The old Flamekeeper grasped the Sacred Crystal Sword in his hand. “Kneel, Clarian, the Ferryman, in the presence of the Flame,” he said.
Clarian knelt reluctantly on a violet carpet in front of the vessel containing the flickering white flame. Earlier, he had bathed and combed his hair, and now he wore the blue tunic of a Citadel soldier.
The Flamekeeper administered to Clarian his oath of allegiance to the Flame and to the Immortal Ones of the Crystal Mountains. Rokkman observed the proceedings from the shadows off to the side. The old Flamekeeper dipped a large, golden chalice into the flame, scooping up white and violet fire and pouring it over Clarian’s head so that it spilled down over him and seemed to penetrate and disappear into him. Nine times, the Flamekeeper dipped and poured the flames over Clarian, all the while murmuring secret and mysterious words.
The Flamekeeper placed his hand upon the ferryman’s head. “So, now, therefore, in the name of the Flame, this son of Orlan and Ranna, known to us as Clarian the Ferryman, chosen by the Immortal Ones of the Crystal Mountains to protect the Flame and the Karran people, is given the violet cloak as a symbol of his high office and as a symbol to the people that he stands forth as their protector, from this day forward.”
Holding a jeweled crystal sword in his right hand, he tapped Clarian on his left shoulder, his right, on top of his head, and then on his heart.
“Know that the Sacred Flame shall always be with you. It is a thought away, and it shall come when you call upon it. Now go, Clarian, for much work is to be done,” he intoned. The Flamekeeper placed a violet cloak over Clarian’s shoulders and patted him on the cheek.
Clarian lurched unsteadily to his feet, helped by Rokkman. The door of the Chamber of Light opened, and Clarian emerged into the outer office of the Flamekeeper. Waiting to greet him were others, including Lillan and Martan, and dozens of officers of the Citadel guard.
“May I introduce Clarian, Protector of the Flame, the Chosen One!” pronounced the Flamekeeper.
Everyone in the room bowed deeply to Clarian, and they all repeated, “Clarian, Protector of the Flame, the Chosen One.”
Clarian was so surprised, he did not know what to do. Immediately, everyone gathered around him, and those who had not met him asked questions. Rokkman patted him on the back, helping him with the answers,. Lillan stood back smiling broadly, and when he looked over at her, she gave him a big wink. He smiled back, his first smile in quite a while. In the back of his mind he was wondering how in the world he was going to achieve all that was needed in the coming crisis. He glanced out of the corner of his eye at Lillan again. She held his glance, and then someone stepped in front of him.
Clarian stood by a long wooden table. Over it stretched a map of Karran and the lands surrounding it. Citadel officers crowded around the table, pointing and commenting. Next to Clarian stood Lillan, Rokkman, and Martan.
“What have our scouts to tell us about the Maggan plans?” asked Clarian.
Martan answered, “We believe, based on all our information, that the Maggan will attack at night on the next full moon or the one after. We’re not sure how prepared they are at this moment to march. We haven’t yet observed them bringing up supply wagons. We may have four weeks to eight weeks to prepare.”
“How many soldiers do they have compared to our army?” Clarian asked.
“We do not know that for sure, either. The Forest of Darkness is a vast area, and they could have soldiers anywhere under those trees. Our best guess is five thousand soldiers,” answered Lillan. “We have five hundred Citadel guards and, at best, a few thousand new soldiers with only a few weeks of training.”
Clarian tried to think how they could hold back the enemy with so few soldiers. There must be a way to offset their greater numbers. “What is their army made up of? Archers, spearmen?”
“The Maggan are mostly foot soldiers, armed with lances and short swords. They have a lesser number of archers and several small units of mounted soldiers who carry bows, long spears, and swords. Not so many mounted troops. Horses don’t thrive well under the trees without pasture,” explained Lillan.
“Then if we are mounted, we will have the advantage of mobility and speed. And we will have large numbers of mounted archers, which is new,” said Clarian.
A young officer with a black beard spoke up. “But if they outnumber us by so many, how can we defeat them?”
“If they attack before we can train a large army, we will be overrun,” said Clarian, “and the city will be lost. But if they give us time, we will have a chance.”
The officers leaned over the table studying the map, each considering the implications of defeat as they pondered how the Maggan would attack.
“Is it obvious that they will attack down this road that leads from the Forest of Darkness?” asked Clarian.
Lillan ran her finger down the map. “They are overconfident. The shortest route to our city is down the road from the Forest of Darkness directly to our doorstep. They could come at us from several other directions, but it’s a long way around, and they would be forced to leave the cover of the forest for many days before they could get here. They would be in the open and more exposed.”
“I think you’re right, Lillan,” agreed Rokkman. “They will come down this road, and we’ll have to be ready for them.”
“How will we stop them?” Lillan asked. “And if they overrun us, what would that mean?”
Martan answered, “I will tell you what it means. Several years ago they attacked the Doman people, who lived far to the north. Now there are no Doman people. All gone. Wiped out.”
Rokkman spoke. “We heard stories back in the Great War that they ate their captives. I never talked to anyone who actually witnessed it, but I can believe it.”
“We haven’t enough soldiers, Clarian,” Lillan said.
“I know. And I know if they overrun us, we will disappear forever like the Doman. And they will take the Flame. Let’s hope that the Maggan are in no hurry to attack. If we can gain time to train our soldiers, we can stop them.”
Everyone looked at Clarian hopefully.
“Send out this order,” Clarian announced. “We will call upon every boy and girl thirteen years or older, and every man and every woman who can fight. We will bring up every horse that is suitable for riding and put a mounted archer on its back. Let the Maggan fight on foot with swords and lances. We will engage them with arrows and lances from a distance, always moving fast. And we will not let them rest or sleep.”
Rokkman tapped his knuckles on the table. “You’re going to put children into the battles?”
“What will the Maggan do to the children if we are defeated?” Clarian asked. “We already know what they do to children. Let the children fight for their lives too. If they can draw back a bow string and loose an arrow at a Maggan, then they must. My father took me into battle against the Kobani when I was thirteen.”
The officers looked around at one another, shocked expressions on their faces. “We don’t have enough time to prepare our soldiers. It’s too little time,” Lillan said, a worried look on her face.
Clarian nodded. “You have allowed yourselves to fall asleep while a rival tribe of savages dreams of killing you and all your families and wiping out your civilization. It’s all the time we have. Send out messengers to every village in the land, to every farm, to bring in those who will fight with us. And bring in the horses and wagons and every weapon. Enlist every tradesman to begin making weapons and saddles, building wagons, and everything we will need to mount an army. Work day and night. Notify all the farmers east of here to leave their farms and come into the city. They are to bring all the belongings they can carry. They are in the path of the enemy, and that would not be a good place to be. When we know the enemy is marching, we will burn all the houses and barns and fields. We will leave nothing for them to use as shelter.
; “This is all good, but not enough. Is there more to your plan, Clarian?” asked Rokkman.
“Yes. I will find Ferman and kill him.”
Grins slowly emerged on previously grim faces.
“I am a warrior from the frontier, the Great Grasslands. I know little about armies. I am a simple man. Why I am the one selected to be here, I don’t know. But I will do what is asked of me. And I ask the same from you. Now…let us begin.
Lillan leaned close and whispered in Clarian’s ear.
“In the name of the Flame!” exclaimed Clarian.
“In the name of the Flame!” chorused the officers.
It was night, and far in the depths of the Citadel, the Flamekeeper knelt before the Sacred Crystal. Ethereal clouds of white light floated upward from the crystal.
“Sacred White Light, Sacred Flame, have I chosen wisely? Is this boy, Clarian, the one to lead our people to victory over our enemies?”
The light changed and darkened, and within the flame the Flamekeeper saw Clarian on his horse, leading soldiers into battle. He wept.
CHAPTER EIGHT
So began a great stream of men and women, some young and some old, farmers and shepherds, boys and girls, driving strings of horses and wagons, all converging on the Citadel. The people of the city that surrounded the Citadel took many into their homes. Others were assigned to the fields of tents in the shadow of the castle fortress.
Clarian was everywhere, riding from one training area to the next. The young boys and girls and older men and women were organized into companies of archers. Older boys and girls and able-bodied men and women who could ride were given horses and trained as mounted archers. By Clarian’s decree, all soldiers were to be armed with bows and also trained with the sword and lance. Some of the younger children could not throw a lance very far or swing a sword well, but they all received training in each weapon.
Clarian took a personal interest in training the mounted archers, firing arrows at targets at a gallop to show them how to bring down the enemy. Clarian could be seen with Lillan and other archery officers observing the training and then offering suggestions. The training day started at daylight and concluded in the dark.
Not all soldiers could ride horses, and there was little time to learn, so wagons were collected to use as transports. Row upon row of wagons lined up in fields nearby. Horses were pastured in all the surrounding farms and paddocks. Great stocks of food and animal feed were stored to be on hand when the hostilities began. The older women in the city hurriedly sewed tunics for the growing numbers of new soldiers. The smithies worked around the clock to turn out swords and lances. Bow and arrow makers and their apprentices with little rest were crafting the implements through the night.
When the formal training ended each day, companies of soldiers began fortifying the walls around the city. Every hour counted; every task was of great importance. In the final days before the expected attack, great numbers of soldiers led by their officers went through maneuvers including mock charges by mounted archers, sweeping attacks from the flank, harassing tactics from the rear, and major withdrawals. Clarian applied everything he had learned from his father and from fighting the Kobani tribe. The Kobani had been very good at moving quickly and striking and then pulling back only to strike again when least expected. They were a horse people, and Clarian intended to use everything he had learned from them to his advantage in this war against the night people.
Meanwhile, two young Citadel soldiers traveled back to the frontier to relieve Parsan and send him back to the Citadel. Ranna and Helan had grown fond of Parsan, and they each gave him a hug just before he mounted his horse for the long ride back. It had taken him a few days to get used to Ranna, and he continually looked at the tattoo on her forehead with wonderment. Different peoples did not mix in these lands except for the occasional trader who would cross the border of a land but would almost never venture to the main city. Nevertheless, Parsan was a young warrior of happy countenance, and with Ranna and Helan barking instructions, he had mastered the transport of travelers on the ferry craft across the swift river, and he had developed a strong appetite for frontier cooking.
Ranna questioned the new arrivals, skinny boys in their teens, seeking news of Clarian, and they passed on what they knew—that Clarian was training the army and that the Maggan would attack soon, or at least that was what was being rumored. They related that they had seen Clarian a number of times on the training grounds and had heard him give instructions, and they were in awe of him. They were disappointed to be posted so far out on the frontier, disappointed that they would miss the battles when the war erupted.
Ranna would often climb the rise in front of the cottage, accompanied by the two dogs, and all three would stare off into the east across the grasses that never stopped waving in the wind, her thoughts on Clarian, as if she could will him to come back down the road, and this talk of war would disappear like the mist over the river when struck by the morning sun.
The bell rang on the other side of the river, signaling a traveler.
Ranna turned and squinted across the river, and she saw a single man with several pack animals waiting on the far bank by the dock. The two soldiers were scrambling and laughing and waving as they launched the ferry into the swift current, pulling on the heavy cables, slowly advancing to the other side to the waiting traveler.
Ranna had hoped there would more travelers coming from the east with information about Clarian, but travel had almost dried up. She had heard that almost all the grassland villages had sent many men and women to the Citadel and that the villages were almost empty. She prayed the Kobani would not take advantage of the situation and break the peace and begin raids.
As she entered the cottage, Helan was making a place at the table for the traveler. “Anyone coming down the road from the east?”
“No. The road is empty. I have had a bad feeling all day that something will happen soon.”
“They’ll send someone to tell us if anything happens.”
Ranna felt she had lost almost everything when the Kobani had killed her husband, Orlan. He had fought against the Maggan in the Great Grassland Wars and survived, only to be killed in a frontier skirmish. She had lived in constant fear as her only child, Clarian, had taken his father’s place, fighting with the Grasslanders against the Kobani until peace was achieved. It had been a year of grateful peace on the frontier and then war again. She suddenly felt her age. A stiffness of body and weariness of mind weighed on her.
She busied herself helping Helan with the noon meal. Helan put her arm around Ranna and gave her a light squeeze. Ranna tried to keep tears from coming, and she bravely flashed a feeble smile. She could hear the two young boy-soldiers in animated discussion with the traveler as they approached the cottage.
The sun was hot on Lillan’s shoulders as she observed the maneuvers of her newly formed mounted archers. Targets were stretched out across several fields below the hillock where she sat on her horse. Her junior officers directed wave after wave of galloping archers toward the targets, arrows arcing up toward the targets, many of them missing their mark. She shrugged in irritation. Well, she thought, just a few weeks ago they were archers on foot. Shooting from a galloping horse, after all, is another matter.
She glanced to her right and saw Clarian in an adjacent field demonstrating to a gathered troop how to charge a straw-stuffed dummy from horseback, fling a lance into it, then spin the horse and draw out a sword, slash down into a second dummy, and sprint away. She felt a warm sensation inside when she thought of him—almost as warm as the beating sun—and especially now as she watched him, tall and lithe in the saddle, commanding respect for his skill. She was sure he watched her when he thought no one was looking. She wished there was time for them to talk more, alone. Lillan resolved to get him to herself soon. Perhaps that very night.
A young officer rode over to Lillan, who sat
astride her horse. It was Sajan, a fair-haired man with cheery blue eyes who was from the same village.
“Lillan!” Sajan called out as he pulled his horse up next to hers.
She smiled at him. “Hello, Sajan. How is training going?”
“Not bad. I need more wagons and horses to carry my archers, but other than lack of transportation and the fact that many of my archers are half my age, I’m ready to march!”
Lillan laughed. “But can they hit a target?”
“Yes, they can. They are quite good, actually. But when they get tired, they want to rest, and they complain something awful. I don’t remember complaining like that when I was their age.”
“I’m sure you were the perfect son. But then again, you weren’t a soldier at their age.”
“No, I guess not,” he said with a chuckle. His smile quickly left his face, and he sat his horse round-shouldered, looking out across the training fields, which were full of soldiers going through drills.
His pensive look caught her eye. “What’s really bothering you, Sajan?”
He paused before answering, flexing his neck as if it were stiff. “I don’t know if my contingent will be able to stop the enemy once we engage them.”
Lillan’s horse nipped at Sajan’s, and Lillan reined him in and then leaned toward Sajan to get his attention, her voice firm. “They must, or they will die. Tell them. And tell them this. In the battle, see only targets, just like the bales of straw stacked out there on the training grounds. Targets. Everything is a target. The enemy is a target. Put the arrow in the target. Then put the next arrow in the next target and the next. Do not think. Draw the arrow back, aim, and release. Next arrow, next target.”
He nodded and thought about what she said. It made good sense.
They chatted about the days past when they were growing up in the village, going to school and working on their parents’ farms. Sajan’s eyes revealed a fondness for Lillan, but she was watching Clarian off in the distance on the training field. Finally, she waved good-bye and urged her horse toward a group of archers who had just ridden up and were setting up targets for some practice runs.
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