“I will see to it,” Armas called back. “Meet me at the Gnarly Knob.” With that, the lieutenant spurred his horse and took off southward, back towards the Northern Gate to make preparations for Hollis’ men.
Shameus, the tavern keep and head proprietor of the Gnarly Knob, heeded the advice of the lieutenant; he had his daughter Keily put on a large cauldron of stewed rabbit and set to baking a couple dozen loaves of salted bread. By the time the woodcutters had made their way inside, a large table had already been made ready with bread and ale.
The lieutenant took Hollis aside after the chief had filled his large hands with food and drink. The two of them shared words and broke bread while the rest of his men recovered their strength.
“How are you, old friend?” Armas asked the weary woodcutter, carefully considering the demeanor of the old man. Armas could not deny that Hollis had a wilder, darker look about him than when they had last met. He began to wonder if, in fact, the Chancellor and the Priest King were right to question the faculties and judgment of this once-great chieftain.
“Well,” Hollis paused to take a long draught of his ale, “the forests have but a week of timber left for us to harvest, two at the very most. I have lost more men in the last month of days than I have in the last score of years swinging an axe out beyond the walled city … and I don’t see the world getting much brighter any time soon.”
Hollis slammed his mug onto the table, sloshing the contents over the edge, and leaned close into Armas’ face. “So you ask me how I am, and really all I can say is that I have a lot of questions that I doubt you have the answers to, and that doesn’t leave me in the best frame of mind.” The intensity of Hollis’ tone increased with each word that he spoke, revealing a layer of desperation and defeat there just under the surface.
“I am … sorry to hear that,” Armas said with genuine concern for his friend.
“It’s this damnable dark, lad! If the great THREE who is SEVEN doesn’t come down to our miserable world here soon …” he looked Armas straight in the eyes, his face still pressed in a little too close, “well, I am afraid.”
“Afraid of what?” Armas asked, leaning slightly back in his chair to escape the rather off-putting stench of the woodcutter’s breath.
“The green-eyed demons, or ghosts, or whatever you want to call the evil that lives out there in the shadows.” Hollis had a vacant look in his eyes as he stared off past the lieutenant’s shoulder.
A beautiful, brown-haired barmaid interrupted their hushed conversation with a large bowl of steaming stewed rabbit and small plate of goat’s cheese.
“Thank you, lass,” Hollis said absently. She nodded back with a warm smile as she walked to the larger table of men to deliver their meal to them.
“Demons? Ghosts?” Armas whispered once she was out of earshot. “What are you even talking about? Hollis, have you gone mad?”
“I saw them, lad, with my own two eyes, I saw them.” Hollis, undeterred, went on with his tale. “An unnatural darkness followed them like a sickly fog that swallowed up whatever traces of twilight still remained in the retreating forests.”
“Maybe it is time you take a respite for a while, old friend,” he scolded while sopping up the stew with his loaf of bread. “I’m afraid all this darkness has done something to your faculties.”
“I wish that were all that this was,” Hollis said with grave sincerity. “But that’s not the half of it. Not the ghosts or demons or whatever the hell they are … that’s not what has me too scared to sleep in the silver light.”
“What is it then?” Armas asked hesitantly.
Hollis took another long draught, as if he were thirsty for the courage to even say the words. He finished the drink and wiped the drippings from his greying, red beard. He had not so much as blinked, let alone unfixed his gaze from the eyes of the lieutenant.
“Dragons,” Hollis said grimly.
“Dragons? You saw a dragon? That’s impossible, they have all been gone for generations!” Armas shook his head in annoyed disbelief. “Tell me that you did not send word to the Citadel about this. Tell me you did not write of this in your letters!” he whispered forcefully, glancing about the room.
Hollis dipped his bread in the bowl, brought the steaming brown of the stew to his lips, and took a lifeless bite. “And that …” he said with his mouth full of food, “is the problem, isn’t it? Because even if I had, that Priest King of ours would have reacted in the same manner that you yourself just did.”
Something like sorrow mixed with defeat came over the eyes of the great chief. “What am I going to do with only a couple hundred woodcutters against dragons and whatever other green-eyed evils are waiting for us in the darkness?”
“Hollis?” the lieutenant pressed, hardness creeping into his voice.
“No, lad, I didn’t write it,” he said like a child who has just been scolded. “And no, I didn’t see them either, but I touched their teeth … and I felt the weight of their magic lingering in the air like a coming storm.”
Armas was baffled to even be having this kind of conversation with this esteemed man, a man known throughout Haven for his steel-hardened resolve and flint-like conviction. Even though he did not wholeheartedly believe his report, his sense of loyalty would not allow him to completely dismiss it either.
“Hollis, my friend, I have known you long enough to see that something truly terrible must have indeed happened to you to shake your resolve like this.” Armas reached out and patted him on the shoulder with friendly placation. “But do not take these stories to the Citadel. They already suspect that you are going mad, and you must not give them any reason to confirm their suspicions.”
Hollis seemed to either ignore Armas’ words or simply not hear them altogether. He looked at Armas, drippings of the brown stew still clinging stubbornly to his beard, and spoke. “So what is this grave and important word that our Priest King has for me and my men, that he would call us out of our camp and send one of his prized lieutenants all this way to deliver?”
Armas let it go. “Right. Well, it would seem that a plan is in motion that will require the efforts and service of your woodcutters.”
“I have heard of this plan,” Hollis said with skepticism. “To seek the light, is it? Across the Dark Sea?”
“The Citadel believes that this expedition will keep the darkness and its evils in the shadows where they belong,” Armas told him.
Hollis looked up from the bowl of stewed rabbit, and for the first time since the two of them met on the road outside the wall, he looked fully present. A fire burned in the hearth of Hollis’ mind, its brave and stubborn glow alive there in his eyes. He listened as Armas went over the plan to colonize and the great task at hand.
“And so our Priest King has requested—well actually, ordered—that you assign forty of your best woodcutters to sail with the first wave of the colony. They must be prepared to leave almost immediately, for the ships will be ready to sail in a matter of days,” Armas told him as he finished with the mandate he had come all this way to deliver.
“And what of me? Do you know? Does the Citadel intend for me to lead my own men across the Dark Sea, or am I to go back to the shadows and wait for the green death to claim me?” Hollis grumbled out his question.
“That is not my place to say, old friend. I was just sent to expedite your arrival to the Priest King’s court so that you may confer with Jhames himself,” Armas answered deflectively.
“Ah, what am I talking about? I am getting too old for such adventures,” Hollis said, surrendering his pride a bit. “This colony is going to need all the energy of youth on its side, not some blunt old axe of a man like myself.”
Hollis crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back in his chair, considering the plans that Armas had just shared with him. “So,” he said slowly after taking some time to think, “Do you truly believe that this mission could actually uncover a new light for Haven?” His words were cautious, guarded, as though h
e wanted to hope in the plans of the Priest King but he couldn’t actually bring himself to anything beyond skepticism and defeat.
“Some say that King Jhames is sending this expedition to seek the light … but I suspect he is just looking for more timber,” Armas admitted to his old friend.
“And I suppose that timber is all anyone really cares about, lad!” chuckled Hollis as he pushed back from the table and slammed his fists upon it to accent his words. “Oh, come then, let’s round up the men and you can lead on. I’ll go to your Citadel, and I’ll talk to our King Jhames, and just maybe I won’t talk too much about dragons. Ha!” He made a wild-eyed face at Armas in mock dementia.
Armas shook his head in amused disbelief at Hollis’ trivial humor on a subject that just moments ago had him so deeply afraid. Perhaps that was his way of coping with the toll of fear and anxiety that the darkness had been taxing him with, day after ever-darkening day.
The two of them began to make their way over to the rest of the northmen. “What about the healers? Were you able to find one here in town?” Hollis asked the lieutenant.
“No,” Armas said apologetically. “Shameus said that his daughter Keily would take a look at whichever one of your men put an axe through his boot. He said she was the closest thing to a healer they have had around here in weeks. But my guess is that your men won’t mind too much, having a pretty girl like her check up on them!” laughed Armas.
“Aye then, I suppose my little splinter will be better than nothing at all,” Hollis agreed. “My best man was attacked by one of the green-eyed monsters—a demon bear, truth be told. We stitched him up as best as we could, and to be honest I thought we would lose him too. Ah, but the North Wolf was not so easily beaten, and he is mending well enough.”
“Then … why the healer?” Armas asked.
“I hoped his eye would have recovered by now, but it seems to be growing worse,” Hollis told him. “The damned bear nearly took his face off. Thank the THREE who is SEVEN that the eye was all he lost.”
Hollis led Armas to the long table where the company of men sat, now much happier and a bit fatter thanks to Keily’s cooking and Shameus’ ale. The men had been stretched beyond the limits of weariness, due in part to the long months of hard labor, and more so to the fear of what evils lurked in the shadows of the North.
“This is Lieutenant Armas of the Capital guard, an old friend of mine,” Hollis told his men. “The Citadel has called for our axes once again, and some of you here will be answering that call to fight the darkness one felled tree at a time. For the Priest King’s crusade to colonize the Wreath is nearly upon us, and he has called for our axes to lead the way.”
The men began to talk and whisper among themselves, some eager at the prospect of a new assignment, others grumbling about the Citadel needing northmen to come to their rescue once again.
“We will follow you to this new assignment, Hollis, but not because that damnable Priest King commands it!” yelled one of the men who had partaken of a little too much brew.
“Aye!” called another. “Our axes are pledged to you, Chief!”
Hollis looked at Armas, and then down the line of men sitting at the table before him. “Silence! I may not be able to make the journey with you, brothers, for the Priest King has demanded a private audience so that he may assess my faculties.”
The men erupted in an angry protest, for they knew full well what the Citadel thought of the haunting reports from the North.
“Tell that Priest King to come see the fog himself!” shouted Oskar from the end of the table. “Where is his axe against the raven’s arrows?”
Goran stood tall and menacing in defense of his chief, addressing the force of his indignation towards Armas. “You Capital guardsmen have not the slightest inkling as to what hells we have faced these last weeks! If it were not for Hollis there would be no timber to fuel the frightened citizens of your damnable Priest King!”
“Enough!” Hollis roared out amidst the din, his bellowed fury sounding more like the man that Armas had once known. “Do you truly think that I need the likes of you to defend my honor? My axe is sharp enough still, brothers.” As he spoke, his wounded offense smoldered into a low burning resignation. “I will make plain enough to the Citadel the truth of what we have seen. Make no mistake about that. And then … well, then they can do as they wish to me.”
Armas crossed his arms and regarded his friend, feeling all the more uncertain about taking Hollis back to the review of the Priest King and the Chancellor.
“Just who will you send to lead us, then?” asked another ale-sodden woodcutter.
“Yasen!” Hollis called out to the dark-haired man covered in wolf furs at the other end of the long table. “Once we figure out what in the green-death is happening to that ugly eye of yours, you, my North Wolf, will lead our men across the Dark Sea.”
The men of the North both feared and respected Yasen for the vastness of his bravery and fortitude that, by comparison, made evident the small stature of their own. They were reminded daily of what burned inside his chest, for all they had to do was to look upon his scarred face and milky eye to see the measure of his courage. The woodcutters nodded and grunted their assent to Hollis’ choice in leadership, neither daring nor desiring to put up a fight against the mighty Yasen.
“Come, my friend, let’s go let the healer have a look at that eye of yours,” Hollis gestured with his hands as he called to the wounded hero. “Jhames is not prone to patience, of that I am sure, and we must see about putting your mending behind us now.”
Yasen quietly rose to his feet and followed the two men into the kitchen. The rest of the woodcutters finished their ale, and some fell asleep right there at the table. A few of them went out to tend the horses, but most of them were too full or too tired to care about the conference in the other room. As the three of them entered the kitchen, they beheld a welcome sight. The beautiful barmaid, who had both baked their bread and filled their flagons, was busying herself with boiling water and mixing herbs and oils.
“Well, it’s about time you decided to come in and face up to your medicine,” Keily gently scolded as she eyed Yasen.
“You, my girl, have outdone yourself indeed, and your papa should be most proud,” said the lieutenant, who couldn’t help but grin at the vivacious sparkle in the eyes that turned to him. “The meal was most … acceptable.”
“Oh,” she sighed, not at all flustered by the easy compliment. “Well, don’t you go getting too grateful just yet, for I haven’t attempted my hand at healing this wound. I would hate to disappoint the likes of the Citadel.” She winked briefly at Armas and turned her attention back to her quiet patient.
“I am sure that I will be most grateful for whatever aid your healing touch might offer,” Yasen said kindly, finally opening his mouth to speak to the endearing young woman.
“Well, we will just have to see about that.” She brushed the compliment aside as she motioned for him to sit. “Come now, let’s have a look at it. I’ll have to take that old dressing off of you.” Keily slowly and tenderly unwrapped the soiled bandage from Yasen’s head. When she came to the end of the strip of cloth and revealed his battered face, she let out a tiny but horrified gasp. “What in the damnable darkness happened to you?” she said as her fingers traced the rough and angry scars that lined the left side of Yasen’s face.
“Can you mend it, lass?” Hollis asked her.
“The scars?” she asked, shaking her head. “No. I suppose I might be able to charm them enough to calm their anger a bit, but they will still be there.” Her hands held the face of the hero of the North as she spoke. “I am not so sure about the eye though. This is well beyond my skill.”
“Will you try? Please?” Yasen asked her gently, his tone betraying a sense of vulnerability beneath his rugged exterior.
“I will try,” she consented, resting her hand upon his muscled shoulder as she knelt down to his eye level, “If you tell me what kind of devil
did such a thing to the hero of the North.”
Just then, the kitchen door burst open and Oskar stood before them, wide-eyed.
“Lieutenant! We need you right away,” Oskar restrained himself from explaining further, his eyes falling on Keily. “It’s … um … the night patrolmen, sir.” His face betrayed the urgent nature of his beckoning.
Armas and Hollis exchanged suspicious glances before they excused themselves and followed Oskar into the main hall, leaving Yasen to tell his tale to the beautiful woman who demanded his story as payment for her aid.
“What is it, Oskar?” Hollis demanded.
“Lieutenant?” they heard a frightened voice call out from the entrance to the Knob. “Lieutenant, please sir … I … I need a word with you!”
The hesitant, young patrolman made his way nervously over to Armas and the two woodcutters. His face looked a sickly white and his eyes were wide with panic-stricken fear. “What is it, lad?” Armas asked him.
“It’s … it’s my brother, sir,” he barely managed to stutter out.
“Your brother?” Armas asked.
The frightened patrolman nodded his head forcefully. “You see, we were both on night patrol duty, scouting the North Road like we were told to do by the corporal. Then we saw what looked like a dark storm closing in fast … only it didn’t look like any storm I have ever seen before.”
Hollis stared hard at the young man, not for a moment shifting his focused attention. Armas watched the old woodcutter anxiously listen to the story of the young soldier with a keen, calculating eye.
“Go on,” Armas urged.
“It was the clouds, sir … they were too close to the ground to be natural. They rolled in like a thick, dark fog. At least, it looked like fog, but then I heard—no, I felt thunder.” He touched the small flint from around his neck to his trembling lips. “Felt it shake my very bones.”
The Great Darkening (Epic of Haven Trilogy) Page 28