by M. C. Elam
“Almost time, brother.” Terill’s voice quavered.
Hawk remembered that sound from the caves when, shoulder to shoulder, they faced the Barrus and knew that the pressure that bound his chest was zeal for the battle that raged in his veins.
“Barclay holds them on the flat.” Hawk stood once more in the stirrups. He raised his arm and signaled the standard bearer. The man let the banner swing, first forward and then back, until the full colors unfurled above his head. In the distance, Rob's man caught the motion and matched it. Their signal woke a rhythmic cadence that began on the breath of a winged eagle and rose over the fog engulfed upper mesa where the army waited. It danced through the ranks growing louder until every man with a shield, every woman with a cook pot, hammered the warning in a growing crescendo that matched the ebb and flow of those waving banners. It beat as did the courageous hearts of the people. We are here, it called. We are ready.
Hawk counted each roll of the cloth as it swung above his head and knew Rob matched him. The sense of pride he felt for these people bloomed in his soul and made his eyes sting. Better trained, armed with the best weaponry, the army they faced might devour them today. Yet he knew the Owlmen, for all their fierce ability, lacked two qualities his people possessed in abundance, heart and a righteous spirit.
“Seventeen,” he shouted, “eighteen, nineteen.” Cloud layers over the mesa rolled across the leaden sky as he counted. The drizzle that turned the ground to mire had stopped sometime before dawn; still the day was cold, dismal, a day when men would die. Yet to the east, the clouds parted in that last moment and a single ray of sunlight cut the mesa like the sharp edge of a dirk and struck a path that connected the banner of Ascalla with that of Glynmora.
“Twenty,” Hawk shouted. The banner dropped.
As suddenly as that pulsing rhythm had begun, silence fell across the open space that separated them from the Owlmen. Hawk watched Barclay raise his arm and heard him call the attack. He watched, one minute, two, and then the Owlmen rushed for the center, just as Barclay said they would, straight into the arms of his army.
A small group swung north toward the left flank. Another toward the south, but the main column, the largest band pushed for the center where Hawk knew Griffin waited, holding back until the last possible moment. They charged, screaming their warrior cries. Swords drawn and defiant, they surged forward like a great sea wave intent upon the tender shore. Leather scabbards slapped against black feathered armor. Ominous, fierce, they were Owlmen, warriors of Lawrenzia.
He waits too long, Hawk thought. He could smell the stink of his own sweat, felt a single wet finger run from the base of his neck along his spine and meet the lacing of his leathers. Stop second guessing Griffin. He knows what he is about. That same inner voice chastised his impatience.
Griffin did know exactly what he meant to do. He had marked the path the Owlmen would take. In the dark of the night he had stepped off the distance. Time, distance, trajectory, he knew precisely how close he must allow them to come before he gave the order. One word, a single word uttered with the beat of his heart.
“Archers!”
The front line dropped to ground and sought cover beneath their shields. Behind them, a rain of death flew skyward. Deadly missiles found flesh and blood targets. How many fell, Hawk could not say. Those who escaped continued the forward assault. The dead, wounded or dying littered the field. Hawk felt nothing for them; they wore the black mantle of Brenan’s army. Owlmen, whose vicious attacks on Ascalla and Glynmora sought to suck the life from the people. Die he thought, and in that instant he kneed Peruseus and joined the fray.
If he remembered drawing his father’s sword from the scabbard across his back, he would not recall the weight of it in his hand. The ferocity of each strike changed him that day. No longer a boy king, he rode transformed, as vicious a fighter as those he faced. Attackers charged, their mounts battering Peruseus. The horse screamed in fury, reared unseating one of the Owlmen. Hawk sliced through his neck and sent the head rolling across the ground. He watched, mesmerized as the man’s arms went limp. The body staggered forward before it collapsed, blood pooling around the stump. Another attacked from the right, just outside his field of vision. The Owlman’s target not Hawk, but Peruseus. He slammed against the horses flank and shoved a dirk into the animal’s soft underbelly. Ropes of shiny intestine exploded from the gash. Blood poured from the wound mixing with mud and chunks of intestine that poor Peruseus trampled beneath his own hooves. The horse crumbled like termite riddled wood.
Too late to leap away, Hawk went to ground with him. He struggled to pull free, but the stirrup trapped his boot. All around them, the clang of axe against axe and the shouts of the wounded and dying slowed. To no avail, he fought to free his foot from the stirrup. Exhausted, he fell back in the mud.
“Aw Peruseus, there’s a good lad. Let’s get you up one last time.” Terill stood over them. His face spotted with blood from the battle, he gripped the horses halter and commanded it to stand.
“He can’t Terill. He’s gutted.”
“Aye, I saw it happen, but he can, and he will.” He tugged the halter with greater force. “Get ye up, Peruseus.”
“Leave off Terill. Can’t you see he’s dying?”
“Dying, indeed you be right, but he’s one last duty before he rests.” Terill pulled hard on the halter. “When you feel his weight come off, pull free. He mayn’t stand all the way, brother, so best be quick.”
Peruseus struggled, heaving in a kind of rolling motion that made Hawk feel his ankle might snap from the force of the weight that trapped it. On the third attempt, the horse gained his feet and Hawk’s boot came free of the stirrup. He stood embracing the animal around the neck.
“He’s dying, brother. Come away now. Let me end his suffering.”
“No, Terill. I’ll not let the last he knows of me be my back. Can you make his end painless?”
“I can, young Hawk. Be easy in your heart.” Melendarius appeared beside him.
“Melendarius, we left you behind our lines, old man. You’ll be killed here.”
“Nay, I’ve the Mother’s protection.” He approached Peruseus. “Aw my poor gallant beasty. It’s no good what life inflicts upon you.”
“Can you heal him, Melendarius? Can you give him back is vigor?”
“No lad. My healing ways are not strong enough with a creature so close to death.” He examined the ghostly haze that dimmed once bright eyes.
“Take him then. Hurry,” came Hawk’s choked whisper.
The old man’s expert fingers touched the horse’s head as he closed his eyes. His body claimed the animal’s agony and convulsed in pain so unbearable his touch faltered, and his concentration began to slip.
“Ah great mother, Anutaya, give me thine hands to ease the suffering I touch. Let me travel with your creature to a place of beauty where his sweet spirit may run free.”
Before Melendarius finished the prayer the clouds parted, and the dismal sky turned bright. A beam of heavenly light swathed them in a miraculous radiant web. Outside the battle raged, but inside a quiet meadow shimmered in sunlight. Overhead a flock of geese made for a distant marsh, their calls sounding in the stillness. Hawk felt the sun warm his face. Here Peruseus snorted and tossed his head nudging Melendarius. His battle armor and halter disappeared, and his eyes danced with delight. The old man produced a crisp apple from inside his cloak, and the horse plucked it from his fingers.
“Let him go, Hawk. Wish him joy and set his spirit free.”
“Where are we?”
“In his dreams, lad, the grasslands of Ascalla.”
“Peruseus, I love you well.” He stroked the animal’s muzzle a final time and stepped away.
The sky dreary once more, the song of birds lost to the sound of battle. On the ground at their feet lay the body of Peruseus. Hawk raised his eyes and scanned the field seeking the one face in a sea of faces. “It was him,” he hissed. “I know it was him.” T
he sword he had dropped earlier lay on the ground at his feet. He bent, retrieved it, and started toward the Owlman. The man he sought fell with a single blow, but killing him failed to ease the ache in his heart. He soon took a menacing stance swinging left, then right. He heard the grunts of the men nearest him, watched them fall, knew his blade had brought them down, and kept slashing. Out of breath, he gagged on the acrid stink of his own sweat. An Owlman plodded toward him. The man clutched an axe in his right hand, a shield in the left. He lunged at Hawk’s mid section, and they fell to the ground. The shield slammed against a rock, split in two leaving only the handgrip intact. The Owlman raised his axe and swung toward Hawk’s sword arm. Hawk fended off the attack, but his arm took a hard strike that numbed his fingers. He dropped the sword. The Owlman straddled him and raised the axe.
I am going to die, Hawk thought. The voice inside his head screamed a hundred reasons why he had to live, but the Owlman sucked in a deep breath that told him the momentum behind the strike aimed for his head would crush his skull. He remembered a mime his mother hired to entertain on his eighth birthday. The man had made magic with slow, precise movement. One of the illusions seemed so real everyone thought he climbed an invisible ladder. Hand-over-hand they had watched his feet rise in time to the rhythmic strumming of a lyre. The Owlman looked that way to him now, as the axe moved higher. His arms seemed to stretch so far above his head they might have been made of taffy, stretched and rolled and stretched and rolled. He saw the mad glitter in his killer’s eye. Strong thighs planted on either side of his torso gripped like an iron vice. Hawk strained to reach the sword. The satisfied smirk on his captors face made him furious. He bucked and twisted with all his strength. The axe aimed at his skull wavered. In that split second, a bone thin arm seized the Owlman’s head. The move caught the man off guard. His neck snapped back baring his throat, and with the same knife she had used the night before to prepare a meal for her husband, the Rabbit Girl slit the Owlman’s throat. Bloody gore poured in crimson ribbons down his chest. The Rabbit Girl dug the knife in further nearly severing his head before she released him.
She gazed at Hawk for a second, then pried the bloody axe from the Owlman’s clenched fist and handed the weapon to Hawk. The corners of her mouth raised in a smile. “Be safe, Majesty.”
He didn’t hear the words but saw her mouth form them before she disappeared into the midst of the fighting. Slick beneath his fingers, he read her meaning in the way she passed the weapon to him. In close combat, an axe would suit him much better than his father’s sword. Another lesson he had ignored in those long ago days. Were they so long ago—those times in the arena with Marcus? Evan stood with him and bested him more often than he liked to admit. She might have gloated. Stung his pride with a word or by the way she tossed her hair. Instead, she bent to his will, letting him master the task when clearly…. Oh, what was the use? He had left her wanting when it counted.
Hawk pushed the dead Owlman away, rolled to his knees and stood. The last altercation had sapped most of his energy leaving him vulnerable. With every breath pain ripped through his side. He gripped the battleaxe swallowing the misery. When an Owlman rushed him from the left, he had no time for a head attack. Instead, he planted one foot for momentum and swung for the man’s mid section. The blade, honed deadly sharp, cut through blackened chain as though it were butter. Blood coated both of his hands and splattered his face. He jerked the weapon upward and watched the man’s intestines spill from his gut. A strangled cry barely registered before he ripped the axe free to swing again, this time finding the neck of a man on his right. Pain forgotten, his breath roared like an angry gale inside his head. Blood ran down his cheeks, spattering his eyes until a scarlet veil clouded his vision. The press of bodies thinned with each swing until all that surrounded him was the carnage reaped by his own hand. Still the axe moved left, right, to and fro, hacking, slashing the empty air. Griffin emerged through a jungle of tangled bodies and grabbed his arm. “We’ve got them, Hawk. We’ve closed the circle.”
“Aye?”
“Aye, most threw down their weapons as soon as they saw we had them trapped. The rest tried to breach our lines.”
“What of them?”
“Dead.”
Still breathless, a sluggish realization that they had triumphed fed his consciousness. The hideous anger that had bloomed in his gut with every swing of the battleaxe had banished all that remained of innocence, stripped away the spirit of the boy, for whom life was a romantic adventure. In its stead rose Hawk, the man, Warrior King of Ascalla.
***
Word of victory spread with incredible speed. Men embraced, clapping each other on the back amid great guffaws of laughter. Soon though, those same faces, joyous in victory, turned somber as they searched for fallen comrades. His eyes etched with fatigue, Hawk faced Griffin. Behind him Father Wryth approached through the crowd. The priest paused when the outstretched arm of a fallen Owlman clutched the hem of his cassock. Ever a man of faith, Wryth knelt beside him. His lips formed the words of familiar prayers measuring each one with care lest his personal repugnance for the man betray his ability to give comfort. Spatters of blood streaked his round cheeks. The priest had slain men today, killed with a righteous conviction. Yet through the gore that coated his cheeks, Hawk noted tender compassion in his expression. A few seconds later, he rose and continued toward them.
Hawk caught Wryth in his gaze, praying that the angst etched into the priest’s face was what remained of the moments he had spent beside the dying Owlman but reading the dreadful truth. Something akin to agony punched him in the gut.
“What is it, lad?” asked Griffin. Had he missed something? Was Hawk wounded? But, no, the boy seemed whole. Then Hawk nodded indicating he should look behind him. He turned in time to find Selene’s brother standing a few feet away.
“Best come with me, Griffin,” Wryth said.
“Is it…” His voice caught in his throat, prompting Hawk to finish for him.
“Father, is it Terill?”
“Aye, lad.”
“Where, where is he?” Griffin scanned the field searching for the familiar mop of straw colored hair.
Father Wryth pointed toward the hastily erected healers’ tent. “Melendarius is with him.”
***
The sweet, heavy iron stench blanketed the field. It hung in Hawk’s nostrils and gathered at the back of his throat triggering a gag reflex. He swallowed repeatedly willing it away, but under cover of the tent, the stink grew to overwhelming proportions, and he failed to hold what remained of the bread meal he’d swallowed in the predawn hours before battle. He bent double and caught the mess in his hands, dove for open air and heaved again. He saw a man approaching with a yoke across his neck that supported two buckets.
“Here, man, bring me water.”
The man turned toward him, at first, irritation clouding his expression at the very idea someone presumed to interrupt his mission. When he realized who issued the summons, he lowered his eyes and hurried to comply.
“Aw, Majesty, will ye be forgiving me for a fool. I be heading straight out for the cooks wagon, lest he give me a whack for taking too long.”
“Here, pour a bit over my hands, I’ve fouled them. My brother ails inside the tent, and I must go to him.”
The man bent on one knee, lifted the yoke form his shoulders and set the buckets on the ground. “Take all you wish, Majesty. I be fetching more for Cookie. And even if he do whup me, matters not. I serve my king.”
Somewhere at the back of his mind, he wondered why the cook insisted on the rush and then it dawned on him. Of course, many animals fell in the battle, Peruseus among them, and the people had past simple hunger days ago. Meat rich stew in their bellies would strengthen them, but thinking about chunks of horsemeat floating in gravy, chunks of Peruseus…. He clenched his fists until the nausea eased then plunged both hands into the bucket. The water turned pink and then a deeper red as he rinsed them clean of blood a
nd vomit. From the second bucket, he gathered handfuls of clean water and splashed it on his face and over his head shaking pink droplets of water from his hair. “Thank you,” he paused a moment, looking at the man for the first time. An image of the Rabbit Girl squatting beside a campfire preparing a meager meal for her husband came to him.
“It be my honor, Majesty.” He lifted the yoke once more and set off toward the stream to refill his buckets.
“Wait,” Hawk called. “Your name, I’d know your name.”
The man turned toward him. “I be Duncan, Majesty. Duncan of Cameret. Near to the Curling Wood. I be an axe man.”
A man of the forest, Hawk thought and nodded. He knew Cameret, a tiny village of no more than six cottages edged Pine Water Creek two day’s journey from Baline. “Find me when the last battle is done, Duncan of Cameret.”
***
“Anutaya paen debir, paen debir, paen debir.”
Hawk heard chanting the moment he reentered the tent. In the shadowy gloom an odd light seemed to emanate from the far corner. Not candle light or the light from any kind of oil lantern, at least none Hawk could remember. It flickered as though driven by purpose and not chance. The outer region rose and fell, expanding and then shrinking inward, fluctuating like the drawing and exhaling of a breath. The surface appeared to shimmer, sometimes gold, sometimes silver, and once, when it turned brilliant scarlet, pain seared his shoulder and side enough to make him gasp. It stayed with him until the light cooled and the surface flickered to icy blue. He stood transfixed, willing his feet forward but unable to move. He knew what he witnessed as surely as he knew his own name. Knew and denied in the fervent hope that Terill would come to him, clap him on the shoulder and challenge him to wrestle as he had that day on the shore of the Great Sea of Shadall. He saw Melendarius, arms raised heavenward. The chant came from his lips. Those words,’ he knew them, too. Granny Stone, his mother’s nurse, sang them at her bedside as she died, and when he asked her what they meant, she had placed his hand above her heart and told him they lifted pain from those who suffered. Melendarius sang them now for Terill.