“Thank the gods you avoided the torture,” Falon said, deciding to ham it up as much as she could.
“Torture?” Lord Casper drew back in surprise.
“Why, the screams we heard,” Falon said as if in surprise. “When several knights and lords were captured by the Frog peasantry, they cried all sorts of foul things such as ‘tax evaders’ and ‘tyrant lickspittles’ before they began carving on their bodies,” she lied, creating all sorts of terrible things which she figured the locals had wanted to do but simply hadn’t had the time for. “We were certain they’d caught you. Thank the Prince that, in his mercy, you were spared such indignities.”
“Right, exactly. That said, I don’t recall reading your report…Lieutenant,” he said, changing the subject and launching a nice little dig there at the end.
“My apologies; I just lit three candles for your soul last night. I swear to get right on it,” Falon vowed fervently, silently laughing at the increasingly disgruntled look on Captain Warrick’s face. She’d get Tug on the report right away first thing.
As for Lord Casper, after the way he ran away during the middle of the battle to save his own skin, leaving her to hold the bag, she couldn’t care less what he thought. If Lord Quinn hadn’t captured Froggor’s Heir, it’s likely they would have all died—or, if not, she shuddered to think how bad things might have gotten.
“Your piety is commendable, I suppose,” Lord Casper’s lip curled and he turned as if to go.
“Oh, there was one other thing,” Falon said as an idea struck her. After her award-winning performance, she hoped the ‘Captain’ would be well-inclined to grant her request and get rid of her. After the way he’d disappeared in the middle of battle, and then hadn’t even bothered to check up on his nominal fighting company for days afterward, she would just as soon be quit of his company.
“What is it, Lieutenant?” Casper asked with a sigh of long suffering.
“Although the majority of the Swans are recent recruits, myself and a number of the men have been in continuous service since last fall. That’s almost a full year now,” she explained, “without any rest or relief. I was wondering if—”
“Request denied,” Lord Casper said, shaking his head.
“But I haven’t even—” Falon said crossly, upset at being shut down before she could even finish speaking. This was just like a repeat of Captain Cromont’s tent.
“No furlough to see your families, and no release from the army for yourself or any of the men, if that’s what you were about to say,” Captain Warrick said flatly.
“What. But why?” Falon couldn’t keep the petulance out of her voice. “We’ve fought three wars for the Prince. Surely we deserve—”
“Deserve?” his head snapped around and he glared at her. “They are peasant warriors and you a country knight, elevated from a squire’s family; you’ve gotten more than you could have even dreamed of in one short year of following this Prince! You don’t deserve a thing. What you owe is loyalty—both to the Prince who elevated you and to the Kingdom you live in. In case you haven’t heard, we are under serious threat. The King is sending an army to the southern border because the Southern Mountain and his harridan of a daughter, the Princess in Pink, have turned their eyes northward. If this affair cannot be settled with a marriage alliance then I fear this will become a war not just over a critical pass and trade route, but an all-out war between kingdoms in a bid for hegemony! In his grace and wisdom, the Prince has called his banners and even now rides south ahead of us in support of the King. The Swan has pledged to the Prince. Your company is that pledge. Man up and prepare to fight, lest I fear that by this same time next year you may see mountaineers stomping all over the fields of the midlands,” he scolded her in a withering voice.
Falon’s fists were clenched, but there really was nothing to say.
Turning on his heel, the young Lord Warrick stalked off.
Placing a hand on her head, Falon rubbed her forehead. It was yet another war in the offing, and it looked like she was in it for the duration. When would it ever end?
Blindly walking through camp, Falon’s feet finally found themselves outside of the familiar tent of Madame Tulla.
Reaching up, she knocked on the wooden board hanging above the door but there was no stir from within and no answer. No one was home.
Shaking her head and wondering just what she’d been thinking coming to this particular tent, of all places, Falon resolutely turned away. If there was another war and no way she could get out of it, she was going to have to increase her fighting skills. That meant sword training, both for her and for the men with Sergeant Darius. But for her personally it also meant honing her witchery.
While she wouldn’t believe that the Prince was doing it for anything other than the chance to lift the Pink Princess’s skirt, until she saw evidence otherwise she did believe Warrick when he said that this could easily become more than just another mere border skirmish.
This could potentially be the biggest war she’d seen yet.
That meant she could no longer afford to reject her heritage. Instead, it was time she embraced it. And if Tulla was no longer an option then she was just going to have to make use of what tutors she had at hand—namely the Healing Wenches, and especially a certain Healing Witch.
After saving a woman from being burnt alive, the least she could do was share a little magic with her…right?
Resolutely, Falon returned to camp. There was going to be a short break before it was time for yet another life and death struggle. The weight of it all nearly crushed her, but for right now she could still bear it and as long as she could then she would.
Unlike what Warrick had implied, she was no coward.
She was Falon Rankin of the Old Blood. Witch. Warrior. And Knight. And it was time those around her learned what that meant.
Epilogue: Saint Aeofia Lives!
In the Short Mire, an elder tree—one of the many soul trees within the grove—began to shake and shiver.
As usual, no one was there to notice. The last elder to take root had done so many years ago, and his family were now themselves old. What energy they had was spent on the needs of grandchildren and great grandchildren, and the grove was a place more reserved for religious festivals and observances now than it was for directly communing with parents and ancestors, as it had been in the past.
Unseen and uncared for, the bark of this tree began to crack and fall off as first branches began to resemble arms and, finally, its roots began to resemble legs.
Prophetic dreams shook the firmament, disturbing an old soul in her rest until finally a living tree slowly morphed back into the figure of a woman—a naked woman of the Old Blood—who picked up one leg and then the other, breaking her connection with the earth, stretching her arms briefly, and then collapsing to the ground.
Unheralded and completely unknown to this uncaring of the modern world, sufficient time had passed to finally dull the harsh memories of a lifetime of struggle. This allowed the call of duty, of prophecy, and of Blood to bring a previously tired, ancient back into the land of the waking.
Three days and three nights passed before the woman awoke and sat up.
“I am… I am…!” spoke the woman in a voice that sounded more like two pieces of wood rubbing together than it did the living, breathing woman who spoke them.
Swallowing repeatedly, the woman dragged herself toward the sound of nearby water and then collapsed, her breaths coming harsh and ragged. After recovering she used her hands to bring cool, refreshing handfuls of fresh clean water to her lips. As the water entered her, not only did the woman’s throat begin to clear but the strength of the natural, living, moving world flowed into her.
“Aeofia!” she cried, water spurting from her mouth. And then she lay back on the grass, happily drumming her hands and heels of her feet on the soft earthen sod as she laughed, “I am Aeofia!”
She was alive. She was free. And the bitter memories of an often
terrible past no longer seemed as fresh and immediate as they had when she’d originally decided to rest with the ancestors.
Rising to her feet with her eyes half-closed, she could sense the strings of fate pulling her first one way and then another. Allowing the almost musical tug of the strings to suffuse her being, she began to dance as she sought to better understand the strange, almost musical patterns which now flooded her conscious mind. As she danced, she felt that strongest pull was to the south and to the east.
While she hummed, in tune with nature and just plain happy to be alive, she eventually faced that direction.
The blood of the people—the blood within her—was a faint cry compared to the overwhelming scream it had been when she’d decided to sleep. In a way, that was bad because it meant that her ties to this mortal world were weakened. But in a way it was good because it meant she was finally free—or at least she was more free than she had been the last time she walked this earth.
The weak blood-bond cried out hopelessly for a succor it did not expect to come, and even though she was not compelled to help such a weak call, her heart stirred. Cocking her head, she began walking southeast, her feet dancing along the heather and sod like a fairy across the mist covered moor.
She could sense through blood prophesy that in order to answer the call, she would need to raise a war band—but that would be easy. The need to assist in a rising ceremony, however…her mouth twisted. If she had been the same Aeofia who had chosen to take root—the one often called ‘Aife’ by those who still spoke of her—she would have done so without hesitation. But the new Aeofia—the one mostly freed from her previously soul-crushing burdens—wanted nothing more than to dance.
Prophesy said that what this world needed was more witches, but the firmament had lied to her in the past. Perhaps now was the time to balance those scales.
She would just have to see.
That day an old soul tree disappeared and Aeofia walked out into a brave new world, drawn out of the grove by the timeless song which resonated within her blood.
All across the land, in places that had long slumbered in peace and quiet, others began to rise up and take notice. And then they began to whisper that a Legend, Queen of the Old Blood, once again walked this earth. And each of them knew her by name as surely as they knew their own:
She was Aeofia, and was known to some as a Saint. But to those of her ken, and to those who could hear the eternal song which filled her Old Blood, she was something much, much more…
She was a Witch Queen.
The End
The Channeling (Rise of the Witch Guard Book 3) Page 27
