their homeland until the company was on their feet, cheering.
Roark and Eohan cared for the gryphons and returned to the command tent with only the most basic genialities to Alana due to her by rank. She found them later, lying together fully dressed on a pile of bedding.
She brushed her fingertips across her nephew’s brow. His temperature felt normal. She checked Eohan’s pulse and temperature. He too seemed healthy.
She sat on her cot. Perhaps she pushed Eohan too hard; Roark was doing his best with an untrained companion. There was little to be done about it; tomorrow would be worse.
A raucous roar sounded outside the tent. Cheerful drunkenness soared through the ranks like a disease. A few telchine made themselves unfit, staggering around, vomiting in corners, pissing on tent flaps.
Though she didn’t believe in bodily punishment as a rule and it pained her to do it, Alana didn’t have time to think of another option. She ordered Melittas, “Have them flogged.”
“Telchine don’t make violence upon our comrades,” the Viscount replied.
“If you wish us to win this war for you, do as I command,” Alana stared at Melittas until sie turned hir head away. So the telchine didn’t flog their own but would sell them into slavery if they were useless or criminal. They would march onto Larcian soil and steal from the dwarves.
“Do what you will, but I will not,” Melittas whispered at hir feet.
She snatched a nearby drunken telchine soldier, clapped hir in iron chains, and led hir throughout the camp with the tip of her blade in hir back.
Humiliation sobered the ranks. A few spoke of desertion, but most feared the Fairsinge who invaded their ranks and rode the mount of royalty. The woman was feared most of all. Good.
A gull flew towards her, landed in front of her tent and waddled inside.
She looked at the scroll upon his foot.
It held one word in Nyauail’s hand: Found.
Smiling, she tossed it into the camp stove where Roark stirred stew. His bright smile was back, but circles had developed under his blue eyes.
He spoke in the ancient long-dead language of elfkin before their split into the Fairsinge and the Daosith Realms. “Eohan changes his mind as a fly beats his wings. It’s exhausting.” His hands trembled as he carefully ladled the stew into a bowl and handed it to her. “I don’t see how you read so many minds at once.”
“Did his emotions overwhelm you?” Alana took a bite of stew, savoring its warmth more than its flavor.
“I could handle it during the battle, but afterward, I was exhausted. I apologize for that. I should have helped you out there, but I ached for sleep, and Eohan ...”
“As long as you can serve the plan, eat and sleep as your needs dictate,” she said ignoring the instinct to embrace her nephew and offer him encouragement. Even a boy as caring as Roark would not like to be embarrassed in front of a peer by an aunt in her dotage. “However, I’d like both you boys to spar with covered daggers for one hour this afternoon. Then I’ll set a dummy bail for Eohan to practice against.”
Roark glanced at his feet as he tried to hide his distaste for Eohan touching the saber bequeathed to him by his mother. He failed. “What weapon?”
Alana removed a steel claymore of dwarven make from under her cot. “I think this suits him. I found it yesterday.”
Too heavy in the hand for Roark, the sword looked to be that of a common foot soldier, set with a wheel pommel and an unadorned split guard. Still, the blade was sound, the pommel sturdy.
“Tonight, you and I will practice a few mental skills to help you focus. Both of you will turn in early. Fear makes Eohan stupid, exhaustion more so.”
Roark nodded.
“If he lives through this, we must find his brother,” Alana said.
“Why? He’s just one boy.”
“Either Eohan will become a War Ender and make a powerful ally. Or I will claim he died in training, and buy him a sausage shop. By his gratitude, he will be an unknown safehouse. Either way, useful to you.”
Roark wiped his hands on his breeches. “Why do you say such things?”
“I won’t be around forever.”
He looked her in the eye. “I don’t want to be a War Ender.” Are you vexed with me? he asked in his mind.
“You won’t have the protection of the highest rank, and assassins don’t always have close friends. Make allies now, dearling.”
“When Seweryn arrives, I must be agreeable to him,” Roark said. “Even though he doesn’t always bath regularly.”
“Good boy.”
“Did you really sleep with him?”
“Do you really want me to answer that?”
“No.”
“Good, because my affairs are not your concern.”
“Corwin’s jealousy grows worse, Aunt.”
“Our expertise protects us,” she lied and brushed the hair from his brow. She knew why Corwin hated her, but there was nothing to be done about it. Their daughter was dead. “Try not to worry. Just follow the plan.”
Yes, tomorrow would be worse. Alana thought, but the day after the worst of all.
*
Chapter 9
Persidal Valley in the Realm of Larcia
Morning mist covered the valley. It was almost peaceful except for the murmur of hidden fear in the hearts of the marching telchine underneath her. Most of them did not want the valley. Even the ones who would benefit financially didn’t want to fight. Good. She could use this to her advantage. The biggest disadvantage was a telchine Viscount who wanted to prove hirself as a great leader, worthy of song and story. Eohan’s fear alarmed her. She must take care he did not undermine the mission.
She circled back and signaled Roark and Eohan to come near. Ortzi called out, and the other gryphons flew to her.
“Roark, acquire a drum.”
Her nephew returned quickly from the errand.
“Stay with the Viscount,” she ordered. “Perfect weather for duplicity.”
Alana tapped a direction with her foot to Ortzi and flew towards Fort Ebnora.
Eohan asked, “What does that mean?”
She was too far away to answer. Maybe Roark did. She visualized a battalion of the telchine marching. She pulled that image from her mind. The wind hummed around her. “Shadow Army March. Shadow Army March. Shadow Army March.” She pushed the image onto the ground. She played the marching beat upon the drum. Ortzi flew lower.
The mists coalesced. Dark forms rose out of the ground and paraded towards Fort Ebnora. With each drumbeat, the shadows grew more dense and detailed until the illusion matched the image in her mind.
“I can’t believe my own eyes,” the gryphon called out in Telchinish. “Can all elfkin do such wonders?”
“Any elfkin of the Guild, my friend,” Alana lied, then added truthfully, “We protect those we serve. Let the arrows land upon the ground, not our companions.”
A volley of arrows filled the sky and landed upon the grassy valley, forming a line. The illusions of telchine soldiers continued their march towards the fort.
Another volley of dwarven arrows fell, and a third. Arrows continued to rain to the ground, but the deception of telchine soldiers did not stop.
*
From the walls, Kajsa gazed through the mist toward the marching telchine. Cries of the not-yet-battle tested young were heard throughout the fort as their arrows did nothing against the invaders. She worked with Alana enough to recognize an illusion when she saw one, even still her breath caught in her throat. Their c
lay-colored flesh and long strands of green hair almost reminded her of grass on the breeze. Though dwarves hearts were strong as the granite from which they came, darkness grew in their spirits. Even her own.
“There are scores of them,” Blazedigger whispered. “And beyond another regiment.”
“Yes. Elf magic might protect from arrows, but the invaders will fall from steel to the heart.” Kajsa tapped her broadsword and whistled. Her warhorse trotted to her side.
She jumped off the battlement and clambered upon her horse. “Hardy up, fellows!” She shouted, “We fell some telchine yesterday, and we shall bring death upon the invaders today! Larcia is our land!”
Echoing shrieks filled the sky; Kajsa glimpsed upwards. The gryphons carrying Alana’s apprentices and the Viscount Melittas approached.
The winged creatures circled the sky as if they were vultures, but Kajsa knew they would not come lower. She pointed towards them. “The Guild ...”
“I don’t suffer telchine!” Blazedigger huffed.
“They are not telchine, brother. Look and see.”
Kajsa understood why Alana wanted two young men as her honor guard. The sight of three Fairsinge was effective. Where Roark was lovely to behold and a little prone to jesting, the new boy was especially effective at appearing grim. When grown, Eohan would be a sight. If she lived through the day, Kajsa might see if he fancied a dwarf companion. She didn’t mind men new as long as they did as they were told.
Death might meet her, Doriel and all within this fort today, but Alana’s plan must work, or the telchine would spread across Larcia. Many other Larcians — dwarves, gnomes and animals — might die.
As planned, Doriel blew his trumpet as the real army advanced.
The gate opened.
“For Larcia!” Kajsa charged out the main gate with a shout, her sword ready to break against the first telchine unlucky enough to meet her. With flashing steel and thundering hooves, she attacked. Blazedigger and his soldiers roared behind her.
The War Enders Apprentice (Chronicles of the Martlet Book 1) Page 6
