by Remi Michaud
He dropped his gaze, feeling ashamed. “I...I don't know. If anyone has any ideas...”
“I suggest we continue,” Mikal stated and Gaven and Kurin nodded. Thank the gods; the decision was taken from him. Shame gnawed at his relief. “At least until we know for sure that they're on to us.”
“We keep a close eye on their movements,” Gaven mused thoughtfully. “If they make any sudden changes to their formation or speed, then we reconsider.”
Mikal nodded agreement. “And quickly.”
And it was settled. As the conversation turned to other topics and their eating resumed, Jurel heard almost none of it. He picked at food that tasted like ashes in his dry mouth. He would not—could not—meet anyone's eyes.
* * *
In the early hours of the morning, Jurel left his tent, too restless to sleep. He wandered to the edge of the glade and sat to brood. Though the days lately had been warm verging on hot, the evenings were still spring-time cool and his hair raised in goose flesh as the chill breeze whispered through the trees.
He sat staring, looking at nothing, uncertain now that he was here, what he wanted to brood about. There were so many choices.
He should have been surprised when he heard Kurin's voice, but somehow he had expected the old man to show up.
“There's no shame, you know,” Kurin said as he sat next to Jurel.
As always, the old man seemed to know what Jurel was thinking. Sometimes that annoyed Jurel. As it did now.
“What do you mean? I'm supposed to be the commander of this army—hells, I'm supposed to be the God of War. Yet I can't make a simple decision. I'm lost, Kurin. I have no idea what I'm doing and now I'm starting to believe that I'm going to be responsible for the deaths of all these people.”
“You need time to learn.”
“Time we don't have. These people are counting on me. In a few weeks, we're going to engage an enemy and one mistake will see us destroyed. Who do you suppose will make the mistake?”
“Jurel, being a commander is not always about knowing exactly what to do. That's why you have advisors. This may be difficult to understand, but an army tends to feel better about a leader who is willing to ask for help and listen to his closest advisors than they do about a leader who always thinks he knows the best way to do things.
“What you did tonight was perfect. You were unsure. You turned to us. You received our recommendations and made your decision based on what we said-”
“No I didn't. All I did was let Mikal take charge and make the decision for me.”
“All right. So you missed one small step. All you had to do at that point was look confident and say something like, 'All right, let's do that,' or 'Make it so,' or whatever. What's important is that once the decision is made, you endorse it. You stick to it until new information arrives and another decision needs to be made. If you trust your advisors and if they know what they're talking about, they won't steer you wrong.
“Most importantly, you need to trust yourself. Your men will sense if you don't. And if you don't, then they won't. That would be a dire, dreadful thing.”
Kurin rose and grunted as he stretched. “It's getting late. We're starting early, so I'm going to get some sleep. As your advisor, I suggest you do the same.”
He disappeared into the night.
But Jurel was not able to take Kurin's advice. His thoughts were churning too strongly to even contemplate sleep. Thoughts of trust and confidence teased him, taunted him as harshly as a bully. A grimly amusing thought: the God of War was incapable of waging war. That would be like an ax incapable of chopping wood.
It did not increase his confidence.
Chapter 15
“Oh Jurel!” Metana sighed, rolling her eyes in exasperation.
As usual, he had managed to annoy her with his seeming inability to absorb the current socio-political structure within the kingdom. Though, to be fair, it was not that he was unable to absorb it, it was more that he was too bloody full of other concerns to care.
Mikal had agreed, at Kurin's request, to let Metana have him for an hour or two in the evenings so that she could fill him in on the current cultural climate within the kingdom. Considering the ramifications of what they were about to try, it seemed wise to give Jurel a wider view.
Except, sitting on a rock in a small clearing near the edge of the forest, with the sun dappling the earth and a slight wind whispering in the trees, Jurel wanted to do almost anything other than learn about how church and state kept their power balanced, or how the general populace was affected by changes to doctrine.
“You great bloody oaf. You need to know this stuff. If you don't...well, whether we win this war or not will be irrelevant if we don't have the support of the people.”
Huffing a sigh, Jurel leaned back against the tree behind him. “I know, Metana. I know. It's just so...boring.”
Her annoyance was mixed with amused forbearance. The mixture was strangely eclectic; her expression didn't seem to know where to settle. “I know, Jurel. There's a lot of other stuff I would rather be teaching you but this is what's important right now.”
“Yes, Mistress Tana,” he grinned insolently. She hated that name.
As expected, she threw a clump of dirt at him.
“Don't you 'Mistress Tana' me, you lout,” she growled but there was a playful edge to it.
“Yes, Mistress Tana.”
She stomped her foot and sighed gustily, glaring at him.
As Jurel had suspected so many months before, her thorny-as-a-rosebush exterior hid a soft core, full of warmth and caring. Her father was a moderately successful merchant who spent much of his life on the road. Her mother died when she was very young—in truth, she admitted to barely being able to remember her. Her father had had no choice but to uproot his children and take them with him on his travels. They had never stayed in one place long enough for her to make friends and so her only companions were her four elder brothers. She had learned to be tougher than most. It was the only way her brothers would let her tag along with them.
It did not help either that Barl, her father, withdrew into himself after his wife's death. He threw himself wholly into his work and it had often seemed that he had no use for his children except as employees.
It had been a difficult life for Metana. She had decided young that she would leave the moment she had the chance. That chance finally came late in her fifteenth year when a Salosian sister appeared one day and asked Barl to provide passage. Within days the forlorn Metana reached out to this woman who received her with open arms and took Metana under her wing.
The sister's heart broke when Metana tearfully told her story and offered promises of sanctuary and a good, full, satisfying life. Within weeks, they stole off in the middle of the night and Metana had begun her new life as a Salosian initiate.
Through her life, even as she had hardened, she managed to maintain her compassion borne by the belief that people were, in general, good at heart. Though she often seemed to chew nails and spit fire, Jurel had come to realize that it was mostly an act. An act that, since their fight some few weeks ago, she had relented on. At least with him. And that was all that mattered.
“I think we're pretty much done here for the day,” Metana declared, letting her glare abate. “You're being even more stubbornly obtuse than usual.”
With that, she grabbed up her wicker basket and stomped by him. And slapped him upside the head on her way past. Yelping indignantly, Jurel jumped to his feet and followed her. He hoped she was still in the mood for the picnic he had asked her on. His hope strengthened when she turned away from the main camp, and headed deeper into the forest.
It was still early; the army had called a halt so that the scouts could range farther ahead and pass word among the trusted few in the scattered villages of their passing. The sun was still a brilliant coin high overhead, only just beginning its westward descent. They had plenty of time.
Early afternoon progressed and the sha
dows began to lengthen and deepen as they ranged the woods. Green like softened emeralds melded with opal and ruby and sapphire. Mist suffused the spaces and it was as though they entered a different realm, a country of dreams and delights.
Metana told stories as she grunted and stumbled her way around great trees, over outcroppings, and up steep slopes made of soft earth and jutting roots, cursing every once in a while when her loose fitting shirt snagged on low hanging branches or when her billowing trousers caught in thatches of brambles. When she lost her breath, Jurel took over, pointing out various herbs and flowers, various leaves and fungal growths to prove he had been paying attention to her lessons (and definitely not mentioning that he had read that dreary herb and healing book the year before, while he had stayed with Kurin), as he flowed over the land as silent as a ghost. They followed game trails and Jurel pointed out fox prints, wolf prints, deer and rabbit and raccoon prints, and on one occasion, the thick heavy tread of a bear. At one point, they followed no trail at all, instead allowing the thinnest sections of undergrowth to choose their way, Jurel leading and Metana doing her level best to keep up.
That was when Jurel gasped.
“What?” said Metana between puffs, as she tried to see around him. “What is it?”
Carefully, Jurel reached forward to the patch of wild roses the color of new blood that twined and snared a shrub. Gingerly, for its thorns were long and sharp, he picked one with particularly delicate petals and turned.
“I really am sorry for not listening earlier,” he said and extended his peace offering.
“Oh Jurel. It's beautiful.”
Her eyes softened, her entire bearing seemed to somehow smooth out. Suppressing a start, Jurel was amazed to see two great tears form in her eyes. When she smiled, it was the real thing. It was a sunbeam after a thunderstorm, a warm breeze after a blizzard. She gazed at him and he gazed back. When she took the stem just above where he held it, their fingers grazed lightly. For a moment, time stood still. His heart beat deep and quick, thudding in his chest like a hammer, and the world spun slow circles. For a half dozen normal heartbeats—a dozen and a half for Jurel at that moment—their eyes locked and it was as though a chain of the finest spun gold connected them. Their surroundings seemed to fade to a blurry haze until it seemed all of creation was them, only them, fingers brushing, gazing over the heart of a rose.
After a long time, far too soon, Metana broke the spell and turned her eyes down. “Thank you, Jurel.”
She situated the rose in her hair over an ear after picking the thorns off and they continued on their way, she with a soft smile tickling the edges of her lips and he, dazed, with a welter of emotions tugging and battling.
* * *
As the afternoon continued to fade and pooling shadows thickened, he spied light between the trees ahead like the adit of a cave seen from deep inside. Curious, he made his way forward and when he reached the last tree, he stopped, too astonished to continue. At his side, Metana did the same.
A small clearing, ringed by a dark wall of oak and elm, ash and poplar and capped by the slate of evening overcast opened before them. Some few birds twittered but except for those lazy calls, the glade was silent as a sanctuary.
In the very center, stood a cottage. A small place, maybe no larger than his cabin on Galbin's farm, it was constructed of ancient logs. Its roof was pale gold thatch that looked no more than a season or two old and a stone chimney jutted from its peak. Shutters were drawn tight, the door stood firmly shut and closed up as it was, it should have seemed unwelcoming. Yet somehow the cottage had a warm, inviting air.
Finding a cottage in the heart of that great forest was surprising enough though it could be easily explained; perhaps a trapper or a hermit or a woodsman lived there. But that was not what brought them up short. A few paces from the front door, stones the size of Jurel's head formed a fifteen foot circle in the well tended yard. Inside the circle, hanging in the air, lights shimmered like earth-bound stars. Slowly the lights, yellow, red, blue, green, all the colors of the wide world and some that Jurel had no name for, moved to and fro like the wheeling of their astral brethren.
Instead of fear or caution, Jurel felt wonder and a sense of deep rooted peace. He stepped from the treeline into the clearing, slowly making his way to the ring of stones. At its perimeter, he gazed and as he did so, the lights picked up speed, spinning faster and ever faster until they were a blurred, dizzying swirl. The wonder melted. It became a strange foreboding though it was soft, distant, like a far away bank of dark clouds. His brow furrowing, Jurel backed away. As if reacting to his proximity, the lights slowed.
“What is this place?” he whispered.
He received no answer.
When he turned to find Metana, she was on her knees a few paces from the treeline. Her eyes were turned upward and her expression was one of rapture.
“Tana?”
He put his hand on her shoulder. She did not so much as twitch.
“Metana?” He shook her lightly.
As though she woke from deep slumber, she blinked in rapid succession and her eyes searched as though to recall where she was. “What? What is this place? Where are we?”
“I don't know. It's pretty amazing though isn't it?”
“It feels like this place is...” She gazed helplessly, at a loss for words.
“Like peace personified?” supplied Jurel.
“Yes. Exactly. Like peace personified.”
He smiled, gladdened by what he saw in her then. It was like she had become a child, innocent and pure, as though time had reversed and the world of suffering and blood they lived in was left at the trees bordering this clearing.
“You want to see if anyone is home?” he asked.
She nodded slowly but vehemently. “Yes. Oh yes.”
So they crossed to the front door where Jurel called—quietly for it did not seem right to raise his voice in that place, “Hello? Anybody home?”
When no answer came after his third call, he knocked lightly at the door. Still, there came no response. All remained breathlessly quiet. When he had knocked three times, he glanced a question at Metana. She shrugged and gestured. He pushed.
The door swung open easily on well-oiled hinges. The scene that was revealed almost made Jurel choke. A scarred round table with two plain ladder back chairs sat in the middle. At the far end a fire crackled brightly in the small hearth constructed of the same gray stone as the chimney. A ladder led up to the loft and what was presumably the sleeping area for the occupant. Except for the hearth, an exact copy of this room was located in Jurel's memory. Glassy eyed, he took it in, all of it evoking sorrow and joy so close together that for a moment the two seemed one and the same. Of course, there was one thing missing. One important element. It was easy to picture Daved in one of the chairs, concentrating over a sheaf of parchments, scribbling in the margins with his little stub of lead.
“Jurel? Are you all right?”
As if in a dream, he turned, the image before him sliding, skewing as though it tried to stay in front of him, until his eyes rested on Metana. The look she returned was one of concern. He coughed, cleared the lump.
“I'm fine,” he said gruffly.
They debated for a little time, argued whether or not the occupant would mind their intrusion until Metana pointed out that the door had not been locked, after all. And after all, they could leave a few coins for the time they spent and the wood they used.
In agreement, they sat and Jurel laid his pack on the table. As they ate rolls and cold meat, they passed few words. Somehow, it seemed that voices marred the idyllic nature of the place, jarred it like an off note in an otherwise perfect symphony. When they licked the last crumbs from their fingers, Jurel reached instinctively for the water bucket that was always near his old stove. The realization was just dawning on him tinged with bitter consternation that he was no longer in his cabin, no longer home, when his fingers struck wood.
And he picked up t
he water bucket. And he stared at it. And he swore to Metana that the splinter of wood that was missing from one of the staves was the same splinter that was missing in his own long gone bucket.
He scanned the table more carefully. Searched, in fact, for something that could not possibly be there. His fingers traced the scratches and whorls on the surface, his eyes picking carefully along the wood's grain. There had been a day where Daved had come home surly, sour from having sustained an injury in his back. He had walked with a slight hunch for a week as the kink worked itself out. On that day, Jurel had prepared dinner and they had eaten in silence. When Jurel had sopped up the last dregs with his roll and stuffed it into his mouth, he had glanced up to see his father staring into the distance.
“What's the matter, Pa?” he had asked.
Daved had grunted sourly. “Age lad, age.”
“But you're not old.”
“Oh? Then why is it that your old man can't do half the things he used to? Hells, I can't even stand up straight.”
To that, Jurel had no answer.
“Do yourself a favor, lad.” Daved's hawk glare had caught him as surely as a fly in a web. “Never grow old.”
All the while as they had spoken, his father had been distractedly, unconsciously digging the blade of his knife into the wood of the table creating a circle of bare rough wood the size of his thumbnail within the surrounding finish.
And when Jurel's fingers happened on a bare circle of roughened wood, approximately the size of his thumbnail, when his eyes latched onto the sight, his chest constricted, his heart seemed to swell until his ribs could no longer contain it. He collapsed back into his chair.
“It's not possible,” he whispered.
“What? What's not pos-”
A clatter at the door and a crotchety voice assaulted their ears and both jumped as though bitten.
“Who be ye then a-sittin at old Ursula's table?”
An ancient woman, so old that her age could not be guessed, stood framed by the door. She wore what appeared to be undyed cotton under a shawl the color of fresh soil. Her hair, so white it was almost blue, cascaded in twists and knots over her hunched shoulders and over the hump on her back. At odds, her eyes were as bright as crystal at noon.
