“I love this river, you know?” she said quietly and watched the water faintly reflecting the moon’s light as it rippled in between the rocks. She spoke as if nothing had just happened at the dance.
Alaezdar faced Aaelie and could now see her clearly in the moonlight.
“Are you ok?” he asked as he pulled her close him.
“Oh, you mean the possibility of being shipped off like a hand maiden to a place I have never been? What do you think? Of course, I am not alright, but I feel a little better now that you are here.”
“This is a dangerous realm right now. There are things going on that are not going to end well.”
“I don’t care, Alaezdar. I am tired of being here in this dull village. I might go with the Ambassador just for a change in scenery.”
“What about Rivlok?”
“What about him? He is just a boy. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I do love Rivlok, but not like he loves me. I will hate to leave him, but I am so tired of this village, of Tharn and of everything else here. I have no future here. Rivlok has no future here. Believe me, I have no desire to go away with a fat old bald man, but if it gets me out of here…”
“You don’t want that…”
“What do you know what I want?” she interrupted. “I want you, silly I want you to take me away from here. You know this realm. Take me away and show me the world.”
“I can’t do that. I want to stay here, more than you know. I would like nothing more than to stay here with you. You said that you like the river. Well, in many ways you are like this river. It is untamed. It is strong. It is beautiful. It is so free and full of life, and you can still be all that here.”
Aaelie watched Alaezdar as he spoke and smiled.
“Are you trying to seduce me, Alaezdar?”
Alaezdar thought for a moment and realized she might be right. He was. But was he ready? Even he wasn’t sure of what he wanted.
“I don’t know. I just like what I see, and I think you should stay here.”
“Then what about the Ambassador? You can’t just tell him that you said I have to stay here.”
“No, you’re right. I have to come up with something.”
“I know you will. Stay here with me for a while and we won’t have to worry about the Ambassador, Tharn or Rivlok until morning.”
“Then, what about Rivlok?”
Aaelie turned away from Alaezdar and walked into the river and toward a large rock protruding from the water.
“I told you already about Rivlok. I love him,” she paused and looked into the river, “and I don’t want to hurt him. I also don’t want to be without him, but I can’t stay here any longer and I want to be with you.”
She turned and sat down on the grassy bank at the edge the river, put her arms on her knees, her chin in her hands, and was silent.
“I really don’t know what to do right now. With you, Rivlok or the Ambassador,” Alaezdar admitted.
Aaelie turned her head and looked up at him standing behind her.
“Love me. Love me more, and love me more than he does. Solve my problems for me.”
She took her hands and began playing with the river’s currents. Alaezdar stood transfixed. He wanted to take her and make love to her, right then, but he knew that he should not. If he wanted to continue with his reformation, with this new beginning, if he wanted it to work, he could not, must not. He and Rivlok were not exactly friends, but he had learned to respect his feelings.
Another side of Alaezdar told him what he also knew. His story at Valewood was nearing an end. Maybe this whole episode with the Ambassador was just the earliest sign of that. That would mean that he would be leaving, so what harm would befall him if he betrayed Rivlok’s feelings and used Aaelie…and then left her to her own fate with the Ambassador.
“Aaelie,” he said.
“Alaezdar,” she returned, almost mockingly.
When he heard her voice, he knew he could not forsake her. He knew he could not create another problem just to save his own skin. He would find another way.
“Come to me and take me away from here,” Aaelie said and she stood up, took his hand and led him ankle deep into the cold water.
She put her cool wet hand on Alaezdar’s left cheek, and he grabbed her hand and stared into her eyes. With his other hand, he reached behind her neck, drew her close to his body, and kissed her. Aaelie gave herself to him freely and held him tightly. They kissed, feeling each other’s warmth and passion, and for the first few minutes, it felt right to Alaezdar until he realized again that he was leading her -- and himself -- down a road that would not have a good end.
He abruptly broke away.
“I’m sorry, Aaelie, but Rivlok...” he lied. Any excuse to break away, he thought.
“What do you mean, ‘but Rivlok’?”
“We cannot do this. It is not my place to come here and take you from him. We need to figure this out. With his help. He loves you dearly and together we can find a way.”
Aaelie smiled a hurt, confused smile, but soon she turned to anger.
“What do you mean, this is not your place? You are here. You are the man I want. I don’t want Rivlok. He is more like a brother to me now. In time he will understand.”
“No, Aaelie. I am sorry. I cannot.”
“But...” she began, hurt again. Tears welled up in her eyes. Stepping back, she looked at Alaezdar, his face firm in front of her. “I needed you, and you built me up, drew me into you. I have been watching you and hoping for this, and now it has finally happened and just that quickly, you let me down? What kind of evil are you?”
Aaelie turned and ran down along the river and deeper into the woods. Alaezdar stood motionless and wondered what the next few minutes might have evolved into, if only he would have allowed himself to do what in his heart he really wanted to do.
“I am a swordsman,” he finally whispered to himself. “What code do I follow?”
He knew he followed no code as a swordsman anymore. He knew that he did not want to continue as a swordsman, either, and that was actually why he’d ended up in this little hidden away farming community. Now his deeper feelings were confusing him. Feelings of neglect, of broken pride, were now mixed with love and somehow had become entwined with code and honor.
He looked at the river, thinking of Aaelie, for many minutes afterward, but soon he concluded he must leave. He would walk away now and leave everything behind -- his sword and his gear. He would take nothing with him. He would truly be a homeless wanderer until he found another village. No more sword or past to cling to him like a curse.
Yes, he would walk away and start over once again.
He had only taken a few steps back along the river when he heard screams coming from the village and it was not the same type of screaming that came from dancing. It was a screaming that he was all too familiar with, from fear and death.
Chapter 10
Morlonn had just finished firing off the last shot from his catapult. He smiled as he watched it sail over the area where his friends and villagers were dancing. Red and blue sparks trailed off the ball like a shooting star streaking through the sky and then it smoldered out as it hit the ground on the far side of the town square, exactly as he had planned.
Morlonn clapped his hands and bent over to secure the small catapult when the fence next to him shook violently. He looked a few hundred yards down the fence line toward where the shaking had come from and saw that the small gate there had erupted into flames and fallen to the ground. What he saw next terrified him.
Gronts.
Not that he had never seen them before -- bec
ause he had many times -- but he had never in his life seen so many at one time. There must have been more than twenty of them and they ran straight through the gate and over the top of the shattered, burning wood pieces of the gate as if they weren’t even on fire.
Terrified, he headed off toward an underground room to find a defensive position. While he ran, he thought how ironic it was that they had built this fence for protection against such an attack, but since it was the final evening of the festival, he was the only one on the fence and he was shooting their only real weapon into the crowd of partiers, not at a real enemy.
He jumped down into the murder room and waited a few minutes for the attack to come, but he quickly realized that he was again all alone. The gronts had charged through the gate unopposed and were not stopping to look for him or for anyone else to kill. They were on a mission, and the gate offered little to slow them down.
How had that happened, Morlonn wondred. Why did they even have that fence if it offered no protection during the time that they most needed it?
He sensed a need to get to the village, and quickly, and he then exited the gate and ran toward the village.
***
The last dance of the night had just begun. The crowd had just finished witnessing Morlonn’s red and blue shooting star. They had all looked to the sky and clapped and then turned to the musicians as they began to play a soft ballad. A young man and his younger sister sang the soft and enchanting song, an ancient elven tune about the return of their god Val-Eahea, and the villagers gathered in front of the stage and watched. The flickering torch lights around them gave a mystic effect to the ballad.
Tharn watched his villagers enjoying the evening. Everyone had finally calmed down and resumed the evening’s festivities and, Tharn hoped, they were no longer thinking about the confrontation they had just seen. Of course, the night had not quite gone as planned for him, but in terms of the whole festival, it was quite a success, apparently, as far as the majority of the villagers were concerned.
Most of them had no idea of the internal politics that were happening. At least Tharn could hold onto that little victory. He knew he was eventually going to have to deal further with Krostos and Azrull, but that would be another day. He was resolute that he was going to enjoy the rest of the evening, watch his people enjoy themselves, and take his satisfaction in that. He was happy the evening was now winding down to a calm and quiet conclusion.
The two singers were finishing the final song and as the man raised his voice slightly to bring in the close of his song, his face froze in fear. Without another sound, he raised his hands up to the top of his shoulders and fell forward, exposing six arrows in his back.
The man’s sister screamed and fell to her knees by her brother while the other musicians jumped off the stage and ran into the shocked and paralyzed, feeble crowd. When the creatures came out of the woods firing their arrows, the people were released from their initial fear and could gather up enough courage to realize that their lives were in danger and that they should run for their lives.
A handful of gronts jumped onto the stage and fired arrows into the crowd. Many villagers ran to safety, but those too slow in recovering from their shock discovered the penalty for that slow recovery. The gronts stood on the stage and picked off nearly a dozen paralyzed villagers before they had even thought of running for their lives. The gronts then loosed more arrows into the fleeing crowd and took out a few more villagers before they had no more targets left to shoot at.
They jumped off the stage and joined in pursuit. There were ten gronts on the stage, each about five foot in height and two hundred pounds of solid, iron-like stout and rounded muscle. Most of their mass was in their trunk-like legs, although their upper torsos were muscular, but thin. Their monstrous faces were smooth and hairless under their bald heads. They had only small holes in the sides of their heads for ears. Their grotesque, pale-milk faces showed no fear.
Their jaws were wide from chin to cheek and held their crowded teeth. Aside from the over- and under-bearing teeth, or fangs, their mouths had a dozen more teeth, like humans, but these gave them a grotesquely wide shape to their jaws. Their noses were small, but the nostrils were wide at the base and the bridge disappeared into their head before it reached between their eyes.
On the backs of their heads they had various animal tails sewn into their skin by the base of the tails. Some gronts had more than others did because they had been sewn on as tribal rites of passage or as trophies for individual accomplishments. They wore no armor, but their skin was so hard that any weapons made by humans did little damage to their thick hide on first contact. They only wore skins of forest animals which now reeked from rotting death, but those had been added purposely to cause fear to anyone they fought and attacked.
Once they had expended all their arrows, they drew their short swords as they jumped off the stage, and they ran into the heart of the village and they chased down more village prey, who they then caught and sliced away at, especially the unfortunately slow at the rear of the fleeing pack.
After each victorious kill, the gronts stopped in their tracks and screamed, and then the others screamed in return as if to acknowledge their clan’s progress. This caused a cacophonous noise throughout the village, from both the victorious, bloodthirsty screams of the gronts and the wailing of the terrorized, fleeing villagers. Once the gronts had reached the height of their blood lust attacks, they ran to the area of the village where the booths were and, in their own separate rampages, destroyed every one of the festival booths.
Back at the stage a robed man had appeared.
He wore a simple dark green cloak and he had his hood over his head, but he removed it to better survey the destruction. He stood there on the stage for several minutes and surveyed the damage and death caused by his gronts. He enjoyed the sight. It wasn’t pretty, nor was it glorious, but it was productive, and for that he was satisfied. He enjoyed watching his plans be executed as he had anticipated, especially when he was using as his instrument these unpredictable and almost uncontrollable gronts.
Torz, his mentor, had warned him about using such creatures, but had also told him that if he could succeed in using them, he would be nearly unstoppable because of the destructive havoc they could wreak in such a short time. Torz’s pronouncement had been a challenge Ra-Corsh could not shy away from.
He stood there for several minutes absorbing the whole scene to determine what to do next. Without a word he jumped off the stage and walked quickly towards the center of the village and as soon as his feet had hit the dirt, a flaming woman with wings of solid fire flew to him from the woods behind the stage. A human woman in tight chainmail with nothing but flesh underneath showing her tight figure, she hovered above him and her chain mail glowed orange as the small hairs on her body were lit with fire. Her wings were like a bird’s wings, but were engulfed in an aggressive flame that left a trail of smoke behind her when she flew.
She landed directly in front of Ra-Corsh and as she did so, the wings on her back disappeared, but small wisps of flame still sparked and crackled beneath her chain mail body suit. Her whole body was covered with the small wisps of flame, even her shoulder length silky red hair.
“Is it working, wizard?” she spat.
The wizard continued and said nothing to the woman.
“Ra-Corsh?” she repeated.
“Curse you, woman!” Ra-Corsh said. He pulled his hands from under his robe and pointed at her chest. “If you cannot tell that all is working as planned, may I suggest you look around? My gronts are causing massive destruction upon this weak and simple village.”
“But the swordsman…do we have him yet? Or are your precious gronts even smart enough to be looking for him again without being told to do so?”
“Unfortunately, they are not looking yet. Gronts are a very...”
“But you told them! They are disobeying you!”
Ra-Corsh looked toward the ground and shook his head, and then looked up at her, his chin still near his chest. He slowly raised his chin as he spoke.
“These are not your normal gronts. They are Kronn Gronts. Yes, they are stupid, but they are the most ferocious creatures you will find. They are not only bred to fight and to kill other living beings, but they are resistant to any Kronn, as the Kronn is in their being from birth. Killing is what they do, and it is what they enjoy the most. It is not too often they find other races besides their own to kill and I seriously doubt that they are even thinking about capturing our prize until they get their fill of killing first.”
“We don’t have much time. I suggest you expedite the process. I don’t want this getting out of control!”
“Fyaa! Be patient. You just need to wait. And don’t forget the girl. We have to have their sacrifice or this will be for naught.” Ra-Corsh shook his head again and turned to Fyaa directly. “Look at me! I am a human in command of a wild band of gronts. I know these gronts. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be alive right now. So just trust me, and wait, and let me and my gronts do our work. They will find the girl and then I will let you search for him when the time comes.”
Fyaa turned away from the wizard and her wings exploded from her back, sparking and crackling as the flames shot out in fury, and she flew away towards the village.
As she flew through the festival site, she shot fireballs onto all of the booths, although they had already been mostly destroyed, and then she flew deeper into the village and torched the wooden structured buildings and even the small homes as she circled around. She smiled as she watched them burn and the people scrambling out of them and running in fear for their lives.
The Warrior's Bane (War for the Quarterstar Shards Book 1) Page 12
