by GJ Kelly
From time to time during her conversation with Allazar, Elayeen fixed Gawain across the track with her eldengaze, and each time she did so, Gawain felt more and more discomfited by it. The pause was a short one, a brief respite from the relentless trudge, enough to water and feed men and horses before they set off again.
Here and there they passed the remains of small shelters previous travellers along this road had erected and used to pass a night on their journey to and from Raheen. The shelters were falling into disrepair now, unattended for so long. Gawain remembered the first time he’d taken this road, more than two years ago now, in the first days of his banishment. He remembered his second journey along it too, covered in the foul white ash which had clung to him and to Gwyn, the dread remains of his home and his people.
In the middle of the afternoon, and Elayeen and Allazar still deep in their private conversation, the head of the column passed the junction of the road with the track that led east through the woods to the abandoned town of Stoon. Gawain remembered it vaguely, mostly that track had been a blur while Gwyn had ridden hard to get him there. The Ramoth tower at Stoon had been the first to fall to Gawain’s vengeance. Now though, on a cloudy and damp autumnal day, the track merely told Gawain that the train of wagons and people were moving much more slowly than he had a year ago, when he and Gwyn had made Stoon from the outpost in half a day.
“My lord,” Tyrane announced quietly from behind and to Gawain’s left.
Gwyn slowed almost to a halt, leaving Allazar and Elayeen riding side by side to move ahead while Tyrane eased alongside Gawain.
“Captain?”
“I saw you noting the track to Stoon. The town was small enough in its hey-day, but in truth there’s not much there now. With the loss of Raheen and no trade to be had there, the town all but died. The farmers scratch a living out on the plains and still make use of the inn there, and there’s a trading post for goods brought in from Jarn. That’s all. Else it would be simple to take our Gorian friends there and for you to head straight for Elvendere.”
Gawain smiled weakly, and nodded. “I was thinking much the same thing. But in truth, Tyrane, events in the north are out of my hands and have been since the Council met at Ferdan. It’s just the not knowing what’s happening in the world, the lack of news. It’s frustrating. Besides, after yesterday’s events I’d be as reluctant as your messenger was to leave now.”
“They’re good lads, my lord. I thought I might have to resort to unpleasantness to get one of them to take the reports to headquarters. And in truth, they do seem to take some comfort from your being here, ever since that apparition kindly announced he was saving you until last. They’re of the opinion that being in the neighbourhood of second-to-last isn’t too bad.”
Gawain chuckled. “Morloch’s minion made a fair attempt at destroying me first yesterday. Still, it’s nice to know I’m appreciated for something, I’d thought it was just my lady’s presence which commanded their best attentions.”
“And the wizard’s, my lord, since he destroyed that dark enemy in such spectacular fashion.”
“Not so loud, Tyrane,” Gawain grumbled, “He’s bad enough to live with as it is.”
“In truth, my lord, he did seem much less, what’s the word, imposing, when first we met.”
“Yes I know. I think it’s the new stick that lends him an air of gravitas.”
“I spoke with Simayen Jaxon yesterday. He said he and his people had never seen a wizard such as the First of Raheen. They’d heard that any wizards as might be in the empire were all in the walled city of Zanatheum, in the service of the Emperor.”
“Then let’s hope the Emperor had better service from them than the kings of our lands, Tyrane.” Gawain said softly, easing Gwyn back a little more, perhaps subconsciously increasing the distance between Allazar and Elayeen and themselves.
Tyrane nodded, and glancing ahead at Allazar’s back, said softly: “I lost friends at Callodon Castle, when the wizard Uldred of the D’ith Sek turned. I’d only just received my orders from King Brock despatching me to hold the Pass. I was well on my way back to headquarters to gather the men, so I was not there when the wizard refused a challenge at the inner curtain wall and attacked. From the reports I received later, the wall guard shot him in the back and a gatekeeper hacked his Dwarfspit head off with a ceremonial halberd. That black hearted bastard Uldred killed twenty six good people of Callodon, most of them common petitioners, women and children among them, while trying to get into the Keep. It was there that Queen Elspeth was holding the day-court in King Brock’s absence. In the face of such treachery I am glad, my lord, that we have a wizard such as yours on our side.”
“Yes,” Gawain muttered, also eyeing Allazar’s back. The wizard and Elayeen were smiling happily, Allazar making gestures with his free right hand as though describing the movement of a fish through water, and then perhaps the leaping of a salmon.
“We seem to be making reasonable ground.” Gawain remarked, deftly changing the subject.
“The pace has quickened since yesterday, my lord. And the Gorians are certainly fit enough, particularly with them taking it in turns to rest on the wagons. We might make forty miles a day if we can keep it up and eat on the move…”
The captain’s voice trailed off as he looked forward past the vanguard. About five hundred yards ahead on the undulating road, the single advanced scout was cantering back towards them waving a warning flag above his head. The warning was relayed down the line from the van and the column slowed.
Gawain and Tyrane advanced through the head of the column to meet the rider.
“Trouble up ahead, Serres,” the scout reported, saluting briefly. “Flood in the road where it dips. Last night’s rain’s turned it into a right muddy mess.”
“And to the sides?”
“Aye, Captain. Ditches and run-offs collapsed. Horses will manage it, and them with stout boots. But the wagons’ll be near axle deep in it, far as I can tell.”
“Dwarfspit.” Gawain grumbled.
“Sorry, Serres,” the scout apologised.
“Not your fault lad,” Tyrane assured the scout, “Back up the road with you, cross the mire and advance another 500 yards, keep a good watch along the road.”
“Aye Serre.”
Mire was right. It looked as though a turnout from a ditch running alongside the road had collapsed, and this in turn had caused the ditch to back up and flood the road in the bottom of the dip, and that had caused the opposite ditch to collapse too. Quagmire was good word to describe the muddy mess left in the storm’s wake when it had abated in the early hours of the morning.
While the horses could avoid the mire simply by walking into the woods and around the worst of it, the wagons couldn’t. The men of Callodon eyed the mud and then the wagons, and grimaced, knowing what was to come. The Gorians, though, under Jaxon’s supervision, merely shrugged, took off their trousers, and began working with a humour and enthusiasm the others found baffling at first, and then infectious. Half of them waded straight into the mud, squelching into it above the knee, and gleefully trod into the mire the branches, brambles, and woodland debris tossed to them by their compatriots.
Soon, Callodon steel joined the effort, guards not on watch hacking away at shrubs and branches, men gathering great armfuls and bundles of twigs and leaves, hurling them into the morass to be trodden down by stout Gorian boots and the willing feet within them.
It took hours. First the wagons were unloaded and the supplies carried across to the other side of the mire, and then the wagons were dragged and shoved across by filthy horses and even filthier men. And then the heavy crates and barrels had to be loaded on to the wagons once more. By the time a brief and practically futile bath in ditchwater had removed the worst of the mud from men and animals, night had fallen once more on the Jarn road. Another scout was sent ahead to look for the nearest passing-place or at least a rest area firmer under foot than the dip they’d laboured out of. When he ret
urned with news of a such a place about three quarters of a mile north, the column made its cautious way in the dark before finally and gratefully making camp.
All were caked in mud, except for Allazar and Elayeen. No-one had expected the blind elfin queen to work in mud she could not see, and no-one expected the wizard standing guard watchfully by her side to leave her alone and vulnerable on the road. It perhaps wasn’t surprising then, when Gawain had done the best he could attending to Gwyn in the dark and settled onto his blanket and saddle on the hard and stony ground, that Elayeen chose to sleep a short distance from him, wrapped in her own clean and dry cloak. The last thing Gawain thought he saw before falling into a deep sleep was his lady, laying three feet away, fixing him with her frosty eldengaze in the murky grey of a blustery night.
The first thing he saw when he awoke just before dawn on the third morning was his lady’s boots, three feet way, while she stood stock still and fixed her eldengaze somewhere off to the southwest. Then he saw Allazar’s boots, standing to her right, and then Captain Tyrane’s.
Gawain at once leapt to his feet, snatching up the longsword, blinking furiously and trying to follow their gaze out into the woods. Behind him, the Gorians were still sleeping, only the duty watch were alert.
“Good morning, Longsword.” Allazar muttered softly.
“What is it? What’s out there?” Gawain whispered, the hilt of the sword gripped in his right hand, the scabbard in his left, ready to draw.
“Something tracks us.” Elayeen announced, and in spite of himself, Gawain shivered. The voice of eldengaze seemed somehow even harsher and so much more jarring to his nerves in the still of the pre-dawn light before even the birds had begun their morning chorus. Or perhaps it had simply grown much more sinister during the night.
“Something?”
“Something dark.”
“Why didn’t you wake me sooner?”
No-one answered, and Gawain felt his anger rising. “Captain?”
“Sorry, my lord. I was only just alerted myself by one of the men.”
“Allazar?”
“Your lady only woke me a minute or two ago, Longsword.”
“Elayeen?”
“My sight is fixed upon the darkness. If you were closer I could have kicked you as I did the wizard. You were not. And my sight is fixed upon the darkness.”
“And does the sight fixed upon the darkness tell us how far away it is, and its size?”
“Perhaps a mile. Perhaps a little more. It is too far for me to gauge its size.”
“A mile?” Gawain gasped, “Through the trees? Are you serious?”
“Yes.” Elayeen’s head swivelled towards him, and Gawain had to fight hard against a strong urge to look away. Instead, he held her awful gaze until, after a few long moments of almost complete silence, she turned her face back to the southwest.
Gawain did his best not to sigh aloud. “Is it moving?”
“No.”
“Then we should. Quickly and quietly. Captain, have everyone woken as quietly as possible. The wind is still from the east and sound carries even in woodland. We eat on the move.”
“Yes, my lord.”
Tyrane signalled the duty watch and at once the sergeant was roused from sleep. Whispered instructions were given, and slowly, quietly, the camp rose with the sun. Gawain turned his face to the east for the briefest of remembrances, before turning back to Elayeen, who stood rooted to the spot, as though she really were a statue.
Another glance at Allazar revealed the wizard smiling down in wonder at the elfin queen and then peering through the steely dawn light into the trees. It was futile, of course, the eyes of ordinary men would see nothing but the shrubs, brambles and trees of the roadside woodland. Birds began singing out their cheery and raucous greeting to the day, and Gawain slung the sword over his back before moving to stand behind Elayeen.
At the movement, Allazar cast him a surprised look, and seemed about to say something, to protest perhaps, but Gawain ignored him and placed his hands on his lady’s shoulders, gripping them firmly.
She stiffened, and then turned around to face him, and her voice was her own when she spoke.
“Egrith miheth, G’wain.”
“As do I.” But before he could lean down to kiss her she turned her back on him, facing towards the southwest again. Again she spoke from the depths of the eldengaze.
“It has not moved, whatever it is.” Then she drew away from him and turned slightly sideways on. “It seems to remain there, but it has a…pulse, slight, like a faint glow.”
“And you can see it, through the trees, a mile away?”
“Though the distance may be wrong. Certainly no closer than that, perhaps a little farther.”
“Elayeen’s gift has grown stronger, Longsword, perhaps in the same way that my own has with the passage of time. The white fire which destroyed the Graken and its rider was an order of magnitude stronger than that which destroyed the Grimmand of Sethi.” Allazar smiled at Elayeen like a parent proud of a beloved child’s achievement.
“Yes thank you wizard, but for now I’d appreciate it if you’d help gather my lady’s belongings and your own and prepare to move out.”
“Hmm? Oh!” Allazar seemed suddenly to emerge from his reverie. “Of course, yes, at once.”
Elayeen, though, was content merely to stand facing the southwest, while all about her everyone including Gawain busied themselves with the quiet but determined bustle of breaking their hasty camp.
After saddling a slightly fretful Gwyn, the great horse sensing his rising frustration, Gawain surveyed the scene around him. It might have been funny if it’d been some simple training exercise. Men and women, covered practically head to toe in dark brown mud, hair matted with the stuff, were saddling horses, hitching wagons, handing out rations of bread and meat, checking weapons... and in the midst of it all, standing aloof from them all, Elayeen, her hair stirring in the soft morning breeze, shimmering silver in the shafts of sunshine lancing through the trees. Her bow and quiver of stone-tipped arrows lay behind her on the muddy ground at her feet, as if forgotten, her eldengaze fixed on the distant threat, and that annoyed him more than anything had since his rude awakening this morning.
When everything was in order, and Gawain had checked Allazar’s work in saddling Elayeen’s horse and strapping her belongings in place, Gawain picked up the bow and quiver and stood in front of her, between her and whatever dark-made thing it was in the distance that held her attention. He pressed her weapons gently against her stomach, and held them there until finally she reached up and took them.
“I can see your eyes now, and your mouth,” the eldengaze voice grated. “They are like holes torn in the light that is you.”
“Hurrah.” Gawain replied coldly. “Can you see well enough to get up on your bloody horse?”
That shook her, like a slap in the face might, and she actually recoiled half a pace.
“No,” she managed, looking down, fumbling to sling the quiver of arrows over her head while holding the bow loosely in her broken hand, all trace of the eldengaze gone.
“Two things, my lady,” Gawain said quietly, but making no attempt to disguise his anger. “Thing the first: if you see, hear or even smell a dark enemy you tell me. Not the wizard. Not the captain. Me. And if I’m sleeping you wake me. Not the wizard. Not the captain. Me.
“Thing the second: if you see, hear or even smell a dark enemy I expect to see your bow or your sword at the ready in your hand, not lying useless and forgotten in the dirt behind you.”
Allazar eased Elayeen’s horse forward, clearly overhearing them.
“I’m sorry, G’wain,” Elayeen said softly, “The sight of the Eldenelves is powerful …”
“Clearly. But while you and the wizard are behaving like children with new toys you might remember that there are eighteen Gorians and twenty four men of Callodon looking on. There were of course twenty seven when we left the foot of the Pass but two of them d
ied during our first day on the road. If you can see something dark, then perhaps you can help destroy it. But not if you’ve left your weapons abandoned in the mud somewhere and the rest of us are all too busy to help find them for you.”
Gawain strode angrily away, leaving Allazar to help her into the saddle while he mounted Gwyn and moved down the track to check the rearguard. The column moved off, people eating their breakfast on foot or in the saddle, snatching wary glances over their left shoulders in the direction of the darkness which lurked unseen in the distance.
When Gawain was satisfied that the rearguard was in order and the sergeant knew as much or as little as he did about the ‘something’, he returned to his customary place. As he passed between Tyrane and the right-flanking guardsman, Elayeen twisted in her saddle and cast her eldengaze to the southwest.
“It tracks us. It is keeping pace.”
To Gawain, it seemed as though all trace of his beloved had simply vanished again, leaving behind a shell filled with a dreadful echoing emptiness, out from the unfathomable depths of which that jarring voice floated up. Allazar had of course been perfectly correct. The eldengaze had grown much stronger, and to Gawain at least, so had Elayeen’s desire to use it, just as Allazar’s had when faced with the Graken on the road.
oOo
20. Running
They’d gone barely a mile, with Elayeen turning in the saddle every few yards to gaze out through the woods. Whatever manner of dark wizard-made danger was tracking them seemed content merely to keep pace with them, watching them by some unknown means just as Elayeen was watching it. Finally, the sight of the elfin so frequently casting her haunting gaze over her shoulder was too much for the Gorians, and Jaxon trotted forward to walk alongside the captain’s horse.
“Serres,” he exclaimed, “If it will help, we are all able to move much faster than this. In Armunland we would often run alongside the wagons, to flee an oncoming storm or because the overseers were in a hurry. We can quicken our pace and hold it for many miles if we must.”
