Last Stand of the Blood Land

by Andrew Carpenter

  Ignatius felt his anger rising at having their people disregarded.

  “It wasn’t a matter of course when Theseus lost his entire force, when you lost Therucilin,” he said.

  This reminded Hadrian of his place, of the men he knew had been executed, and his excitement turned to condescension.

  “They will reassess and send a force big enough to kill and enslave you all.”

  “And how will they deal with those that failed to complete their mission or die trying?” asked Rebus knowingly.

  This quieted Hadrian again, self delusion evaporated as he was forced to remember how his failure to hold a territory would be viewed back home. He couldn’t recall any failed leaders having lived to remind the people of anything but greatness. There was nowhere for him to go.

  “They will not take you back,” said Oberon.

  Hadrian hung his head.

  “Help us defeat them. Help us make the cost too great.”

  Looking around the little tree house at the winged warriors and the ancient Elf, he asked, “You would stand against the world, and for what?”

  Oberon remembered Nestor’s words and felt defiance growing in his heart.

  “For a say in how we change, to keep some of our ways.”

  “For the freedom not to be ruled by Men who are not from our lands and only want to take,” said Ignatius.

  Hadrian thought of his wall, miniscule in the grand scheme of his country but still a contribution to expanding their rule, a legacy. What does a legacy matter if you did not spend your days freely? There was no alternative for the Southlander, but a small part of him was beginning to feel that the size of the cause represented by the warriors in that little room might be larger than Galatia. Perhaps.

  They questioned him further about the siege tactics of the South, their rhinos and phalanxes, the structure of their armies, and how their supply lines would be defended. He gave partial answers, providing direction for the war plans of the North, but when he left, escorted by Rebus, Strato, and Albedo, the seeds had been sown for his complete conversion to their side.

  Left alone, Oberon and Ignatius sat on the floor, resting on their wings, the new knowledge hitting them in very different ways. For Oberon, the vastness of the South hardened his resolve, expanding his feeling that the North must unite and out maneuver whatever was sent next. Ignatius felt his old dreams, for a Nymph, the quiet of his tree home on a winter night, simple pleasures of food and drink, slipping further away.

  Ignatius knew now that killing would have to become his only focus if they were to win with Oberon’s plan, and he knew this meant that it might be many generations before any of his people could live his dream of a simple, peaceful life. I wish Donus were here. The big Cherub had known that the Southlanders were like the leaves on the trees in the forest. His vision had been to forget the North, making their homeland in the forest a jagged little razor full of Blood Born warriors that the South could conveniently pass by in their conquest of the Blood Lands. It had been that way for hundreds of years; if it weren’t for the Giants they could have stayed safe in the homeland the Angels had given them. Donus had a point. But for how long.

  “You are too much like him,” said Oberon.

  Ignatius knew who he was talking about but remained silent.

  “Women prisoners for us to rape, baring us more warriors. Slitting prisoners throats. That is Donus.”

  “You heard Hadrian, we need Donus. You cannot call for warriors who will make the cost for the South too high and then condemn them when they do what you won’t.”

  “There is a third way,” said Oberon.

  “How?” asked Ignatius.

  “We work together with the other tribes. We show soldiers like Hadrian that we are not the savage monsters they think they are. We gain support from the other peoples the South has conquered. We fight smarter and eventually the South will realize it is smarter to trade with us than to fight us.”

  Ignatius sighed, the brutality of war more real than Oberon’s third way. He knew the South was more like Donus than he was. They would never trade with a little territory, not when they could conquer it.

  “You are the war chief.”

  Oberon pulled a handful of red feathers from the pouch on his belt and handed them to Ignatius.

  “Donus’ feathers?” said Ignatius in surprise.

  “I took them from his body after you killed him. In that moment you knew the third way. You earned them when you took Therucilin but you need to remember who you were before this started, who you were when you said no to Donus.”

  Ignatius took the feathers, tears tickling the sides of his eyes and pain rising from his stomach into his heart. He tried to breathe and clear his mind but the confusion of the world was too strong and he felt the pain from the deaths of the past and fear of the future.

  “We need your experience here, with our fighters, with the other tribes. We will not be defeated but we will not become like Donus to win. Come back to us, work and think with us and we can make a third way forward.”

  Ignatius gave no sign that he understood, anger replacing the fear and pain. Anger at his tribe for their unwillingness, anger at the North for their weakness, and anger at Oberon for his foolishness. For the powerful, willing Southlands that he now knew by the name Galatia, he felt no anger. Only understanding.

  Chapter 7

  C urrar and Tulma were waiting for him in the branches when he left Oberon. Ignatius could remember leaving their former owner, Xyerston, behind and the vision of his severed head when the Centaurs closed in from behind at Theseus’ last stand still haunted him. Giving the mighty griffins a good life was a tribute to Xyerston, a commander who was fairer to the Northerners under his command than any other Southerner Ignatius had met.

  The eagle-lions were perfectly built to keep up with the Cherub. They could fly higher and further than he could and their cat claws and reflexes put them at home in the treetops. In the wild their smaller kin hunted the mountains, the forests, and the plains. Their tan fur rippled while their massive claws dug into the bark, hurling them along behind the Cherub. He glided and dashed across the treetops, feet pushing off the tiniest of limbs as he climbed higher. They matched him move for move, eyes that could spot a mouse from a thousand feet up locked onto his back in a friendly game of chase. They had bonded too closely with the winged Cherub to hunt him as they had once before; they were members of his pride now, his dominance asserted through food and a stern hand from time to time.

  His conversation with Oberon had left him angry and certain that Oberon’s planning, training, and building would not save them from the South. His old friend wanted a third way, but the path they were on was one of half measures. I need to find my own solution; they will never trade with us. The Northerners had taken every target in the Blood Lands, they had defeated every army of the South, but he knew it was not enough. Hadrian had spoken the truth about Galatia and Ignatius knew a people could not grow that powerful with a weak will. Their will would break the North like they had broken so many others.

  He found himself looking down upon the arrow smiths, a dozen Cherubim working together, each at a different stage in the arrow making process. He was saddened by the sight of Nestor’s ancient hands fletching arrow after arrow with precision. Even at this distance he could tell the Cherub’s blindness did not slow his movements but it seemed wrong that this elder should spend his final days repeating the same process until his fingers bled. He should be telling stories to the youth, young ears eager to hear of the glories of years gone by, eager to learn. Instead he sat in a line, wood, arrowheads, sinew and feathers going in one end, completed arrows piling up at the other.

  Knowing the fate of his people if they continued on this path made all of the efforts going on around him seem like the thrashings of a deer as it bled out on the forest floor. Perhaps Nestor feels more involved, more respected, more important now then ever before. He took another breath, flying down next to th
e old worker. Nestor sniffed the air.

  “Ignatius,” he said, marveling the warrior with his ability to detect him by scent alone.

  Currar and Tulma hit the ground behind him much harder and the elder’s face lit up with surprise when he smelled the Griffins but he said nothing.

  Ignatius looked up and down the assembly line, catching looks of awe at the presence of such a storied fighter along with looks of judgment that shouted anger that such a violent monster could be allowed in the village. He ignored them all, placing his hand on Nestor’s knobby knee and picking up an arrow, hunter’s hands remembering how to glue the steel, Nymph made broad heads onto the finished shaft. Currar watched him with his piercing glare while Tulma rested her beak on his moccasins and dozed. He thought about the steel he held and the power the little arrow contained. I add the broad head that is capable of killing anyone but Nestor adds the fletching to guide my strike.

  “How do you cut down an oak tree with a dagger?” he asked the elder while he worked.

  “You must grow your patience to be bigger than the tree,” answered Nestor. “If you are impatient and hack too soon or too hard you will break the blade. But if you are patient, and whittle slowly, piece by piece, you will prevail.”

  “How do you cut down a forest with a dagger?” he asked again.

  Nestor paused, his fingers working away without his mind. This was a twist on the parable the old Cherub hadn’t heard before. Ignatius watched his wispy hair catching the breeze in front of unseeing eyes. He could feel the others listening for a new answer. They had heard the old one before; their War Chief always used it to explain their battle plans. Patience, whittling away, never over extending, that was how they would beat the South. How they could beat something even larger they did not know.

  “The root,” said Nestor. “Take your dagger to the root of a tree in the middle of the forest. Cut it open and insert a bore-beetle. The trees will fall slowly, painfully, but in the end the beetle’s young will eat them alive, every last tree in the forest, until none are left alive.”

  Ignatius felt his hands catching the rhythm of the line now, adding the broad head to each arrow just in time for the next shaft to come down the line.

  “Thank you elder, I will return when I can sit and listen to your stories of the early days of our race.”

  Nestor looked up at him, a childish grin on the ancient Cherub’s face.

  “I could show you how to flint knap,” he said. “I bet if I dropped you in the forest without your metal blades you would starve. But the elders could teach you to turn rocks into blades.”

  “I’d like that,” he answered, wishing he could see a future with time for such lessons.

  After shaking the elder’s wrist Ignatius walked away, his griffins sniffing the bushes for hiding rodents, pondering Nestor’s answer. He faced a forest with only a dagger but he knew these trees wouldn’t sit nicely while Oberon whittled them down, one at a time. He needed his own third way and he suspected his mother could tell him how to get at the roots. He found her at her forge, a familiar young female working the bellows. It was Timna, the Cherub he had escorted down from the castle the previous year.

  Erithea didn’t stop hammering the red-hot steel she was working when she caught a glimpse of her son out of the corner of her eye. Her red hair was matted to her sweaty shoulders, the epic beauty of the Nymphs still coming through despite her disheveled exterior. He could see she was trying to make another katana like the ones he wore on his back. The black, two-foot blades were of the same quality as the ancient swords carried by Ryogen and the Elves. Ignatius had perfected the technique of folding harder metal around a softer core, reinventing a method for creating flexible yet sharp instruments of death known to some in the South.

  He picked up a hammer, joining his mother, the touch required to fold layer after layer still there in the memory of his muscles. Mother and son flowed together, Timna watching and learning from their every motion. When the layer was complete she doused the blade in a bath of water, hissing steam flowing over her face. It was short, like his, perfect for the flying warrior, but would require many more hours of labor before it was complete.

  He started the conversation by explaining the techniques he had taught himself to create the folded steel, easing into the harder conversations that lay beneath the surface. In the past he would have been speaking with her in the quiet mountain meadow of his childhood, bacon and corn bread cooking on the stove in her cabin. The Nymphs had left that safe world on the mountain when the Angels, when his father Augustine, had died.

  “I need to find a way to save our people,” he said, the weight lifting off his shoulders onto the only one he thought might know who he truly was.

  “Donus had a plan, Oberon has a plan,” she said carefully.

  He pulled the feathers from his satchel. He recognized the red of his friend’s wings and wished he a plan that was different than Donus’, something to poison the roots of the South’s forest rather than hacking madly. She took the feathers from him and began to braid them into his hair.

  “I will put these next to your fathers feathers, next to these black feathers. Wotan, Donus, your father, they are part of you but they are not who you are.”

  “I’m not like Oberon,” he said.

  “There are things you can learn from everyone. Oberon is just and believes there is always a way besides resorting to strength, to over powering your problems.”

  He felt nothing but sadness and pain, pain for losing his father, for killing his friend, for killing the prisoners. He knew what kind of a life he wanted, a chance to have a family and raise them in the old ways, the simple ways, but he felt pulled in too many directions. He had already acknowledged he must compromise his dreams for his people. We will walk the warpath forever if we take this way.

  He snapped to mindfulness when he felt his mother yanking out some of his own feathers. She began to add his brown and gold feathers to the black, red, and white already scattered throughout his brown curly locks.

  “You are not Donus, you are not Oberon. You are someone else, someone with many parts that make him up but someone with the power to control his own destiny.”

  He was not ready to understand, still angry with Oberon and fearful of Donus, but he nodded, looking to where Timna was reaching out tentatively to try and pet Currar’s beak. The griffin snapped playfully but the Cherub was too fast. She stepped in, her liquid hand closing around his beak, and ruffled the mountain lion sized beast’s feathers with her free hand like he was a kitten.

  “I need to find a third way for my people that will let them win against what is coming. But I also want to find a mate, to live my life.”

  “Where would you find a mate?” she asked, adding braids down the sides of his head to keep the hair out of his eyes.

  “Where my father did,” he answered.

  “Nymphs make challenging mates,” she said, tying off the braid and drawing his daggers from their sheaths to examine their edges.

  His daggers were impeccable but he piled the additional three he had taken from Donus, his katanas, and his wingblades next to her honing stone because he knew it would please her to sharpen them for him.

  “You should go to the Nymphs. Your love might be there but a weapon for your people could be there as well.”

  Ignatius shook his head doubtfully, thinking of the hawks he had seen on the Giants shoulders when he passed through Atlas’ village.

  “It will take more than messenger birds and poisons to save us.”

  She tilted her head knowingly, picking up a wingblade and pointing it at him over the stone.

  “The poison that took Fort Hope came from your mother’s people and there are more secrets hidden in the mountain forests than Taragon has chosen to share.”

  Ignatius thought about the chief of the Nymphs, wondering why he would hold his secrets back when an invasion of the forest would bring the South to the foot of his own people’s homeland.
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  “Like what?”

  Erithea looked to where Timna was laying on Tulma’s back, the griffin female seeming not to notice the weight of the little Cherub.

  “Like bigger griffins,” she answered, “among other things. You should go, find your mate, and see which of the Nymph’s secrets he will reveal to the son of an Angel. But don’t expect a female to simplify things for you. If anything she will make it harder because you will have to leave her and you will have to change for her.”

  Too naïve to understand his mother’s words, Ignatius thought about Oberon telling him he was needed here. He thought of his friend turned chief and Hadrian’s map lying over the map of the North. He moved to his mother’s side and kissed her on the cheek. She stroked his feathers and he knew she was seeing Augustine’s wide white wings. She looked back to his weapons quickly, brushing away a tear before rearming her son.

  “If Oberon asks where I’ve gone tell him I’ve gone to where our fathers went when they started our race. Tell him I’ve gone to find my own third way.”

  She nodded, following him to the edge of the lake where he flew into the evening towards his tree home, Currar and Tulma flying behind him like geese in a v of three. That night he drank the last of his apple beer and stuffed his traveling satchels with nuts and dried fish. He looked sadly at the empty shelves for a moment, the beer accentuating his emotions. Then he realized he was going to leave his tribe for a moment to go to the Nymphs. He might live out his promise to find the Nymph he had glimpsed just once when she crossed his path on a deer hunt. He rested back on his bed, looking out his window, enjoying the familiarity and closeness of his tree home. The last thing he saw before he dozed off was the moon, hanging high above Devil’s Lake. The first dream he dreamt was of the Nymph, turning to smile at him before disappearing into the forest.

  He knew he was the most dangerous being in the woods before he stepped into them. His muscles flexed underneath his fox fur vest consciously, the katanas on his back rising and falling with the muscles of his back. He had killed Donus and Rebus had told him that multiple Elves had been unable to beat the massive Cherub. He had brought him down singlehandedly. He had fought Centaurs and Men; he had captured Therucilin. Looking into the trees to the southwest of Devil’s Lake, where Erithea had pointed the way to the Nymphs, Ignatius was not afraid. Nothing can stand against me. Behind him Currar and Tulma sensed his mood, the hackles on their shoulders standing up, claws extending.