Beneath Ceaseless Skies #167
Page 7
The knight closed the space between them to kneel, although his left knee buckled more than it folded.
“This is not the first time you have come when all my heart has gone to ruin,” his lord said. “To deliver me from following it.”
The knight drew his sword with clumsy hands and laid it on the flagstones. “And I will always come, my Lord.”
His lord stared out into white light and warped glass. “Where is my brother?”
Breath knotted in the knight’s throat. He forced it to come slow and even. “I let him go.”
The crack of his lord’s palm against the stone sill was like the sound of breaking bone. “Then you have cursed us all. I trusted you. With my most important duty. And you have betrayed me.”
“This city was cursed the moment that we sued for war, when we should have been petitioning our allies for aid,” the knight said. “I have done everything you’ve asked... But that... I couldn’t do that, Gwyn. And I could not bring him here. It would have undone everything.
“The south is blighted. Even if I had killed your brother, taken his lands, done everything you’d asked of me, all you would have to show for it would be more dead bodies when the snows come. There has to be a better way, Gwyn. A better way than more suffering and death.”
“And who are you to decide what’s best for this land?”
The knight clenched his jaw. “You are alive now because of me. Because of the night I freed you. But all that helping you to escape has brought this kingdom is more pain. You are a better man than that, Gwyn. If I didn’t believe it, I would have left us both to rot up in that tower.”
“You have disobeyed my orders, and disappeared into the mountains while my whole kingdom falls apart. I have not known this last week whether you even lived.”
“I....” The knight ran his tongue over his lips and looked back down at the floor. “I did not know the matter was of any importance to you, my Lord.”
“You take my bastard brother captive and drag him off into the hills, then set him free, and you don’t think that matter is of importance to me?”
“Of course,” the knight corrected quickly. “I should have sent word. I’m sorry. That is....”
“Enough.” His lord’s expression creased with pain. On the other side of the glass, a raven with gloss-black feathers perched on the ledge and looked down into the burning city dispassionately. His lord watched the raven watching the kingdom burn and pushed his hand through his hair. “What shall I do, love?”
“We have to leave this city,” the knight said.
His lord nodded slowly and drew a breath. “We can go north,” he said. “Lady Freuddwyd has long been our ally. She will give us sanctuary.”
Pain roared in the knight’s hip as he pushed himself to his feet, but he gritted his teeth against it. “Her lands are three weeks’ hard ride from here, Gwyn. We cannot go so far, not while people are starving. Not while our homeland is on fire.”
“You would have me stay in my lands and die here?”
“I would have us stay and live, Gwyn.”
“You think I haven’t tried to seek aid?” his lord snapped. “Every eagle that comes back from our so-called allies bears nothing but excuses and apologies. Lord Michael is too sick to care, and Cardington too greedy....”
“Then we can go south. Beyond Y Brenin,” the knight said. “Into your brother’s own lands.
“You know more about the things that grow in this country than anyone I’ve ever met, Gwyn. We can stay on the road, move from village to village and teach the people which things they can take from the land to feed their families. Which ones they can use for medicine. You and I can help this kingdom and its people to recover, from what you and your brother have done to it. You have a knack for healing, Gwyn. I’ve seen you do it. I... I know you.”
“It’s suicide,” his lord whispered. “You want us to go into his lands alone? My brother will throw everything he has after us. I’ll not go back into that tower, Mercher. I can’t.”
The knight felt the weight of the memory more than he saw it. A high place shaped from grey stone and hard wind. The crows upon the battlements. The warmth of the key in his hand.
“Edling Goch has given his sworn word to meet us a year and a day from today,” the knight said. “To parley.”
“Parley?” His lord’s voice curled with anger. “Have you lost your senses? You think that I will beg for scraps from the table of the man who poisoned this land in the first place?”
“You shall have to, Gwyn,” the knight said, pushing the window open. “Or all you shall get is more of this.”
The old-bonfire smell came first, then the sounds of raised voices, breaking glass, and screams.
Guilt and pain tore through his lord’s face, and he turned aside too late to hide it. The knight reached out for his hand. Fine bone china against hard skin, dried blood, and calluses.
“I will protect you, Gwyn,” the knight swore. “I freed you from Caer Isel and I shall free you from this. But you must trust me. If I am right, this land will eat again. Its people will recover. They will thrive. Even flourish.”
His lord pressed his tongue against his teeth. “And if you are wrong?”
“Then they shall have to sever every fighting part of me before they harm you.”
His lord tried to smile. “It is a long road south. And if the southern lands are blighted, then those furthest from here will need our help the most,” he said, the white silence pierced by the mounting certainty in his voice. “You’ll need your wound tended. Fresh armour. A whetstone for your blade. If we can last until a year from now, surely we will have earned this land some peace. Although.... Although I shall have to re-learn how.”
“In all the years I have known you, I have never once seen you fail at something, once you have set your mind to it,” the knight said, saluting with a closed fist to his heart. “It will be done. By your will, my Lord.”
“We shall have to pray that we will be alive to see it. The North Road is not safe for two men travelling alone. Let alone for you and I.” His lord watched the raven rise through the smoke towards the dim disk of the sun, lips pressed together into a bloodless line. “If something happened... before I could do anything to fix this....”
“The North Road is not the only way into the south,” the knight said, tightening his grip on his lord’s hand. “There is a path beyond Y Brenin, through the marshes and the mountains.
“I know where it lies, Gwyn. I will show you its way.”
Copyright © 2015 C. Allegra Hawksmoor
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C. Allegra Hawksmoor is a writer, activist, and publisher based in North Wales in the UK. She has a particular love of fantasy, science fiction, social activism, gender-fluidity, post-civilised environmentalism, and otherwise using fantastical worlds to reflect on the injuries to this one. She is currently serving as Fiction Editor at SteamPunk Magazine and as editor-in-chief at micro-press of post-civilised Romanticism, Vagrants Among Ruins. She can be found online on Facebook and Twitter and www.hawksmoorsbazaar.net.
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COVER ART
“Floating Town,” by Takeshi Oga
Takeshi Oga is a Japanese concept artist and illustrator. He has worked on games including Siren 2, Siren: New Translation, Final Fantasy IX Wings Of The Goddess, Final Fantasy XIV, and Gravity Rush. View more of his work at his online gallery, www.takeshioga.com/524159.
Beneath Ceaseless Skies
ISSN: 1946-1076
Published by Firkin Press,
a 501(c)3 Non-Profit Literary Organization
Compilation Copyright © 2015 Firkin Press
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