Though the litany of similarly arrayed chambers seemed to be endless, he finally crossed through the storage vestibule that marked the culmination of the longhouse structure. Janus pushed aside the hide covering draped over the entryway, and emerged into the open night air.
The air that washed over Janus was refreshingly cool and crisp. It was an instant salve to his body, bringing a welcome relief from the cramped conditions, low circulation, and pungent environment of the chambers; not to mention the collective body heat of the longhouse’s numerous occupants.
The night seemed to be lingering idly at the boundary to dawn, passively awaiting the first rays of the new sun to finally drive it away. There was a very faint lightening to the blue-black canopy on the far edge of the horizon, visible from the favorable vantage afforded by the hill-top village.
Janus walked a short distance away from the end of the longhouse, and sat down cross-legged upon the flat ground. He looked out over the elongated, dark forms of the other longhouses occupying the village interior.
He settled himself in and stared away towards the horizons, looking at nothing in particular, content to await the rise of the sun. At the very least, the ascending sun carried with it an uplifting sense of renewal as it ushered in a new day.
“You do not look very happy,” a young voice announced softly to Janus.
The calmly voiced words might as well have been shouted out. Janus head jolted upright in complete surprise at the unexpected intrusion of his solitude, his heart immediately leaping up to his throat.
Rapidly turning his head towards the abrupt sound, he beheld a young boy of perhaps twelve years old, crouched down about five feet away. Arms wrapped about his knees, with his smooth hands clasped lightly in between, the youth looked upon Janus with a keen interest.
The child was clad in the typical fashions of the tribe’s more matured youth, not far removed from the attire of an adult, wearing leggings, a hide-kilt, and moccasins. The bare skin of his arms and lean upper body was as of yet unblemished by the tattoos so abundant on the adult males of the tribe.
The youth’s long black hair flowed freely over his shoulders, and the surface of his large, dark eyes appeared to gleam within the dim ambience of the pre-dawn.
He patiently awaited a response to his inquiry from Janus.
“No, I guess that I am not very happy,” Janus replied at last to the youth with a rueful grin, relaxing slightly from his initial shock. His tone lightened as his nerves gradually settled back down. “What brings you out here so early?”
The youth just smiled and shrugged, offering no verbal answer.
“Ah, a mystery,” Janus remarked with a slight smile.
“What is wrong?” the youth innocently inquired. He then repeated his initial observation, “You do not look very happy.”
Janus gazed upon the child for a long pause.
“I suppose it is because I recently lost a very, very close friend
… my father,” Janus commented in a weary voice, his eyes lowering as he stared towards the shadow-draped ground.
He did not know how to begin to explain his current situation to the young boy. It seemed to be an insurmountable proposition when he could not really grasp it himself.
“And I also suppose there is more to it now,” Janus continued. “I do not know your lands, and I do not know how to get back to my own lands. I am just very sad, and I have much to worry about. I guess that is why I don’t look happy.”
The child’s beaming face dimmed. “I understand sadness. And it is not good to feel lost. It is not good to lose friends… or fathers. But I have something that might help you.”
Before Janus could get another word in, the child sprung up, and abruptly bounded off into the depths of the darkness. Though the child was quickly out of sight, Janus could hear the boy giggling in mirth, and wondered what the spirited youth could possibly be up to. His curiosity piqued, Janus looked around after the boy, but it was several minutes before the youth finally returned into sight.
“Here he is,” the young boy announced to Janus, striding up and gesturing to his right side.
Though Janus looked closely, he perceived nothing at the child’s side. Only empty space occupied the area that the boy was so fervently indicating. Janus said nothing, not quite sure how to respond and having no inclination of what the boy expected of him.
“Can you not see him?” the young boy asked with enthusiasm, smiling luminously.
He looked down to his side again, and shook his head, as if in sheer disbelief towards Janus’ lack of reaction and perception.
The boy said matter-of-factly, as he pointed again, “He is right there.”
“See what?” Janus inquired at last of the insistent youth, becoming more than a little confused by the strange proceedings.
“A dog for you. Not like the village dogs. One with really long ears. One who will watch over you, and make sure that you have a companion to help you… even here, in these lands that are new to you,” the youth exclaimed brightly.
The words froze Janus for a moment. They nearly brought tears to his eyes, dredging up a deeper sorrow, one of those older floodwaters that had been fully released by his father’s passing.
On pure impulse, Janus felt that he wanted to scream out that his pain was nothing to make light of, or to play games with. Raw emotion had been poured over raw emotion often enough. Yet even in the strained moment, his heart and mind somehow won out over his immediate, passionate instincts.
He knew that the child had meant well enough, and did not know anything about all of his painful losses. Janus surmised that the imaginative child, in his own way, was just trying to make Janus feel better.
He then decided somewhat grudgingly to play along with the game, at least for the imaginative youth’s sake.
“Is it your dog?” Janus asked a little more firmly, acting as if he saw the dog at the boy’s side.
The child nodded, and then shook his head vigorously. To Janus, it was an odd response, but the child quickly explained, “Yes… but he is also yours. He is our dog. But I think that you need this friend with you now.”
Janus’ resistance could not hold everything back indefinitely, as the thoughts poured vividly into his head of older, lost friends. His eyes welled up at the thoughts of his precious hounds, and a few tears escaped and trickled slowly down his cheeks.
The child noticed the change in Janus, and his expression swiftly became saddened. “Do not cry. You did not lose your friends forever.”
Something strange seized upon Janus for a brief moment at the child’s words, giving him immediate pause. Janus wondered whether he had heard the child correctly, even if he knew in the fullness of his heart that his ears had not lied.
“This dog is one friend to you. There are others, one like him, another that is not,” the child then added.
The unexpected words pierced Janus through.
He looked down again at the ground, as the deep-seeded pains within him roared up again furiously, nearly choking him in their vice-like grasp. How badly he wanted to believe the young child, or at least what his mind could imagine that the child was referring to. Yet he did not think that there was any way of proving any relation to his own world within the youth’s mysterious, penetrating words.
It was just another trying episode, painfully reminding Janus of times that had left yet more scars on him that would never truly heal.
“Do not be sad,” he then heard the young boy say. The clear presence of conviction within the boy’s voice was not lost on Janus. “Sometimes, you just have to look with different eyes… eyes that see beyond the things of this world.”
Janus fought back his tears, as he recognized a sudden and peculiar change in the boy’s tone. Lying underneath the boy’s words was the presence of a deeper, resonant wisdom that did not seem quite normal for a boy of twelve.
Raising his head slowly, he brought his eyes up to meet those of the strange youth.
> There was no one there.
Swiftly looking about in all directions, all that Janus beheld were the silent pools of shadows, the slumbering longhouses, and the upright stakes of the outer palisade. There were no sounds within the stillness, other than those from the light, whispering breezes gracing the hilltop village.
Janus had heard no footsteps, and he could not believe how quickly the youth had disappeared from sight. He chided himself for being so slow and unaware, and began to wonder if the whole episode was just a mere creation of his imagination, a figment given life by his own powerful sorrows. If it was such, it was likely the first indication that he was truly starting to lose his own grip on sanity.
As before, he found himself entirely alone.
With a brief, exasperated sigh, and a couple of deep breaths, he slowly got back up to his feet. Even though the horizon had grown noticeably lighter, Janus meandered back towards the sheltered porch at the entryway into the longhouse of Ayenwatha’s Firaken clan.
Janus no longer had any interest in watching the sun rise.
AETHELSTAN
A small number of higher, bell-shaped tents stood in the midst of a much greater number of elongated ridge-tents arrayed far outward from them. The various tents were now the quarters of a modest host of Saxan warriors, culled from Wessachia and some of the province’s immediate border areas.
The dark of the advanced night shrouded the brighter color of the painted, canvas panels upon the larger tents. Most of the bigger tents were currently empty, as the senior thanes who occupied them were now gathered together within Aethelstan’s tent, located near to the direct center of the woodland encampment.
The march to the glen had gone about as smoothly as could be reasonably hoped. The outer muster points had joined their numbers to Aethelstan’s column towards the end of the trek, continuing a favorable trend as a nearly complete response to the given levy summons had been achieved.
Following the addition of the very last muster point, nearly three thousand men in total had journeyed together for the last stretch. It had taken the better part of another day’s hard marching through the wolds to reach the area that the Saxan scouts had identified as a propitious encampment site.
Following the end of the long march, a fair number of scouts continued to work diligently and tirelessly to acquire every last bit of information that they could.
A few of the scouts had set out to try to contact those living in the villages and hamlets just inside Count Einhard’s lands to the immediate west. Most fighting men had long since departed with the greater levies, but the observations of those left behind were just as valuable. A village woman or an elderly craftsman could, just as easily as a man in his prime, take note of any unusual happenings in the vicinity of their abodes.
Other scouts boldly scoured the lands right up to the very banks of the Grenzen River, searching for any sign of an approaching enemy.
A few more had carefully surveyed the lands near the edges of Wessachia, to select the best terrain possible for defense, and the most likely routes for enemy incursions.
Upon the column’s arrival, the encampment had been efficiently deployed among the trees of the glen. It was a very scenic locale, ringed by hills that fractured the slanting rays of the setting sun. A creek, of moderate size with a gentle current, wended through the midst of the low ground, providing an ample water source for the camp’s occupants.
A few trout had already been seen swimming within the clear waters. The discovery quickly prompted a couple of men to occupy themselves with setting baited hooks to lines of nettle-hemp, even in the last light of the day. Another few men attended to the placement of a wicker-trap, the nearly five foot long object well-suited to capturing an array of a Saxan river’s common denizens.
As the enemy’s presence was not yet imminent, the thanes wasted little time in getting some weapons training organized and underway with the farmers, artisans, and others who had responded to the summons of the General Fyrd. They were hardy, tough men as a whole, woven of an excellent fiber, but they were not given to regular practice in forming up in a shield wall or wielding a combat spear.
Many of the common men were very capable archers, having regularly hunted in the woods near their own villages and hamlets. Such archers would become very valuable in the coming fight.
Yet besides the bow and arrow, it was no mystery that most of the villagers still required much more formal practice in martial skills, where the axe was no longer a tool for menial daily tasks, but rather a weapon for war.
When night fell at last, most everyone was dismissed from their labors and training to seek some rest and sustenance, although the tasks of the higher-ranking thanes were not yet done.
A number of disturbing signs had been recently emerging, heavily burdening the minds of those currently gathered with Aethelstan. At the present moment, the thanes had been assembled in the tent for well over an hour, anxiously hoping for further reports to arrive while discussing the grave matters at hand.
“Your concerns are not without cause. It is certain that far too many scouts have not come back. But take another look. I believe that it is no mere coincidence that most of the scouts that have not returned were sent into this very region,” Aethelstan commented.
Already in a terse mood, he looked down somberly towards the crude parchment map spread out before him. It was illuminated by the steady light of a beeswax candle that was set in a holder just next to it.
Rendered on a single sheet of average quality parchment, the small map outlined Wessachia and its border territories. Aethelstan ran his finger slowly over a specific area on the map, indicating the forested hills arrayed just in advance of the headwaters of the Grenzen River.
Though the parchment map was rather simple in its display, it was quickly proving to be a very valuable and welcome gift. It had come from an elderly monk, who resided in the esteemed monastery of Jafarne, located in the neighboring province of Wesvald. It had already become of great use to Aethelstan, both in his planning and in conferences with the other thanes.
He silently pondered the general area where the bulk of the missing scouts had recently disappeared, working to grasp some further insights beyond what his instincts had already told him.
One scout had managed to return from the disconcerting region. Aethelstan had met with the scout privately upon his return, just before the larger conference had taken place. The lone scout had traveled far enough to reach the outlying edges of the marches that bordered Wessachia to the southwest. The area was situated just a little farther away from the core area of Aethelstan’s concern, where most of the scouts were vanishing.
The scout had taken a more circuitous route upon his return, avoiding the less traveled woods right along the Wessachian border. In Aethelstan’s eyes, it was likely a decision that had inadvertently spared the fortunate scout’s life.
The great thane was enormously thankful for the scout’s successful return, for the scout’s own sake as well as the precious information that had been gleaned. The scout had brought back some very disturbing tidings with him, mostly gathered from a visit to one of the easternmost march forts.
Word had come to the scout of entire horse-mounted patrols, of the kind sent out from the fort garrisons for routine forays, not returning. The number of horse-mounted couriers arriving at the march fort had also dropped sharply in the recent few weeks.
As patrols disappeared and arrivals declined, occupants of the fort had quickly noted that the riders continuing to arrive safely were those coming in from the direct north, south, or southeast.
A few unusually large clusters of sky warriors had been reported within the same period, witnessed in the skies high over the western marches. They had curiously kept their distance from the march forts. They had not visited, or even come anywhere near to the garrisons, as Saxan sky warriors traditionally would have whenever they were within the marches.
A couple men of the garrison had commen
ted to the Wessachian scout that these distantly observed clusters had appeared to be flying in an unusual formation. Instead of flying abreast of each other, or in a discernibly spear-headed type of formation, the observed groups had been crossing the skies in a loose throng.
A few other garrison men had then remarked that the steeds especially appeared to have a different profile in comparison to the winged Saxan mounts that the garrison men had observed on many occasions before.
The men had attributed the anomalous perception to deceptive tricks of the sunlight, the great distance, or fanciful imaginations fueled by anxiety on their part. Apart from the brief mentions of the observation, little else had been said on the matter during the scout’s visit.
Aethelstan was immensely glad that the scout had deemed the fleeting observations valuable enough to remember and pass on formally to the great thane. Aethelstan was not quite so sure that the garrison men were deceived by mere tricks of sunlight, or by active imaginations.
It took little to recognize that something was most certainly amiss in that region. Aethelstan could not overlook the possibility that the perceived anomalies could well indeed be dire warnings, of something much worse to follow.
After some further discussion between the scout and Aethelstan, the great thane had come to a firm determination. The areas where the garrison patrols and the scouts had seemingly vanished were both within in the general region around the headwaters of the Grenzen River.
It did not take much further consideration to recognize that the disappearances of the mounted patrols and the scouts were not likely a mere coincidence. It was all but certain that they had a common cause. The faces of the other thanes in the dim firelight within the tent’s confines reflected the same worrisome concerns that Aethelstan now held tightly inside of him.
It had now been many hours since the farthest ranging scouts had been expected to return, not to mention a small number of scouts sent out to closer areas along the immediate western boundary of Wessachia. The latter were far past overdue for returning. Aethelstan held out few hopes that the Wessachian scouts would be making an appearance in the camp anytime soon.
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