“Well, groomsman, it would seem that you might even have more to be hopeful for now than you ever expected to,” Armas said with a teasing tone of voice.
Engelmann puffed his pipe, but his eyes twinkled and revealed his amusement with the whole exchange.
Armas grew serious again as he implored them one last time. “Please though, my friends, whereas I am not wholly convinced your words are the irreverent blasphemies that the Citadel believes them to be, you would do well to speak with prudence and caution. I, for one, will hold out hope that two of my friends will not end up bound and chained in the prison holds of the Capital.”
Chapter Forty-Nine
Armas and two of his riders left from the Capital at the rising of the faintest amber the very next morning. They chose the fastest coursers from the stable yard and rode with great haste northward to the borough of Piney Creek. Armas went with the objective of truly investigating the frightened claims that were recorded in the marshal’s reports. Though the Chancellor would rather he just pacify their requests and bid them to keep any unfounded fears to themselves, Armas had a soft spot for the northerners and had determined to give their situation a fair assessment.
By the time they arrived in the northern borough, only the faintest silver light could be seen, casting its sad glow over the small community of Piney Creek. The streets were eerily quiet at this time of night, and most of the windows of the modest homes were completely dark in their cold slumber.
“Go and inform the marshal that we are here, and have him meet me over a loaf of hot bread and a flagon of the Gnarly Knob’s amber ale,” Armas said to his guardsmen. In truth, though the darkness continued to brood and his mission was slightly distasteful, all he had thought of for the last twenty leagues or so was the delight he was about to take in the warm hospitality of Keily’s cooking and Shameus’ amber ale.
“Aye, Captain,” his men said with a salute before they walked off into the darkened night of the North towards the guard bastion at the Northern Gate.
Though Armas could see an amber glow from inside the foggy glass windows of the familiar tavern, he heard no songs or jovial bouts of drunken laughter. He saw no shadows of men dancing or even stumbling to find the privy through the back door. The Gnarly Knob, once a vibrant center of life for those who called this colder borough home, seemed altogether … dead.
He heard the sound of his own boots clumping and knocking on the slats of the tavern’s front porch as he made his way to the door of the place that he had frequented whenever the Citadel sent him northward. Pushing at the wrought-iron handle, he swung the door inward, revealing a rather unexpected sight. There inside, seated at the tables and at the tavern’s bar itself, dozens of men and women ate their stew and drank their drink in frightened silence.
Armas scanned the crowd of people, but could not spy Shameus or Keily anywhere in the tavern. “Pardon, good people of Piney Creek,” Armas said, his voice sounding awkward in the strange quiet. “I’m looking for my friend Shameus or his daughter Keily. Would anyone be able to point me to where they might be?”
The patrons looked up from their suppers, and without saying a single word, they all began to turn and look to one another to determine who should be the one to address this captain of the Citadel. Finally, with what seemed like the full consensus of the silent group, an old man stood to his feet. His heavy, woolen clothes were dirty, and his face looked like he had not slept in days. His long mustache, once a deep black, was now peppered with the grey of long, hard-lived years. He removed his woolen hat from his head, and in cowering humility he spoke to the captain.
“My lord, the lady Keily is on the wall, as she has been for two days’ time,” said the old man named Bartle. “She has been there almost every moment, ever since her father was lost to the dark fog.”
“Shameus? Lost?” Armas was a bit stunned at the thought, despite the many warnings and reports he had heard of the dark mysteries in the North. “What fog, and why is he lost to it?”
“The day the branch fell, my lord, this thick, black hell of a haze came to rest heavy upon the outlands there, just on the other side of the wall.” Bartle seemed a bit sheepish as he retold the story. “The whole borough was spooked beyond belief, the horses and all the livestock too; they all began acting strangely, my lord. Not a one of the chickens would lay an egg, nor would any of the heifers give up their milk; it was as if the whole lot of us were scared puckered tight,” Bartle continued on.
“Some of us, well, we just drank more ale to dull the fear, and before long a few of the old ones had more than enough courage for the whole borough. The four of them wanted to prove something to themselves I think … maybe that they still had strength left in those old bones of theirs, or maybe that they wouldn’t be bullied here on their homeland. I couldn’t say for sure.” Bartle wrung his woolen hat in his hands as he spoke to the captain.
“And Shameus went with them then?” Armas asked.
“Aye,” replied Bartle with a somber look in his eyes.
“Well where are the four old fools now?” Armas asked him in a kind voice, trying to learn all that he could from this frightened old shepherd.
“That’s just it, my lord,” the man said as he raised his eyes to the captain’s. “No one knows, no one has seen them for two days now … they never did come back through the gates.”
The door of the Gnarly Knob burst open in a flurry of excitement as the two guardsmen that Armas had traveled with rushed inside. “Captain,” the older of the two said as his hurried breath fogged around him in the cold chill of the night’s air. “Captain, I need you to come with us right away. There is something you must see!”
Armas could feel the dread pulsating off of this frightened soldier’s body. “Alright corporal … where are we going?”
“To the Northern Gate,” the rider told him. “I need you to see what lies just beyond it.”
The rumblings and murmurings of the frightened people hiding in the warmth of the tavern began to swell to panicked outcries as they observed the faces of the worried guardsmen.
“What did he see?” shouted an old woman. “Tell us what he saw!’
“The THREE who is SEVEN has abandoned us, I knew it … I knew it! He has left us to die at the hands of the damnable dark and its evil fog!” shouted a drunk and ornery old cuss of a man.
“Don’t you go talking like that, you old fool, or the THREE who is SEVEN might get half a mind to follow through with it!” said another man as he kissed the flint that hung around his neck.
“Will you help us, Captain?” implored Bartle.
Armas chewed on his lower lip as he stood there, his mind racing to come up with some comforting words to offer the scared people of Piney Creek. As he thought, without much effort and to his great surprise, the words of Engelmann were the first words that came to his mind.
“Do not give up hope, people of Haven. You must hold onto it with both hands; for it may be hope alone that proves to be the very weapon to defeat whatever evils await us.” As Armas heard the words come out of his mouth, a deep empathy overcame him for these complete strangers of the cold North. His empathy however, was quickly followed by the sudden realization that he was not just saying the words of Engelmann in order to pacify and create calm; it seemed that he indeed meant them. He meant them, perhaps more than he had meant any words he had ever spoken before.
“Excuse me, my lord … but are you … well …” Bartle’s voice snapped Armas’ attention out of his reverie.
Armas began to step away from the old man, glancing around the room once more before he took his leave.
The old shepherd leaned in close once more and grabbed his arm. “Are you … are you a Poet, my lord?” Bartle asked him in a nervous whisper.
Without answering the question, but not without letting its implied meaning sink in a bit, Armas left the Gnarly Knob. He followed his guardsmen through the silent streets of the frightened borough by the faint light of the dyin
g tree. When they arrived at the main entrance to the northern highway, there at the mouth of the Northern Gate, the gravity of the situation fell upon the captain’s chest with heavy and ill-fitting pressure.
“Corporal, tell me, what do you know about what’s happening here?” Armas asked his rider. “Is it just the fog that draws them to stand and take watch there atop the battlements of the wall?”
The young rider looked nervously at his commanding officer before he spoke. “No, Captain. Come, follow me and see for yourself.” The corporal led his captain through the checkpoint of guardsmen, then up the stone stairs that looked as if they had been cut right into the inner masonry of the large, stone wall.
When Armas reached the barbican atop the Northern Gate, it became instantaneously obvious that the very reports he had read, and that had subsequently led him to make the long ride North, did not for a moment accurately portray the state of affairs that presented itself just beyond the relative safety of this wall.
In fact, the situation was perhaps a great deal worse than the reports had led him to believe.
“Where is the gatekeeper? Corporal, get me the marshal of this borough and get him now!” Armas ordered with commanding haste. “Rider! I need a rider at once!” he shouted to the column of stunned and scared guardsmen that lined the battlements around him. “Move!”
A slow-burning commotion lit at the shouting of Armas’ orders, waking the guardsmen and the citizens alike from their fear-induced paralysis. Those atop the wall could see plain enough that whatever it was that waited on the other side would not be counted friendly.
The marshal of the borough swiftly made his way across the wall from the other side of the battlements and reported as Armas had ordered. “Captain, do you have any idea who or what that is out there?”
“No. Not in the slightest,” Armas replied.
The marshal peered worriedly down the small line of defense, as not more than a few dozen guardsmen and gatekeepers were at his command here in this northern assignment. Most of the Citadel’s trained fighters were stationed in Westriver, where the majority of the timber riots and outlier insurrections were taking place.
“Tell me, Marshal,” Armas asked him, “have you heard word from Hollis? I sent a rider a day before we arrived, and I had hoped that by some stroke of great fortune he might have been close by.”
“No, Captain, none yet,” answered the marshal. “And I fear that whatever is out there,” he pointed off into the dark distance, “might have just cut off any further chance we have of hearing from him now.”
“I fear the same thing,” Armas agreed. “About the tavern keeper, Shameus … has anyone seen any sign of him yet?”
“No sir, not one sign,” the marshal said, his expression going dim and a bit saddened as he answered. “His daughter is over there,” he said as he pointed to the dark-haired young woman. “She is a strong one though … hasn’t left her position there but for just long enough to make supper for her patrons, before taking her place back on the wall.”
The marshal looked at her with a mix of pride and sadness in his eyes. “She is not frightened, that one there, and she is not stupid either. She knows full well that her daddy is probably dead, but she is waiting and watching so that she might know who it is that will have to pay for taking him from her.”
“Well, it might just be her vengeance that raises courage up in the rest of these men of ours,” Armas said with a sad smile.
“You might be right about that, Captain,” the marshal said. “I have known her since she was a wee lass, and she was never one to hide from intimidation, not from the boys, and certainly not from her half-drunk patrons!”
Armas watched Keily, though she did not notice him. An urge to protect the beautiful young woman from the evil that had taken her father rose up inside him. Responsibility and a hint of desire for her nearly persuaded him to make her take her leave from the wall, and perhaps even Piney Creek altogether, but wisdom and prudence prevailed and he forced himself to temper his instincts. There was no doubt that they needed every able body if they were going to stand a fighting chance.
“And she is not a bad shot either, with that hunting bow of her daddy’s there.” The marshal pointed to the leather-wrapped bow that hung from her back. “If she pretends whoever it is out there is a jack or a chicken, well—I would put her up against some of your best archers.”
“Let us pray that we need not find out just how keen of an eye she has, huh?” Armas said as he firmly squeezed the shoulder of the old marshal.
The third member of Armas’ riding party ran up the stone stairs, the mist from his heavy breath dancing in the torchlight. “Captain, you sent for me?”
“I need you to ride, ride hard and with as great a haste as you can urge your horse to make!” Armas wrote hurriedly on two pieces of parchment, sealing them with green wax and the sigil of the Capital guard. “This one,” he handed the tiny piece of rolled parchment to the young rider, “deliver first to Lieutenant Marcum; he is stationed in Westriver at the Western Gate. His immediate response could be the very thing that saves the lives of many of Haven’s people.”
The rider took hold of the document and tried to pull it from Armas’ grasp, but the captain held firm, not ready to release it just yet.
“Do you understand me?” Armas asked with an urgent hardness to his voice, afraid that the young rider would miss the importance of this order or find himself distracted somewhere along the way if he was not properly instructed.
“Yes, Captain, I understand,” the rider responded.
“Then, and only then, once Marcum has received this order and you have watched him set into motion the words of my command, deliver this to the Citadel,” Armas said. The intensity of his gaze was so moving that the young rider could not help but feel overwhelmed at the gravity of this heavy assignment.
“Yes, Captain,” the rider answered again. “I will deliver these dispatches first to the Lieutenant, and upon his enactment of your orders, I will then proceed to deliver this next parchment to the Chancellor.”
Armas gave him a satisfied nod. “Go then. Go now, and may the THREE who is SEVEN make your horse swift and your sight clear.” He saluted the rider, and without wasting even a single moment more, the young man was off in a sprint to find his horse and set out on his assignment.
The battlements on the wall were silent with tension. The guardsmen and a few of the braver citizens patrolled in wide-eyed alertness as they tried to ascertain the full scope of just what it was that waited beyond the barrier of the wall. There was no laughter, nor chatter of town life, no drunken storytelling or tavern music. The whole community waited in frightened quiet, unsure of what was to come, and all the more unsure as to what they could do to stop it from happening.
Somewhere off in the faint silver distance, a baby started crying. The desperate sounds of a mother begging, willing her waking child to remain quiet so as not to rouse the unknown evil that lie in wait, summed up the frightened atmosphere of the whole borough.
Armas took his position atop the barbican. His still trembling hands held his spyglass to his watchful eye as he surveyed the haunting scene before him. There, not half a league from the outer curtain of the northern wall, shrouded in a thick and hungry haze, stood nearly sixty green-flamed torches. The eerie un-light of the torches seemed to be positioned in the same way that war banners were used in the field of battle to distinguish between the positions of the companies of soldiers within the larger battalion.
The captain scanned the horizon, his blood growing cold with each torch he counted. It didn’t take long for him to determine the current intention of the forces that waited in the darkness.
This was a siege.
What he could not seem to get his mind around was who it was that was besieging the great city of Haven. It was certainly no horde of outliers or band of highwaymen. Armas felt the pull at the back of his mind, the knowledge of evils he had been warned of by sources he sh
ould have trusted.
“Corporal!” Armas shouted. “Arm these men, and wake the citizens of Piney Creek! We will need every able body, whether man or woman, and every bow that can still string an arrow. Tell them to bring any blade of any kind, and tell them—”
Boom! The ground beneath them shook and rumbled as the sound of deep thumping interrupted Armas’ orders.
GAROOM! The rumbling sound fell again, shaking both world and resolve with its mysterious reverberations.
“What’s that?” shouted one of the citizens who was still keeping watch from atop the wall. “Are those torches that just caught fire?”
“I’ve never seen torches like those!” another man said, his voice shaking with fear. “What in the damnable darkness are they?”
The two newly lit torches shone brighter and bigger than all of the others that spread out there in siege formation, surrounding the Northern Gate of Haven. Then, without warning, they flicked dark for the briefest of moments before returning to their full brightness yet again.
“They are lit again!” the voice of another citizen shouted out.
The corporal leaned in close to Armas and whispered his question. “Are they trying to signal something, Captain?”
GAROOM! Another earth-shaking thud resounded loud and final, as the two large torches rose and fell in time with the thudding.
Armas swallowed hard as fear pooled in his parched mouth. “Perhaps, Corporal. Stand your ground, now.”
Armas stared into the large orbs that seemed to hover in the brooding darkness. Though he kept the knowledge to himself, it was plain enough to see that the large glowing torches were, in fact, not torches at all.
GAROOM! The crushing boom sounded and shook yet again.
Hollis was right, Armas thought as he stared long in deep suspicion at the hellish green that lay encamped there just beyond the reach of the dying light of the great tree. Hollis was right! He was right this whole time … what damned fools we are!
The Great Darkening (Epic of Haven Trilogy) Page 45