by GJ Kelly
“Really? I had hoped for a little more,” And Elayeen, one foot in the stirrup, suddenly threw her arms around Gawain’s neck and kissed him, a little clumsily at first it was true, but robbing him of breath nevertheless. Then just as suddenly, she released him, and thrust herself up into the saddle.
“My queen is becoming a taverner’s wench, brazen and sly as any vixen.” Gawain gasped, beaming happily.
“It’s a long way to Jarn,” she smiled down at him, and through the warmth that had spread through him during their embrace, Gawain felt a slight shiver tickling at the back of his neck at her gaze, and thought he understood what the old saying about being ‘pinned’ had meant.
Two hours further along the Jarn road, which, though it undulated here and there ran almost arrow-straight through the woodlands at this point, Elayeen suddenly stiffened, and stood upright in the stirrups, gazing as best she could over the heads of the officers in the vanguard.
“Trouble?” Gawain asked.
“Call a halt, G’wain, let me look.”
“Hai, Tyrane, hold fast.”
The column came to an abrupt halt, the Captain raising his arm and making a signal with his hand. Elayeen, with Gawain and Allazar flanking her, moved forward through the vanguard, and she stood once more in the stirrups, her head swivelling first to the left, then to the right.
Gawain tensed, and watched Gwyn’s ears closely, but his horse-friend had given no signs of alarm since leaving the outpost. Indeed, the Raheen charger seemed a little nonplussed at coming to a halt on such a long and open stretch of road.
“We should move forward a little, but slowly.” Elayeen said, settling back in the saddle.
Before Gawain could say anything, Tyrane raised his hand, his fingers flashed a signal, and they began moving again, cautiously. Gawain cast a quizzical look at the wizard and got one in return.
They’d moved perhaps five hundred yards as quietly as it was possible for any large group of men, wagons and horses to travel on a stony sun-baked track when Elayeen, still slightly ahead of them all, stopped again and held up her right hand to signal a halt. The gesture was immediately repeated by the Callodon captain and it was plain to see who it was currently commanding the movement of the column. And she was plainly concerned.
“Elayeen.” Gawain said softly, scanning the woods in spite of Gwyn’s complete calm.
“Darkness,” she replied, her voice quiet but hard. “Either side of the road. Within bowshot.”
“Yours or mine?”
“Mine.”
“Three hundred yards or thereabouts?”
“Yes.”
“Moving?”
“No.”
“Hold here, Captain,” Gawain ordered quietly. “The wizard and I will advance.”
Again, Tyrane relayed the orders by hand signal, and the entire column sat saddle or stood in silence, tension mounting.
Gawain and Allazar dismounted, and once again Gawain rested his hand lightly upon his lady’s booted ankle. She gazed down at him, her expression blank, her eyes strangely cold and piercing.
“Watch us closely, miheth. If the darkness you see moves, don’t call out, just put an arrow into it. I doubt Allazar and I could hope for a clearer warning than that.”
“Isst.” Elayeen acknowledged, her voice hard, and drew an arrow from her quiver, nocking it by feel, before turning her gaze to the north.
Gawain felt a shiver run the length of his spine, then he let go of her leg and moved forward. “Stay here Gwyn,” he whispered to his horse, and then with Allazar beside him, they moved quickly and quietly down the centre of the road.
After a hundred and fifty yards, according to Gawain’s judgement, he drew the longsword and slowed to a cautious walk. He eyed the wizard briefly, noting the firm grip on the staff in Allazar’s right hand, and the tiny specks of light twinkling at its ends. Allazar noted the look and Gawain made a gesture, easing the wizard further to his left, widening the gap between them.
At two hundred yards they stopped, and Gawain stole a quick glance over his shoulder. Elayeen sat saddle, her horse turned to her right, the better to draw and shoot along the track if needs be. Another quick glance at Allazar, who simply shook his head. All around them, the woodland seemed no different than it had when they’d passed through it a week before and rested at the charcoal-burner’s cabin. A sudden nod of the head from Allazar drew Gawain’s attention and he tensed, until he followed the direction of the wizard’s gaze and saw a plump rabbit to the side of a large blister of brambles.
They moved on, slowly, waiting for the whizz of Elayeen’s arrow or the sudden rustle of undergrowth which would presage an enemy charge towards them. But nothing came. Finally, at three hundred paces or thereabouts, Gawain stopped, and he and Allazar gazed about them. Nothing sinister at all.
“Could she be wrong?” Gawain whispered, moving cautiously to the middle of the road to stand back-to-back with the wizard.
He felt Allazar shrug slightly. “Her new sight is yet young, Longsword, but still it is remarkable.”
“Yet there’s nothing here.”
“Not that we can see.” Allazar asserted.
“The brambles aren’t tall enough to hide a goat, and the birds and woodland creatures don’t seem in the slightest disturbed.”
“True.”
“And Gwyn hasn’t so much as sniffed a concern, much less given a warning.”
“Also true.”
“Dwarfspit.” Gawain sighed, adding, “Watch my back.”
With that, he turned to face down the track, took a step or away from the wizard so that Elayeen would hopefully see his gingerbread figure clearer, and then made a hugely exaggerated gesture, holding his arms out wide and shrugging his shoulders.
Almost at once he saw Elayeen lift her bow, and again in spite of her broken fingers draw it, and loose an arrow.
“Dwarfspit!” Gawain gasped, and Allazar whirled in time to see the longshaft arcing silently towards them.
It fizzed into a tangle of brambles to the left of the track a few yards further on from them, and before they had a chance to say anything, another zipped into the brambles to the right. No attack came.
Gawain sighed again. “If anything nasty comes rushing out of there, hit it with your stick, wizard.”
Allazar nodded, and Gawain simply strode forward, swinging the longsword in a great flat arc, dropping to one knee as he did. The blade crashed into the brambles, and to their surprise, lifted them clean off the ground to send them tumbling further into the woods, exposing a cracked guardstone, a twin of those they’d seen at the Farin Bridge.
“By the Teeth,” Allazar mumbled, and hurried across the road to sweep the brambles aside with his staff. “The brambles have been cut from deeper in the woods and placed over the guardstones to conceal them.”
“And the stones are starting to crumble. Destroyed by the wave from the circle, do you think?”
“No, Longsword, I think these were laid more recently.”
Gawain studied the cut ends of the brambles, and the ground around the crumbling stones. “Agreed. You’re getting better at this than I give you credit for, Allazar. Yet these stones are spent?”
“Yes, they are. The only question is, when? And where is the spider at the end of this web?”
oOo
16. Morloch’s Wrath
Gawain signalled to the column with two great waves of his arm, and then watched as Elayeen came thundering down the road, a startled vanguard scurrying to catch up twenty yards behind her. She slowed as she neared, looking from the left to the right, and brought her horse to a stop a few yards short of Gawain and the wizard.
“Your arrows will need new points, miheth,” Gawain announced, “But the shafts are intact. I’ll attend to them.”
“Thank you. Did I hit the… things?”
“Guardstones. No, though I’m not surprised given the distance.”
“Those are guardstones?” she asked, twisting in her
saddle for a better look at each of the ruined stones.
“What’s left of them. They’re crumbling, like stale cake. They’re similar in size and shape to those at the Farin Bridge.”
“I did not see those.” Elayeen reminded him as Tyrane and the vanguard arrived.
“Ah. Well, they’re round and flat, like great white stone coins, though rough-hewn. About a yard across, the diameter almost the same length as one of your arrows.”
“Thank you, miheth. To me they look simply like deep dark holes, but glowing… as though they would draw the light from the world. It is hard to describe.”
“May we look, my lord? I and my men are not familiar with these guardstones. I’d like to bring Jaxon up too, for his opinion?”
“Of course Tyrane, a good idea.”
“The one on the right is better preserved,” Allazar announced sternly, leading the Callodon officers across the road. “You can still see some of the runes carved into the surface of the stone…”
While Allazar described the stones and their function to Tyrane and his men, and the rest of the column slowly drew nearer, Gawain unpicked the twine binding the broken stone points to the shafts of Elayeen’s spent arrows.
“You’re very quiet, G’wain.” Elayeen spoke suddenly, still gazing down at him.
“You saw my gesture from so far, so clearly? Before you shot your arrows?”
“Yes. Did I do something wrong, miheth? I could think of no other way of showing you where the danger was, and you and Allazar seemed to be just standing there, between the two… things, as I thought they were. I was worried for you.”
“No,” Gawain said softly, “No, you did the right thing. I’m just glad it was you doing the shooting, what with the wind and all.”
And it was windy indeed, blustery in fact.
“I could see you both clearly, G’wain, and also my own left hand on the bow, poor broken fingers and all. I may not see as I once did, it’s true, but if for a single moment I thought loosing the arrows would have endangered you or Allazar, I would not have done so. Are you angry with me, miheth? Without the throth between us now, I cannot tell…”
“No,” Gawain insisted quickly, “No, I’m just surprised. Continually,” and he turned his attention to repairing her arrows.
Elayeen smiled sadly, knowing from the sound of his voice there was something else troubling him, but unless he spoke of it, she could not guess the reason, just as he could not guess how much the loss of the throth between them made her feel so diminished and, at times like these, alone.
When the wagons arrived, Jaxon confirmed that yes indeed, these were guardstones the like of which had penned his people and all others across Goria far to the west, and the presence of them here in the free lands of Callodon sent a tremor of alarm through the refugees which Allazar did his best to allay.
Gawain tied off the first new point, using his teeth to bite off the small ball of twine, and standing close to Elayeen’s left side, handed the arrow up to her, brushing her arm with it. “Here, miheth, the first is done.”
“Thank you.” She slung her bow, and then felt along the shaft of the arrow, from tip to fletching. Satisfied, she deftly slid it into the quiver at her right hip. “Do you have enough points?”
“Plenty, I annoyed Allazar by making them at the charcoal-burner’s cabin when we sheltered there. He really doesn’t like the sound of stones being banged together. This one’s nearly done too.”
“Thank you.”
“There’ll be rain tonight I think. Another storm on the way. Summer’s fading fast this year.”
“Yes.”
There was a long silence between them, Gawain working on fixing a new point to Elayeen’s arrow, she simply sitting quietly in the saddle while small groups of Callodon guardsmen took it in turns to study the guardstone while Allazar described its function.
“It was the way you looked at me, back down the road.” Gawain blurted. “Just before Allazar and I came ahead to check for the darkness you saw.”
“I don’t understand, G’wain.” Elayeen said softly.
“It was a cold look, Elayeen. It sent a shiver down my spine that raised the hackles on the back of my neck, when you gazed down upon me with that… that… eldengaze.”
“Eldengaze?”
“I don’t know what else to call it, miheth, this sight of the Eldenelves you have,” Gawain sighed. “For a fleeting moment, it was as though you were a completely different person, from a completely different time. Even your voice changed.”
He handed her the second shaft, and as before she tested it by feel alone before placing it in her quiver. Then she suddenly looked down at him, her eyes damp.
“I do not know what to say, G’wain. I’m sorry…”
“No,” he smiled weakly, though she of course did not see it. Then he placed his hand on her thigh. “Don’t be sorry. It’s just another of the many ways you have surprised me lately. It… just caught me off guard. I’ll get used to it, I’m sure.”
He called Gwyn forward, and mounted, moving as close to Elayeen as he could while the group slowly reformed behind them, everyone anxious to move on from the guardstones and the dread they symbolised. Then he suddenly reached over, leaned across and kissed her, caring not a jot for the throng watching behind them.
“That doesn’t absolve you G’wain, for making me feel ugly,” she pouted.
“I didn’t say you were ugly, E. Chilling perhaps, but definitely not ugly.”
Allazar sighed as he dragged himself into the saddle and then drew his horse alongside Elayeen’s left flank. “I think we should move on quickly, Longsword, for the sake of our new friends’ nerves if nothing else. The sight of the stones brings back bad memories for the poor people.”
“Aye, and none too pleasant for me, either.” Gawain agreed, and with a nod to Tyrane, they set off again.
“I marvel, my lady, at the range of your new sight. To see the guardstones at such a distance, and spent ones at that.” Allazar shook his head in wonder.
“Thank you, I’m glad someone appreciates my eldengaze and doesn’t find it chilling and hideously ugly.”
“Eldengaze?” Allazar looked puzzled.
“I didn’t say it made you look hideously ugly, miheth, merely chilling.”
“It is my king’s new name for the gentle looks his queen bestows upon him in times of peril.”
“Ah.”
“It is not my new name for… never mind. I refuse to be baited.”
Elayeen allowed herself a triumphant smile, and then became serious once more. “You say the stones were spent, Allazar? Yet I could still see the darkness glowing about them.”
“Quite possibly an artefact of the dark runes still graven upon them, my lady. Such runes still contain power, even though the material upon which they are cut is crumbling. Only when the runes themselves are broken is their power destroyed.”
“Oh. Well, if that’s how they appear when spent, I should be able to see unspent ones a mile away.”
“That, my lady, would be most useful indeed.” Allazar agreed.
“Though chilling and hideous to behold of course,” Elayeen said, archly.
“I am saying nothing.” Gawain sniffed haughtily.
And for the best part of an hour, no-one did. They progressed slowly along the Jarn road, though at a slightly quicker pace than earlier in the day, and not even the Gorians on foot protested at that. But with the late afternoon sun dipping slowly to the west behind them, Elayeen sent a shudder of apprehension through them all when once again she stood in her stirrups. Then, to the vanguards’ alarm and Gawain’s, she kicked her horse forward through them, ten yards ahead, and then swung the animal to a halt broadside on across the road, gazing north along its length.
“There is something dark ahead,” she announced, swinging her head around towards them, and with it the eldengaze that had so disturbed Gawain an hour before. “And it is moving toward us.”
At once,
the Gorians crowded around the rear wagon, the men within jumping down to make way for the women, who were bundled up into the wagon in their place. The Callodon guard closed ranks, and the rearguard advanced.
“What is it, my lady, can you tell?” Allazar asked, his voice hard, and Gawain would swear it was edged with excitement.
“No. It is moving slowly, straight along the road toward us. And it is much darker than the guardstones were.”
“Where are the scouts?” Tyrane wondered aloud. “If they encountered something on the road their orders were to return at once to alert us rather than engage.”
“It has stopped moving.” Elayeen announced, unslinging the bow from over her shoulders.
“I can only see a vague shape on the far rise, it must be at least a mile from here.” Gawain muttered. “And the heat from the track is making it shimmer.”
Gwyn’s ears were fixed forward, and she snuffled and bobbed her head. Something was there, far ahead of them on the arrow-straight road.
Everyone seemed to be waiting for a decision to be made. Gawain decided they were waiting for him to make it. “We advance, slowly. Ready string and steel.”
Tyrane signalled the command, and the air was filled with the sound of crossbows being cocked and bolted, and swords loosened in scabbards.
Then slowly, the column began moving forward once more.
“It still hasn’t moved,” Elayeen announced, adjusting her grip on her bow, her damaged fingers still paining her greatly.
“We’ll lose sight of it ahead where the road dips a little,” Allazar muttered. “Perhaps…”
“I won’t.” Elayeen asserted, and again her voice carried with it a distance and hardness not her own. “I have it fixed.”
The road dipped, and to the ordinary vision of all but Elayeen at the head of the column, the heat-shimmering above the track blocked their sight of whatever it was awaiting them. The wind blew in swirling gusts from the east, across the road, but Gwyn seemed nervous, her ears twitching this way and that, giving the snuffling warning signs so well-known to Allazar and Elayeen as well as of course to her chosen rider.
