“How could they have known that our full sky forces were not in the area? It is clear that they took a great risk as well. The tilt of fate does not render one the wiser, and the other the more foolish. It is merely that fate tilted in their favor, and not ours. Nothing more, and nothing less, Edmund.”
“We could not stand and fight against that force, I could only urge them to try to survive,” Edmund replied gloomily. He looked as if he needed to explain his immediate decision to fragment the cluster of badly outnumbered Saxans at the onset of the ambush, imploring them to try and escape with their lives. “The Trogens were far too many. Each one of them is a great wolf of the skies, and their steeds are no lesser. If we had stayed, I am certain that none of our men would have survived.”
“None would have,” Aethelstan said quickly, with firm certainty, wanting the continuing onrush of guilt to ebb and cease in his friend. “Anyone could see that plainly enough. It was more than evident. The Trogens are no ordinary warriors, and there were several of them for each Saxan … at least four or five to one. They fight with a fury beyond the natural order, as if possessed by the fell spirits of the Lord of Fire Himself.
“In no time you made the wisest of decisions, Edmund. Because of you, some have lived, where none would have if you had not decided to break up your formation. Each and every one of those in the skies would have been destroyed, as your own mouth has spoken.”
At that moment, a Saxan fighter hurried towards Aethelstan and Edmund. He brought himself to an abrupt halt, heavy of breath as he lowered his eyes and gave a bow towards the thanes.
“What is it?” Aethelstan queried insistently of the warrior.
“I am here to report that nine sky warriors have survived the sky battle, and are now safe within the camp. Only one of them was badly wounded, but the Sister tending to him said that the wounds will not be fatal. The steeds of these men have also survived. Seven other Himmerosen have been found, or have made their way back as well. There may yet be others, but that is the latest count,” the man stated.
Aethelstan turned back to face Edmund. “Then nine men owe their very lives to your decision. Nine who may come to be very important when we make our inevitable stand here, do not forget that. Only the living can be of help to us in the future. Dead warriors can do us no good.”
Edmund still refrained from meeting Aethelstan’s gaze, though Aethelstan saw that a little of the despondency that had been present had departed his friend’s expression. Still, there was little doubt in Aethelstan’s mind that his friend would yet feel deep pangs of guilt at his survival of the conflict.
It was the kind of man that Edmund was, and one of the great qualities about him. He truly was willing to meet the worst fate experienced by any one of the men that he led forth.
Sorrow would still be a ponderous weight upon Edmund’s spirit, as there was also a very personal aspect to the deaths of the men that Aethelstan and Edmund led. Their forces consisted of warriors who had lived alongside each other throughout their entire lives, within the villages and burhs of Wessachia. As such, concerning those who had recently fallen, Edmund had almost certainly known several of them as long as he had been alive. As many of the deaths were so personal in nature, it made the burdens of spirit even heavier.
Aethelstan understood that onerous weight, and patted Edmund reassuringly upon the back, glad that his friend’s eyes were not looking to see the sadness present in his own look.
His voice remained steady and encouraging. “Come now, Edmund. There is yet much to do, and I need your mind clear to help our people. The enemy is even now relaying our positions from the skies, and we are going to have to work hard and think cleverly to undo the damage that their constant observation of us brings. Remember, Edmund, they can only watch us. They cannot hear us, and they do not know what our plans and intentions may be.”
Edmund’s eyes remained downcast, but after a few moments he finally brought his gaze up. A different look was now reflected within his eyes. Aethelstan was not surprised at the change, as he knew that Edmund would swiftly come to reason.
“Let us resume our work here, Aethelstan,” he said, with an edge of resolve, though his next words carried a trace of despair. “But is there not anything in this wide world that can ever work to our favor?”
Aethelstan smiled gently. “In such times it seems there is nothing going in our favor. I can only believe that there are things that happen, far and wide, which we ourselves may never know of, that work to our aid in many enduring ways.”
“I would like to believe that, but I cannot see it,” Edmund replied dourly.
“And neither can I, but then again, we cannot see all things, can we, Edmund?” Aethelstan queried.
He placed his hand again on Edmund’s shoulder, stepping past him before the other thane could feel a need to answer Aethelstan’s question. The question was intended to be more rhetorical in nature, something for Edmund to ponder as he wrestled with his turbulent emotions.
Edmund hesitated for a moment, perhaps already thinking upon the words. Aethelstan looked back, and gave a gesture to his friend to follow him to the tents.
The beleaguered sky warrior would need some food and rest, as all of his men undoubtedly would. There were physical needs to address. At least that could be achieved, even if his friend could not really hope to take his mind completely away from his inner torments.
*
JANUS
*
“Back on the water, where this all began,” Janus remarked to Erika.
He leaned back closer to her, in order to gain a little privacy for their conversation. Janus was sitting just in front of her in the narrow watercraft, both of them with the haft of an oar held firmly in their hands as they made their own physical contributions to the travel.
They had been journeying down river for at least a couple of hours. Most of the earlier portion of their travel had been endured in attentive silence, individuals left to their own thoughts as they paddled in a steady rhythm. A rapid pace was still being sustained, though after the initially robust outset Ayenwatha had eased everyone back just a little to preserve strength.
A few conversations had finally broken out amongst the group, much to Janus’ relief, as the interactions offset the extended monotony of the excursion.
At first, Erika returned a confused expression to Janus in response to his words. The look vanished after another moment of thought, as comprehension dawned within her eyes.
“Almost forgot about all of that,” she replied in a low voice. “You were on a boat with Derek and Kent when the fog first came, weren’t you?”
“Can’t say I really trust the water anymore,” Janus declared ruefully, as he nodded in reply, traces of a mirthless grin playing about his face.
“And I suppose I don’t trust secluded university areas that are covered in grass, and surrounded by trees,” Erika retorted. She grinned, a fragment of lighthearted laughter escaping her. Dipping her oar blade back into the surface of the stream, she pulled back strongly.
“But it seems we are on the water, and there are no universities close by,” she stated, as she looked back to Janus again. “So it would seem the burden is greater on you.”
Her smile broadened, and her eyes sparkled like the very surface of the river that they were now coursing along. For no identifiable reason, Janus immediately felt self-conscious, and not a little embarrassed at the warm, radiant smile that she had given him. He had never felt entirely settled in the presence of a woman, especially a woman with the sheer magnetism and charisma that Erika possessed.
The more that he was around her, the more he saw that she was truly a rarity among both women and men alike. She was not just imbued with a comely appearance, but also amply gifted in wit, humility, and a quiet strength. It all contributed to the strong presence that she exuded, which he admittedly found both intensely attractive, and not a little bit intimidating.
“I know I probably sounded pretty stu
pid there,” he responded, with some hesitation.
Erika smiled again. “Janus, given what we are all going through, the issue of trust towards anything is becoming pretty muddled these days. Wouldn’t you agree?”
Janus readily assented, as matters of trust struck at the core of everything that he had been struggling with. His voice took on a more somber tone as he replied to her.
“Yes it is, as you say, certainly muddled. But I miss having at least some sense of bearings, even if they are just very convincing illusions at the end of the day,” Janus said. “I already have more than enough trouble trying to have faith in anything. But I need something to grasp onto everyday, even if it is a simple matter of believing that I will not suddenly find myself in another entire world. And I’m well aware now that even faith in that could fail me at any time.”
“We all need a little stability to hold onto,” Erika responded, her tone taking a serious tilt. “Finding yourself in a new world is rattling, to say the least.”
Once again, Janus felt the awkward sensation of having just said something rather ignorant in her presence.
“Sorry, I made another obviously dumb comment,” he muttered contritely. “I know I’m not the only one shaken up here.”
Raising his oar back up, he dipped it back into the water with a little more vigor, the burst of exertion born out of his inner frustrations.
“Hey, it’s okay to say what you feel. You need to get it out. And it lets me know I’m not alone in what I’m thinking these days,” Erika said sympathetically, a smile warming her countenance.
“You are very kind,” Janus said, just above a whisper, his eyes avoiding contact with hers.
His gaze drifted over towards the treelined banks of the river, before lowering to stare at the currents that their canoe was cutting through. Everything seemed part of an immensely nightmarish dream, the genesis of which was the crushing blow of his father’s unexpected passing. His sheer foolishness in the company of a woman that he found wholly fascinating was just a sliver of the continued feeling of discordance that enveloped him.
In so many ways he was adrift, far out of harmony, and clouded by a fog far denser than the one that had unveiled this new world to him. Looking forward, he quietly watched the pathway of the river as it wended through the thick, hilly forest bordering it. Its course was quite varied, continuing straight for lengthy stretches, turning in sharp bends at other points, or angling into elongated curves to either the left or right.
Janus turned his head to look in the direction of the riverbank to the right, hearing a sudden splash of water. He saw the outward ripples marking the place where a large fish had broken the surface, and then plunged back down into the depths.
The meandering of the river, and everything else about it, was not entirely unlike the course of his life. It was a thought that gave Janus pause.
The water, the banks, the current, and the fish all formed the elements of the river that the canoe was traversing. There was a certain order to all of it, even if he had no idea as to what they might encounter around the next bend in the river.
Such was life, in a way, traveling down its own natural course, on an unceasing flow that progressed from one moment to the next within its own host of elements. Like the travelers upon the canoes, life held a considerable degree of blindness towards both the immediate and distant future. Life held its own gradual shifts in course, as well as sharper ones, and some periods that appeared rather straightforward. Yet in all cases, time drifted onward like the canoe across the water.
Janus knew that the river, and the life teeming within it, would continue onward long after he had passed through, just like the world would continue after his own life’s journey had reached its ultimate end. In life, Janus was a passenger on a great and foreboding river, carried forward in the vessel of a physical body.
As helpless as some aspects of that perception might have seemed, neither could he ignore the unmistakable order to the river, which also echoed life’s journey. Underlying the act of passing down the river in a canoe was a strong sense of destination.
The recognition of the presence of a destination was a small comfort to him, even if he could not so easily liken that aspect of their physical travel to his rumination upon life. It nonetheless brought to mind thoughts of greater powers, ones that might very well lay beyond the natural design that he observed all around him.
Perhaps life had a destination as well. It was the challenge of handling the ambiguity that was the difficult part, as he could not say for certain that there was a destination, but neither could he honestly rule it out. There was just altogether too much that was deeply shrouded in mystery, and he knew that it would be entirely disingenuous, if not intellectually dishonest, to claim certainty of things that he did not have a full understanding or knowledge of.
He just wished that he could still the anxieties, especially when the world seemed to be cloaked in ashen gray. The tribal people, such as Ayenwatha, appeared to be unshaken in the things that they held to heart, and not even the immense tragedies that had been visited upon them seemed to significantly rattle their bonds of belief in something greater.
Janus both admired and envied their conviction, as it was something that he could not fathom within his own life. He realized that he had lost much of the ability to trust in even the simpler aspects of life, especially where they related to other individuals.
It was a tremendous predicament to be in, as life was anything but a solitary experience. It was undeniable that a person entered and left the world alone, but those two moments were truly aberrations during the course of a lifetime. He lived in a world that left him no chance of persisting within it if he were entirely left to his own devices. The need for at least a small amount of trust in others was paramount, as, in truth, he needed others for the survival of more than just his body; he needed others so that his spirit could endure.
“What are you thinking about?” Erika asked him, curiosity dancing in her eyes as she looked into his face.
Janus did not shy away from her gaze, as he brought himself back out of his musings. “I suppose a lot of things … great and small. Sometimes you miss the obvious, but it’s better to figure something out late than never.”
A slight grin broke onto his face, as he realized that at the very least he had just taken a small step. It remained to be seen whether or not he could take enough steps to come forth from the depths of shrouding darkness that had thickened around him over the past few months.
Even so, the first step in any path back towards light was the recognition of the absence of it, as well as understanding the need for it. That much, at least, he had achieved.
*
LOGAN
*
Logan paddled in sullen disquiet, feeling like cursing the very day that he had been brought into the world. Everything seemed like a mammoth mudslide to him, a slow, continual descent into a murky abyss that was neither warranted nor preventable.
Certainly, none of it involved a course that had been chosen by him, but then again, that was precisely what angered him the most. The sole missing factor in feeling like he truly had even a small degree of free will was the lack of power to make a different choice in the course that was taken.
Throughout the lands he now found himself within, there were several thousands of displaced people, all suffering a heart-wrenching exodus from their homelands. At an even farther distance, there was a dark and ambiguous threat manifesting, as an enemy force encroached upon the tribal lands. Going even farther, there was an entire world that was not all too different from the decaying one that he had once lived in.
There was simply no presence of justice, or even sanity, not when the simplest of observations was faced truthfully. The darker forces of the world held the truest advantages, in all of their forms. Their ends would always justify the means. No matter how brutal, no matter how deceitful, one who disregarded the constraints of virtues could act in any capaci
ty to achieve a desired means.
The forces attacking the villagers were undeniable proof of that reality. Such proofs were everywhere, Logan knew, if one was willing to open his or her eyes, and see what was there for all eyes to see.
The lying merchant could smoothly gain the sale that the honest merchant could not attain. The deceptive craftsman could hide a blemish or weakness in structure, where the honest one could not. An errant laborer could twist his way out of failing a task, where the honest would willingly face consequences, with their full weight of penalty.
An invading army, without the burden of virtues, could readily annihilate their enemy, destroying civilian and warrior alike. A truly honor-bound people would be above employing widely destructive and indiscriminate tactics, and in adhering to such ways could well suffer a comprehensive defeat in the long run.
The list of examples was practically endless, demonstrating the enormous advantages that the amoral or immoral person held over the one who embraced a moral code. It was a drink most bitter to the tongue, and maddening to the mind.
In the middle of a substantial river, within a sprawling forest, in the midst of a vast new world, Logan felt himself to be little more than a speck of foreign dust on the strange planet.
He could see Erika and Janus talking together in one of the canoes just behind him. It was true that the two of them shared his unfamiliarity with the new world, as well as his familiarity with their world of origin. It was a very basic bond among the exiles, but it was one that Logan valued nonetheless.
Janus was of the silent, more contemplative type, and Logan keenly sensed that the man was wrestling with a tremendous internal struggle. Erika was undeniably an attractive woman, with a real flare of life to her. Depending on the day, it was either an irritation or enjoyable, as she was not shy about saying whatever was on her mind.
Logan was conscious of his genuine friendship with Antonio, and he was grateful that he had someone with him from his former world that he knew well.
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