Anger seemed to burn violet-bright in the eyes of the mighty cervidae, and he stamped and snorted, shaking his antlered head in rebuttal. This is not the enemy's wilderness! His voice bellowed adamantly in Cal's mind.
Cal recoiled, not meaning to offend this servant of the THREE who is SEVEN. I'm sorry, I only meant-
All of Aiénor is but a garden of His great pleasure, and though weeds and disease have invaded its design, beauty is even now and ever always being restored, the beast interjected. Do not give authority to the dark trespassers, for though His light is hidden, this world and all that is in it is still His own.
A beat of a moment passed as the groomsman considered the words of the great stag. Then the scurried sounds of his friends' struggle woke his attention with a jolting call into the forest. "Cal!" he heard Astyræ shout as she nocked another of her silver-winged arrows on the ancient weapon. "Cal, where are you?"
He could see her there in the clearing, but his position was still cloaked to them, and he ached with the powerlessness to rush to her aid. Although the first wave of attack appeared to have been repelled, the other Nocturnals were now upon his friends.
Deryn darted in and out of the three still standing, his tiny, blue, Sprite blade aglow in an azure wash of fierce protection as he slashed at throats and dove in and out of the path of the enemy blades. The Sprite managed to stick his blade in the gullet of the first of the Nocturnals, but it had gotten momentarily lodged there, and it was only by a hairsbreadth that he managed to free his weapon and miss the crushing swing of another's jagged mace.
"Where is he, Deryn?" Astyræ pleaded from the tree line as she dispatched another arrow, which merely glanced off the armor of the Raven soldier. "Have they taken him?"
"I do not know where he is," the Sprite said as worry colored his fury. "But something unsettling is afoot." He dodged yet another blow from the Raven blade.
"Cal!" she cried out again into the darkness.
I have to help them, please! Please let me help them! Cal begged.
You cannot help them now, Calarmindon. It was you who left them, the Stag said bluntly. Yet … you are still meant to seek the light with them.
Cal listened to these heavy words, and the weight of their meaning fell upon his shoulders. But I don't know where I am going, he said shamefully. How can I take them somewhere that I have never been, let alone some place that no one has ever been to?
This, Bright Fame, is why I have been sent. The gaze of the beast held Cal's, unmoving. You are to retrace the ancient paths, and I am to guide you on your foretold quest. For a way has long been made for those who would but seek it.
Will you come with us, then? he asked the white cervidae.
A burst of short, agitated snorts came in heated blasts, the indignant breath visible in the chill of the atmosphere. The stag was angered and yet sorrowful; a knowing weariness could be seen in his burning eyes. He broke his stare, his tri-crowned head turning to look upon his own scarred flank before returning to meet the eyes of the groomsman again.
I am.
And with those two words, the massive white stag turned its head sharply and leapt off in the direction of the clearing.
The instant the creature left him, Cal's body released from the strangling hold of the holy beast, and he dropped to his knees. His chest rose and fell, heaving great, labored breaths. Cal forgot momentarily about the ambush of his friends; that was, until the sounds of clashing iron and frenzied commotion woke him from his respite.
"Deryn, Astyræ!" he whispered to himself, and in a flash he was up again and on his feet, the point of the ancient blade of the dragon slayer held thirstily out before him. He was nearly to the edge of the clearing when he heard the THWANG of a loosed bowstring.
Cal broke through the line of thick pines, and as he did he saw the fierce glow of her eyes, both yellow and violet, staring focused and ready to fire, zeroing in on him. "Astyræ!" Cal screamed, begging her not to shoot him. "Astyræ, it's me! Are you-" he began to say, but as he beheld the impossible aftermath about him, his own words caught lifelessly in his throat.
"Cal?" she yelled back her worried question. "Are you alright?"
But all the groomsman could do was stand and stare at the bloody mass that lay lifeless on the clearing floor.
"Oh, thank the Great Father that you are alright!" she said, relieved as she hurried towards him.
"Cal?" Deryn asked, feeling the growing tension of the moment. "Cal, where were you all this time?"
But Cal did not answer; his eyes were locked and his mouth slack-jawed at the horror that lay bleeding out in front of him.
"Cal?" Deryn said suspiciously as he wiped the black blood from his tiny blade. He flitted over to his charge and pulled at his shortly-bearded jaw, examining the shock in the eyes of his friend. "Cal? Cal, answer me," Deryn asked again, his worry unbridled now.
Cal slowly looked up, peeling his horrified eyes from the bloody mass before him and meeting the gaze of his guardian.
"I ..." His mouth suddenly went dry and his voice was now altogether unsure. "I was talking to him," he said lifelessly as he pointed to the arrow-pierced flesh of the dead White Stag.
Astyræ lowered her bow, the threat of the Nocturnals now gone for the moment. Her mind raced, and her fears, her soul-quaking fears began to shake and threaten the respite of the small victory that she and Deryn had just won. "Cal?" Her voice was uncertain, her question disproportionately heavy to the singularity of the word.
A single tear rolled down his weary face as he looked in shock at the majestic and magical servant of the THREE who is SEVEN who now lay lifeless, devoid of power, there upon the clearing floor. Cal swallowed hard, doing his best to choke back his emotions as he beheld this woman, this beautiful distraction who held in her slender hand the instrument of destruction. "What have you done?"
Chapter Forty-Eight
THE MOOD OF THE FIRST colony was tense at best. The rift between the guardsmen and woodcutters threatened the fragile civility of this wilderness encampment with nearly every interaction between them. Stockpiles of freshly hewn timber began to accumulate in great mass along the stronghold's eastern wall as the North Wolf and his men waited for the mighty ship Determination to return with her empty holds from the harbor of their homeland. The governor watched Yasen and his men with great suspicion, for though he relied upon their sharped axes, in his heart he suspected betrayal from the northmen.
Days had turned into weeks since Tahd and Captain Means set sail from the rocky shores of the Western Wreath in search of glory, bearing the fuel of hope for their countrymen beyond the Dark Sea. Hope, however, had quickly turned to worry, for in the last few days the rumblings of a great and violent storm grew louder upon the winds. Guardsmen and woodcutters alike could not ignore the streaks of sickly green lightning as they woke the darkened skies of Aiénor with enraged fury.
No rain had fallen, but still the haunting wrath of the storm moved slowly, lingeringly, towards them. The distress over the last great ship of Haven setting sail through such a tempest evoked bloody memories of brothers lost and the Resolve shipwrecked, which only added to the tensions of the fractured colony. Woodcutters and guardsmen both did their best to continue their assignments with fervent conviction, but the charade was haunted with the sinking suspicion that they were indeed lost to these western shores, that the last ship of Haven might never again return.
"Is it ready yet?" Yasen asked the nervous smithy. "That timber is not going to fell itself, you know."
"Yes," Wielund answered rather exhaustedly through a wash of sparks as he pedaled the sharpening stone. "I am nearly finished, sir."
"Thank you, Wielund," Yasen said kindly.
The smithy pumped his legs in concentrated silence for a few moments more. His brow was furrowed with questions, but he was unsure of just how it was that he was supposed to ask them. "Have you ... have you seen him? Talked to him?"
Yasen just stared at the young man, his one
eye doing its best to bore a hole through any ill-gotten meaning. "Seen who?" he asked.
Wielund just let out an exasperated sigh, and then stopped his pedaling altogether. He wiped the dripping sweat from his face with a filthy rag that hung from a nail on one of the rafters nearby. "You know who," he said in defeat.
"I do know who it is that you inquire about," Yasen said matter-of-factly as he held a burning piece of kindling to the simple, carved bowl of his pipe. "Though I am not quite sure your motivation for asking?"
"He was my friend too, you know. He saved my scrawny hide from the depths of the black waters," Wielund said, his words thick with both emotion and defensiveness. "Though we didn't see eye to eye on things, it doesn't mean that I wished him harm."
"No, perhaps not," Yasen said through a haze of fragrant smoke.
"So, have you?" Wielund demanded. "Have you seen him? I am … rather worried about him," he admitted as he rose from the sharpening wheel and walked over to pump the bellows and stoke the glowing coals.
Yasen looked behind him before he chose to answer the smithy's questions, and when he perceived that there was in fact no one in earshot, he exhaled his plume of smoke and answered him. "If I had seen him, I am sure he would be wasting no time at all, seeking what it truly was that he came here to find," he said as he smiled a knowing smile.
"I don't know if I understand it all, this talk of new light and deeper magic," Wielund said.
"I don't know if I do either, smithy," the North Wolf agreed. "At least, not completely. But I do know it is real enough, whether I understand it or not. And the groomsman? The groomsman seems to know that he is here on some sort of greater assignment."
"Greater than this? Greater than the colony of the Priest King? Greater than harvesting the light for our people?" Wielund whined, his pride bruised at the notion of something more important than the station he had been graciously appointed to.
"Aye!" Yasen puffed. "This is all just temporary, you and me, and all of this, this is all dependent on blades and backs, governors and greenhorns." He pointed with the tip of his carved pipe towards the stockpiles of timber on the eastern wall. "What Cal is seeking ... he believes that it is beyond himself, somehow. Beyond all of this. And I, for one, pray that he is right."
"Why?" Wielund asked as he pulled a glowing metal horseshoe from the coals of the massive forge.
"Why what, smithy?" Yasen said. "Out with it, go on!"
"Why would you pray for that?" he said, genuinely confused at the notion. "Wouldn't that mean that you were wrong? That all of this was wrong?"
"Wouldn't you rather be wrong if what he hopes for is indeed right?" Yasen argued. "I believe in what we do. I have pledged my life to the service of Haven and to my brother woodcutters. But I don't really want to strive under the weight of darkness forever. There are other things I would rather do with my hands, other labors I would rather devote my life to!" he said with a wry smile as he thought of the beautiful barmaid of Piney Creek who had captured his heart when she tended to his wounds.
"I don't rightly know if I ever thought about it like that," Wielund said in between the strokes of his hammer.
"Thought about what?" came the mockingly suspicious voice of the one-armed fire knight.
"I – I just ... I was merely talking about-" Wielund nervously tried to stammer out.
"Are the shoes ready, smithy?" he demanded through indignant disgust, cutting off whatever explanation the smithy was trying to formulate. "I've been waiting for you to shod my steed for days now, and somehow I now find you in here wasting whatever vigor you still have on the likes of this wood rat?"
"I had to ... I had to sharpen his axe!" Wielund reasoned.
"And which of these tasks do you think that the governor would say was more important?" Pyrrhus seethed.
"Should we ask him?" Yasen replied. "Or perhaps ... perhaps we should write a correspondence to the Priest King himself and see what it is that he would rather us pour our resources into: the timber for his entire kingdom to see by, or whatever phantom enemy it is that you are so bravely defending us from?"
Pyrrhus just stared at the one-eyed woodcutter, his rage roiling under the surface in wounded fury. His hand flexed open and closed, as if he were barely restraining himself from reaching for his own blade and ending this once and for all.
"Mark my words, North Wolf!" the fire knight growled in anger. "This Wreath is not all oak and pine, and its natives are not all golden-haired maidens. There is something darker in these lands, something much more sinister than mere shadows, I know it in my bones; I can feel it. And while you and your northmen are all off on whatever holy war you think this is, who do you think is going to defend the very timber you fell?"
"Chase whatever ghosts you like, Pyrrhus. My men and I, we will carry out our orders," Yasen said as he thumbed the blade of his freshly sharpened axe. "Thank you smithy," he said with a nod of courtesy before turning his dark, bearded face to meet the enraged stare of the fire knight. "Your work is swift and sure, as always."
The horns of the watchmen sounded suddenly, breaking the battle of prides with their startling tones. Pyrrhus and Yasen met each other's eyes with a wholly different concern on their faces. "The watchmen signal," Yasen said. "Perhaps the ship returns with your captain?"
"Not likely," Pyrrhus arrogantly argued, reaching for his sword as he thundered away from the smithy and towards the commotion.
The square of the colony's stronghold was buzzing with curiosity, as woodcutter, Priest, and guardsmen alike poured out from their barracks so as to see what it was that the watchmen heralded.
"Pyrrhus!" called the authoritative voice of the governor. "What is it? What do your men see?"
The fire knight looked over his shoulder to spy his men there upon the palisade walls. It was then that he saw his two night watchmen pointing to the east. "The east?" he said under his breath, sure that the alarm would be for something much more sinister than the return of the great ship.
"Did you say the east, Pyrrhus?" Seig asked, approaching the fire night with a purposeful stride.
Pyrrhus stood there dumfounded for the moment, trying to wrap his mind and his pride around all that this could mean. "Yes, yes, Governor. The east. My watchmen signal something in the east."
"Tahd!" Seig exclaimed. "My captain is returning, and with him the glory we have fought for, and so rightly deserve!" He slammed his massive hands upon the shoulders of the knight. "This will be a day for celebration Pyrrhus! Glory for me, for all the men of the first colony! And for you, reinforcements!"
Pyrrhus thought on what the governor had just said, and the small wound of pride he felt at the absence of an enemy was quickly replaced with the swelling of power he felt at the arrival of men to command.
"Yes, indeed, my lord," Pyrrhus said as a proud smile spread across his thinly-bearded face.
"Gather your men, for we will go to the shoreline to greet our captain and brothers returned!" Seig ordered, now nearly drunk with excitement. The governor leaned over and whispered to his attendant; as soon as the words were finished he took off in a sprint towards the center of the commotion.
The horns erupted in a cacophony of brass as the notes of the watchmen yet again demanded the attention of all who gathered. Everyone looked to the center platform where the tall, dark-haired governor stood, seeming somehow even taller here in these anticipatory moments.
"Men of the first colony, today is a bright day indeed. For our watchmen have espied the lamps of the Determination sailing upon these black and angry waters, and they are nearing an arrival upon our western shores!" the governor declared victoriously, with fist held high.
The gathered crowd let out a relieved cheer, patting shoulders and embracing each other with great joy. "See!" said Alon the woodcutter to his brother. "I told you this was not all for naught!"
"You told me?" Oren said, with great offense in his voice. "If I remember right, it was I who told you!"
Seig raised
both of his hands in an effort to silence the jubilee of the men. "We will make ready ourselves to greet our brothers, those returned and those new to these wild lands of the Wreath. Banners will be unfurled and we will give our fellow colonists the welcome of heroes! Pyrrhus!" the governor ordered. "Make ready the knights and the guardsmen for our trek to the shoreline. Fresh water and ale are to be brought to the beach, for our brothers are sure to be thirsty, and we will not meet them empty-handed!"
Gvidus elbowed Goran and whispered to his large brother. "And just what do you suppose that they would have us to do on this fine day? Huh?" He looked to their chieftain, whose patched face was still resolute in the uncertainty of the moment.
"Governor?" Yasen shouted out over the commotion of the announcement, but Seig went on congratulating himself with all of his fellow guardsmen, and paid no attention to the request of the chieftain. "Governor!" he shouted even louder now. "Governor Seig!"
"Yes, woodcutter?" he said, feigning his sudden acknowledgement.
"What of us, then? Of me and my men, what would you have us do to aid in the welcome celebrations?" Yasen asked, already presuming the answer.
"It would seem prudent to me—right even—that you and your brave woodcutters should continue to pursue what it is that you have come for." His words were dripping with mockery as he spoke them.
"And what would that be, Governor?" Yasen said, unaffected by the belittlement intended. "Glory?"
"Timber," Seig replied, his words hanging long in the air. "We would not want you to waste much time on festivities, now, would we? Not when our great city is waiting for your men to bring them their light."
Yasen nodded in silent assent, bridling his anger as he strode towards his brothers. "All of us—not a single damned one of us—will be in this stronghold when the captain and his new charges arrive. If it is timber that they want, than it will be timber that we will give them."
"But, Yasen?" Oren asked. "What if there are more of our brothers aboard the ship?"
The Ravenous Siege (Epic of Haven Trilogy Book 2) Page 44