by R. G. Long
The man’s anger ebbed through his voice as he spoke for the first time:
“This city harbored the unclean. We have cleansed it of its filth!”
He attempted to knock aside Holve’s spear with his arm. In return, Holve spun his spear around, and ensured that the man would never again rise off the ground where he lay.
Ealrin looked around him and saw the devastation.
People lay slain in the streets: either by the sword or by fire. It was horrible to see. And yet, down the main road another group of three men walked. They stopped abruptly, and then began to run. For some reason, Ealrin began to run too. Holve followed him closely.
The men overturned an abandoned horse cart. One of them pulled out two small children, no older than twelve Ealrin thought. Laughing, he threw the girl to one of his companions, who threw her up over his shoulder while she bit, scratched, screamed and fought him. He grabbed the boy by his shirt, and lifted him into the air. The boy kicked out at him, hard enough to make him grunt in pain. Ealrin was yelling at the men now. The one holding the boy turned to look at Holve and Ealrin. In what couldn't have been more than a breath, the man drew his sword and ran the boy through. Throwing him to the ground, he began towards Ealrin and Holve.
Ealrin was sprinting now, running at the men, swearing. He hadn’t used these particular words in recent memory. They fell flat as he ran.
What was the purpose of this senseless violence?
“You foul barbarians! Surrender the girl immediately! Drop your weapons!” he yelled.
Two drew their swords and approached him, as the third, which was carrying the girl, ran off in the opposite direction. The young girl was screaming for the boy, who lay dying on the ground,
Before Ealrin realized how he had done it, the two men lay dead at his feet. His sword had been quicker than his thoughts; he had to save the girl. As he sprinted in her direction he felt deeply in his bones that his life depended on hers.
Holve had run ahead of him, and had now caught up with the man. He threw the girl aside and scrambled for his weapon. Before he could retrieve it, he was skewered by Holve's spear.
The girl scampered away from Holve, and back to the boy who was under the cart with her.
Ealrin was at his side. His breathing was ragged as he coughed up blood. There were only moments of his life left. The girl was now beside them. Ealrin stood to give them room, and to survey the surrounding area. Were there others, they would soon encounter lurking in the next building?
"Dece! Dece! Don't die Dece! Stay with me! Who will keep me safe if you die!? Dece! Dece!"
The girl broke down into sobs over the boy. Holve walked up slowly to them.
"With her sobbing like that we're bound to attract every raider who hasn't heard us already. We've got to get somewhere safe," he said. Rage still burned on his face. Still, Ealrin could see pain in Holve's eyes.
"Dece! Dece!"
The light had gone from the boy’s eyes. Ealrin bent down, and shut them with his fingers. He then turned to the girl.
"I'm sorry, but we have to leave this place if we are to stay safe. You have to get somewhere safe. Do you have family nearby?"
The girl shook her head.
"Come with us. There's no safety in being out in the street."
She didn't answer.
"You have to come with us," he said, beginning to fear they would be set upon soon if they stayed where they were.
Ealrin wasn't sure his words were registering to her. Her eyes were still full of tears, yet her sobs had abated slightly. She was biting into her knuckles fiercely.
Finally, she nodded her head and stood over the boy. Ealrin took her hand.
Holve needed no further comment. He led the way down a side street, then to another. At every corner, he checked to see if anyone was close by or watching. They moved as quietly and as quickly as they could. Soon they found themselves at a door that was blackened and burned. Holve forced it open, and motioned for them to go inside, and then closed the door behind them.
As soon as they were inside, Holve went straight to work. The occupants of the house were either no longer living or had run for it. He managed to find several things those raiders and looters wouldn’t have found immediately satisfying: food, herbs, and other things useful for traveling. Apparently Holve knew this house well, for he scoured through cabinets and chests in the wrecked, and already run through, common area that would have gone unseen by someone unfamiliar with the house. Someone had come in through a back entrance, for the door was hanging from its hinges in an odd fashion, suggesting that it too had been forced open and then left hanging. Holve corrected it as best as he could, hiding them from view.
Ealrin turned his attention to the girl. She was shaking as she stared blankly off through a window. He moved her over to a chair and sat her down, then found a blanket and wrapped her in it. The shock was now taking its toll on her. Ealrin tried to get her to talk in order to bring her back to her senses.
“What’s your name?” he asked gently.
For a moment she just continued to stare out the window. A single tear fell from her cheek. After a long time, she answered softly:
“Blume. Blume Dearcrest."
Ealrin repeated the name out loud. It was a beautiful name. In fact, this girl did indeed look like she would blossom into a beautiful young woman. Her hair was long and blonde. Her face was still childlike, but those features were giving way to adulthood. The sadness that she bore now was the only thing keeping her green eyes from shining like Ealrin believed they could.
"Can you tell us what happened here?” He knew she had to keep talking. Something in him told him that she had to talk to stay in reality with Holve and him. Holve was still busying himself around the house. He had procured a pack of some sort and was filling it with the supplies he had laid out on the table beside Ealrin and Blume.
“They came before the suns had risen carrying torches and weapons. My brother and I were out in the streets early getting ready to open the shop our parents own. There were hundreds of them. They kept shouting that we were unclean and that the city had to be cleansed. They set fire to anything that would burn. They killed any who resisted them, but especially the non-humans. One of my friends, a girl elf, tried to run but...”
She paused. Whatever had happened to the girl elf would apparently haunt her for a long time. Tears began to flow again from her eyes, but she pressed on.
“My brother and I hid under a cart. We heard screams. The smoke was awful, but we lay as low as we could to try to avoid breathing it in. We were going to wait until night to sneak away. To find mom and dad. But then those men came and...”
Again she paused.
Her brother, Ealrin thought.
How horrible to see your own brother killed right before your very eyes.
“As they lifted me into the air I saw mom and dad’s shop. It was burned terribly. I don’t know if they were inside or if they made it or...”
Now she began to sob again. Ealrin didn’t know what else he could do for her. He got up and searched for a cup. Finding one, he filled it with water. He gave it to her and she drank, though her hiccupping made it difficult for her to swallow.
Holve spoke.
“We haven’t seen anyone in this city save for you and the raiders. We didn’t pass anyone on our way and I haven’t seen anyone moving about yet either. I doubt you’ll be safe if you stayed here, but I can’t guarantee your safety should you travel either.”
“We can’t leave her here, Holve,” Ealrin said, standing up to face him. "This is no place for a child.”
“Nor is the open road, where we’ll be vulnerable to attack,” Holve replied.
Ealrin looked back at the girl. She couldn’t be more than twelve or thirteen. There was no way to ensure that her parents were alive, only to check the ruins of their shop to see if their bodies remained.
“We have to take her somewhere safe, Holve. We have to.” Ealrin knew that his
voice was pleading. He also knew that he now felt responsible for her, though he hardly knew who she was. A child on any journey would indeed be difficult, not to mention perilous for her. But the ruins of a city were no place for her either.
“We’ll check her home for a sign that her parents are alive. If we can’t find them, then we’ll take her as far as the next city, but we can’t risk taking her further than that. Breyland is two days journey from here. That’ll be all we can do.”
Ealrin was satisfied with that. But then he knew that there was one more thing to do.
“I’m sorry for the loss of your brother,” he said as he knelt down to be level with Blume’s eyes. He took one hand of hers into his. It was freezing cold and shaking. “Will you come with us? You don’t know who we are, but know that while you are with us, no harm will come to you if it is within our power to prevent it.”
For the first time, Blume looked Ealrin directly in the eyes. Hurt. Pain. Anger. Sorrow. They were all there in her eyes. But hiding behind all of these was something Ealrin could see quite clearly. A beautiful determination.
She nodded yes, and the pair became a trio.
THE SEARCH FOR HER house took only a few moments. She knew the town very well. Blume showed them the house and Holve checked inside. He returned outside with a grim look on his face and shook his head.
He had found her parents.
She begged him to return inside and retrieve something from the floor underneath her parent’s bed: a small chest. While the rest of the house had been sacked, the chest, she spoke of should still be intact and hidden. When Holve again emerged from the house, he handed her the chest. She clung to it as if her very life depended on it. It was no larger than Ealrin’s two hands.
He offered to go inside to fetch some of her things, but she protested.
“I’ve nothing of value really. Our shop only sold enough to provide us our needs. My mother was to make me a new dress for the summer but...”
Ealrin understood. Her possessions she wore on her back.
Holve came over to her and looked at her properly. He then handed her a small knife in a sheath.
“Was this your father’s knife?” he asked her quietly.
Taking it in one hand, while still clutching the chest with the other, she nodded.
“Take it. Wear it at all times. Whatever you do, don’t take it off.”
Holve rose and looked off to the east.
"We’ll need to get going if we’re to make it to Breyland. Nightfall will happen before we are too far down the road. I don’t believe staying here will give us any advantages.”
And with that, the three of them struck out from the ruins of Weyfield, and onto the road to Breyland.
After they had climbed a hill, the full destruction of the city came into view as they glanced back at it. Blume looked back at what was once her home and stood silently for a moment. She then bowed her head and began to cry. Holve and Ealrin looked at each other. Ealrin bent down to one knee while Holve scanned the country around them.
The plains were beginning to fade and give way to the foothills of a mountain range that rose up from the northeast. The northern border of the Southern Republic was just beyond those mountains and past the next city they intended to leave Blume at. Ealrin had seen this on one of the maps Holve had showed him.
Ealrin took the girl by her shoulders and attempted to look into her eyes that were filled with tears and downcast.
“I can’t imagine what this is must be like for you, but you have to understand something: you have nothing left behind you. All that you have is ahead. You could spend every day of the rest of your life looking back and regretting. Or, you could choose to walk forward and live on. Would your parents, or your brother, wish for you to give up and stand on this hill forever, or continue living? I don’t know what lies ahead for you, Blume. But I do know that there is nothing back there for you either. There was great evil done today. You could choose to let that evil win by giving in to sadness and despair, or you could choose to fight against it by rising above it and showing the world what one good foot placed in front of the other can accomplish. Okay?”
Ealrin couldn’t know whether these were the words she needed to hear or not. It was all he knew to say though. He knew that some of those words spoke to him as well. Would he bemoan having lost his life before the crash of his ship in Good Harbor and his friend to the vile actions of goblins? Or would he instead keep living day by day in the face of great sadness and look for the one small thing that could sustain him: hope.
Slowly, Blume’s tears stopped and she looked up at Ealrin. She whispered something into his ear that was barely audible.
Without hesitating, he complied with her request.
He lifted her off the ground, cradled her against his chest as if carrying his own child, and continued down the path with Holve at his side.
From this moment on, Ealrin felt that his first, and most pressing need was to ensure the safety of and care for the little girl from Weyfield.
The one who no longer had a family.
20: A Time to Flee
Wisym stopped short when she crested the hill. Her scouts had confirmed her suspicions and reported to her four hours before, yet as she passed through the ancient trees that stood as sentinels in the forest of Ingur, she could not believe what her eyes were telling her.
Ingur lay in ruins.
The towers of their sister city lay crushed and broken among the ruins of what was once a beautiful elven metropolis. Trees that were older than the elders lay fallen and burned. These revered forest sentinels would no longer stand to protect the dwellers of the woods.
There had been no answer for their calls to aid because there was no one left to respond.
Wisym gave the command to search the rubble for survivors, sure in her heart that there would be none.
The elves at her command spread out and searched underneath stones, trees, and bodies for any sign of life.
Wisym herself walked through the city with her constant companion, Ithrel, at her side. The words of the elder still hung in her ears as she made her way to the elder tower of Ingur.
As they were sister cities, the towers that held their elders were identical to one another. Therefore Wisym knew that underneath the great raised platform was a bunker of sorts: the very last line of survival among the residents of an elven city.
When she arrived at the tower, there were hardly any ruins to search.
The massive tower of Ingur that housed no less than seven elders lay toppled in on itself. If there were survivors underneath the platform, they were beyond reach.
Wisym could imagine their pleas for help in her mind. Screams of desperate elves trapped under a mountain of rubble.
Wait, she thought, that was not made up in her head.
Wisym really did hear someone yelling for help. She turned to her friend to confirm what her ears were telling her, that someone nearby was alive.
"Elves!" Wisym cried out, knowing that some of the warriors she had brought from Talgel were close by. "To me!"
She followed the sounds, first faint and far away. As she ventured away from the tower of elders and more toward the center of the city, the plea for help grew louder in her ears.
The center of town, as she had remembered it from its previous glory, used to be a beautiful sight. A white stone fountain stood in the middle of a courtyard paved with stones. Twelve beautiful and ancient trees rose up in a circle around the fountain. Around one half of the circle were the shops where elvish craftsmen and artisans could sell their wares. Around the other half stood the homes of ancient and noble families. This was a gathering place of the elves here. This was a place of business and training as well as a place to celebrate and commune with one another.
But the place she remembered in her mind's eye was very far away from the reality she saw when she entered the city center.
All that remained in the once glorious fountain was rubble. The
pool that it had fed into it was ruined and, in one section, broken, allowing a steady stream of water to flow out of it.
The bodies of elves, warriors, children, women, and the old lay scattered in and among the city center. No one was spared for mercy or for pity. All were killed.
Save for the one elf that still cried out for help.
Wisym turned from the shops and followed the sounds of the voice in the shadow of one of the homes that surrounded the circular plaza.
And there outside of one of the houses, yet hidden underneath the trunk of one of the great ancient trees that surrounded the old fountain and other debris, lay a young servant elf. He could be no older than thirty, a child by elf reckoning. After clearing away some of the debris, she could see his eyes. He looked terrified. At the same time, as he looked into the eyes of Wisym, she saw a flood of relief wash over his face.
“Quick! Over here!” Wisym called.
Several elves came to aid her. They lifted the tree off of the young elf that had trapped his leg to the ground. Wisym looked at the leg and said a silent thanks to her elders; it was not crushed.
Several elves lifted the boy out of the rumble and laid him down close by, not wanting to move him much in case he was injured internally.
“What happened here?” Wisym asked him. “Was it goblins?”
In her heart, she knew the answer. Though throughout the whole city she saw fallen elves, there was not one body of an attacker. No goblin corpse littered the streets. Goblins don’t clean up after a battle. Goblins leave their dead in hopes to spawn more of their filth.
The arrows and shields that lay smashed in the streets were not the crude things made by goblin armorers.
These were much better made.
These were too well adorned.
The elf boy shook his head and spoke, though his voice was hoarse from lack of water and weak from lack of food.
“Men.”
As the boy spoke the word, Wisym heard the drums of goblins in the forest. Side by side with the trumpets of the armies of men.
