The Ravenous Siege (Epic of Haven Trilogy Book 2)

by R. G. Triplett

  "I'll get her!" Roshan announced as he took off after the still saddled animal.

  "Roshan, wait!" she whispered after him, but it was too late. The boy was determined to rescue this wandering steed.

  "Make ready!" Marcum whispered his order while the archers drew their bows in practiced unison. "They are coming this way!"

  Roshan had finally reached the horse, and when Keily caught up with him she did not quite understand the mix of worry and sadness in the boy's eyes.

  "Keily?" Roshan asked nervously. "Keily, what happened to her? Is she going to be alright?"

  The barmaid saw now what had upset the boy so much. There, decorating the dirty, dun-colored face of this mare were the most angry and violent looking scars she had ever seen upon the face of such an animal. The eyes of this beast were still kind, though her frame seemed gaunt and her markings terrifying enough to strike a gasp in the breath of even a seasoned groomsman.

  Time slowed to a standstill for Keily as she beheld the face of this horse. Her breath caught in her throat as the familiarity of the scarred lines awakened memories of a young groomsman and the first time she had met him. "What in the damnable dark?" she whispered. "How can this be?"

  "Are you okay?" the boy cooed as he ran his tiny hands along the neck of this noble horse. "There now, you are safe with us."

  The horse snorted her understanding and nodded her weary, scar-ridden head. Tears pricked at Keily's eyes at the tender way the boy spoke to the horse, and at his naïve promises of safety in the very moments before death claimed them all. As the sounds of blood and battle reached her ears, she determined to try and make good on the promises of the young Roshan.

  "Run!" whispered the lieutenant down to the exiles below. "They are coming now, and we won't be able to hold them off for long. Scatter now! Make for the hills and save yourselves!"

  The host of frightened people tried to flee as quietly as they could; men and women who could not hope to truly fight grabbed what they could and ran for the mountain's base.

  "Fire!" shouted Marcum from above, and scores of arrows were loosed in volleyed succession upon the company of Nocturnals that had come into shooting range. "Take out as many of the green-eyed bastards as you can, men!"

  Keily looked up at the carnage above, and what she beheld struck fear into her brave heart. The thin line of their defenses, though valiant and desperate in effort, began to crumble almost immediately under the maniacal attack of the green-eyed enemy.

  "Keily?" came the frightened voice of her young friend. "Keily, what should we do?"

  She stood frozen for a moment, watching her panic-stricken people flee, watching the falling forms of the arrow-pierced guardsmen as they tumbled down the hillside in a heap of blood and armor, watching the horrific host of Nocturnals closing in to butcher the rest of them. Her heart pounded in her ears and her mouth went dry with fear; it wasn't until the hand of the young boy tugged at her tunic that she engaged the madness swirling all about her.

  "Keily?" he begged her as the tears fell from his own frightened eyes.

  She looked down at the frightened little boy and knew that she must do something to protect him. She looked into his eyes and determined her course of action. "Come on now," she said with a calming order. "It is time to ride, Roshan!" Keily helped him atop the dun-colored beast, and then ran her hand along the mare's smooth, soiled coat.

  "Are you not riding with me?" he asked her, even more nervous now as the remnant fled in wide-eyed terror about him.

  "No, Roshan," she told him as she cinched the saddle and handed him the reins. "I know this horse, and I knew her rider. You must let her take you far, far from here."

  "But, Keily?" he begged.

  "We haven't the time!" she said as the screams and grunts of battle echoed overhead. She took the horse's head in both of her hands, examining her kind albeit sad eyes. "Take him west, and keep him safe! And if you find help, Dreamer, please lead it back to us as fast as you can!"

  Dreamer snorted her understanding while Keily handed the boy a large knife. The sound of the Raven's arrows cutting through the fading violet sky gave her all the motivation she needed.

  "Ride fast, and find us help!" Keily told them both, the horse and her boy, and then smacked the hindquarters of the mare and yelled after them as they fled. "Yaw! Ride swift, and may the THREE who is SEVEN guide you safely!"

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  "CAL!" DERYN WHISPERED NERVOUSLY. "CAL, Cal, wake up!" The Sprite guardian did his best to quietly rouse his sleeping friend. "Now is not the time to slumber so heavily!" he grumbled to himself.

  The Sprite flitted over to the sleeping woman who lay close to the smoldering fire. "My lady, please ... please wake up!" he whispered again.

  The sound of boots and the clanking of metal off in the timbered distance made the Sprite's tiny throat dry with nervous anticipation. Deryn shot up to the tree line, doing his best to conceal his azure wings in the thick foliage of the evergreen canopy above them as he watched the band of green-eyed Nocturnals below.

  "What is the hurry, huh?" came the grumbling, gurgling voice of an ashen-faced soldier. "The whole damned world is already hers!"

  "Are you really going to complain about the will of the Raveness?" said the tallest of the enemy scouts.

  "Not complaining," the first Nocturnal backtracked in his reply. "I am merely wanting to understand."

  "Understand?" came the voice of their leader, growling out a loud bellow of disproval. "Understand!" He pulled a small scythe out from his black, leather belt and held it to the throat of his underling. "If the Raven Queen wants them hunted," he paused, letting a seething calm come into his voice and linger for a moment, "then we who are her servants ... will ... indeed ... hunt."

  "But there is no one left to stand against her," said the first Nocturnal, unflinching at the bite of the razor-sharp edge. "Why would she bother with nomads and leftovers?"

  "Why is not our concern," the leader said between barred teeth. "If you would like to ask her, then by all means, go ahead. But don't blame me when you become food for her dragons!"

  The moment hung there, tense, as the remaining four Nocturnals watched their captain hold his blade to the throat of one of their own. "Do any of the rest of you care to ask another question?" he queried with a piercing gaze.

  The heads of his subordinates shook their answers, and before he could exact his anger all the more upon the lone grumbler, something else caught his attention.

  "Captain?" one of them asked.

  The captain turned towards them in a sharp movement, the disgust of his answer all too evident on his face. "Do you smell that?" Almost as if on cue, the six of them began to sniff the air, their gaunt noses pinching as they took in the scent in question. "Someone is out here; someone is close." Their captain grinned a sinister smile. "I can smell their fire."

  "Is it them?" came the question of another.

  "Don't be foolish!" spat one of the six. "It is probably some Dardanian dog, or some smudge from Clarus."

  "Regardless of who it is," said the captain, "whether it finally be the prize of our hunt, or merely some un-enlightened beggar, we will see to it that there is none left still breathing who refuse to take the un-light."

  Deryn had heard enough. In a bolt of blue light that he prayed the soldiers would not see, the guardian Sprite shot from the cover of the mighty tree limbs and perched himself upon the nose of his friend. "Wake up!" the Sprite hissed, before leaping from the face of his friend to that of the lady Astyræ. "My lady, please!" he begged, as urgently and as loudly as he dared to risk.

  "What is the matter, Deryn?" Cal said groggily and a bit too loudly as he woke from his exhausted sleep.

  "Shhh! Quietly now," the Sprite warned.

  "What is it?" Cal asked, the anxiety of his friend quickly sobering up his drowsy thoughts.

  Deryn flitted up to meet his gaze as he spoke. "There are Raven soldiers, Nocturnals, six of them, just there beyond the Á
goni gi!"

  Cal reached over to the sleeping beauty beside him, gently shaking her pearl-colored arm to wake her. "Astyræ? Astyræ, you must listen now, my lady."

  Cal watched her as she stretched, her disheveled, golden hair framing her soft, pale face in such a way that he could not help himself but to stare, overtaken for the moment with her waking grace. "Is everything alright?" she cooed sweetly, as if she were waking upon the bed of some far-off refuge.

  "The Raven's kind are here, just out beyond this clearing," Cal told her, quelling his attraction and turning to the seriousness at hand.

  "They are hunting something, or someone," Deryn reported.

  Quickly, Astyræ rose, the fog of sleep now vanished as she reached for Arianrhod. She slung the white leather quiver over her shoulder, fitting one of the silver-winged fletched arrows to its silver bowstring. "Have they followed us?" Astyræ growled her question as she aimed her arrow at the clearing. "Is it us they are after?"

  "Even if they had followed us, we were on horseback," Deryn answered her. "And these green-eyed monsters are not mounted."

  "How long were we asleep, then?" Cal asked his Sprite friend.

  "A few hours, maybe, if that."

  Cal unsheathed his ancient blade, and the smattering of silver and amethyst leaves shone brighter than ever before. A jolt of wariness pulsed through the groomsman as he realized the danger that they were in. "However it is that they have come so close, we cannot just wait here and let them find us." He walked over to his sleek, grey courser, and held his strong head with his left hand. "Whatever you do, Farran, keep quiet for me now. You too, girl," he said as he patted the flank of the massive chestnut.

  "Where are you going?" Astyræ whispered to him.

  "There," he pointed with the glinting end of Gwarwyn. "Right where he spotted them. Deryn, stay with her, near the horses."

  "No, groomsman, it is I who should run sentry for you," Deryn protested.

  "I am not so sure of that," Cal said absently as he peered off into the darkened thick of the surrounding forests.

  "Cal, don't be foolish-" Deryn continued to argue, but Cal cut him off.

  "Please!" he shouted in a whisper. "Just stay here with her."

  "Very well then, Bright Fame," Deryn said with a wounded disappointment. The Sprite and the violet-eyed woman watched him walk cautiously beyond the glassy, barren clearing and into the thick mass of birch and pines and thick, climbing ivy.

  "How many were they?" she asked the Sprite, distress coloring her words.

  "Six, or at least that is what I could see," he told her as he watched nervously for his friend. "He won't be able to overpower them all."

  "I hope … I hope that he will not try. I don't think that they are looking for us," she said. "I don't think they would even know that we exist in this darkened world."

  "Who then, my lady?" Deryn asked, his eyes still trained on the trees before him. "Who would they hunt?"

  "Once my father fell, and Dardanos was hers, the sorceress sought only to conquer and command any who would resist her. The Amaian they were called, the last, the end of all people." They heard a crack in the forest, and she drew her ancient bow tight, training its pointed, silver barb on the noises before them. "Oh groomsman, please do not do something foolish," she whispered. A tear of worry and a tinge of hurt clouded her vision and her thoughts for a moment.

  Deryn rested his hand on her shoulder, sharing her distress. "The Amaian?" he prodded, turning her mind away from the powerlessness she was feeling.

  "The rest of us had to move, to never settle; we were nothing more than wanderers, nomads," she went on to explain. "But lore had it that somewhere in the depths of this wilderness there is a protected land, where we who refuse the un-light of the Raveness might yet make a new home for ourselves."

  CRACK. The sound of twigs breaking added to the quickening thump of her beating heart.

  "Is that who you believe they are hunting?" Deryn asked. "These Amaian?"

  She nodded her answer. "Yes, though I cannot say if she would know about the return of the tree men from Haven to these shores. The Great Father knows that my people certainly didn't know."

  CRACK. CRUNCH. The sounds came again, this time closer than before. Then, before they could pinpoint the source of the noise, a low, guttural, gurgling sound joined the chorus of breaking branches and crunching footsteps. Deryn drew his tiny blade while Astyræ held her bowstring taught.

  Cal had made his way a mere twenty paces into the thickness of the forest when he heard the group of Nocturnals just off through the trees. Protect me, please, guide my steps so that I might yet seek Your light, he prayed silently as his hands wrung the hilt of the still-tarnished sword.

  The sounds of the soldiers came even closer, but when they were nearly upon him, the most unlooked for of all noises filled the spaces of his mind. SCREECH came the sound of an Owele off in the distance, and Cal was instantly frozen. Before he could struggle against the constraints on his body, he beheld a radiant, white figure of light, leaping and bounding like an eerie dream through the forest, ever closer to him. He tried to move his hands, to ready himself to strike a fatal blow to the Nocturnals that crept closer and closer to his position there behind a thick, knotted, oak tree.

  Not now! Not now, please! he pleaded, but his voice had once again failed him. He was helpless, prisoner to the moment, motionless and powerless while those who were hunting him and the lady Astyræ were nearly upon them.

  The bright light wove in and out in ghost-like fashion until it stopped not but forty paces from the frozen groomsman.

  "I can see the glow of their light," one of the Nocturnals growled as they paused just before the very same oak tree that Cal was helplessly concealed behind.

  "If they refuse the un-light, we will feast upon their flesh," their leader seethed. "You three, go north forty paces and we will go south. I do not plan to let them escape this day." Without hesitation, the band of Nocturnals moved into their positions. Cal stood there, frozen and helpless, watching and hearing it unfold before him.

  Deryn. Astyræ! he shouted in the echoes of his thoughts. No! Please, no!

  Once the band of Nocturnals was in position, their captain looked through the darkness as if it were as bright as when the great tree was still shining, and nodded his green-eyed command. The Raven soldiers crept from the tree line like savage hunters, their muted, iron blades held above their beak-helmed heads, circling in on the smoldering fire there in the glassy wasteland.

  Why will you not let me protect the people I care for? Cal shouted silently, the madness of memory flooded his mind as he recalled the moments when the demon bear nearly took the life of his woodcutting friend. Why won't you let me come to their aid?

  Just then, the very light that had seemed to bound its way like a glimmer through the thick darkness of the forests took shape there upon the Ágoni gi. The blurred edges and morphing shapes sharpened and solidified, and a white stag stepped forth in the middle of the clearing, right in front of three of the Nocturnal soldiers.

  Watch out! Move away from there, Cal begged the brilliantly lit beast. But the Nocturnals could not see it, and indeed they passed right through it as if it had not existed at all. What in the damnable dark is this? Cal said to himself.

  The Nocturnals paused after they had stepped through the stag, blank and confused looks suddenly coming over their faces. Just then the sounds of loosed arrows and clashing metal woke up the heavy sleep of the forest, and a small, blue blur of light dove in and out between the stupefied Nocturnals in the clearing.

  Do not be afraid, Calarmindon Bright Fame.

  Cal heard the deeply resonating voice of this beast, whose luminous face was crowned by a massive array of glowing antlers. The stag's coat was as white as snow, and it stood nearly twelve hands high, but it was the three-pronged crown of obsidian antlers that sprouted like black ice out of both the sides and the base of the beast's massive head that caused Cal to forget to
breathe.

  Your friends are yet safe for the moment.

  Cal stared in utter amazement, for this stag blazed with light, the very same light that had haunted his dreams just two days ago. Was that you I saw? In my dream?

  Indeed, it was, the animal replied as his burning, violet eyes met the groomsman's gaze. Tell me true, Bright Fame, what is it that you seek?

  Cal was held in a most familiar motionless state, prisoner to the will of this magical creature, helpless to either his kindness or his wrath. He thought long about his words in the muted silence of this holy conversation. The light. At last, he answered the white stag. I have come across the black waters, at the bidding of the Oweles, to seek the light of the THREE who is SEVEN.

  The giant cervidae snorted his understanding and shook his mighty crown. Indeed, it was foretold, and indeed, you have been called across the depths, and indeed, in your seeking, a new light awaits. The beast stamped the ground and snorted majestically before he finished his words. Though in truth, light is not all that compels you in your quest, offspring of Ádhamh.

  Cal's eyes dropped, crestfallen under the judgment of this deep magic. I do not know the way to this light, nor do I wish to find it alone. Forgive me … if I have betrayed my calling?

  It is not wholly good for the offspring of Ádhamh to be alone, though it is not wholly without a different sort of wounding in the togetherness, the stag surmised with a puzzling mix of grace and pain. No. There is not a trace of betrayal to be found, though there is a troubled destiny that shadows your journey.

  Shame seemed to lift from Cal's mind as quickly as it had settled, and his youthful curiosity could not help but ask awe-filled questions of this mysterious creature. Why have you come for me? he asked, as his eyes ran over the beast from tip to tail. It was when he saw the jagged scar along the flank of the white stag that he knew just what creature it was that held him. Why have you haunted my dreams? Why have you met me now, here, amidst the enemy's wilderness and while my friends fight for their very lives?