Once upon a Spring morn ou-2

by Dennis L McKiernan

  Roel grunted and said. “I saw my fill of them during the war. They are swift, but are not as nimble as horses.

  And the warriors astride were quite good, especially with the bow; we were hard-pressed to defeat them. You and I must take care, Celeste, for should this be a military train, such men are fierce.”

  “Roel, someday, you will have to tell me of this war.”

  “Ah, me, cherie, I do not like to think about it, for many good men died. . on both sides, I am certain.”

  “When you are ready, my love.”

  They rode without speaking for a while, and then Roel said, “It’s not like single combat, where two knights agree upon the rules ere the fighting begins. Instead it is a charge of steeds and knights and footmen and a horrendous collision of armies crashing against one another, and confusion and chaos and a wild uproar filled with the clangor of weapons and belling of steeds and shouts of rage and cries of fear and the screams of the dying. All one can do is lay about and lay about and lay about, with hammers smashing and swords riving and spears stabbing and arrows piercing, with severed heads flying and entrails spilling forth like hideous blossoms blooming; hands and arms are lopped off in a dreadful pruning, and bones snap and skulls crunch beneath crushing blows. And then, finally it is over, and it seems a silence reigns, but the silence is only relative to what has gone before, for the field is littered with the dead and the dying, and men weep and cry out in an agony born of horrendous wounds, and horses scream of broken legs and ripped-open bellies; and the gorcrows and looters come to pick over the carrion, and-” Of a sudden, Roel became aware that Celeste had stopped the horses and had dismounted and now held him by the hand, and tears spilled down her cheeks as she looked up at him.

  Her voice choked, yet she managed to say, “You need never tell me of this war you fought.” He nodded once, sharply, and whispered, “Let us ride on.”

  She looked up at him for a moment more, and then kissed his fingers and released his hand and turned and mounted her mare.

  The caravan continued to fare starwise across the grassy plains, and as Celeste and Roel drew closer, Celeste said, “It looks as if their road will join ours. See, it curves ’round and does not cross over; I think it becomes one with this way.” Roel nodded but said nothing, and on they went.

  Ahead, the caravan followed the arc and soon it was plodding duskwise, ahead of Celeste and Roel. It moved at a more leisurely pace than they did, and slowly the horses atrot overtook the ambling camels.

  “It is a merchant train,” said Roel, his first words in a while. “Not a military convoy. They have an escort of guards, though, so be wary.”

  Celeste slipped the keeper from her long-knife, and she strung her bow, though she slipped it back into its saddle scabbard.

  As they neared the tail end of the train, three camel-mounted guards-dusky-skinned and dressed in turbans and jodhpurs and boots and long riding coats under torso-covering bronze-plated armor, and armed with curved scimitars and lances and bows-slowed and waited for Celeste and Roel to reach them. One of the warders held out a hand palm forward and called out,

  “Wakkif!”

  His meaning clear, both Roel and Celeste reined to a halt, and their mounts snorted as if to blow their nostrils free of the somewhat rank odor of camels, and it took a firm hand to keep the horses from sidling away.

  “Min inte? Mnain jayi? Intu kasdin ’ala fen?” demanded the guard.

  “Do you speak the common tongue?” asked Celeste.

  The warder frowned. “Kult e?”

  Celeste sighed and said, “Parlez-vous la vieille langue?”

  “Kult e?”

  She turned to Roel. “It seems he speaks neither Common nor the Old Tongue.”

  “I have heard such language as his in my travels, though I do not speak it,” said Roel. “It sounds as if he is from Arabia.”

  The man looked at Roel and said, “Betif’ ham

  ’arabi?”

  Roel shrugged and shook his head, saying, “I think he just asked if I speak Arabic.”

  Another warder came riding back, this one with gold braid ’round his turban. He spoke to the guards, and they treated him with deference.

  “It seems he’s the captain,” said Roel.

  The man looked at Celeste and dismissed her with a gesture, at which she bristled but remained silent, but Roel he eyed with some respect. Yet he, too, did not understand either the Old Tongue or Common.

  Roel clapped a hand to his own chest and said,

  “Chevalier Roel.” He gestured toward Celeste and said,

  “She is with me.”

  Again Celeste bristled, but still she remained silent.

  Once more Roel slapped his chest and then pointed duskward along the road and said, “We ride yon.” The captain slowly scanned the plain; the land was empty as far as the eye could see. He said something to the three other warders, and they reined their camels about, the animals turning at the tugs on their nose rings, and with the beasts groaning and hronk ing, and blue tassels swinging from saddle blankets, and the riders thumping the camels with switches and crying, “Hut, hut, hut, haijin. Yallah, yallah!” they rode to catch the caravan and resume their posts.

  The captain once more scanned out to the horizon, and then said, “Kammil,” and he gestured for them to continue riding duskwise.

  Quietly Roel said, “Cherie, if they are from Aegypt or Arabie, they do not consider women the equal of men.

  It would be best if you rode slightly back and to my left.”

  Celeste hissed, and then muttered, “As you will, my master. Yet be aware, love, you will someday pay for this.” Then she grinned at Roel’s gape.

  Roel then laughed and heeled his mare and together they rode onward, did the knight and his lagging princess.

  And slowly they passed alongside the camel train, the beasts laden with trade goods. Dark-skinned men walked alongside, while others rode, trailing the pack animals on tethers running to nose rings.

  “That must be painful,” said Celeste, “yet fear not, my love, I’ll not leash you that way.”

  Roel burst into laughter, and on they fared.

  For the rest of the day they rode, and that evening as dusk was falling, and even as they espied in the distance to the fore the twilight bound looming up into the sky, they heard water running somewhere to the starwise side of the road, and there they found a spring bubbling out from the ground and running through the grass and down a gentle slope.

  “That’s odd,” said Roel, looking about. “There are no hills or mountains nearby, yet here we have a fountainhead.”

  “ ’Tis Faery, love,” said Celeste. She glanced at the darkening sky and added, “Perhaps we should camp here.”

  “Oui,” said Roel. “It is a good place. And on the morrow we can cross through the twilight and mayhap find the gray arrow.”

  The next dawn, as they were breaking camp, a turbaned rider came to the spring and stopped to let his camel drink its fill.

  “A scout, I think,” said Roel, “from the caravan.” As the beast sucked water, Celeste stepped to the man and offered him a cup of tea. The scout took it and smiled and nodded his thanks.

  Roel saddled the mares while Celeste removed the nose bags and stowed them away. As she tied the bundles, the turbaned man rinsed out the tin cup and stepped to her side, and smiling and nodding, he handed the vessel to her. Then he helped Roel lade the gear onto the geldings. Finally, all was ready, and Celeste and Roel mounted up, and the scout strode to his now-grazing camel and commanded the beast to kneel; then he, too, mounted and got the animal to its feet.

  They rode together in a comfortable quietness for a ways, still going duskwise. The horses snorted and were somewhat nervous in the presence of the camel, yet

  Roel and Celeste held them firmly, and after a while they settled.

  But within a league they came to a juncture, where a trail continued on toward the twilight bound, but the road began a slow arc starwise
. Roel reined to a halt, Celeste stopping as well. The scout stayed his camel alongside them, a puzzled look on his face.

  “Which way, cherie?” asked Roel. “What says the map?”

  Celeste unfolded the vellum and looked and sighed.

  “This road is not on the chart, nor the fork and the path beyond. We are to look for three boulders at the crossing, though.” Roel nodded and said, “Then let us choose.” As Celeste refolded the map she said, “Perhaps ‘left is right, but right a mistake’ applies here.”

  “Hmm. . do you think? If so, then we should take the straight-ahead path.”

  “I agree,” said Celeste, nodding.

  “Betif’ tikir bi~e?” asked the scout.

  “I believe he wants to know where we plan to go,” said Roel, and he pointed to himself and Celeste and then down the trail toward the wall of twilight looming in the near distance.

  Frantically the scout shook his head and waved his hand back and forth in a negative gesture, saying, “La!

  La! Abulhol! Abulhol!”

  Roel shrugged and turned his palms up, clearly showing that he didn’t understand.

  The man then patted up and down the length of his own body from shoulders to hips and then moved his hands as if he were turning his torso sideways. And then he stretched and stretched the envisioned form and held out his arms wide, indicating a gigantic body. He drew forth from the lower tip of his spine a make-believe tail and added it to the pretend body. Then he framed his face and lifted an imaginary head and placed it on the conjured creature. Lastly he clawed at the air and roared and then said, “Abulhol.”

  “Some sort of huge, man-headed beast,” said Celeste.

  Roel nodded. “Still, cherie, beast or no, I deem we must take the sinister way, for if left is right, and right a mistake, then somewhere ahead we must cross.” Celeste nodded and said, “Even if this isn’t the right way, we can follow the wall till we find the three boulders.”

  “Just so,” said Roel, and he turned to the scout and shrugged. Then Roel touched his shield and lance and said, “Large or not, my spear and a swift charge should do.”

  The scout moaned and shook his head and said, “La, la. Inte raltan.”

  “Whatever he is telling us,” said Celeste, “he thinks we are making a mistake.”

  “Nevertheless. .,” said Roel, and he turned up his hands and shrugged, and then heeled his mare and started down the path, Celeste following.

  For long moments the scout watched them ride away.

  Then he shook his head and turned his camel, and starwise along the road he fared.

  A candlemark passed and then another, and nearer to the bound rode Celeste and Roel. Finally, “There are the boulders,” said Celeste, pointing ahead. “I deem we have chosen aright.”

  Roel nodded and said, “If indeed we were to continue duskwise, though Lady Doom did not say.” Finally they came to the crossing and stopped. Roel dismounted and tethered his mare to Celeste’s gelding, then tied a rope ’round his waist. He handed the coil to Celeste, and she tied the end to her saddle cantle. As Roel took his shield in hand and drew Coeur d’Acier, he grinned and said, “Try not to drag me across all of Faery, my love.”

  Celeste tentatively smiled but said nought.

  Roel strode into the twilight, Celeste following, horses in tow. As they reached the midmost ebon wall, she stopped and payed out the line as Roel stepped on beyond. More and more length he took, and finally all rope was let out. Then it went slack, and Celeste began drawing it in and coiling it. At last Roel came through the midpoint, and in the darkness as he untied the line from his waist he said, “ ’Tis good that we filled all skins with water, for ’tis sand, all sand beyond, great dunes for as far as the eye can see.”

  “What of the monstrous man-headed creature?” asked Celeste.

  “No sign of such,” said Roel. “I believe the scout was speaking of a mythical beast that only exists in fable or imagination.”

  Though Roel could not clearly see Celeste in the twilight, she shook her head, saying, “Forget not, love, ’tis Faery.”

  Roel groaned and said, “Ah, me, you would have to bring that up.” He stepped to his mare and hung his shield on its saddle hook, and then untethered the horse and mounted and rode forward to Celeste and said,

  “Shall we?”

  “Let’s do,” said she, and laughed, and smiling, together they rode into the desert sands.

  31

  Cient

  Over the sea raced the Eagle and into a raging storm, and the decks pitched and men were hard-pressed to keep control of the animals. Many members of the warband lost their breakfasts and lunches and other meals throughout the day, and yet they persevered as under foul weather they ran. Yet the winds were strong and in their favor, and three days later they arrived in Port Cient just as night drew across the land, and they spent much of that eve off-loading the animals and equipment and men.

  It was here that Vicomte Chevell and some of his crew declared they would go with the warband, and so they depleted the fund of horses in that port city.

  And running at a fair pace, the combined force rode away from Cient the very next dawn.

  There were but six days left ere the night of the dark of the moon, and they had far to go.

  32

  Sand

  Into a world of dunes the chevalier and princess rode under a cloudless sky. The desert stretched out before them like a golden ocean of long, rolling waves frozen in place. They had entered in midmorn, and the day was mild, rather than scorching, as across the sands they fared, as if spring or autumn lay upon this part of Faery, rather than a time of torrid summer or that of frigid winter.

  As they had entered this domain, Roel had looked about and said, “I see no markers to get us back. What does the chart say?”

  Celeste had then unfolded the vellum and had looked at the notation. “It says there is an obelisk at hand.” She looked up and ’round. “Yet I see none.” Roel sighed. “Covered by sand, I think. Is there any other means to find our way to this very place again?” Once more Celeste peered at the chart. “The Spx lies due duskward from here. Hence if we ride due dawnwise from whatever it might be, we can come back. .

  Ah, yet wait, there is a way to the Changeling realm from the Spx; hence we do not need to return.”

  “Another way?”

  “Oui. Across two borders. If we find the gray arrow at Spx or El Fd or Ct Dd or mayhap somewhere beyond, it will be the shortest way to the Lord of the Changelings’ tower.”

  “Bon! Then let us ride.”

  And so they had ridden.

  And the day had waxed and waned, and in midafternoon they had fared beyond the dunes and into an arid wasteland with nought but sparse patches of thorny scrub dotting the barren, rock-laden ’scape.

  On they went across the desert, and as evening drew nigh Roel said, “Watch for birds.”

  “Why so, love?”

  “We need water and a place to camp, and at dawn and dusk they will lead the way.”

  “And you know this because. .?”

  “Some of the war took place in an arid waste; I learned it from those who had been there as we rode home.”

  Celeste asked no more, for she was yet shaken by Roel’s revelations with regard to armies in war, and she knew that he was deeply troubled by his experiences in battle. Oh, my love, my dearest heart, do you see blood on your hands? What was it you said? That good men had died on both sides? Oui, that was it. Until that very moment I had never thought of the enemy, the foe, as having good men as well. Non, but mayhap I have an ex-cuse for never thinking such, for all I have known as an enemy are Redcap Goblins and Trolls and Bogles and other such vile beings. . Yet I wonder: are Redcaps ever good? Trolls? Bogles and the like? I do know that some Goblins are pleasant and well-mannered and kind: House Goblins for one. Barn Goblins for another. And I have seen-

  “There!” called Roel.

  Celeste looked where Roel pointed. In the
near distance directly ahead two swift doves flew toward what appeared to be a great jumble of boulders. They spiraled ’round and down and disappeared among the huge rocks.

  “We should find water there,” said Roel, and he urged his mare into a trot, with Celeste following after.

  Downslope they went, into a broad basin, in the mid of which there rose up the enormous pile of massive stones. As they approached, they could see enshadowed openings here and there, dark slots where the gigantic boulders rested against one another. “We’ll have to be wary,” said Roel, “for we know not what might reside within: asps, vipers, scorpions, jackals, even desert lions.

  If it’s a large beast or a den of snakes, I deem the horses will give warning.”

  “Would doves likely go into a nest of vipers?” asked Celeste as she strung her bow.

  “Mayhap,” said Roel, cocking his crossbow and laying a quarrel in the groove. “Who knows what birds and other creatures will do for a drink?” Celeste smiled. “Well, my love, we are about to find out, n’est-ce pas?”

  “Indeed we are,” replied Roel.

  They rode to the foot of the great mound of monstrous boulders, rising up out from the barren plain much like a rocky tor. Roel said, “Cherie, I would have you wait with our horses while I go within, for who knows what might come running out? And I would not have the animals bolt.”

  Celeste sighed in exasperation, but then she smiled and said, “And just what should I do if it is you who comes running out?”

  Roel grinned and said, “Flee!”

  “If so, perhaps I’ll leave you a horse, but then again, maybe not.”

  Roel laughed and dismounted and handed Celeste his reins. As Celeste looped the lead about the forebow of her saddle and nocked an arrow, Roel took a lantern from one of the packs and struck the striker and opened the hood wide, and with his crossbow in hand, in through one of the great crevices he cautiously stepped.

  Moments later, the horses flinched and snorted in startlement and Celeste jerked up her bow as, in a thunder of wings, birds fled the jumble, desert crows crying and doves whistling as they hammered away. Off to the right a jackal ran out from the rocks and through the scrub, yipping in its flight.