Whispers of War: The War for the North: Book One

by Sean Rodden

  Runningwolf was momentarily silent, his loamy eyes caressing the landscape as would a loving hand.

  Then spoke the Rhelman, “Captain. Master Axennus. Are you familiar with the ketterk?”

  “Of course,” replied Axennus. “The large flightless bird of Rheln.”

  The Rhelman said, “When disturbed, the ketterk will often bury his head in loose earth, reasoning perhaps that because he cannot see, so too can he not be seen.”

  Bronnus sent Axennus a questioning glance.

  “You riddle with us, Left Tenant,” accused the Ambassador.

  Runningwolf blinked slowly.

  Then, in his strange alien monotone, “Like the ketterk, we are unseeing.” A poignant pause. “But we are not unseen.”

  Behind the western foot of the Warwatch, the company came before a graded glade of grass and flowing flower, green and gold and glorious – the fragrant scents of blade and bloom entwining themselves about one another in an aromatic dance upon the glen. The flowered field rose gently but steadily westward for half a league, coming to an abrupt end in the shadow of a great wall of giant conifers.

  “The Field of Cedorrin,” stated the Fiann. “And beyond and above Cedorrin,” – her slight nod indicated the tall jagged line of pine and fir and northern spruce – “stands the Fend.” Her lips formed the semblance of a grim smile. “The final bulwark of Druintir’s eastern defenses.”

  “Doubtless Druintir is walled, Shield Maiden,” remarked Bronnus, uncertainly.

  “Verily, she is walled, Captain Teagh,” replied Caelle, her grey eyes asparkle with a distant blue light, “though fir be her brick, and pine be her stone.” Her smile was gentle but grim. “The Fend is the only wall this land has ever known.”

  The sun was long into its westerly arc when the ambassadorial company approached the dark perimeter of the Fend. The trees rose high and tall, many soaring hundreds of feet skyward, and were set so closely together that they seemed of one gargantuan nettled growth – a solid mass of evergreen whose lowest needled branches swept the earthen floor and whose coarse canopy scraped the sky. And though the company halted no more than a dozen yards from the Fend’s rough edge, the men could discern no aperture, no pathway into the trees.

  “A wall in sooth, Shield Maiden,” grumbled Bronnus. “The trees give way to neither horse nor man.”

  Heedless, Caelle of the Fiannar threw back her head, her long dark hair spilling across her shoulders and down her back, and the gold of her rillagh blazed beneath the shadow of the Fend like fire in night.

  “Hear me, ancient Faendomin!”

  Her cry was clear and strong, like a hornblast, or a song.

  “I am Caelle, Shield Maiden to the Lady Cerriste of the House of Defurien! With me are friends to Lindannan – the sons of noble House Teagh, a champion from the plains of Rheln and friend to the mirarra, and nigh upon five-score of the Fiannar’s long-sundered kindred from the land called Erellan in antiquity!

  “Noble Faendomin! We beseech you. Grant us passage.”

  But the Fend remained still of sound and motion, and from the forest’s deep green darkness there came no reply.

  Nevertheless, Caelle seemed contented as she visibly relaxed and threw a quick smile toward Axennus.

  “A courtesy only, Ambassador Teagh,” said the Shield Maiden. “The Fend stood here long before the Fiannar came to this land. I offer the reverence and homage that is due.”

  “Of course, Shield Maiden,” replied Axennus respectfully.

  Bronnus endured in dubious silence at his shoulder.

  And then, her mirarran nosing aside a densely nettled branch, Caelle led the Southmen into the green darkness of ancient Faendomin.

  Ascending steadily, the company filed through the Fend, each man’s mount near upon the next. The way through the forest was dark and close, more tunnel than path and certainly no road. Barely wider than the breadth of a horse’s breast, the sylvan passage was walled by tightly woven trunk and limb, like the skin-side of a grotesquely knitted sleeve. In places, the men found it necessary to bend low upon the neck of their mounts in order to avoid snagging helm or hair in the low-hanging overgrowth. Underhoof, the ground was soft and spongy with millennia of fallen nettles and cones, and the only sounds made by the horses were the heavy huffs of their breath. Little light penetrated the Fend’s dense cover, the way lit largely by patches of luminescent moss that clung to the barbed bark, casting the tunnel and those traversing it in an eerie emerald half-shadow. The air, though, was clean and cool, sweet with the scents of pine and cedar. And rather than feel claustrophobically enclosed, most men of the company were struck with a sensation of solitude, of serenity, of security.

  One, however, was otherwise disposed.

  “I feel like a rat in a hole,” muttered a scowling Bronnus.

  Axennus saw no cause for restraint.

  “Really, brother. A gentleman keeps his deviancies to himself.”

  Behind them, guardsmen shook in a bout of laughter. Their merriment, however, was short-lived – the sharp steel of the Iron Captain’s subsequent hindcast glare spoke little of sport.

  On the path ahead, Caelle kept her smile to herself.

  They had been ascending through the Fend for near upon an hour when they came to the forest’s western fringe. As the entrance had been from without, the egress from the shadowbound trees was undetectable from within, the light from the outer world shuttered and sealed away by the thick interwoven growth of fir and pine. But Caelle’s mirarran pushed aside some spiked sprigs of spruce, and one by one the members of the company emerged from the strange green darklight of the Fend into the warm red glowings of sunfall.

  Before them, some miles distant still, the half-ring of a great ridge of grey rock marked the horizon, the final rise to the upland plateaus of the High Land. And cascading from the western lip of the precipice fell the River Ruil, cool crystalline waters plummeting six hundred feet in three distinct stages, then racing in foam and fervour eastward. The tri-tiered waterfall cast up a vast veil of mist and spray, like the shroud of a faerie fog, across which the monolight of a golden rainbow arced nobly into the evening air. And despite the weight and white of the falling waters, the three-throated shout of the cataract seemed surprisingly soft – a ceaseless silver song, or the sound of serenity.

  “Behold!” rang Caelle’s clarion cry. “Friends of the Fiannar, I give you Diar Ruill en Thir. Druintir of Lindannan!”

  And as though in well-rehearsed reply, the cold northwind rose and bellowed, parting the masking mists, scattering the gold of the spray’s spectral sash.

  And lo!

  Beneath the northern sky, in the red-gold glamour of the sinking sun, the last city of the Fiannar was revealed in all her grace and grandeur.

  Grey and ancient she was, hewn of the hard metamorphic stone about the Silver Stair, shimmering dimly in the evening glow like sun-bleached bone. Every curve and corner of the city’s chiseled stone spoke of age, as though Druintir was but a brittle relic in the rock, the great fossilized remnants of a behemoth of olde. Yet she spoke also of strength and sufferance, of indomitable endurance, for her pale cold marble had weathered twenty centuries of wind and war.

  But it was neither Silver Stair nor carven city that stilled the heart of Axennus Teagh within him, that bated his breath and bereft him of voice. Rather, he was awebound and bewildered by another sight, by another beauty – a beauty that no man might behold and remain unchanged.

  So it was that Axennus Teagh of Hiridith, Erelian Ambassador to Lindannan, first gazed upon the Colossus of Defurien.

  Nearly two hundred feet soared the stone likeness of the First Lord of the Fiannar from the rushing waters of the River Ruil – one hundred feet from knee to bewinged helm, a further one hundred thence to tip of upraised blade – and the sheer power of its presence was taller still, well beyond measure of Man. Towering in both welcome and warning, the graven monolith reared regally from the foam at the foot of the Silver Stair, l
ong legs entrenched knee-deep in the surge, fair yet fearsome face fastened eastward, sacred sword upthrust in triumph and proud defiance. And, glory upon glory, of purest gleaming gold were Defurien’s shining blade and royal rillagh, blazing in the dusk over Druintir like bolts of fire in the cold northern sky.

  Some time passed before Axennus found his tongue once more. And when he did so, his speech was stilted, stunted, as one intoxicated, or entranced.

  “Never in my life –” the Ambassador managed with some effort, and left the remainder of his thought unspoken.

  “Nor mine,” agreed his brother quietly, simply.

  And for a time no more was said.

  At length, Caelle of the Fiannar broke the still of shared silence. “There are some wonders for which no words suffice.”

  She looked upon Axennus of Hiridith and smiled in understanding and fellowship, her eyes reflecting the ruddy light of the sinking sun.

  The Ambassador only nodded.

  “Come,” Caelle said softly. “Let us proceed.”

  They rode northward, a line of blue and bronze following the dark eaves of the Fend, then turning west along the southern bank of the River Ruil. In their van the White Eagle of the Republic fluttered listlessly as though humbled by the splendour of the land into which it had been so boldly borne.

  North of the Ruil, from riverbank to receding Rothrange, a broad expanse of golden grassland danced to the whispered song of the wind.

  “The Miramarch,” nodded Caelle. “The pastures of the mirarra.”

  And momentarily a riderless rush of the noble silver-maned creatures thundered from the concealing shadows of the mountains, fleet and fierce and ever free.

  And south, below the river road, was a vast wilderland of tree and rock and rolling grass, of oak groves and cedar stands and clusters of gleaming marble and limestone, of reed-banked rivulets and sparkling streams.

  “The Gardens of Galledine,” said the Shield Maiden.

  Though few in number, there could be vaguely discerned in Galledine strange structures of blended arbor and gorse; willow-walled halls with flowered floors; open-sided shelters formed of stone, grand dolmens raised to private purpose; magnificent manors that married living wood and rock so perfectly as to obscure where the one ended and the other began.

  “By nature, mine are a people of the wilderness,” explained the Fiann. “Few are they that prefer the stone ceilings of Druintir to the leaf-caressed skies over Galledine.”

  West were the majestic marvels of Druintir and the Silver Stair, the way there paved of finely set slabs of stone that shone as though with a light of their own. The half-circle of sunset crowned the bluff above the city, colouring the cataract, the caps of the Ruil’s waters glittering scarlet it their race eastward, save where the long shadow of the Colossus fell dark upon their surface – for soaring above all was silent stone Defurien, vast, vigilant, eternal.

  So taken were the Southmen with the manifold wonders of the land, many failed to mark one that most certainly should have been evident.

  Should have been, but was not.

  “Where are your people, Shield Maiden?” the Iron Captain grated from beneath knotted brows. “I see only horses.”

  Caelle looked upon Bronnus, her head tilted, her smile small.

  “My people are here, and many, Captain. When outlanders approach, the custom of the Fiannar is to remain concealed until the warders of the Grey Watch, guardians of our Lord and city, determine whether they be friend or foe. Trust that you would have been challenged long since had not word been sent with Sarrane of your coming, and had I not been at your fore.” Her smile broadened, bright and beautiful. “Patience, Captain. The Grey Watch will make their presence known soon enough.”

  “Pardon my brother, if you please, Shield Maiden,” excused Axennus once again. “I believe he imagines himself to be a ketterk, a childhood quirk he has never truly outgrown.”

  Bronnus bit back a hot retort.

  For the quickness of his side-sight, the Ambassador detected the smallest and briefest of lights spark in the loam of Runningwolf’s dark eyes.

  Not quite a smile. But close enough.

  As they drew nearer and night settled upon the earth at last, the titanic statue of Defurien soared higher and higher from the waters of the Ruil, and murmurs of excitement and expostulations of awe ran through the troop of Erelians. Of surpassing beauty was Defurien, though cold were the eyes and grim the mouth, the expression stern and set of purpose. When the company came beneath the glittering gold of the First Lord’s risen sword, they halted, their heads cast back on craned necks, theirs eyes straining upward into the blacklight of fallen night. All were silent, all were still, their only sound the muted beating of ascendant hearts, their only movement the slow blinking of wonder-widened eyes.

  “He is Defurien,” said Caelle softly, her silken voice quiet but clear, “Father and First Lord of the Fiannar.”

  The Southmen remained silent, staring skyward.

  “There is much mystery to the Colossus of Defurien,” continued the Shield Maiden. “We know nothing of its making, neither its true composition nor the manner of its crafting, only that it was fashioned by the Daradur and gifted to the Fiannar in recognition of our friendship and fealty. For the Daradur are not a forgetful folk, and ever has there been great love between our two peoples.”

  She paused, looked upon the Ambassador’s upturned face, and something gleamed in her eyes.

  “But seldom do the Daradur share their secrets. And if the crafting of the Colossus is one, then the subject of the sculpture is the greater. Often has it been said that the resemblance of the Colossus to the Father of the Fiannar is striking, that the Daradun masters superbly captured Lord Defurien, countenance and character. But how can this be so? For though his skill in stonework and metallurgy be unrivaled and unsurpassed, how might even the most gifted of masters reproduce so unerringly something he has neither seen nor heard described? For the Daradur are beings of this Second Earth alone, and to these shores Lord Defurien did not come.”

  Caelle waited a moment for her words to be absorbed, but expected no reply and received none. Her glittering gaze subtly assessed the Southman at her side.

  “A marvel and a mystery, both,” she said, ever so softly.

  The Shield Maiden then unsheathed and raised her sword to the Colossus.

  “Emni lea, Defyrine! Your lost sons of the South are returned!”

  “And the people of the Father bid them warm welcome,” came a voice as hard and as smooth as oiled iron. The tone failed to achieve the kindness of the words.

  As one, the men of the ambassadorial party tore their attentions from the countenance of the Colossus to the marble road before them.

  There, mounted upon a noble mirarran, was a tall strong figure, cloaked and clad in whetstone grey, the blade of a long silvery sword lying naked across his thighs. The grey figure’s face was completely concealed within the cowl of a heavy woolen hood, save two points of light where the steely glitter of eyes shone forth.

  “You are long in coming, Caelle,” spoke the voice of iron, something of displeasure, of disapproval underscoring the statement.

  “And you, Marshal Eldurion,” retorted the Shield Maiden, sheathing her sword, the sapphire specks of her own eyes flaring brightly, “are short on courtesy.”

  “Truly spoken, Shield Maiden,” growled Bronnus Teagh blackly as he kneed his roan to the Fiann’s side. “Word of welcome speaks the Marshal, yet his unsheathed blade gainsays him.” The Iron Captain’s hand fell to the pommel of his own sword. “But forthmost, he belittles you in arrogance, and chastises you as though you were a child. I am mindful of the hand you had in our so recent salvation, and would not have you so ill-treated.”

  The grey Marshal neither moved nor spoke, but within the shadows of his cowl twin sparks flashed coldly.

  “Hold, Captain Teagh,” commanded Caelle calmly, sternly, turning her blue-flecked eyefire upon Bronnus. “You a
ct rashly in the face of custom with which you are unfamiliar. And though I recognize your fair intention, I would tell you that where one lacks familiarity, one might exercise prudence.”

  The Iron Captain’s visage hardened for the gritting of his teeth. But he said no more, and his hand loosened about his sword-haft.

  “You will understand, Captain,” continued Caelle, her voice softening, “that though it be bare, the Marshal’s blade is not unsheathed, for neither sheath nor scabbard has ever touched its steel. Always are the swords of the Grey Watch as naked as they were at their forging, and they are ever in or near to the hands of their wielders. That the weapon of the Marshal of the Grey Watch slumbers in his lap is welcome enough, and few are the strangers that are greeted with such honour.”

  Bronnus said nothing, his tongue stilled by the bitter taste of swallowed pride. He lowered his eyes. He released the handle of his weapon entirely.

  Grey Eldurion remained as still and as silent as stone.

  Caelle reached across and placed one hand on the hard muscle of Bronnus’ forearm. Her touch was soft but firm. And then she smiled upon him in something akin to sympathy.

  “And alone of all men,” said she, her voice soothing the Captain’s aching dignity as would a heated cloth upon sore sinew, “Eldurion of the Grey Watch might be forgiven his fatherly scolding of me. For you see, Captain” – and a childlike giggle slipped past her smile – “I am his daughter.”

  Bronnus’ jaw fell slack.

  And from somewhere behind the Captain’s sagging shoulders there issued a single yelp of such perfect glee that many a well-mastered mount started and stamped in surprise.

  “At last!” burst Axennus, his eyes shining with hilarity. “Doughty Bronnus Teagh is silenced! My dear Shield Maiden, you have accomplished in little more than a day that for which I have striven these past thirty years! Wonder of wonders! Would that I were a bolder man and beg of the good Marshal your fine hand!”

  Caelle’s smile instantly vanished. Her eyes widened and whitened. An expression like fear flashed over her face, colouring her countenance. A rustle of uncertainty rippled through the troop of Southmen as all there followed the Shield Maiden’s anxious gaze to the tall grey form of her father.