by Ethan Spears
She lay her head down and wept into her pillow. She didn’t eat or drink, and it was hours ahead of time, but she slept anyway, sleeping the sadness away.
The next day she awoke in silence, no longer feeling the joy of her fresh, clean body. Breakfast was ready as she rose and she ate in silence. Ezma led her outside for her exercises. When Mergau finished her run, Ezma shook her head in disappointment, snapped her gold pocket watch shut without a word, and marched back to her home, Mergau trailing after her, not even caring that they were skipping their bath.
When they got inside, Ezma went straight to her desk, leaving Mergau to do her training without any instruction or comment. Mergau bent her legs and crooked her arms, brushing her fingers together. She stood there in sullen silence for several hours as Ezma scribbled her notes, periodically leaving and coming back without them. Ezma finally checked her watch and, satisfied, poured Mergau some of her potion. Mergau accepted it meekly and drank. They ate in silence. Ezma dismissed her to bed with a wave. Mergau slipped back into oblivion and slept.
The next morning, there was no fire pit, no desk, no stools, no rug, and no breakfast. Mergau awoke to find even her pillow and blanket missing. The only thing that remained was Ezma, sitting on the floor with her legs crossed and her gaze focused intently on Mergau.
“Come here and sit down across from me,” she said, her body perfectly still as she spoke. Mergau felt disoriented. She wasn’t sure how long she had slept or the time of day as the hut never let in any natural light, but a tall candle in Ezma’s hands guided Mergau as she did what she was instructed.
“You’ve had some turbulent times these past few days,” Ezma said, her voice oddly close and comforting. “Things were said and done and no more thought need be tasked to them, but you have other troubles. Speak of those, instead.”
Mergau sat silently. She didn’t know what was happening, but she felt unusually careless. After a long while, she said, “I do not know what to say, mistress.”
“Start with three days ago. What happened three days ago?”
Mergau tried to think, but her head buzzed, a vague emptiness. “I do not know.”
“Focus,” said Ezma.
The candle’s flame blew out, the smoke rising and assailing Mergau’s nostrils. She was starting to remember. “I was very happy,” she recalled.
“About what?”
“My body, my magic, my speed.” The words came easily, her usual struggles with the Krik language not impeding her. “I was proud of myself and all I had done in so little time. I felt like I was floating all day.”
“Keep going.”
“I felt for the first time that I was doing something that I wanted to do, and I was doing it well. I was not perfect, perhaps not even good, but I was just starting and getting better. I felt as solid as a man and as determined as a woman. I felt things I had not felt in a long time. I felt clean, and not just my body.”
“Can you feel that happiness now? Can you imagine it and hold it in your breast?”
Mergau felt a pleasant sensation in her chest and breathed deeply. “Yes. I can feel it strongly now.”
“But then what happened?”
The buzzing felt like it was going to return, but as she remembered, it subsided. She felt the memory being gently tugged from her as if it wanted nothing more than to be shared. “I became confused. That day and the next. My happiness was driven from me. You made me very angry then. I couldn’t control myself, and you pushed me further and further. You made me feel foolish and worthless, though I had no reason to feel that way and every right to be mad.” She felt so calm saying it aloud, at peace with it. It didn’t matter to her anymore despite being so fresh in her mind.
“Can you recall that anger? Does it boil inside you now?”
Mergau felt the hotness of it in her gut. “I do,” she said through clenched jaw.
“Then what did you feel?”
There was no buzzing at all this time. “I felt sadness. An overwhelming sadness. It was the worst sadness I had ever felt.”
“Worse than when your brother died?”
“Yes,” she answered quietly.
“And why is that?
“Because I couldn’t do anything to stop my brother from dying, but this sadness I created myself, through my own actions. In trying to find myself, I felt I had lost myself, and that I may be lost forever. When my brother died, I still had a family, and now I have none. They were not taken away but discarded. They would be waiting for me at home even today had I not made the choices I had made.”
“And this sadness… can you feel this sadness in you now?”
Mergau felt the icy coolness of it wrap around her heart and clutch at her throat as she spoke. “I can.”
She heard Ezma stand and begin walking in slow circles around her. “The mind and body cannot reach true resonance if you are not in control of them. This means not only your muscles and bones, not only your thoughts and focus, but also your emotions, the part of you that is the most difficult to control, the part that changes without your bidding and refuses to change when you bid it so. Three days ago, you failed to produce magic because you were too happy. Two days ago, you failed because you were too angry. Yesterday, you failed because you were too sad. Today, you are calm.
“Feel them now. Do you feel the warmth of joy?”
“Yes, mistress.”
“Do you feel the heat of passionate anger?”
“Yes, mistress.”
“Do you feel the creeping chill of despair?”
“Yes, mistress.”
“Then arise, Mergau of Pon Gundruc.”
Mergau sprang to her feet, feeling weightless.
“Assume the position.”
Mergau bent her knees and arms and her fingers came together. She did not feel foolish or uncomfortable.
“Now I tire of this darkness. Light up this room.”
“Yes, mistress.”
And the light came bright and fast.
Chapter 9
Confusion and Speed
As Aoden pulled his cart, he silently wished the elves used beasts of burden.
There was a time where common pack animals were difficult to coax into navigating the woods, so pulling carts by hand was necessary, but that was thousands of years ago, and animal training techniques had improved much. When Aoden saw his first camp shift as a green recruit, he thought the elves had gone mad. Humans, dwarves, even the halflings used animals to haul their carts, especially during times of war when soldiers needed to arrive on the battlefield fresh and ready for combat. Not the elves, though. Their strict reliance on stealth and the bow meant there was little need for conserving energy. ‘Why rest on the road when you can rest laying in ambush’ he had once heard it stated, but it was another excuse to keep from changing.
Perhaps living for hundreds or thousands of years wasn’t for the best. When he was young and still running in the streets of Handock, dogfights were popular; vicious battles between stray and trained animals alike, tearing each other to pieces while onlookers cheered and bet on the outcome. By the time he was an adult (by human standards), the dogfights were considered gruesome and banned. The old men complained but eventually died off until no one left alive thought of the fights as anything but a barbaric past.
On the other hand, earlier that day Aoden saw an archon, hair gray from root to tip, in an outfit that would have been out of fashion a millennium ago. He openly wore the golden eye symbol around his neck, a sign that used to be one of wisdom but four centuries ago had been co-opted by a powerful necromancer and was now anathema to most races. Also, Aoden was reasonably certain the walking staff the Archon used was topped with a dwarven child’s skull.
Tradition be damned.
He was sure half his equipment was issued thanks to tradition. His sword was undoubtedly from an era before the bow dominated elven warfare. The same was likely true with his commander’s armor. He was given three sets of armor upon promotion: the
steel armor that he used when patrolling ruins and roads; the soft leather he used for ambushes since it allowed him to climb easily but was crap at stopping blades and arrows; and the hard leather, which he lost years ago, but he had no need for it and never bothered to look. In truth, the only armor that he needed was the soft leather, but tradition—again with the damn tradition!—stipulated three sets of armor for every commander.
The worst part was he didn’t even need the new armor. His old lieutenant’s leathers fit just fine, as did his soldier’s before that. All provisioning had to do was sew a patch with his new rank insignia on the gloves and they would be fine. Instead, they took his old armor, already broken in, and replaced it with new armor that had to be broken in afresh. He didn’t know if his old armor was put to use on some new recruit or was discarded or remade. Whatever the case, it was taken and never returned.
His metal armor sat in its case on his wagon, unused since his stop in Handock months back, along with the rest of his belongings, the materials for his command tent, and his furniture, some several hundred pounds all told. He and Dorim lugged it along, one behind the other, pulling it through the woods as they marched, the wagon’s well-greased wheels and axels shifting up and down with the road while the bed remained flat, the items inside jostling only slightly. The rest of the squad dragged carts as well, most full of tarps, stakes, ropes, bedrolls, weapons, training equipment, and provisions, the occasional fire-starting kit, spare scrap of leather, repair tool, or other bric-a-brac filling in the gaps. At first, he felt guilty having such a large and lavish tent, complete with bed, table, and chairs, while his men continued sleeping in their tiny four-man tents, but that was before he had to lug the wagon for hours upon hours without rest.
In the end, it was a wash.
“Hear that?” Dorim said, breaking the long silence that had fallen between them since lunch, so focused were they on putting one foot in front of the other.
Aoden listened, then nodded. “Sounds like someone with news. Should break up the monotony a bit.” They continued trudging on, hands firm on the leather-bound handles. Slowly, the messenger’s shouts broke through the thick forest as he ran down the line, calling out his news as he passed the squads moving east. Aoden strained his ears, but the crunching of the dirt under their many wagons drowned it out. “Did you catch any of that?”
Dorim shook his head. “Malk,” he called out.
“Yeah?” the scout responded from in front of his own wagon.
“Did you catch anything that messenger was going on about?”
“Something about a sighting, but I didn’t catch it all. Wait till another comes around.”
Most days, Dorim would have uselessly reprimanded Malk for his failure to recite the message back verbatim. Instead, he shrugged and left it at that. Aoden could hear Dorim’s fatigue in his voice plain as day. It had been three months already since they had begun their melee training and Dorim had become confident enough to demand a duel every day for the past week. He had improved noticeably but still couldn’t touch Aoden. His attacks were obvious, though he was getting better at switching them up. After Aoden inevitably landed the first strike and ended the match, Dorim would demand one rematch after another until he had exhausted himself. The rest of the squad was interested enough to watch for the first day or two, but it soon became clear who the superior was when it came to swordplay. Any anxiety about embarrassing the Lieutenant in front of the men vanished as soon as their swords clashed; Aoden wasn’t wont to lose.
And so, one-and-a-half battle-fatigued elves dragged their wagon, pricking their ears when they heard the occasional shout, waiting for the message to come again.
As for the other elves, Aoden was pleased with their progress. Two in the squad—Ile and Roonun—were nearly impossible to get started, so much did they dislike the sword—or, more likely, Aoden himself—but all the others were willing at least. Some were genuinely enthused. Mendoro, in particular, was trouncing every partner he was put against, and Dorim had quipped more than once that it was past time he gave Aoden a try. He was humble about his skill and became embarrassed when Dorim urged him
Coros and Loom, the two in the squad most adept at spellcraft, had been trying to copy Keenas’s Yasiden style, but admitted it was much harder than it seemed after they sent a practice sword rocketing so high into the sky that even Malk couldn’t hear where it landed, and this from a pair that frequently competed against one another by curving arrows around trees with their magic.
‘It’s strange,’ Loom had said, shielding his eyes against the sun as he scanned the sky for the soaring blade. ‘I can hold one easily enough but moving it around is unpredictable. I can see why the Archon would use this technique instead of just sending bolts of magic flying around: it doesn’t take a lot of magic to move a sword, a lot less than even making a candle flame. He could probably sustain Yasiden for days, weeks if someone fed him.’
‘It’s surprisingly hard to exude so little power,’ Coros confirmed.
‘Even using a little too much magic can send a sword flying.’
‘Not that high, though,’ Coros quipped.
‘Usually, but once you reach out for that second sword and your concentration becomes split, well,’ he gestured to the sky. ‘Anyway, I should probably go to provisioning and get another.’
Dorim fumed over the loss of the sword, but Aoden was just happy that they were trying new things on their own. They had approached him for pointers on swordplay, but it was near impossible to translate them to Yasiden. It was difficult to talk about things like grip and stance as pertains to controlling a sword with pure magic, but they were eager to bounce theory off of him and his experience regardless.
Aoden got that feeling on the back of his neck again. He would get it every once in a while, something about these woods, but it made his neck itch like he was being watched. Whenever he turned, Dorim was staring at the ground, concentrating on his feet as he pulled the wagon. ‘I can think of far better ways to die than falling and having one of these things roll over me,’ he had said.
“Messenger’s coming again,” Dorim noted. Aoden listened, the voice approaching their route, but with the rattling, stomping, and other noises, he couldn’t make any sense of it.
“Damned wagons,” Dorim grumbled. “Malk? You get it this time?”
“Yeah, I got it. What they spotted was a giant, apparently a notorious one. There’s a reward on his head. You heard of Magragda the Swift?”
Dorim cursed. “Bastard likes nothing more than tearing up trees, just to piss us off. He even tore up Ancil, my hometown’s wardtree. Just walked right in and pushed it over, then left like it was nothing. Didn’t even take anything.”
“Sounds like an asshole,” said Malk. “Anyway, he’s apparently in the area, wreaking havoc on the woods. All squads are instructed to keep an eye open and kill on sight.”
Aoden whistled. “Don’t get a lot of kill-on-sight orders for lone targets. He must have made someone very powerful very mad.”
“Ever fight a giant before, Commander?” Dorim asked.
“No. You?”
“No. I think Garnis has. Hey, Garnis!” he called to the open air. “You fought a giant before, right?”
“Yeah,” Garnis grunted from the next wagon over.
“Oh, there you are,” said Dorim. “Did you kill him?”
He shook his head. “You mean ‘her.’ And we didn’t stand a chance. I was with two others and she got the spring on us. She took a dozen arrows from me alone, but with creatures that big, they hardly do anything. We got away but just barely. And that was a run-of-the-mill giant woman. A male giant with a reputation and a bounty must really be something else. I did kill a shadow wolf, though.”
There was a chorus of groans from the elves. “No one wants to hear your damn shadow wolf story, Garnis,” Minkin said from another nearby wagon.
“Shadow wolf story?” Aoden said.
“Oh, you haven’t heard it bef
ore, have you Commander?” said Garnis excitedly.
“Here we go,” muttered Dorim.
“Let him tell it,” said Mendoro, pulling the same wagon as Garnis. “It’s one of my favorites.”
“A giant and a shadow wolf?” said Aoden. “You seem to run into lots of ferocious creatures.”
“Oh, I look for ‘em, Commander. My mother collects and sells the pelts of exotic creatures so you could say it runs in the family.”
“Somehow, a giant’s ‘pelt’ doesn’t seem like a hot commodity.”
“It wouldn’t be, but it would still be a challenge collecting it. The shadow wolf, on the other hand, now there’s a creature both fun to hunt and profitable to boot.”
Diving headlong into the story despite grumbles and complaints, Garnis regaled mostly himself with the tale of the hunt, how he learned of the beast and tracked it to its lair, battling it on three separate occasions with no clear winner. Aoden found the tale entertaining and exaggerated beyond belief after so many retellings. He knew next to nothing about shadow wolves, or his men’s interests or hobbies for that matter, and he was getting a taste of both now. He had nearly forgotten due to his years of detachment that his men must have done something before they joined the ranks and had activities to entertain themselves when on leave.
He had gotten to know some of the friendlier troops well, or so he liked to think. Coros, Loom, Malk, and Mendoro were especially open with him, but they were also the ones most interested in swordplay, so that made sense. Those who could respect his abilities respected him as well. Coros and Loom had a deep interest in magic and he could see them becoming powerful mages in their lifetimes. They were jokesters, taking things casually and without much seriousness. They were also nearly inseparable, being cousins who had grown up together. Some bit of luck or bribery saw them together in this squad and Aoden was thankful for their presence. They kept their tone lighthearted, diffusing situations that otherwise might have been tense or uncomfortable for him with humor.