Drachenara

by T. G. Neal

  Aurelia nodded silently. Lyseth seemed to agree as well.

  In the back of her mind, Aurelia felt the pang of remorse at taking a human life. Even that of the Hill Folk. She could see the expression on the man's face when she ran him through. She could see the fear on the mother and child, when what she could only guess was the father was in harm's way. She could imagine the cold embrace of death behind each person whose life she had taken, and they all seemed to stack up. Though each one did seem easier than the one before; none were easy. She frowned and looked at the blood on her blade, figuring it to still be warm. She wiped the blade off on the furs of the man she killed and sheathed it.

  Lyseth hung her shield on her back and re-sheathed her sword. “I'd say we sent a message.”

  They drug the Hill Folk aside and loaded up their horses to ride into town with the dead in tow on their captured steed.

  Aurelia, Keneya and Lyseth rode through the entrance to the town of Torvrel. They were quickly greeted by a man who was dressed in antiquated – but effective – armor, that gave him away as more of the concerned citizen type, rather than a city guard. “Halt!”

  Keneya rode forward. The elf wore his hood up, as was usual, and he nodded his head. “I'm Keneya, of The Silver Sort. We sent the message your Mayor requested.” He gestured back to the corpse laid across the back of the horse. “He's already starting to smell.”

  The man peered around at the dead man who was steadily, slowly, dripping blood on the ground. “I-- I see.” He turned. “Follow me.”

  The trio followed the man into town, where the mayor stood with a small attachment of city guard. When the mayor saw them, he approached, smiling. “Welco-- Oh, my.” He said, covering his mouth. “I suppose you ran into our problem on the way in, then?”

  Lyseth looked to Keneya and nodded. She spoke up, “We did. We slayed three of them. I don't think they're going to be a problem for you anymore.” She turned the horse slightly,

  Aurelia listened to the exchange, but she looked past at the town. What a nice place it would be to settle; to blend in. Could I really do that anymore? She wondered.

  The mayor reached into a messenger bag that hung at his hip and took a reasonably proportioned back of coins from it and tossed it toward Keneya, who caught it. “Thank you, so very much. We're even more in debt to the Sort than we were before.”

  “Think nothing of it,” Keneya said, bowing his head.

  “Would you all care to stay one night in our town? Private rooms, great views of the forests.” He asked, smiling.

  Aurelia shook her head; it was the first time she'd said anything since they rode into town. “I think I'd like to return. Just to see if we have any more work.”

  Understanding completely, Lyseth humbly declined the mayor's offer, and the three turned to make the return trip to Jav'Parjon.

  Greyever was obscured by the Visik Mountains from the east, and only easily accessible in a small inlet from Rantil’s Bay. However, the eastern shores of Greyvale were much different than the rest of the Brendom. The sands along the coast were a result of years and years of broken-down limestone, resulting in beautiful beaches. Those coastal delights extended from the southern edge of Lucandis and all the way to the northern border of Berlessis and made for a wonderful sight for arriving persons.

  Had they been arriving for a better reason, perhaps the prince and Commandant, Kyvan, would appreciate the visuals for what they were. Instead, a tumult brewed in his heart. As he stood on the bow of the ship, he examined the many docked vessels in Rantil’s Bay, and his eyes searched for where their vessel would dock. He thought to himself as the Captain guided the vessel into port, considering his father’s wish that he not come out here to oppress the Brendoms. He wasn’t here to oppress them; he was here to ensure that safety and peace stayed with the realm. An alliance of Brendoms forming an army was not in the best interest of the Nine. And he intended to source the problem, and if necessary, shut it down.

  A young man, acting as Prince Kyvan’s squire, stepped up to him. “Sire, once docked, the Captain believes we should stay aboard and rest for the night and make haste to meet with the Governor in the morning.”

  “You tell the captain that we will move forward tonight. The inlet lay ahead, and we will take a dingy forward through the marshes.” Kyvan nodded his head once to concrete his statement.

  The squire bowed his head and turned to walk back to the Captain.

  The ship finally came in alongside the long pier and rested beside another small corsair that belonged to a merchant group based on their flags. Prince Kyvan watched as the merchants offloaded items. The pier was dark; only the merchants who offloaded their wares this late held lanterns, but the ones that hung on the pier itself had been extinguished. “A humid place, this is.”

  The squire returned wearing his chainmail armor with a jackdaw on his shoulder. The boy acted as a messenger and a personal protector to the Prince and learned from him to adjust to a future station. “Sire, the Templars are ready to go ashore.”

  “Good, tell the Captain to stay with the ship. Feed the slaves and the thieves below deck. I do not foresee this being a long trip, then meet me on the far docks, where the single lantern hangs.” Prince Kyvan pointed off across the water of the bay where it moved closer inland and became brackish, before bleeding into the rest of the swamps.

  The squire again disappeared. Prince Kyvan left the corsair and walked along the docks surrounded by his Templars, the most elite of the Royal Knights. They were all fitted with full plate armor and were equipped in a variety of ways. Five bore a sword and shield, two carried short bows, two carried greatmaul’s, and one was a mage. The prince himself wore a suit of royally marked armor, designating himself as a speaker of the crown, and indeed, as the prince of the realm.

  The docks were relatively bare in comparison to their daylight state. A few merchants moved to and fro, checking the status of their ships, or unloaded; one ship prepared to leave. Kyvan stepped to the edge of the dock where the small boats awaited for use to ferry to the city of Greyever. Before the prince could even step into the boat an arrow flew out of nowhere and struck the mage in the small gap between his helmet and his cuirass. The result was a gurgled cry for help as he stumbled backward, clutching at his throat, hands aglow with unused magic. He stumbled and fell into the murky brackish water and disappeared within.

  Once aware of the situation, all the Templars came to alert. The prince was pulled inside their ranks and shields were raised. “Where did it come from?” Shouted one. “Eyes up!” Shouted another. The Prince lowered his head and inspected around them.

  One of the Templars with a greatmaul hefted the weapon and searched too, though he wasn’t prepared for what came from behind him. From the edge of the pier climbed two rogues. Clad in dark clothing, they silently rushed up behind and drove poisoned daggers into a small opening in the shoulder joint of the armor, on the left side, so as to get into the blood the fastest. The sudden pain only quickened their heartrate, absorbing the potent poison, and causing them to fall to their backs, gasping for air before ceasing all movement forever.

  The Prince barely caught a glimpse of the rogues as they rushed off down the pier into the night. “Stealth and treachery!” He shouted. Archers! And gestured for them to fire. Both of them chose a single target and loosed arrows. One rogue was struck and fell to a permanent stop. The other disappeared behind a stack of crates. “Eyes alert, Templars!” The Prince called out, looking around, himself. Even as they stood and guarded themselves, another arrow pierced the night and hit one of the archers. This one, however, sunk into his leg. He did not yield, only cried out for help and returned fire to the location he saw it come from – a tree in the swamp.

  The returned arrow whistled through the air and sunk halfway up the shaft into the belly of the hidden archer. The enemy fell from and stuck in the muck and mire below the trunk of the tree. Only his back could be seen above the black mud and water.

&n
bsp; The Prince thought about his options, then quietly said “We must find cover. Return to the ship for now.”

  But as they began to move, the glistening of light upon armor was seen on the deck of his ship. A tall pale man stood behind the captain and smiled as he slit his throat, tossing the body overboard. “Come, now, Prince Kyvan! Return home!” The man taunted. “You came to the wrong place with too few men.”

  “I do not fear you, bastard!” The prince shouted back.

  “It is not me you should fear.” The man waved his hand and a nearby archer fired a flaming arrow into the air. From the edges of the pier and off the decks of several ships came multiple plate-armored soldiers with no markings.

  “You do not even declare your allegiance, fiend?” Asked the prince, angrily.

  “Why? Will your eyes decry my actions after they are void of life?” The man said, walking off the ship.

  The armored men now rushed the prince and his Templars. A sudden clash of metal upon metal rang out through the bay. Outnumbered three-to-one, the Templars fell in relative ease. One by one, they met the cold embrace of death at the end of sharpened steel.

  Now alone and surrounded by dead Templars and encroaching enemies, the Prince snarled at his would-be killers. “Cowards, all of you!”

  From among their ranks, a man stepped, his blade bloodied by the throat of the captain. “Little prince, a commander, yet so out of his element. Do you fear death?”

  “Who are you?” The Prince asked.

  The man blinked his milky eyes at him. “I am your demise.”

  The Prince called out in battlecry and swung his blade. As Kyvan attacked, the man parried and retaliated. A simple hard swat with his blade, and the man knocked Kyvan’s blade back far enough for the man to strike at his face with the pommel and strike he did. With one lash out of the hilt, the man broke the Prince’s front teeth out, causing him to spit bone and blood onto the pier. Even injured, the Prince did not relent. He came back at the man with a swing from his blade. The man stopped the blade with his own, then with a bare hand he grabbed the end of the sharpened blade. Though the razor-sharp edges cut into his palm, it did not draw blood.

  Shocked and frightened by this revelation, Prince Kyvan looked at the man and his eyes grew wide. The man pulled the blade from Kyvans hand and threw it away, then with the same hand he used to grab the blade, he put it behind the princes back and placed the tip of his sword against the small gap between his cuirass and his leggings, a place only armored by leather, and then he pulled with his hand and pushed with his blade, driving the tip into the prince.

  Kyvan cried out and coughed up blood. He trembled only briefly in pain, as it suddenly ceased when the blade cut through his spine. He lost use of his legs and collapsed to the pier, though he still drew breath. The man stood over him, hand still upon the hilt of the blade which threatened to end the prince’s life forever. “I have seen the other side. There is nothing for you there. When you see your men, as you wander forever on the endless Black Plains, you tell them Denevim took your life, and there is no man I fear.” With that, Denevim twisted the blade several times before removing it.

  Trembling and crying on the pier, hidden between two crates, the squire scrawled a message as fast as he could and attached it to the leg of the Jackdaw. He sobbed once too loud, and a soldier discovered him. He only had just enough time to release the Jackdaw and watch it fly into the night before he was wrestled away and thrown onto the deck of the ship.

  Denevim walked toward him. “Brave boy. Foolish, though. I planned to let you live to tell the story. I suppose though, your message will suffice.” Denevim looked to his soldiers and to the squire. “Chain him between the masts of the ship. Ensure he does not break free.”

  Standing on the pier, Denevim watched them chain the young man up, stretching him uncomfortably from the short mast to the main mast of the royal armada corsair. As he watched on, a soldier returned to him and spoke, “Captain Denevim, there are slaves below decks chained to the hull.”

  “That makes our lives easier. Have them row back out to sea. Three of you go and take the dingy back to shore.” Denevim looked to the pier. “Take those barrels of oil. Break them on the deck and return.”

  The soldier nodded “Aye, sir.” And did as he was told.

  Denevim moved back down the pier to where his other soldiers were collecting the body of the prince and covering him in a sheet. Denevim looked to his Lieutenant, who stood watch over their actions. “Lieutenant, if any merchants saw any of the activity of the night, kill them.”

  The Lieutenant bowed his head and turned away.

  By the time everything that Denevim had asked for was completed, Denevim turned to see the capital corsair out in the middle of the bay. He turned back to one of his archers and motioned out toward the vessel.

  After soaking the arrow in oil and lighting it, the archer sailed an arrow up into the air that came down directly into the deck of the ship. Immediately the oil caught flame. The first one to scream was the young squire chained to the mast. The slaves who were working unawares below the deck suddenly joined in on the macabre chorus as the flaming oil leaked between the cracks of the upper deck and onto them below.

  Momentum carried them out into open sea even though the top part of the ship was burned, the sails were gone, and the screams stopped. Denevim stood and watched until the ship burned through enough to take on water. The embers of the once strong hull were extinguished as the charred wood sank below the surface of the water, never to be seen again.

  All loose ends tied and headed back to whence they came, Denevim smiled a very dark smile.

  Vaelen tightened the straps down on the horse and loaded up the supplies he had been given. It was an early morning, and he and Aurelia had been given their first assignment together. The verdant hue that everything took on in the lush forests of the Emerald Wood was naturally soothing. At night, the sounds of a variety of frogs sang like a lullaby to them inside their new home.

  Vaelen walked up to the head of the horse and ran his hand down her mane. “Pretty girl. Going to treat me well, right?” He said, giving her a pat on the neck.

  From behind him came a voice, “Vaelen.”

  Vaelen turned to see where it came from, spotting Mikael. “Aye?”

  Mikael had a canvas bag in his hand. “Come.” And he gestured to the rock wall beside them. “I don’t know how much your father talked about mine from when they were younger, but they were friends. Good friends. My father never talked about yours a whole lot, and he rarely talks about times past at all, but he made sure to fill my ears last night after I mentioned that your father had passed on.”

  Vaelen nodded respectfully. “It’s good to hear. I’m surprised I had not heard more, as well. It’s a shame that our fathers lost touch.”

  “I had thought the same thing, but— “Mikael said and Vaelen tilted his head in curiosity. “Your father and mine wrote frequently. Comparing stories and their current lot in life. At some point, your father had planned to move down here, but decided that a place with a regal upbringing would be better for you.”

  Vaelen sat down on the wall, listening.

  “He was right. It would have been a harder life down here.” Mikael said. “But, he also was such a dear friend of my father that he reasons you deserve the same respect that Wraith would have gotten.”

  Vaelen shook his head. “I’m my own man. I have a lot to live up to before I can be considered half the man that my father was.”

  “We all feel that way in the shadow of our parents, but you sacrificed everything you have ever had to bring Aurelia with you to start something new.” Mikael said, absently rolling the edges of the canvas cloth between his fingers.

  “It was my duty.” Vaelen said.

  “Your duty died with her parents. Like it or not, you did something you didn’t have to do. She cares for you, you know?” Mikael said.

  Vaelen snapped his head up and looked up at Mikael.
>
  Mikael started unrolling the canvas. “This is yours, though.” In the cloth that Mikael unrolled sat two armored sleeves and a new cuirass to go with his already-existing leather and chain armor.

  “For what?” Vaelen asked.

  “Being the son of a legend? Being a Silver Sort? Having good character? Pay it forward, sometime.” Mikael said turning to walk away. “Good luck in Alfendul.” And he went back into the Silver Sort’s headquarters and closed the door behind him, passing Aurelia on the way in.

  Vaelen looked at the pieces of armor as Aurelia approached. She stood before him with her arms crossed and looked down at the armor. “Oh, those are nice.” She said, glancing over at Vaelen, who stared at the pieces.

  “Aye, they are.” He seemed to zone out while he looked at the shiny metallic pieces.

  “Are you ready to go?” She asked, putting a hand on the hilt of the short sword that hung from her belt.

  “Are you ready before I am?” He asked, looking up at Aurelia.

  She whistled, and her horse came galloping around the side of the building.

  “I guess you are.” He stood up, laughing. “Help me lace up? Then we can go.”

  Aurelia laughed and assisted him in getting the new pieces of armor on him, replacing the hardleather cuirass he was wearing prior with the metal piece now, a much favorable piece for surviving any encounter. Once armored, the duo mounted their horses and set off on the northwestern road for Alfendul.

  The ride wasn’t exceptionally long, they were headed to a tavern, farm, and homestead in the foothills of the western Jagged Peak Mountains. As they rode, Aurelia spoke first. “We’ve been here almost four days now, and I haven’t seen you hardly at all, where have you been?” She asked.

  Vaelen looked back at her. “Reading, working, and training.”

  “I’ve been training. I haven’t seen you down there.” She asked, riding directly beside Vaelen.