by GJ Kelly
“They will not be moved save by force,” Elayeen sighed, repeating an assertion she’d made often enough since Dannis had sent word of the siege to Brock.
“Aye,” Finn agreed. “Funny thing though…” and then he tailed off, and shrugged.
“What was a funny thing?” Dannis folded his hands into the sleeves of his capacious and billowing shirt.
Finn sniffed and shrugged again. “Dunno, Serre Curator. Thought I seen a flash, earlier. Like the glint o’ the sun on dull steel. Drew my attention because of it, thought it might be a changing of the watch down there, or someone walking up the slope opposite. But there was nothing, and I’d swear the flash moved, fast like, and before I had a chance to flick my eyes that way, it was gone.”
“Which way, and when?” Elayeen asked.
Finn nodded down the hill and to the left. “There, by the stream, where the medium veal sits. About half an hour ago. Does it mean anything, d’you think, Leeny?”
Elayeen watched the dim light of the ToorsenViell with her eldeneyes for a moment. Then she flicked away the Sight and turned to Finn.
“In which direction did the flash move?”
Again Finn shrugged, and began to look a little uncomfortable. “Can’t say that there really was one, Leeny. Might just have been a trick of the light, or might just have been exactly what I thought it were, a glint of the sun on steel. Sun’s well in the west now after all…”
“But?” Dannis asked, his features deadpan.
Finn sniffed. “Well I dunno, I thought it went up over that way…” and the guardsman pointed, tracing a line from where Oze sat, up and away towards the southeast. “But there was nothing there. Might just’ve been my eyes, we’re none of us spring chickens y’know, ‘cepting Ranger Leeny of course.”
Elayeen blinked, and felt her heart quicken. She summoned the Sight, and studied the sky. Nothing.
“Forgive me, lady Ranger,” Dannis asked softly, “Does this possible observation mean anything? You seem a little alarmed.”
“I am, Serre Curator. Southeast is the direction in which the Graken-rider flew. The siege and the Toorsencreed have distracted us from the creature which sowed the crops of Flagellweed and Spikebulb, and distracted us from the very reasons why my friends were sent to Mereton and Harks Hearth bearing warnings.”
“But the Goth-lord is a servant of Morloch, so too the Graken-rider…” Dannis began, and then blinked, and turned his suddenly pale-faced attention to the wizard sitting alone by the stream below.
“Leeny?” Finn asked, struggling to understand the reason for the elderly curator’s sudden alarm.
“It is possible that Oze of the medyen-Viell has summoned the Graken-rider, in the same manner the Goth-lord did in the wilds of Arrun.”
“Oh. Kak.”
“I think it might be wise to notify Bede,” Dannis announced. “And commence to moving our people quietly to the down-below. A siege we can withstand. Assault from the air is something the down-below can easily ignore, but not our village nor our homes above ground. Quickly, Finn, if you please.”
“Aye, Serre,” Finn bobbed his head, and hurried away.
“It may be nothing,” Elayeen tried to reassure the curator.
“I fear that ‘nothing’ is the most unlikely outcome of this siege, dear lady.”
“I too,” she sighed, disgusted with herself. “How could we have forgotten the threat of the Graken, surrounded as we are by the all the horrors of its last approach?”
“In our minds, the enemy below are nothing more than soldiers of a corrupt faction struggling to retain secret power and dominion over the people of Elvendere. The symbols they bear and the uniforms they wear are not of Morloch’s making. It is no surprise that we should all fail to associate them with a Graken-rider, or worse, and instead direct our full attention to them, and to your safety.”
“I have no excuse. G’wain himself branded them Morloch Collaborators for their treachery. I should have known. I should have remembered!”
“Dear lady,” Dannis reached out a gnarled hand, and patted her gently on the shoulder. “Even the greatest of generals can make an error of judgement, or fail to see until too late a sign or portent, else battles between great generals could neither be won nor lost.”
“And I am not a great general…” Elayeen sighed, as the importance of her failure and the acceptance of it sunk in. Then she gazed down at the Toorsengard below, still sitting on their saddles, and Oze still unmoved from his rock by the stream, and whispered: “I should not have come here. This is not my path.”
Dannis smiled. “And yet there are many in Mornland and in Arrun who are glad that you took it. And here, too, even though they know you only as a Ranger of the Kindred. Do not be too harsh with yourself. I rather think, if you asked him, the King of Raheen himself might admit to having made a few errors along the way, too.”
“If only I could.”
oOo
46. Something
Elayeen was tired. She had tried to doze by the blockhouse at the line on the road, but no sooner had she closed her eyes than she jerked herself awake and summoned the Sight, scanning the southeast for the Graken. Finn slept, snoring gently on a bunk inside the blockhouse. Bede ambled back and forth, pacing quietly, and Dannis, for the umpteenth time, tried to reassure Elayeen that for now, she should rest.
Dawn was still an hour away.
“Serre Curator, I have a question,” she said softly, her thoughts a jumble since the wait for the Graken began.
“By all means ask it, Ranger Leeny. I shall be glad to provide an answer if I am able.”
“You have said that you and your father, and his before him, believe Dun Meven a relic of the wizard Aemon’s making, from elder days?”
“Yes, that is true.”
“Does not the time of Aemon precede the first war against Morloch? I have heard it said that Morloch was once of the D’ith, if so, surely he would know of Dun Meven, and its secrets?”
“Alas, lady Ranger, I am no historian. I do think that Aemon was one of the earliest followers of the great wizard Zaine, but I cannot say for certain. I would so have loved for the wizard Arramin to have explored the down-below here, but alas, it never came to pass. There was always something more important to occupy the old fellow’s attention, and he rarely left Castletown. He could doubtless tell you. Is it important?”
Elayeen felt the stirring of vague intuition again. “I don’t know. It seems to me that if Oze and his creed are in league with Morloch, they would know the secret of Dun Meven, if Morloch does. The fact of the siege suggests they do not.”
“And that in turn suggests that Morloch knows it not, also?”
“So many things have happened which seem to make little sense. Perhaps it is just the lateness of the hour, and the darkness before dawn which makes terrors of our fears and fears of milder concerns. It is the Graken which should concern me now, not antiquities.”
“Our people are safe in the refuge. Apart from young Ned on watch in the tower, and us here at the line, all are safe in the down-below. I must visit a few of the dwellings, light a few fires in the grates to give the appearance to our enemy that all is as it should be here. I shall return with some breakfast wine and, if I know Parissa, she’ll have left everything ready at the tavern to make some rather splendid eggy bread. Try to sleep, Ranger Leeny, even if only for an hour. Bede has the watch.”
She nodded, and did her best to smile when the curator patted her arm and took his leave. Sleep? She doubted it was possible. Her bow lay across her lap, a blanket draped around her shoulders, and the stone of the blockhouse wall had been cold when she’d rested her head against it earlier. And there was a Graken and its rider somewhere out there in the darkness.
Nor did they have any specific plan on how to deal with the creature. When the attack came, as they knew it must, they would do their best to bring beast and rider to ground. Of all the buildings in the village, the blockhouse was by far the stron
gest. But even its roof was of wooden joists and thatch. Nothing in Dun Meven had been made to withstand an attack from the air; even the subterranean refuge had been built with a conventional enemy in mind, though obviously it was proof against the Graken.
Morloch’s spite had changed everything. The creatures employed against the Gorian Empire to snuff all resistance quickly and contain people in the patchwork of slave-worked provinces there were now being ranged against these eastern lands as punishment for the Kindred’s victory at Far-gor. And no-one was prepared for such tactics. No land but Raheen had been prepared for any of this…
Which was why the Toorsencreed’s treachery was so terrible. Gawain’s rage at the gates of Threnderrin Way was righteous. Had the Kindred fallen at the farak gorin, elves would even now be gazing out of the forest, only to see Morloch’s hosts gazing back in at them for their pleasure. And that was why it made no sense. Surely not even Toorsencreed could imagine they’d receive anything but death from the Meggen and creatures of Morloch’s Pangoricon…
Leeny… a voice whispered.
… Surely even the denizens of the Toorseneth could understand that Morloch would never share power or dominion with anyone…
Lady Ranger…
She woke with a start, neck stiff and the side of her head numb from resting against the blockhouse wall. She blinked in the sunshine lancing through gaps between the hills to the east. Finn was there, holding a plate in one hand and a steaming tankard in the other.
“Here ye go, lass,” he smiled. “Eggy bread and brekkie wine. Dannis said to get that inside you, could be a long day and no telling when next we’ll eat.”
“Thank you,” she managed, propping her bow against the wall. “How long was I asleep?”
Finn shrugged and smiled as he handed her the hot food and drink. “Not long enough. The ‘spits in the valley haven’t budged, still all sat there wrapped in blankets. Go on, dig in, me and Bede have eaten already.”
Elayeen stretched out her legs, and took a sip of the wine. It was lightly spiced and fruity, and hot. The eggy bread, when she bit into it, seasoned with a hint of pepper and cinnamon, was delicious. She glanced around while she ate, noting the smoke rising from chimneys here and there, which to enemy eyes down in the valley would not only seem normal, but would be expected. Out to the southeast, nothing but the hills, and puffy white clouds. It was a beautiful spring day, marred only by the neat ranks of Toorsengard in their blue and white uniforms, sitting on their saddles, eating freenmek and honeybars in the valley at the foot of the road.
“Morning, Leeny,” Bede smiled, emerging from the blockhouse with his ‘bow. “Dannis is still tending fires and such. Think he might even be setting a kettle of stew on the go at the tavern, for lunch.”
“Good morning,” she managed between mouthfuls, and sitting upright to stretch and roll her shoulders.
“Stiff neck, eh?” Bede grinned, “Well, serves you right. Perfectly good camp bed in there you could’ve had but no, there ye sat all night.”
“It was quieter out here,” she smiled, standing to put the plate on the chair, picking up the last wedge of eggy bread and biting into it before flexing her legs.
“Aye, Finn does saw the logs, I’ll give you that.”
“Who does what?” Finn called from the middle of road.
“You and your snoring, kept poor Leeny awake all night.”
“I bloody do not!”
“You bloody do,” Bede called back amiably, “Worse than Dannis, too.”
“Bloody do not,” Finn mumbled, and turned his attention back to the siege-camp below. “Look out and down!” he suddenly called.
Elayeen and Bede stepped forward a pace, but saw nothing out of the ordinary.
“What and where?” Bede demanded.
“Flash of something again! Only this time I saw it, like a grey sausage faster’n any bird I’ve ever seen! More like a shooting-star, only there, fizzing in down there, smacked straight into that medium veal’s twig!”
Oze was standing, holding his wand horizontally before him as though it were a scroll and he reading it. Then he clambered up onto the rock, tucked the wand into his sleeve, and began rubbing his hands together.
“Looks like the cat’s got the cream,” Bede mumbled.
Then a ball of white light appeared in the wizard’s hands, and with a flick of his wrist, it sped away to the southeast. Oze stepped down off the rock, and began striding towards the troops encamped at the foot of the road. There was sudden movement, the elves standing, and then they began saddling their horses.
“Looks like lunch may be a bit late today,” Bede sighed. “They’re coming. Finn, you take the blockhouse and cover the road. Me and Leeny’ll take the open air.”
“Aye. No bell from Ned up top. It’s just us and them, and whatever that Grakenspit brings with ‘im. Aim well and make ‘em count, eh?”
“Aye, mate,” Bede smiled, his features stern. “We’ll make ‘em count all right.”
Finn gave a nod to Elayeen, and took his post inside the blockhouse. There was a brief squeal of hinges, and a section of wood swung down from the wall facing the road to reveal a narrow loophole through which, moments later, Finn’s crossbow emerged.
Below, elves were tightening saddles, testing bowstrings, loosening weapons. Oze of the ToorsenViell, however, casually saddled his horse, and mounted, waiting patiently. A grey sausage of something sped in from the southeast and slammed into the wand he carried in a tubular scabbard tucked into his belt. He withdrew the wand, read, and replaced it. On the top of the road at the line, they heard the order to ‘stand ready’ drifting up from the valley.
“There,” Elayeen pointed above the hills to the southeast, a dot in the clear blue beneath the white of the clouds above it. “It comes.”
“Ah yes,” Bede sighed. “It does indeed. Heads up, Finn,” he called louder, “Graken approaching.”
“Aye aye!” came the reply.
“They will wait for the Graken’s strike before commencing their charge up the hill,” Elayeen announced.
“Thought as much. They wouldn’t want to be early and shot off their horses before it gets here.”
Bede picked up a small brazier, almost ornamental in appearance, and set it on the southern side of the road near Elayeen’s position. With a smack of the firestone and steel hanging from it, he sparked it into flame.
“That do for you, Leeny?”
“Yes, thank you.”
Elayeen eyed the brazier, and then the wooden shed surrounded by Spikebulb down the slope to her right. In the air to the southeast, the dot was growing larger.
“You sure you can hit the spot, Leeny? The mark’s small enough. I don’t mind taking the shot with me ‘bow on a rest.”
She eyed the narrow opening above the door in the side of the shed facing them, and smiled. “These arrows were made in Elvendere by masters of the craft. The Toorsengard insist on the best of everything. I might not trust such an important shot to arrows of ancient make kept for decades in the stores of Dun Meven, and certainly not to the well-intentioned curtain rods of Threlland. But with arrows liberated from the ‘gard, I would trust the shot at thrice the distance.”
“Aye, well, meant no offence, Leeny. Normally we’d have a bloke in the shed to light the wicks and loose the loads, that’d be Devun’s job, but with them spikes around it, the firing-hole is the only resort left to us.”
“I took no offence, Bede,” Elayeen nocked the fire-arrow to her string, and eyed first the approaching Graken, and then the narrow hole she must shoot into.
Below, the ‘gard had mustered, and had formed into a column of twos ready to commence their assault. It was important to deny them a swifter ride up the slope than the zigzagging road would offer. To the left of the road, from the defenders’ viewpoint, the terraces choked by Flagellweed were as effective a barrier as any. Only the slope to the south side of the road remained clear all the way up to the area seeded by Spikebulbs.
“Best light it up now then, Leeny. Graken’s turning slightly, coming around to approach from the south I reckon.”
It was. Though distant still, they could make out its wings flapping, the creature flying almost lazily, in no apparent hurry. Elayeen turned sideways on, dipped the wad of the fire-arrow into the basin of the flaming brazier, held her breath and then drew and released in a single flowing motion. The arrow was a blur and disappeared into the shed fifty yards away.
Bede’s eyebrows arched in appreciation, and he mumbled ‘good shot’ at the very moment a gout of flame billowed from the tiny window of the opening. A muted roar from within the shed told the Callodon guardsman all was well, and they turned their attention to the Graken.
It was heading directly towards them, and though still a good distance away, approaching at what seemed to Elayeen to be a leisurely pace. Its line of attack was an obvious one, which would take it from south to north clear across the top of the entire village beneath it. The rider would have no interest in the trees on the summit, or the watchtower therein. Only the rows of buildings on the broad and level expanse of ground above the terraces would be fixed in its gaze. Their smoking chimneys spoke of people inside them…
Distinctly grey, the voice in Elayeen’s head whispered, and she snapped away the Sight, nocking another arrow. This time, and like all the others in her quiver, the longshaft bore an elven broadhead point, razor-sharp.
“Where is Serre Dannis?” she asked, turning a little more to face the southern end of the village and the approaching Graken.
“Last I saw, in the tavern, busy with the stew. He’ll know what’s what in a moment or two…”
At that very moment, the Graken swooping a little lower and its rider leaning forward in preparation for his attack, Finn loosed his crossbow at the column of riders now advancing up the grass to the southern side of the road. There was a muffled woosh! as the gable ends of the long shed blew outwards, and for a moment Elayeen caught a glimpse of the ‘load’ to which Bede had referred. Then, flaming logs, barrels, and great wadded fireballs of some unidentifiable material eased forward, shifted, and began to roll downhill, gathering speed towards the approaching enemy.
