by Sean Rodden
“It means Whitey don’t win for once, Maddy,” Rooboong offered jauntily, but his smile was awkward and crooked.
Decan Regorius gazed at the strange configuration, pink eyes narrowed and uncharacteristically nervous, then stepped forward and swept the formation apart with the instep of one weatherworn boot.
“Bag ’em up, boys. No one wins tonight.”
When the foursome had finally settled for the few remaining hours of night, a solitary shape issued from the deep shadows between two tents, knelt, placed a palm on the earth beside the ebbing embers of the fire. A hiss escaped clenched teeth, the hand snapped back, flashed an emphatic sign of warding, and the figure hurriedly rose and strode into the cold, cold darkness.
No one wins tonight.
The sun emerged from the eastern horizon, red and radiant, slowly soaring into a cool clear sky, a sky free of cloud for the first time since the Erelian company had departed the grand city of Hiridith. Axennus Teagh had risen before the sun to bear reverent witness to the first glimmerings of the nascent day. He stood at the eastmost edge of camp, cerulean cloak wrapped close against the morning chill, grey-green eyes fixed dawnward. At his side was an officer of the Ambassadorial Guard, also gazing into the growing erubescent glow of the new morning sun.
“A red dawn,” murmured the officer stoically.
He was significantly shorter than the Ambassador, of dun complexion, his countenance flat and round, his long black hair pulled straight back and tied with a leather thong. The brown of his large round eyes was deep and dark, earthen, the rich hue of damp loam.
Axennus nodded. “Indeed.”
“Such a sunrise bodes danger to the traveler.”
The officer’s voice was low, somewhat alien in inflection, his words slow and deliberate as of one unaccustomed to the Westspeech.
“That warning pertains to the sea, Left Tenant,” replied Axennus. “Mariners only should beware a red morn.”
The smaller man did not immediately respond, apparently giving thought to the Ambassador’s contention – a courtesy only, in keeping with the ancient customs of the officer’s people.
Then, “I know little of the sea, Master Teagh,” said he, undeterred, “but in the lore of my people, the sun that rises over the wide waters also rises over the land.”
The Left Tenant was a Rhelman, a native of the broad green fields of Rheln, time-honored homeland to the tribal Horse Masters of the West. The Rhelnian civilization predated the Erelian by more than two thousand years, and was steeped in olden tradition, knowledge and wisdom. The Rhelmen were a proud and noble people, highly attuned to the complexities and simplicities of nature – lovers of peace, though fierce and fearless when pressed into battle. And their native tenacity was a thing of legend.
Axennus smiled. “So it does, Left Tenant,” he acquiesced softly.
The Rhelman had come to the North March Mounted Reserve in much the same manner, though differing in detail, as most members of that fabled company. Banished from his tribe and ostracized by his people for a transgression in his youth, he had endured years of solitary survival in the wilderness before chance and happenstance brought him to Hiridith, the sparkling Silver City of the Erelian Republic. And there he had been rejected and outcast by Erelian society for his strangeness and his inability – or unwillingness – to conform. For the Rhelman, ostracism was certainly not an unfamiliar thing.
“I would be wary this day, Master Teagh.”
Characteristically undaunted by the sheer enormity of the great walled metropolis, the Rhelman had nevertheless been unaccustomed to the closeness of urban society, an existence so distantly removed from the nomadic life of his youth and his subsequent exile in the wilderness. Discovering that Erelians found his Rhelnian name difficult, if not impossible, to pronounce, he had reluctantly adopted its Westspeech translation – a thing that further removed him from those about him.
“Wary or weary, Left Tenant Runningwolf?” Axennus reprimanded lightheartedly. “I do not doubt you slept little or not at all. I suspect you kept a vigil upon this little party of ours once again. Discover anything of interest?”
“I saw some of the men playing with themselves in the night,” Runningwolf reported laconically.
The Ambassador actually bit his tongue before risking a reply. “Amongst themselves, surely, Left Tenant.”
“I discern no difference, Master Teagh.”
Axennus simply smiled and decided the semantics of the matter did not elicit immediate explanation.
“Decan Regorius and some of his squad were playing the game they call Stones and Bones, Master Teagh. The one named Maddus threw a circle of thirteen stones, within which was a crux of a dozen bones with the sun stone at its heart. Two little bones landed outside the circle.”
The Ambassador stiffened, brows knotting slightly. “Odd.”
“So said the one named Maddus.” Then, “You are aware that the pieces used in this game called Stones and Bones are the same that were used in antiquity in divining the Fist of Fate?”
“I am, Left Tenant,” said quietly, his bright hazel eyes narrowed against the crimson glare of the rising sun. “Fourteen finger bones to a fist, thirteen moons and one sun to a year.”
Runningwolf nodded almost imperceptibly.
“Master Teagh, the formation I described – ”
“The ‘Crucible’.”
“Yes.”
Something in the solitary word prompted the Ambassador to deduce, “There is more.”
“The stones settled with their numbered faces down. All of them.”
The Crucible of the Dying Man. Followed by a red dawn. Not good.
“That is all, Left Tenant?”
“The ground was cold to the touch. Very cold. It should not have been so cold there by the fire.”
The Ambassador nodded, waited. No, not good. Not good at all.
“That is all, Master Teagh.”
Axennus nodded. He gazed into the crimson light, his face reflecting the red of the rising sun. He pursed his lips pensively.
“We are to be tested, Left Tenant. Severely so. And soon.”
“This is possible, Master Teagh.”
“Or perhaps Guardsman Maddus only.”
“Also possible. However the red sun shines on us all.”
“Or it could all mean nothing.”
The Rhelman did not reply.
The two stood in silence together, watching the sun slowly stain the sky with skeins the pale pink of thinned blood. Beneath his breastbone, Axennus felt a rime rise over his thudding heart. He stifled an involuntary shudder, then looked to Runningwolf with a conciliatory smile.
“At least the rain has departed us and the wind has died, Left Tenant.”
“The wind sleeps,” retorted the Rhelman, “but does not die.”
The Ambassador’s smile slid from his face.
In Hiridith, Runningwolf had briefly found gainful employment in the stables of a kind and wealthy merchant, but his benefactor soon passed to the Great Spirit, and shortly thereafter, fickle fortune had failed the Rhelman again. Extremely adept with his fists and feet, the Rhelman, in defending his deceased employer’s honour and good name, had beaten a visiting Genduri trader to the brink of death. Runningwolf was arrested, hastily tried and convicted, and thrown into the dank dungeons beneath the White Tower, where he languished in chains for many long months.
When war came from the South, the Rhelman was unceremoniously escorted from his cell, hurriedly granted conditional Erelian citizenship, then conscripted into the Legion Reserve. Military service to the Republic would, at war’s end, earn him a pardon and his freedom. He and the mounted policing body to which he had been assigned were then deployed to the remote North March – the obvious irony of drafting felons and convicts into law enforcement largely lost upon the men in power who made such decisions.
“We must beware the wind’s return.”
To this, Axennus Teagh simply sighed softly.
But some small good fortune had, at last, come to Runningwolf, for the sons of his former employer, the late Jophus Teagh, were officers of high rank in the North March Mounted Reserve. Axennus and Bronnus Teagh were known to the Rhelman, known and dear. Both had ever been kind to Runningwolf, and immediately upon the Rhelman’s assignment to the North March, the industrious Axennus had remarkably arranged for him to be presented with a true Rhelnian stallion, an extreme rarity beyond the borders of green-grassed Rheln.
In turn, Runningwolf had made a gift of his loyalty, given first to the sons of Jophus Teagh, then to the men of the North March Mounted Reserve, but never in sooth to the Erelian Republic. Such fierce and faithful fealty might only be earned.
“Peril awaits us, Master Teagh,” affirmed Runningwolf, the sun reflecting red upon the loamy brown circles of his eyes.
“Perhaps,” conceded the Ambassador, “but life would be decidedly uninteresting in its absence.”
Runningwolf turned his gaze from the sunrise to the Ambassador. The Rhelman’s flat face was characteristically devoid of emotion, the bare canvas of a masterpiece gone unpainted. He blinked languidly.
“I must go, Master Teagh,” he intoned in his slow, alien voice. “The Captain will want me to ride ahead.”
The Ambassador nodded.
“Before I ride, I will instruct the men that they must cease playing with themselves at night.”
Axennus bit his lip. Hard.
“Umm…unnecessary…Left Tenant.”
“As you will, Master Teagh.”
Raising to his forehead the leather totem-pouch that hung about his neck, Runningwolf saluted the Ambassador in Rhelnian fashion, a concession both Teagh brothers not only tolerated, but encouraged, in respect for the ancient customs of the noble People of the Plains.
“Reserve your salute for the Captain,” Axennus said gently. “I am become little more than a glorified civil servant, and neither require nor desire such military formality.”
Runningwolf said nothing, but only blinked slowly once more, hand and totem yet at his temple, waiting with the imperturbable patience of his people.
The Ambassador smiled, then submitted, twice tapping his breast with a closed fist in the Erelian fashion.
“Each to our tasks, then,” spoke Axennus lightly, the smile on his lips reaching his eyes. “Abide the Captain’s wishes, as all here must – my own self being the sole and significantly gratifying exception.”
Runningwolf lowered his hand, his totem settling back to its place near his heart. He did not otherwise react, but a subtle shift in his stony visage gave Axennus the impression that the Rhelman was momentarily pondering the Teagh brothers’ strange relationship. Then, perhaps attributing the brothers’ unending verbal contest to simple sibling rivalry, or – considerably more likely – concluding the odd relationship was not worth pondering, the Rhelman turned upon his heel and swiftly moved away.
The Ambassador smiled at the smaller man’s back, for Runningwolf was a treasure in the trove of Axennus’ heart, a true and loyal friend, a rugged rock in a world of shifting sands.
Clad in the traditional deerhide leggings and footwrappings of the Rhelmen, and cloaked and shirted in Erelian blue, Runningwolf appeared as one existing in both the old world and the new, yet belonging to neither. His double-curved Rhelnian bow and beaded leather quiver at his back, small iron hand-axe and bone-hafted knife at his waist, Runningwolf bore no other weaponry, and he eschewed armour altogether. The Rhelman relied solely upon his reflexes, both in defense and attack, and by those reflexes he was ably served. Axennus had never seen a man so quick, so easy in motion, so very swift of hand and foot, so dexterously deadly in battle. The Ambassador found it unsettling that a man whose people were devoted to peace and freedom should find his only sense of worth in war and service.
Axennus’ smile faded as he watched Runningwolf leap agilely astride the bare back of his amber Rhelnian stallion and, with another mounted guardsman at his side, ride northward into the morn.
“One day you will find cause for joy again, my friend,” Axennus whispered in the Rhelman’s wake. “One day.”
The soaring sun was high and white in the northern noon sky, long having shed the foreboding red of its rising. The ambassadorial company followed the rough Old Road northward along the rocky foot of the Westwall, the dual-headed White Eagle of the Republic stretching its stiff wings in the bright blue heavens of the standard-bearer’s banner. But for in battle, Erelian law, both civil and military, decreed the colours of the Republic be unfurled only in weather free of falling rain, sleet or snow. Thus, this was the first day in more than forty that the White Eagle had flown.
Another banner, the double-blue of the North March Mounted Reserve, the same standard-bearer had lovingly folded and secreted close to his breast, in the forlorn hope that it might one day fly again.
“We approach Doomfall, Draconarius,” advised the Ambassador, eyes agleam with enthusiasm. “History is made this day. The White Eagle has seldom soared so far to the north.”
“And proudly she flies, Commander,” responded the black-locked, prominently-nosed standard-bearer.
“No longer a commander, Draconarius. You must find another title for me. ‘Ambassador’, perhaps. ‘Master Teagh’ seems to work. Or, should you prefer, something of your own design.”
The standard-bearer sniffed. “As you say, Commander.”
“In your own time, of course.” Axennus grinned, absently running a hand through his mare’s long grey mane. His eyes gleamed. “When the morrow’s sun is down, we will be in Druintir.”
“A journey’s longest hours are its last, Commander. Ambassador. Sir.”
“Verily, Draconarius, verily.” Axennus laughed brightly. “But before we achieve Doomfall, let alone Druintir, there is a thing I must do.”
The Ambassador fell back among the mounted company, his mare slowing her gait until she came to the flank of the Iron Captain’s destrier.
Atop the roan’s broad back, Bronnus Teagh did not so much as glance at Axennus. The younger Teagh endured his brother’s scorn with quiet dignity, the corners of his mouth twitching with repressed humour. The brothers Teagh rode side by side in shared silence for a time, their comrades casting quick looks their way. Some of these looks were curious, some were wary, a few clouded with concern. The brothers had not spoken to one another since Axennus’ monologue of the previous evening, a speech that had inspired ninety-nine men and had humbled one. None could foresee the Iron Captain’s delayed and nervously anticipated response, but the thunder of his silence was ominous.
After some time, Axennus sent his brother a sidelong look.
Bronnus stared straight ahead.
Moments passed, then the Ambassador glanced again.
Looked away.
Glanced once more.
Looked away.
Glanced –
“Whaaattt???”
Axennus brought his palm to his chest and made a ‘Who, me?’ face. “I didn’t say anything.”
The Captain grimaced. “First time for everything.”
“You wound me.”
“You could have told me, little brother.”
“You’re confusing me, Bron,” frowned the Ambassador. “First you tell me I talk too much, then you insist I don’t say enough.”
The Iron Captain made a rumbling sound reminiscent of summer thunder. Glowering, he grinded his teeth, continued staring straight ahead, a storm rolling in his dangerous dark eyes.
Axennus was far from unnerved.
“Nevertheless, I will bite. Reluctantly. What, exactly could I have told you, dear Bronnus?”
From between tightly gritted teeth, “Which came first, our deportation or the Senator’s daughter.”
“Daughters, dear brother.” The Ambassador’s smile was entirely bereft of even an inkling of ruth. “It really does take you a while, doesn’t it?”
“Careful, Axo.”
The younger man heaved a
weary sigh.
“Do you truly believe that, given the opportunity, I would deny myself a moon and more of a mute Bronnus Teagh? Teller, still thy Tongue! The trek to Druintir is sufficiently long and difficult without the added hindrance of requisite fraternal verbosity.”
At last – and grinning broadly – Bronnus reached over, one large hand coming down heavily to grasp his younger sibling’s shoulder.
“Little brother, you will never quite fathom the extent to which I agree with that last assertion.”
And together, they laughed.
Relief swept through the ranks of guardsmen like a cool soothing wind, and soon the greater number of them were laughing as well. And, as was its wont among most veterans of the inimitable Ghost Brigade, laughter soon gave way to song. Nearly one hundred voices possessing disparate degrees of ability sprang from gladdened breasts, praising in turn the glories of the Republic,
“O Hiridith! O Hiridith!
Thou Silver Lady fair!
May thy marble wings cover me!
O Hiridith, sweet Hiridith!
Lay with me if you dare,
And cast wide thy gates in love for me!”
the triumphant might and valour of the North March Mounted Reserve,
“To Northkeep! To Anthum!
To Silver Bridge we ride!
For freedom! For honour!
For glory and pride!
Blaze fire! Flash iron!
To Rhille-haven we ride!
The Blue Banner above us
And Death by our side!”
and their great fondness for the brothers Teagh,
“For the valiant Iron Captain
We would forfeit our very lives,
And for the wily March Fox
From Death we would surely rise!”
Axennus leaned conspiratorially toward his brother.
“I think they like us.”
Bronnus made a gruff dismissive sound.
“You are the one they love, Axennus. I demand and claim only their respect.”
“I did not know the two were necessarily mutually exclusive.”
“And I did not know they call you the March Fox.”
“Hah! Likely, that. The wax in your ears has always been rather thick. No need for envy, though. A simple result of the poet’s imaginative license, I’m sure. He must have been in need of a clever name for me.”
