by J. S. Crews
The layout of the camp had represented another lesson in their military training. It was essentially just a smaller version of the standard camp used by the kingdom’s armies. In the center was a large bonfire with the tent shared by the five noncommissioned officers and that of the Lieutenant facing each other from opposite sides. The area occupied by the bonfire, Sergeant Hammid had explained, would normally be where the commissary wagons would be set up to service larger detachments.
Located directly behind the officer’s and noncom’s tents were those shared by each separate squads of soldiers. Identical to the noncommissioned officer’s accommodations, these were square at the base, ten feet on either side, and made from cured skins. They were held erect with wooden poles and strong hempen rope, forming a triangle, the highest point perhaps five feet tall and slanting sharply down to the sides. This made it necessary to crouch inside, but it was never meant to be anything more than a sleeping shelter. There was technically space enough for every soldier in each squad to bed down, but two would always be on watch, leaving only six inside at any one time. Having Jonas and Alastair split up, one of them added to each squad tent, had threatened that level of comfort as did adding them both to the tent shared by all five noncoms. Instead, Lieutenant Teagan took pity on all involved and invited them to place their bedrolls inside the spacious officer’s tent he had to himself.
His tent was the same size as the others, but utilized more poles in its construction, creating considerably more head room. It also featured a curtain that closed off the rear section as a private sleeping area. There was an actual cot back there for the Lieutenant to stretch out on after a long day in the saddle, but Jonas and Alastair would make do with bedrolls spread on the ground in the front area, where Teagan had folded his camp work table and set it aside to make room.
Around the perimeter of the encampment, the horse lines were set up, mounts and pack animals alike all hobbled and tied together to form a defensive screen. This replaced the wall and ditch soldiers of earlier times would have been made to construct before their one hot meal of the day. Those men even carried, each of them, a piece needed to assemble the pre-fabricated wall as they marched. Thinking on such things, Jonas imagined sleep would have come easy after such strenuous work and behind such a fortification, back in those days when the kingdom was still fighting to expand and surrounded by potential enemies. Now, though, in more settled times, the animals around them formed a living fortification that would alert them should anyone get past the sentries.
Of course, someone would be a fool to cause them any trouble this night, camped as they were a stone’s throw from a fort where five or six score of their friends were sleeping. It was not difficult to imagine, however, that there may come a time when he would be thankful for the attentive senses of those beasts and their predilection toward skittishness. At that moment, though, he was snatched from his reverie by the sound of a heavy log crashing to the ground as his friend fed more fuel to the fire.
To his surprise, it seemed most of their number had retired to their tents unnoticed as he was lost in thought. This included the Lieutenant, the Sergeant, and all of the other noncommissioned officers, leaving the boys alone on one side of the fire with only a couple of soldiers across from them. No one would overhear them as long as they kept their voices low.
The privacy of the moment apparently had not escaped Alastar. Regaining his seat at Jonas’s side, he asked his friend, "Have you thought any further about what we discussed last night?"
That laid bare why the slightly younger boy—who was notorious for being the first abed, especially when Jonas was in one of his introspective moods—had waited around for the crowd to thin. He is going to worry at this like a hound with a bone, he thought. Rolling his eyes, he answered, "Of course I have, but not fully. Today has been rather distracting, in case you hadn’t noticed."
Alastar looked sharply at his best friend after the unexpectedly biting remark, but it took only an instant to see he was being made sport of and to return the grin he found dancing in Jonas’s eyes. "Aye, you jape and keep up your courtly manners, trying to avoid gossip, but you know I’m right. The man’s as mad as a March hare."
"I’ve chosen to withhold forming an opinion just yet, but I am well aware of yours, my friend. You have spoken about it at length," he replied with a laugh. Alastar, for his part, looked at him skeptically. Jonas was doing his best to maintain the facade of lacking interest. His acting flippantly was a ruse, in truth, a means of deflecting the younger Squire from fixating on the idea and continuing to harp about it before he had time to think on it more.
Half a turn of the silver moon and more had passed since the boys had, as part of their ongoing education, witnessed the execution of a brigand. The man had been the last surviving member of a band responsible for the deaths of farmers defending their lands. Duke Valdimir had seen to it the sentence was carried out judiciously and communicated the weightiness of the grave responsibilities that come with ruling. Witnessed at the same time, however, had been a shocking glimpse into the psyche of one of their compatriots in Duke Valdimir’s court, and it had left them with the beginnings of a decidedly troubling impression.
Since seeing what they had seen of Sir Eadred that day, the older Knight had become a favorite topic of Alastar’s. Eadred was, of course, completely insane to hear the younger Squire tell it. And, despite Alastar’s penchant for gravitating toward the most entertaining possibility available, Jonas had been no less nonplussed.
Even as he had fended off Alastar’s gossiping, he had found himself unconsciously paying greater heed. He had been watching Eadred’s mannerisms, allowing him to see things he might not have otherwise noticed in the normal press of life around the castle. What Jonas had noticed only materialized during moments of stress. Twice he had witnessed Sir Eadred displaying differing levels of anger or frustration, once focused upon a soldier in the yard and the other toward a servant who had spilled a goblet of wine at table. In both instances, however, what he saw reminded him unsettlingly of the day of the execution.
In those moments, Eadred’s eyes seemed to adopt a quality that Jonas could only think of as wild. It was a look that bordered upon the feral, and it seemed to last just seconds before he reined himself back under control. For those brief moments, though, the knight looked more animal than man, and it was a quality that brought back another memory for Jonas that did nothing to lessen his morbid fascination.
The truth was that Alastar was correct, at least in some measure. What Jonas had witnessed in Sir Eadred’s brief lapses was a look in his eyes that bespoke madness... something both squires had seen before. It hearkened back to an event several years in the past, when the boys were serving as pages in Glendon. It was a day that had begun the same as any other, giving no indication that it would be the dawn of a moons-long web of dark obsession of the sort that stood out in a boy’s mind as starkly as an errant crow in winter.
The first rumblings of trouble had been the steady rhythm of iron-studded boots as one of his father’s guardsmen moved with haste down the corridor toward Duke Joran’s private study. Fate had placed Jonas and Alastar nearby to witness this and—being who they were, as much as anything else—had decreed they should quickly forget their normal duties in favor of this new excitement. Peeking around the corner at the stout door of aged oak leading to his father’s inner-sanctum, Jonas had watched as the harried soldier did something that left him shocked. Defying all decorum, the soldier had snatched open the door to his lord’s study without even knocking, and Jonas could recall feeling almost breathless, anticipating what manner of punishment the poor wretch would receive.
There were raised voices, which hadn’t been a surprise after such an appalling interruption, but then he remembered being astonished as his father emerged with a look on his face more akin to concern than anger. Needless to say, this only piqued their interest and the boys set out hard on their heels.
Unwilling to wait for
a horse to be saddled, Lord Joran had remained afoot, jogging briskly out of the main gatehouse that served as the entry to Oakenhall Castle and down the winding hillside to the town below. Traveling by foot like a common infantryman, rather than observing the custom of going ahorse, had lent support to Jonas’s growing suspicion that something serious was occurring. The boys followed as quickly as possible without being discovered by the Duke or any of the small party of men, who had fallen in behind their liege-lord.
They closed to within hearing range of the babble of raised voices before making it even halfway across the wide avenue of shops and businesses at the immediate base of the hill below the castle. As they drew near, the sounds became more and more focused, and the boys could hear a loud and plaintive screeching above the din. Finally, they drew near enough to see the drama playing out, concealing themselves behind an old wagon that had been flipped upside down to allow a wheelwright to make his repairs.
A mob of the townsfolk seemed to be dragging an older man out of one of the small houses in this first section of the residential part of the city. This area was home to some of the more downtrodden citizenry of his father’s domain; rents on the modest homes were much lower than in other parts of the city, due to their proximity to commercial areas with their offensive smells and noisy crowds. For whatever reason, this crowd was ganging up on one man. Some of Duke Joran’s men had halted their actions before sending someone to fetch their lord, and Jonas felt equally proud his father had kept them from hurting the old man and angry with himself for not getting there quickly enough to know more about what was happening.
Whatever their reasons, so many crowding into a mob to accost one pitiful-looking oldster was an affront to Jonas’s boyhood ideals of fairness, and so it pleased him greatly to have his sire putting a stop to it. Only he realized just then that, while his Lord Father had plainly halted things, several men from the mob had jointly appointed themselves as spokesmen and were pleading their case. Duke Joran was stood with his arms crossed over his chest, listening as the men spoke and gestured wildly, his men positioning themselves to protect their lord or intervene if the need arose to thump some skulls.
The boys understood little of what was said, fearing discovery if they moved closer, but it was then Jonas first noticed that which had recently lit a spark in his memory while watching Eadred. It had been the eyes of the wretched creature at the center of the drama that day and their striking similarity to those of the southron knight.
He had hung between the two men holding him, his arms looking no larger than twigs next to the strong workman’s hands closed over them like vices. Every few moments, he would give a feeble tug one way or the other, trying to break free, but that was a fight he was not going to win and so he soon gave up each time. He was dirty, dressed in rags, and had an appearance that would have been more readily accepted as that of a man with no home at all. His eyes, though, were the feature that held your attention. They were feral, darting back and forth from face to face, and this—coupled with his ragged appearance—made him seem more animal than man.
It was not until later that they learned the details of what had occurred through the prodigious gossip mill lying at the heart of every castle in the realm. The old man, obviously touched by the gods, had lived there with his daughter and rarely been seen. The daughter had died suddenly of a fever some weeks before. Since then, the rents had not been paid, and so the owner had made up his mind to visit and deal with the current occupants.
He claimed he had dealt only with the daughter and was not even aware of the old man’s existence. There was no real reason to doubt his word; those living nearby attested to having rarely seen the old creature themselves. Most assumed him dead. The property owner had arrived to find his small cottage full of refuse and the old man, clearly out of his mind, had attacked him with a knife. Luckily, he would survive with only a minor cut to his hand, having run off bawling for help before any further violence could proceed. The commotion that had brought Duke Joran down from the castle was the townsfolk taking it upon themselves to oust the knifeman, a job that should have been left to the city watch. They had drawn the attention of a squad of soldiers happening by on their way up to the castle, and so the corporal had held them fast and sent one of his men up the hill to fetch the Duke.
This man had committed a crime. That much was beyond dispute, yet it was also plain for anyone to see that, by his neighbor’s own admission, he had lived there for years without causing any trouble. Apparently, he had been looked after by his daughter, who was now dead unexpectedly without having made arrangements for his care. It was also obvious that, assault or no assault, he was not fit to take care of himself. His own pitiable physical state and the deplorable condition of the home spoke to that truth in volumes.
The deplorable condition of his mental state also marked the point where the story took an even darker turn. It was widely understood that such people had been somehow touched by the gods in a way that removed them from the realms of other men. They were no longer members of the community and were, in fact, considered by many as already deceased. Families would, quite literally, mourn their passing, even as the flesh remained walking among them.
What ultimately became of that flesh was often of little concern. Folks simply wanted them gone, both for closure in the grieving process as well as because of superstitions. It was feared that, being nothing but hollow vessels stripped of a soul, these poor wretches could attract dark spirits that would attach themselves and use the body to commit evil acts. Sometimes local priests would take charge, leading them away to live out their days in some peaceful place where temple authorities could contain the damage they might otherwise cause. Just as often, however, they were simply abandoned in the wilderness to die.
Jonas’s father had been appalled to learn that the latter had been the fate awaiting the old man had his soldiers not intervened. There was no other family and, even if there had been, it was doubtful they would have come forward. None were willing to put aside such fears, which were being fed even further by the violence of that morning. Many were convinced that a malevolent spirit had already laid claim to the sagging skin and bones.
There was simply no one willing to allow him to live among their own family, and Duke Joran could see the truth of that plainly written on their faces. Neither though was the Duke of Glendon contented by the idea of his citizens’ willingness to harm another. For this reason, he had shown the assembled crowd the rough edge of his tongue, issuing a verbal edict outlawing such overt acts of vigilantism. Murder would be considered murder going forward, whether or not the victim had all of their wits about them at the time.
Faced with no other option, Jonas’s father had taken custody of the old man and had his men transport him up to Oakenhall Castle. Exactly what he thought to do with the wretched old soul was anyone’s guess, but there had been pressing need to act decisively to return peace to the city, and the Duke had accomplished as much simply by taking the old man away. What he surely could not have been aware of, however, was that his actions that day would spark a brief period of dark fascination that his own son would still be thinking about years later.
As it came about, the initial idea had been to lodge the stranger temporarily in guest quarters, until arrangements could be made to turn him over into the custody of the Temple of Iadara. Unfortunately, his violent behavior continued and Lord Joran’s physicians were forced to give him poppy wine to drink to make him sleep, putting to bed forever any notions of him peaceably resting in one of the guest apartments. They likewise could not simply keep him under the effects of the potion indefinitely for fear of causing him never to awaken. The boys remained glued to the drama unfolding on the subject through every scrap of idle gossip they could get their hands on.
It was finally decided that there was no other choice but to place him in one of the cells in the castle dungeon, both for his own protection and that of others. Duke Joran had resisted, showing great h
esitation about having the man treated like a common prisoner and agreeing only after he was satisfied all other options had been weighed and proven untenable. Why he should take such a position toward one guilty of violence was something Jonas had not understood and, in a fit of bravery, had drummed up the courage to ask about over dinner.
Duke Joran was a large man. Jonas knew that even now years later when he himself had grown bigger, but in his childhood years he had seen his father as truly enormous. He was also amiable and seemed always ready to let loose with a booming flood of laughter that filled the room like the light from a hundred-and-a-half beeswax candles. Such a loud and boisterous personality always had two sides, though, and so his readiness toward open-handedness came with an equally explosive temper. Jonas could only remember having been beaten a handful of times, but his father’s voice could crack like a whip that would sometimes leave you wishing he had hit you instead.
That was the reason bravery had been required on his part, since knowledge of such things was not the business of a child. It was also the reason he instantly regretted having made the query, fighting the urge to squirm visibly in his seat at the high table as his father simply stared at him. When he had finally spoken, though, his voice had been soft and confident, lacking even a hint of the harshness the boy had feared.
"You have done wrong and faced punishment for it, so I know you understand the reasoning behind that. You also know that a man who steals a horse must needs face a much harsher punishment than a child who steals a toy from his playmate, is that not true?" Jonas nodded in the affirmative, and his father continued, "You should also know, by your age, that—while one might spank the child who stole the toy—it makes no sense, nor is it permissible in my presence, for a man to put his hands on a very small child, such as a babe in arms.
