by B R Crichton
Truman saw Granger, sitting at the table with Blunt. The historian was writing in one of his journals, perhaps details of the battle from Blunt’s perspective. Granger was diligent in his recording of events, and even over the noise, they worked. Blunt’s ale was still untouched, which was not like him at all, and the way he was leaning on that wall as though he could barely support his own weight made Truman wish he would just go to bed. He had heard about the cavalry charges the old mercenary had been involved in, and wondered that he was still upright at all.
Dimas was asleep under a table already, blissfully unaware of the feet that thundered on the boards around him. The serving girls had been urged to join the dance, so now Valia was not the only woman in the sets. They twirled and laughed, clapping in time to the flute, and stamping their feet on the hollow floor.
Alano Clemente had been subdued after what had been a torrid few hours of rounding up the Jendayans that had broken through the defensive line. The Moshet militia had been left to finish the job, as a few dozen were still at large, but Alano and Marlon had been required to do their share of the tidying up. He was telling Truman about a child whose parents had been killed. He had taken the girl to a neighbour and left her there for safety, but the thought that the child might remember the scene clearly played on his mind.
“Children are the most resilient of all of us,” Truman said. “With care from another family, she will be well. She was fortunate to have had a man of your sensitivity near.”
“A few moments earlier, and we may have saved the parents.”
“You cannot dwell on what could have been. Deal with what you have.”
“Do you think she will take that memory from her childhood?” he asked.
“She may have an image in her mind of the room itself, but I believe her lasting impression will be that of the kindness you showed.”
“So cruel,” Alano said, shaking his head sadly.
“You have no children yourself?”
“No, Casilda cannot bear children.”
“But, you wished for them.”
Alano nodded. “I only ever wanted to be a farmer, and raise crops and little Clementes.”
“And you find yourself here instead.”
Elan interrupted their conversation. “Kellan would have loved this party.” He beamed, clearly enjoying the ale. “Have you had a dance yet?”
“I have not, my friend,” Truman said, lifting his bandaged forearm. “I have sustained enough injury today, without having my feet trampled as well.”
“You never did have the stamina of us younger men,” he replied.
“Find me a lady to lead,” Alano declared, leaping from his stool, suddenly bright again, “and I will show you a dance called the Balina Whip. Any man left standing will win my undying admiration and respect.”
With that, Alano and Elan barrelled back into the fray.
Blunt was asleep, propped up against the wall, still with his leather breastplate on. The incongruity of the red hat tipped low over his eyes was startling to look at. The music and dancing had not died down, despite the Balina Whip having taken its toll on a few, who sat panting at their tables. This was a good party. Wasted on himself as far as Truman was concerned, and he drained the last of his wine, planning to find a bed for the night upstairs. The revellers would no doubt be up until dawn anyway, and nothing was more desirable right then than a good night’s sleep.
Valia arrived at his side, flushed of cheek and short of breath.
“Another?” she nodded at his empty cup.
“I was just about to order one,” he lied hurriedly.
“You had better watch yourself,” she giggled. Giggled! Valia! “Someone may take advantage of you in your weakened state.”
“I will be on my guard,” he replied, smoothing his moustaches with thumb and forefinger.
She took a large gulp of wine as soon as it arrived.
“I am not the only one who will need to be on guard,” he said nodding at the half empty cup.
“Well perhaps I will be,” she winked at him. “Perhaps not.”
Truman smoothed his moustaches again, and took a sip of his wine.
This was not right.
“Valia, I am tired, and in a lot of pain,” he began to say.
She put a finger to his lips to silence him. “Let me help with that.” She leaned forward to kiss him, just as one of the Band tumbled into her, another victim of the Balina Whip. She shoved him away brusquely as Truman took his cue to leave. He took another sip of the wine, and bowed politely.
“Goodnight, Valia,” he said, turning as every fibre of his being struggled against him. This was his chance. Valia was drunk and vulnerable, practically throwing herself at him. And he was going to bed! The Truman of old would not have let a simple scratch on the arm keep him from his prize.
But he was not the Truman of old.
As he reached the stairs, his eye was drawn by the sense of something awry in the corner of the room. Olimar was trying to rouse Blunt from his slumber. It must have been well into the small hours, and Olimar was shaking the mercenary’s shoulder gently. Truman paused, and began to make his way through the numerous merry-makers towards the corner of the room.
“Blunt,” Olimar said over the noise, shaking a little harder. “Blunt!” He gently patted his father’s cheeks.
“Blunt,” he repeated, giving the shoulder one last shake.
“Father?” he said softly. But Blunt did not move. Olimar hushed those around him, and slowly, like ripples in a pond, the room became quiet, all eyes on the corner of the room.
Blunt was propped firmly against the wall, his hat over his eyes and feet spread before him; his fingers were twined, holding his hands in place on his lap. He was a picture of blissful inebriety. Yet his ale remained untouched on the table.
“Father?” Olimar repeated, gently removing the hat from his father’s head. He felt at the side of Blunt’s thick neck for a moment, then began to search his body carefully. Feeling around between the wall and his father’s back, he hesitated, and then withdrew a blood-stained hand.
“Father,” he whispered, and then sat dumbly back onto the stool behind him, staring at his bloody palm.
“He must have sustained the injury in battle,” Truman whispered, “And kept it from us.”
“Why?” Olimar said quietly. Truman shook his head.
Granger stood up and approached the table. “Because he knew that he could not be saved.” The whole room stared at him as he walked slowly towards Olimar and his father. “He did not wish to die on his back in the infirmary. He must have known one of his vitals was punctured. His armour stemmed the bleeding but he would have known what the only outcome could be.”
“Then why not tell me,” Olimar said accusingly.
“‘The company of friends’, was what he said. Do you remember that silly game you played in the mountains? Describing how you all would choose to die? This was his wish. Surrounded by the joyful sounds of those he had fought beside, not the hand wringing, and buoyant words of false cheer that are spoken at the deathbed.”
Olimar bowed his head, and was silent for long minutes. He held tightly to the wrist of his deceased father. No-one dared speak.
“Are you writing our stories, in those books you carry?” he asked eventually without lifting his eyes.
Granger nodded. “I am,” he said.
“Then remember him well in your words,” Olimar said. “He had a good heart.” With that, Olimar rose, and walked in silence to the stairs, which he ascended slowly, his light tread the only sound.
In the shocked silence that followed, the soldiers exchanged solemn looks as their minds were wrenched into a simulacrum of sobriety. Truman shared knowing looks with friends, knowing that the enormity of Blunt’s death could not fully be appreciated yet. It would need time to sink in. He caught Valia’s eye, but she quickly looked away and walked unsteadily to the far end of the bar. He made to move towards her, when Elan�
�s expression caught his attention.
The Lythurian stood with his jaw slack, and his eyes focused on the middle distance somewhere above the door. His hands were trembling slightly.
“Elan?” he said, concern switching to his friend. “What is it?”
His voice, when he spoke, was barely a whisper. “It’s all gone. It’s all gone.” Then his eyes rolled back to white, and he slumped heavily onto the floorboards as though he was a puppet whose strings had been cut.
The days became as one; the weeks merged into a single, long agony until pain itself receded. Kellan was unrelenting. He slept only when exhaustion pulled him to the ground, and ate only when his strength was gone entirely. He was gaunt, and dirty. Cuts on his hands and legs had become infected from their exposure to grime. The horse had died two weeks earlier, driven too hard for too long until its heart gave out, throwing Kellan into the snow. But he had barely lain for a heartbeat. His mind was fixed.
He had not been able to find Eloya when he searched from within the Calm since an indeterminable time before that. Such was the oppressiveness of his fear and anxiety, that the barrier trembled with thought-shattering intensity, scattering his efforts like a fox scatters chickens.
He was pressed against a membrane separating his rationality from all out madness, and leaks were beginning to form. There was no option but to go on; press further up the mountain; force the body ever onwards and upwards through the snow.
Had he glanced back he might have noticed the onset of an early spring chasing him into the highlands, but his eyes were fixed ever higher, ever nearer to Eloya.
When the Veil came into view, it was some time before it registered with his consciousness. He had been watching it draw nearer, a passenger in his own body, crawling with frost blackened fingers to its base. When he acknowledged it at last, it was as though a bucket of icy water had been thrown over him. He gasped as pain returned with the realisation.
He found new strength to forge ahead, as well as a mental lift that allowed him to use the Calm once more with any sort of cogency. Still there was no sign of Eloya’s mind.
He held onto the Calm, using it to coordinate his broken body up the steep, stone steps that rose beside the Veil; memories of his weightless moment stirred by the tumbling waters added fortitude to the shield. He sought Eloya again, without success; disquiet pushed against the Calm as the Daemon began to stir. He climbed higher, on knees and forearms, his hands useless, searching for his love.
There!
He found her. But it was not right. It felt like her, should be her, yet she was distant. Faded and indistinct. Could she be asleep?
No.
The knowledge brought an avalanche of emotion crashing onto the Calm as he came over the crest of the steps.
She drifted free of the Life-force. Grey and cold. A lost soul unable or unwilling to find rest within the Soul Keeper’s care.
Lythuria had been reduced to ashes.
He stumbled to his feet and faltered into the vast bowl. Topaz was clear, untouched, yet the land around it was a scorched ruin. Not a single tree was left; incinerated to the last. Every home had been destroyed. Nothing remained but cold ashes and blackened stone. Things barely recognizable as bodies were scattered on the ground, charred, and locked into their final contortions.
The Daemon flung itself at the failing barrier of the Calm. It could smell the rage that hammered on the prison from without and sensed the imminent ruin of its shackles as fury broke against the defences like waves against a brittle coastline.
Kellan was shaken to the core.
Why? Why destroy this place? To get to me? Were they all killed to get to me?
Rage burst through the Calm like water through a levee, pushing an ever wider hole in the wall until the rush was unstoppable. The Daemon drank it down, growing with every heartbeat. The buzzing in his ears grew so painfully loud that Kellan fell to his knees, screaming in agony and fury. The Daemon devoured it, the buzz now a shriek of exultant joy at its victory and freedom.
The Calm shattered, and the Daemon exploded from its host.
The force blew the ash from the ground in an outward rushing, expanding circle, scouring the land beneath to the bedrock. Then, as the vacuum at its centre caused the ring of ash to collapse in on itself, the resultant collision at the eye of the storm sent a plume of grey-black debris skyward where it mushroomed at the top of a thousand foot column.
The Daemon rose from the top of the tower of drifting carnage and hovered, like a hawk stretching its wings before swooping down from the dizzying heights to find its master.
Chapter Twenty Eight
Ara Dasari was situated on both sides of the four hundred mile long canal that joined Kor’Habat to the Adorim Sea. Jagged reefs prevented all but vessels with the shallowest of draughts from accessing the capital. Even the shallow riding trader ships would sooner navigate the Temple Canal than risk those rocks. The channel had been made by redirecting an existing river millennia ago to give the great city a genuine sea port. The torpid waters were easily travelled with a favourable wind, and teams of horses on tracks along either bank would help at other times,
An obvious advantage to Korathea was the security such sea access offered, as well as control over trade and movement of commodities.
With reefs to the south protecting against a sea-borne invasion, and the Lesser Cascus Mountains to the north, Ara Dasari was perfectly situated as a corridor to the eastern provinces. It was also the most defendable position against the approaching Jendayan invasion.
The ferries across the quarter mile width at this point had been carrying refugees to the eastern side from the west for several months. The oarsmen had never had to work so hard, but since they were paid by the crossing, none of the crews had grumbled much, and ferry masters had become rich through the winter. The entire length of the mile-long docks on the western side were busy with those eager to cross, but it was doubtful that there would be any willing to make the crossing in the other direction. An enormous tented city had grown on the plain to the east, though providing such vast numbers with food and sanitation had proved almost impossible, and disease and riots were commonplace. When a million or more people descend on a piece of land fit for a tenth of that, then something has to give.
Spring had arrived and still the exhausted travellers willingly pressed coins into the palms of the operators in exchange for their perceived safety within the canal’s embrace. This latest lot was from Moshet; the city abandoned after having fought off one attempted incursion in the depths of winter. Word had it that they had appealed for aid from Kor’Habat, but that the Kodistai was drawing all of his remaining forces close to his palace, and had declined to send any reinforcements. The city of Moshet was left to the invaders.
The ferry master watched as the masses approached through the streets of the western city. One particular group approached his part of the loading dock. Soldiers by the look of them.
“Welcome to Ara Dasari all crossings one silver mark per person per horse baggage you cannot carry will be charged by the crate at one silver mark each how many are in your party?” he said in one long stream.
“That will be one silver mark including all baggage, and horses and I may not toss you in the canal with stones in your pockets,” an imposing woman in leather armour said as she stopped half a stride from him. He swallowed hard and looked up into her hard eyes.
“The cost is non-negotiable,” he said reasonably. “I think you will find it the going rate among all ferry masters.”
“Well I am willing to bet that I would only have to drown one of you before the others lowered their rates,” she growled. “Would you care for a wager?”
“I…” he began, then thought better of it. “Of course. Yes, all baggage as part of the price. Was that not what I said?”
“I am not from these parts,” she replied, leaning down so that she could look him in the eye. “I must have misunderstood you.”
“Ind
eed,” he replied, turning quickly to escape the woman. “That is my vessel returning now. It will be empty on this leg of the crossing, so should be here in a matter of minutes.”
She smiled without humour, and turned to her companions, leaving the ferry master to breathe a sigh of relief.
Once Valia had secured a crossing on a ferry, she turned back to her friends.
“Profiteering bastards,” she grumbled. “There should be laws.”
“You sound more like Blunt every day,” Olimar said.
“Your father would have thrown him in the canal anyway,” she replied. “Just to make a point.”
“That he would,” Olimar replied with a reflective smile. “That he would.”
“Come on, let’s get across this bloody canal,” she said with a tired resolve.
Blunt’s death had left a hole in their lives that few of them were able to fill. His leadership had bound them together for so long and through so many battles and hardships, that to go on without him seemed impossible. But, somehow, the survivors had stayed together under Olimar’s leadership. He had not been a willing successor, but the weight of expectation that had fallen on his shoulders in Moshet had forced his hand. He relied heavily on Valia for much, though, and loyalty to his father’s memory kept her close by.
It did not take long for what remained of the Band and the ‘Remnants’ to cross the gangway onto the broad ferry boat. Oars sprouted like legs from below deck, put up whilst the oarsmen enjoyed a rest from their labour.
Valia could see Krennet wrangling with another ferry master further along the vast dock. He was clearly just as incensed as she had been at the charges, yet appeared to be having less luck in negotiating a better rate. He waved his thin arms in dismay whilst the ferry master stood firmly, shaking his head with a satisfied smile. Krennet had not been seen during the defence of Moshet, though his men had fought well enough. Captain Renald of the Moshet milita had taken them under his command while Krennet had sought refuge in the local governor’s empty mansion. She felt sure that he would be continuing all the way to Kor’Habat once the ferry landed on the other side.