by Damien Lake
“Ah…Edwin. Floroes.”
“Churt’s the only archer we have left. The only dedicated archer, I should say.” Dietrik shifted position, bringing one knee up to his chest and wrapping his arms around it. He changed the subject by fiercely announcing, “I hope you finally learned your lesson, anyway!”
“What?” Marik jerked. He’d been remembering how Floroes had tended him without rest during the long trip back to Kingshome from his first near fatal encounter. Also about his first contract in Dornory’s barony, when he had come to know Edwin and count the grouchy archer as a friend.
“Having your head nearly burned away, you’d better realize it’s too big a target the way it is!”
“My head?” Marik’s confusion reared up anew.
“You’ve been acting like you’re the last word on swordsmanship for the past few months. You’ve been bloody pushing forward in battle like you believe you’re Basill Cerella come from beyond the veil.”
“I…My sword skills are—”
“Not half so good as you might think, mate!” Dietrik backed down slightly, moderating his tone. “I’m not denying you are good, because you are. But there’s a difference between good and ‘unbeatable’. You need to watch your bloody back, because I can’t do it all the time.”
“My…my ‘bloody back’ is fine! In case you forgot, I pushed the whole damned frontline straight into their center yesterday! Or the day before, or whenever it happened!”
Dietrik nodded. “As I said, you are good. But that wasn’t your sword skill, only your mage strength. And as strong as you are, there were a thousand different ways they could have taken you apart if they’d had a smart commander.”
Marik sniffed. “They did try. And I put them down each time.”
“Oh did they? How many times did they target you specifically?”
“Four times. I can remember them each clearly.”
Dietrik laughed, the sound pure, distilled mockery. “Say eleven times, mate, and then you’ll be correct.”
“Eleven? Don’t be preposterous. I know—”
“You know what you saw!” Dietrik barked. “And all you ever saw was what was right in front of you. Overconfidence! While you were working to push ahead of everyone else hard enough to leave us behind, you never once looked back to see if you actually had! Seven times we barely kept your back from sprouting feathers, or a steel sword, or from being brained by a bloody monster you never knew was there!”
“The monsters weren’t anywhere near us!”
“That’s exactly the point, mate! They were! A whole force came from the rear and cut their way back and forth wherever they pleased. A good thing they didn’t stay organized, or else they would have ground us into dog food! You better thank Sloan later, by the way. He was the only one who kept two of them from crushing your skull into applesauce.”
“Sloan…they were…they were…”
“They were about ten paces behind you. Only three paces to them, and no question who they meant to rip apart. The white-robes had them locked onto you like a cutpurse on a fat, dangling pouch.”
Marik searched his memories, wondering if he had ever felt so stunned in his life. He must have, but the instance eluded his recall.
“Sloan is not overly thrilled with you, I might add.” Dietrik shook his head, though with a rueful air this time. “You know you are a great fighter, but you need to work with the unit and squad, not alone. If we had organized around you, instead of spending all our time trying to bloody catch you, we would have put a serious dent in their tally roster!”
“I…” What could he say? Though it seemed inadequate beyond description, he said, “Dietrik, hey, I’m…I’m sorry.”
Dietrik studied him, and at last relented. “I can tell you mean it. So, no serious harm done. But you better be ready for a twelve round bout with Fraser. Sloan will only stare at you…you know what I mean. Fraser will have heard all-l-l-l about it by now.”
That was worth a new wince. “I guess…I don’t know what went wrong. I got good enough to hold off Colbey during our practices, so I guess…overconfidence…like you say.”
“Don’t look at it that way.”
“No, you’re right. I was overconfident! Why didn’t I see that? Why? My father, Chatham, and Colbey too all taught the same thing! Strength isn’t everything, and no one is as good as he usually thinks he is!” He slapped his forehead, then yelped in pain.
“I meant it the other way around. To be candid, I don’t think you became good enough to hold off Colbey. I think he got sloppy enough that you could hold him off.”
“What are you talking about?”
Dietrik fingered his chin. After a long pause, he said, “I don’t believe he is well, mate. After the explosion, he got, well…he got funny.”
“Funny?”
Details followed, Dietrik explaining how he had noticed Colbey’s peculiar behavior, at first thinking it might be because the helm he wore as a disguise had been ripped away during the explosion. He spoke to the point where Colbey started screaming.
“And you remember how much he changed over the last months. I believe something in Tullainia must have unhinged him.”
“Screaming? I can’t imagine that.”
“It happened,” Dietrik assured him. “He was screaming at the ground, then looking at his hands and screaming louder. He kept twisting his ears whenever he wasn’t staring at his hands.”
“Where is he? Is Glynn looking after him as well?”
“Not a bit, mate. Colbey spent ten minutes screaming shrill as any woman I’ve ever heard before suddenly jackrabbiting straight into the forest. Left his sword and dagger and everything behind. He never stopped howling.”
The image of Colbey in such a hysteria…he knew Dietrik told the truth, and yet he could hardly credit it. Could form no imagery of it in his mind.
“We might have seen the last of him,” Dietrik finished. “If he is completely out of his tree, it might be just as well.”
“I suppose,” Marik muttered. Colbey? What happened to you?
“Anyway,” Dietrik mentioned while he rose, “we decided to move back fifty miles from the Stoneseams and sort out what’s what. We’ll mind our own business unless the black soldiers push this far into Galemar.”
Dietrik meant to leave. Marik forestalled it by stating, “They’ll send us back to put them down. No doubt in my mind.”
“Don’t be so hasty to that conclusion.” Marik studied Dietrik with curiosity. “News came in this morning by army messenger. It went out to all the division and regiment heads.”
“News? What next?”
Dietrik’s face soured further. “Seems with us all so busy over here to the west, Nolier started feeling frisky again. They are sending troops across the Hollister River to seize the land we all bled so much for to reclaim.”
He ducked through the flap, and Marik felt like sinking through the cot into the ground. This on top of the rest was too much.
Marik had become a mercenary in hopes of finding his father. So far he had only found trouble and near-death experiences. There still existed the chance of finding Rail by working as a mercenary, except with massive armies squeezing the kingdom from both sides, it forced him to wonder what future any mercenary in Galemar might face over the next year.
Epilogue
Bird chatter, the random squirrel, a distant forest cat calling to its mate at a successful kill. The forest was never silent, though it seemed far emptier than ever before in his memory. Cool air filled the expansive woods. It felt hollow, a still space through which dangling moss wafted on slight breezes, and massive leaves rustled overhead.
After generations, the village’s presence could no longer be felt in the deep Rovasii.
Hardly any damage had been put right, despite the years since the tragedy. Thomas still returned every few days. The destruction had been his one slip in a lifetime of dedicated service. His job, along with the other Guardians, had been to safeg
uard not only the pool his ancestors had been at a loss to deal with, but the people most of all.
The people.
His people.
Two walkways remained, yet no maintenance was granted to them. Trusting his weight to the old suspension paths would be like risking a half-rotted branch. All the others hung in mossy tatters against the massive Euvea trunks. Boards had gone missing, most broken on that terrible day. Ropes thicker than his wrist ended in snapped frays, the cords untwisting into countless fibers. Frayed ends grown green with time.
Another building had fallen since his last visit. An old storage shed only slightly larger than a bedroom. He remembered it had housed the multihued lanterns for the Grove Festival nights. The long lantern strings had stretched between younger Euveas in the large festival grove. Colored paper wrapped around coiled switches housing small candles. Better than four-hundred lanterns suspended throughout the clearings, he recalled. Long tables beneath had held massive feasts. Every villager not helping at the cook pits would sit and talk and laugh. Children were never content to sit still for longer than it took to eat the feast specialties that only appeared at such occasions. They would always run to every corner and cranny between gnarling roots in small gangs to search out each lantern, then argue about what the fanciful creature, picture or words painted in black ink on the glowing paper might mean. No prize had ever been offered but there had always been competition among the groups to see which could ferret out the most and decipher their meanings.
All gone. Ten or fifteen lanterns had needed to be replaced each year when they wore down, new creations with different artwork taking their places so the search would never be quite the same. The children always took great pride in being the one to discover a lantern on its first appearance. Thomas could remember that simple pleasure reaching back to his own childhood, and further beyond to the village’s founding, most likely. A simple string of lanterns, yet with so much history wound through the cord on which they hung. Gone forever.
He’d found the lanterns’ remains during the aftermath, when the survivors had canvassed the ruins to uncover any useful salvageable supplies. The storage room had since served to house nothing except dust and squirrel nut caches. Seeing the broken walls shattered against the Euvea roots breaching the still pool waters below…it almost pained his heart as much as seeing those torn and trampled lantern fragments had.
Most buildings, or their ruins, still remained treeborn. Only the platforms severely damaged in the attack had finally given way. The cats-cradle of walkways, the multileveled village, perhaps they might be rebuilt someday. Someday.
That day would be long after his death, if the survivors ever birthed enough descendants to repopulate the village. If they survived so long, and if the limping existence they eked out in the sealed area did not prove to be a slow death while they slowly succumbed to despair.
A ruined, decaying village, held in the trees above the shallow waters. They dared not maintain what little had escaped intact for fear that if the attackers returned, the signs would alert them to the survivors’ continued existence.
Shuffling scrapes caught Thomas’ ear immediately. From above rather than from the ground. From a road-wide Euvea branch that led into the village from the forest.
No outsider had ever climbed to the Euvea pathways before this. Thomas knew no scouts would be so careless of the noise made by their feet. Who approached his ruined home so oddly?
He rested a hand on his sword hilt, the other on his dagger. Whoever it might be would emerge from the shadows soon enough.
The feet came into the soft light first, followed by the rest of the man. Thomas felt his eyes goggle while he took Colbey in. His clothing was proper for a scout in the winter season, but over it he wore an odd black leather vest. It looked as little cared for as the rest of him.
Colbey met his eyes. Thomas had never seen such a haunted gaze in his life, the broken despair deeper even than in the villagers who would be crippled for their remaining lives. His eyes were half red, the veins bloodshot, and his face beneath was gummy with unwashed secretions. Aside from washing, it had been days since his cheeks met a razor, and his hair could have served well to house an entire avian family.
Thomas said nothing. The sight startled him greatly, though he would have held his silence in any event. First words belonged to him who approached.
Instead of words, Colbey shocked Thomas to his soul’s depths. He would never have expected it from any man, but this one least of all. Not from the proud trainee he knew so well.
Colbey’s face screwed up. Tears started plowing tracks through the grime, hardly the first in recent history. He collapsed to his knees before Thomas, his head pitching forward.
His surprise barely allowed him movement enough to catch Colbey’s head when it buried in his stomach. The younger man’s arms wrapped around his legs. He started to bawl. Great heaving sobs, his entire body hitching between breaths.
Thomas, thunderstruck, cradled Colbey’s head while the man cried with raw emotion frightening in its intensity. The older Guardian’s words came in a whisper, forced through his clenching throat.
“Oh, you poor bastard. What in all the lands have you been through?”
* * * * *
“I would not have expected that of Adrian.”
“The task, I fear, has always been larger than his capabilities,” Xenos replied to King Lambert Soieel, lord over all Arronath. Or so the man believed. “Had he entrusted more to the colonels you, in your wisdom, assigned to help him carry out your orders, then undoubtedly such a tragedy would never have occurred.”
Lambert nodded absently, his cloudy mind mostly taken with Secunda’s intimate caresses rather than in focusing on the matters at hand. He smiled down to where she stretched across the silken bed large enough to sleep twelve. His satin bed robe hung open to reveal his nakedness where he sat. Her belly rubbed his lower back, and he bent his head to steal a kiss and fondle her breast though the sheer fabric, little better than a veil.
Xenos waited. All to the good that Lambert could see no further than wherever she stood. After several licentious exchanges, Secunda turned her gaze away, in the advisor’s direction. Lambert followed her eyes, becoming aware of him again.
“He died, correct?” The tone that should have emerged cold and stern instead sounded dreamy and uncaring. “That is what comes of wanting to shoulder an entire load on your own shoulders.”
“Indeed, your majesty. This bodes ill for Arronath. There can be no doubt, with the death of your general and one of the colonels you personally sent to aid him, that the dangers posed by the Council of Kings must be the dark threat foreseen by your seers.”
“Yes, no doubt,” he murmured, but his attention was on Secunda’s hand, which had reached around to caress between his legs. He leaned back against her, one hand massaging her calves, the other rubbing along her veil-covered back. After a long moment, he remembered Xenos. “You are certain the report is accurate?”
“The army mages are well trained in these matters. The reporting mage had enough witnesses to warrant breaking the usual schedules and make a top-clearance-priority message.”
He nodded absently while Secunda’s fingers occupied his attention. “What then…ah…what do you propose?”
“It is time you appointed a new head of your army. A leader you can trust without question, and who is capable of achieving success.”
“It was too much for Adrian. Who do you have in mind?”
“I am the only one you can trust, as you well know, your majesty. With all the schemers and vipers I have uncovered for you among your court, you can trust none but me.”
That shook Lambert from most of his daze. “You, Xenos? I cannot spare you from my side! I need you here, to help me root out the rest of the worms and their plots against me!”
“I have put a choke on them. And I can see to it that they are too busy vying with each other to cause any great mischief. And your new quee
n,” he bowed to Secunda, “has proven adept at the court’s machinations, as you remember. She will spot any ill advised plays made against you until my return.”
“I am uncertain. I do not like the idea.”
“I will deal with the problem in a timely manner. Without trusted personnel in place, I must go there to see it done properly.”
Lambert shook his head. “I never implied you could not, Xenos. Still, is this the best idea?”
Secunda quickened her dexterous fingers on his malehood, distracting him while Xenos briefly touched his mind with the power. Care was needed. The king’s Healers checked him thoroughly on a regular basis, treating his mind as well as his body. Manipulating him without detection required skill.
It had become easier with Secunda distracting him lately. His diverted attentions made the work far less complicated.
With a careful ribbon of power touching Lambert’s mind, Xenos replied, “Yes, your majesty. It is a most wise decision. I will be honored to serve you in such capacity.”
Lambert nodded vaguely, then with firm conviction. He stood from the bed, facing Xenos and pulling his robe closed to conceal the effects of Secunda’s manipulations. “Advisor Xenos, you have proven capable on any number of matters. We wish you to travel across the sea and assume command over Our forces. We expect success where Adrian only provided failure.”
“It will be as you command, your majesty.” Xenos bowed deeply, one arm folded over his stomach, the other extending sideways.
“Come. We must announce Our decision to the court!” Lambert walked through the bedroom door to find his wardrobe attendants, Advisor Xenos maintaining a respectful distance behind.
* * * * *
Rail rubbed his temples. His heart had finally settled down, but it took longer each day. Pain in his head throbbed a dull drumbeat. The only saving grace was that it had not flared up too badly this morning.
