The Gully Snipe (The Dual World Book 1)

by JF Smith

  Once the question had been spoken aloud, Gully hoped he would feel some relief, but his anxiety only grew deeper as he anticipated the answer he had realized he needed to hear, and feared not hearing it.

  Worse, he expected the man before him to lecture him on his lack of faith in their religion.

  Nellist considered the king for a moment. “Mariealle?” he finally asked. “You ask after Mariealle, do you not, Your Highness?”

  Gully nodded curtly, his lips pulled tight to hold his anxiousness in. He waited for the lecture to begin. Or to hear the terrible answer that she had not found the favor of her ancestors during her nighting.

  Instead of the lecture, however, instead of the look of smug victory in the Archbishop’s eyes, Gully saw reassurance and kindness there.

  “Please come and sit with me, Thayliss.” Nellist led Gully by the elbow over to one of the benches and placed his lantern on the stand next to it.

  He took Gully’s hand as he sat next to him and said, “Your Majesty, of course she did. It was the very next evening after her nighting that my interpreters identified a new star among those of her family.”

  Gully finally exhaled the breath he had been holding onto in anticipation.

  Nellist said gently, “Here... allow me to show you...”

  He pointed to the north-western sky. “Do you see the Father Star there?”

  Gully nodded as he looked where the Archbishop pointed at the lonely spark of light above.

  “To the west of it is the constellation of the noble family of veDellersean, the Quill and Codex. If you look, you will see it mid-way towards the edge of Pelaysha’s disk,” said Nellist. “Just east of the Quill and Codex are the Allerdaain’s family stars. There is a green one, next to the two large blue ones that alternate twinkling. The green one… that is your Mariealle, having joined her ancestors in the sky. She is now a resplendent emerald green star in our sky, watching over us. Watching over you, Your Highness.”

  Gully’s breath caught in his chest, and he had no idea the impact that seeing her star in the sky would have upon him. After the day he had barely survived, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to keep his emotions in check, and so he remained still and said nothing, despite wanting to reach up to try to touch her star from where he sat.

  He stared at the star for a long time, immensely relieved to hear these words from the Archbishop. He still was not sure if he believed in people becoming stars, but something about seeing that point of light, a magnificent green, calmed him in a way that he did not anticipate. It calmed him even as it made him long once again for the person he had known only painfully briefly.

  “You probably think of me as being foolish, Nellist, for having claimed to have little faith in our religion just the other day, and now begging you for affirmation of it for Mariealle’s sake,” said Gully.

  “There is no shame in seeking the comfort that comes in knowing that our lives are not wasted, Highness.” The Archbishop patted the king’s hand gently. “There is nothing foolish about wishing that people for whom we care will be rewarded for their good deeds and bravery after they have left us behind.”

  Indeed, Gully felt very comforted, far more than he expected to, at Nellist’s words. He was quickly learning why his brother, Thaybrill, cared so much for the old man.

  “You’ve had a very trying day, King Thayliss. And if I may say so, one that few would have survived were it not for your uniquely suited set of talents. You deserve this modest bit of succor,” said the Archbishop, “even if you wish you did not need it.”

  Gully sighed heavily and nodded as they sat together. The Archbishop was far more insightful than he might otherwise seem, and Gully was very glad of that.

  Chapter 40 — One Too Few

  “And how many do you see?” asked Roald. His feet took long strides and his boots echoed heavily on the wide wooden planks of the hallway.

  Ummalst practically sprinted to keep pace with the Lord Marshal. The windows they passed looked out from the previous Lord veBasstrolle’s manor house, across East End, and to the mountains to the east. The sky was still heavy and gray after the steady rain that had fallen earlier in the morning.

  Ummalst said, “I count over a hundred, probably closer to a hundred and fifty.”

  Roald stopped without warning, causing Ummalst to pass him before he stopped, too. Roald stared off towards the mountains as he thought. He shook his head and said, “That is not many. I was hoping there would be more slaves returning to us. The king will be discouraged.”

  “There are soldiers camped nearby as well,” added Ummalst as he ran his hands through his black hair.

  Roald shrugged. “I would expect that. They need to keep our people contained until they send them through the pass.”

  “No,” said Ummalst. “It’s far too many for just that.”

  Roald’s eyes narrowed. “How many?”

  “Thousands.”

  Roald’s lip twitched at the number. He couldn’t understand what the Maqarans were getting at. They couldn’t take the pass, even with ten times that many. It would be foolish for them to think they could take it by brute force. Why, then, this large build-up of men when they were ready to exchange slaves for soldiers?

  “Ohh!” exclaimed Ummalst.

  Roald snapped from his musings and said, “I’m sorry?”

  “Nothing, Lord Marshal. Just had to dodge as I’m flying.”

  Roald began walking the rest of the way to the large, dark doors at the end of the corridor. “Well, come on, let’s offer the king the benefit of what you’ve seen.”

  They stepped into what had once been Chelders’s personal salon. Gully was seated at the desk, hurriedly putting his arm back into the sling at the sound of the door. Behind him, Gallun and Gellen stood by quietly in their human forms. Roald had noticed they seemed to be using that form a little more often the last week or so.

  Encender was also in the room, pacing back and forth. Thaybrill and the patriarch were seated on the couch in front of a roaring fire, which was needed for the cooler weather that the rain had brought. Raybb and Exoutur were sitting in large, cushioned chairs. Marshal Pumblennor, who had been placed over the Guard contingent in Basstrolle’s fief since the old one was one of the traitors that would be given to Maqara as slaves a few days hence, was standing at the window. Despite it being mid-morning, the dark wood of the room and the clouds outside cast the large study into deep shadows.

  Roald said, “Your Highness, I have already seen you not wearing your sling on your arm as the healer specifically instructed. There is little point in rushing to put it on now.” It felt so much better to be able to needle him again now that he had capitulated on how he should behave around Gully and Thaybrill.

  He added, to everyone, “Ummalst is flying over the Maqaran encampment now. The Iisen and Balmorean slaves are gathered as hoped.”

  “How many?” asked Gully softly.

  Roald frowned. “Between a hundred and a hundred and fifty.”

  Gully’s mouth pulled down into a frown to match Roald’s. “That number is tragically low,” he mumbled. He seemed distracted by his own thoughts for a moment, then noticed all the eyes in the room watching him. He said, attempting a brighter tone, “But at least they are meeting our demand, and that is a lot of people to save today.”

  “There’s more,” said Roald.

  “More?” asked Encender.

  Ummalst ducked violently and shouted in alarm, throwing his arms over his head for brief moment. “Um, sorry,” he said in embarrassment. “That was a little close.”

  Gully said, “What is happening, Ummalst?”

  “The clouds are low and heavy, and I’m flying under them. The Maqaran archers have started taking pot shots at me now and again. I think they know I’m not a typical eagle.”

  Roald said, “No more, then, Ummalst. Return back to the Iisen side now.”

  Ummalst smiled and said, “It’s of no concern, really. Most of their shots are
poorly judged and far off the mark. Just one or two got a little close. Lucky shots, really. They probably are going to shoot one of their own men before—”

  Gully stood and leaned over the desk, placing his good fist upon it. “Ummalst, come home. Now.”

  “Besides, there’s not really much else to see, I daresay. There is no reason to court injury,” added Gully as he resumed his seat. “’Cender, I trust you will forbid Abella Jule from flying beyond Iisen’s borders?”

  “Without a doubt!” snorted Encender.

  Roald cleared his throat and said, “There are a large number of soldiers gathered in addition to our people, though.”

  Gully’s eyes studied Roald for a moment, trying to divine his meaning. He finally asked, “How many is a large number?”

  “I couldn’t count them all. A couple of thousand, I believe,” said Ummalst.

  Gully leaned back in thought. His fingers worried absent-mindedly at his doublet where his pendant lay underneath.

  Encender stepped closer and said, “They can’t invade. They know they can’t. The pass gate is too strong for them now.”

  “True,” said Roald. “I cannot figure what game they are playing.”

  “What else could they expect to do?” asked Exoutur.

  “Perhaps their loss at our hands a few weeks ago was too much to bear and they are willing to try any wild gambit to invade again?” suggested Thaybrill.

  “They’re not that foolish, Your Highness, and they know how heavily fortified our gate is now. They’ve sent men forward on a few occasions, and we’ve turned them back. Not violently, of course,” said Marshal Pumblennor.

  Gully closed his eyes and breathed very heavily. After a protracted silence while everyone waited for his response, he said, “Marshal Pumblennor, before we release them back to their own land, you will put out the eyes of every Maqaran soldier.”

  Every motion, every sound in the room, ceased in disbelief at the king’s order. The only sound among the men gathered was the crackle of the fire in the large hearth.

  Roald was shocked beyond words, but he was the first to gather his wits. He said harshly, “Your Highness, may I speak to you privately for a moment?”

  The look on Gully’s face was that of helplessness as he looked down at the desk in front of him. “I know what you wish to say, Roald. Go ahead. Even here, in front of all. Please.”

  Roald turned red, hesitated, but then blurted out, “Gully, have you gone mad? We’ve already cut out their tongues! Now this?! This is barbaric! We may as well murder them in their sleep!”

  Encender stepped over to the desk and countered, “Well, for once, I agree with the Iisen king! It is time the Maqarans paid dearly! Perhaps you Iisenors do not care what they have done to your people... what they would do if given the chance, but I care greatly for how they have tortured and decimated my people over hundreds of years! If they did not wish their men to suffer, they should not have picked this fight!”

  “This act makes us no better than they!” retorted Roald.

  “Except they have been at it for centuries! We have a very great distance to stoop before we are as low as they!” shouted Encender, his face turning red.

  Gully held up his hand, silencing both of them. “Patriarch,” said Gully, “I would be interested to hear your opinion on this, please.”

  The patriarch adjusted his position in his seat uncomfortably and seemed to be of the same mind as Roald that this sort of decision was unlike Gully. He said, “We’ve discussed the choices you must make many times, Your Highness. This is one where I feel I should not interfere with you making a decision on your own.” He added, “Especially when you have not given your reason for what seems to be a rather uncharacteristic demand on your part.”

  Gully looked back to Marshal Pumblennor and reiterated his order. “We blind them. Every one, Marshal.”

  Roald felt like a stranger was now sitting at the desk. He had never seen such a vicious streak running through Gully before. This could not be the same person whom he had known to steal a few swallowstamps from someone, only to repay his victim a few days later when he found someone else more deserving of theft.

  He began to argue, to forbid Gully from becoming something monstrous, but Gully interrupted him.

  “There is a practical reason, Roald. I do not suggest this course of action out of any act of malice or spite, I swear to you. You know that I would not do that, not even to the Maqarans,” he said.

  Roald thought about it for a second, then nodded that he was listening.

  “The Maqarans cannot hope to overcome our gate in an assault,” Gully began to explain. “It is too constricted an area and extremely well-fortified for an attack on the front. However... when we begin to release the Maqaran soldiers back to their side, there will be a large number of able-bodied soldiers on both sides of our gate, in a tight area. If they rise up and fight then, it will be chaos and we stand a good chance of losing control of the gate. That is what the Maqarans are looking for. That is the advantage they seek. We take it away from them by making sure the soldiers we have in our care can never be used against us. Not today. Not ever.”

  Roald considered what Gully had said. It was true, even without the plan being in place in advance, the Maqaran soldiers being released would quickly figure out the advantage they could gain and how easily they could take control of the gate if they suddenly rose up, even if they lost a large number of their own men in the process.

  Gully prompted, “That is why they gather so many soldiers on their side. They know they have a narrow moment of an advantage to invade us still. We must blind them, Roald.”

  Roald frowned, but he nodded in reluctant agreement.

  Gully said gently, “Roald, I must know that you see it this way. I will not force this on you.”

  It was a savage, brutal act to Roald, but he knew Gully was thinking, as always, with absolutely perfect strategic insight. The Maqarans were counting on the soft, humanitarian treatment of their soldiers to give them a second chance after their previous failure. He could also see, now, how much pain it caused his dear brother to issue such a brutal order. The responsibility for this butchery would become yet another wound the two of them would carry and secretly share with one another. Wounds that only they would understand.

  Roald ran both of his hands through his dark hair in frustration and sighed aloud. “Aye, Gully, aye. I do. I do not like it, as I know you do not, either. But with that number of soldiers waiting on their side, if they gain control of our gate, we would lose East End in a day, Maqara would gain a defensible foothold inside our borders, and there would not be a way to send them back, ever.”

  He felt ill in the pit of his stomach as he did so, but Roald looked to Pumblennor and confirmed the order, “You will see to it that each Maqaran soldier is blinded before being sent back, Marshal.”

  The glance he shared with Gully afforded silent confirmation that they would together share the burning of new wounds and the shedding of bitter tears over this later.

  ~~~~~

  Roald stepped forward again, only to remind himself this was not the time. He pulled his foot back and kept his place where he was standing next to Thaybrill. A short distance from him, he had never seen Gully looking so pensive. So much so that Gully seemed to be more a statue than a person, standing quietly, unassumingly, against a set of large rocks near where the pass let out into the open.

  Gully was in his thief’s clothes so that he did not draw any attention, and after giving everyone else strict orders not to kneel or salute or otherwise pay him any respects, he stood by himself, his eyes watching intently from underneath his chaperon hood. Roald had wanted to be near Gully as the slaves made their way, one by one, back into the land they doubtfully expected to see ever again. Many others had wanted to be with Gully, too, offering him support and comfort as best they could — Gallun and Gellen, the patriarch, Abella Jule, Thaybrill... the list went on. Gully had politely declined, and Roald un
derstood why. He knew what this moment was to Gully. It was a sacred moment to his beloved foster brother, the best chance he had had in over ten years to see his father again, and Roald knew his brother would want no one and nothing distracting from it. Roald had helped pull people away from him so that he could have the time to himself to watch carefully at each face that emerged from their nightmare.

  Word had spread through East End and Lohrdanwuld that many who disappeared over the years would be returning this day, and many of the families of the missing had made the trek to the Maqaran Pass to hopefully reclaim those that they had lost. Not far from where the pass opened up into the fields at the foot of the mountains, these people gathered and waited — mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters, wives and husbands, and even sometimes children now years older than when a parent disappeared.

  Roald and Thaybrill kept a respectful distance while members of the Kingdom Guard helped the freed slaves back into Iisen. The swordsmen reassured each survivor that they were home and safe, and then led them to where anxious family members were waiting so the happy reunion could happen. Or, in other cases, gave them food and rest and reassurance when no family or loved ones were waiting anxiously for them.

  Roald spent some of his time in silent attention, watching with relief when someone returning was reunited with those that had been left behind. Most of his time, though, he watched Gully. Were it not for the occasional breeze blowing the hem of his cloak and chaperon, Gully would easily be mistaken as a part of the rocks he almost disappeared into. Roald found it difficult to stay away from his brother and would have given anything to wait with him. He would have done anything to comfort him and let him know he was not alone.

  It did not help matters that Thaybrill was unconsciously brushing up against his arm every so often, almost making it hard for him to breathe each time the prince did so. Roald had tried to make Gully understand how had he felt two days earlier, but in the confusion of Krayell’s attack, Roald was not sure he spoke any words that made any sense at all. He felt his heart bleeding out all around him for too many reasons, but he stood still and let it do so as a good soldier should.