by Jenny McKane
Avalon kept staring at the woman. “If you grew so close to him, tell me what his real name is.”
“His name is Skyresh Sakr,” said Meja. “He is from a small settlement in the Far North and was initiated young. His tattoos are the marks of his commitment to the rebel cause.”
Avalon felt like she had just been punched in the stomach. It couldn’t be true, could it? Skyresh wasn’t a calculating womanizer who did the same thing with everyone?
“Thank you, Meja,” said Teacher Gaia. “You may leave us.”
The woman nodded, then walked out of the room.
Teacher Gaia stared at Avalon, sighing. “I know that it is hard to accept,” she said. “You are a trained warrior, who was duped by the magnetism of a handsome rebel leader. Don’t you see now, Avalon, how you were tricked?”
Avalon stared down at the floor, breathing heavily. She hardly knew how she felt. She remembered Skyresh talking to her intently; she could still see his vivid blue eyes. The connection she had felt between them, pulsing like a life force. How he had saved her life, three times. It was real…wasn’t it?
She was startled when jealousy overwhelmed her. She suddenly knew now how Minna had felt. Skyresh was like the sun, and when that sun shone its rays on someone else, you felt cold. He couldn’t have ever felt the same way about that woman, Meja, could he?
“I can see that you are reflecting deeply,” said Teacher Gaia in a satisfied voice. “I will leave you alone for a few minutes, and then we will talk again.”
She got up and walked out of the room, leaving Avalon alone.
***
Everard walked to his horse, which was already saddled, ready for the journey ahead of him. His new mission, in the west of the realm.
He mounted, staring around him. He had all the details of the new mission in his bag and knew whom he had to report to when he first got there. He was ready.
Commander Vasslo walked up to him. “Good luck, Guardian,” he said.
Everard nodded. Then, he turned the horse and cantered down the road.
He was so tired he could barely stay upright in the saddle, but he knew that it wasn’t just physical weariness which overwhelmed him. It was a great sadness that he just couldn’t seem to shake off.
He knew, in theory, that he was doing the right thing. He was a guardian of the realm. He had to go from one mission to the next and leave his personal feelings aside. He had been trained to do this, after all. And it was all that he had ever wanted to do in his life. He had to forget all about Avalon and what had happened to her. She had made her choices. She would still have been caught, even if he hadn’t played a role in it.
Everard stared at the huts on the side of the road as he rode past them without really seeing them. The truth was he had played a role though. A big role. If he hadn’t have gone into the palace, she might have made it out and be free now. The chances were slim, but it might have been possible. He had led her to her doom.
Stop it, he told himself fiercely. You have worked too hard to let this defeat you. Remember where you have come from and what you have been trying so hard to escape from your whole life. But as hard as Everard tried, the sadness stayed with him.
He watched an old man carrying a bunch of twigs on his back. The old man stared up at him, his eyes hard. Everard knew that all the old man saw was a guardian, a privileged Jarle on a horse. A person who had it easy all his life. A man who had been born into wealth and status and had never known a day’s hardship in his life.
It was all a lie. Everard hadn’t been born into privilege. He had taken privilege…
He had been born into a poor Stromel family, in an insignificant settlement, far from the city.
His father had been a farmer, forced to work the land, day in and day out with never a rest. The local Jarle population lived in a few houses on the east side of the river. Everard would stare at these houses, yearning to see inside them. He dreamed of the life that he could have, if only he had been born into the right class.
He knew that his parents worked hard, but that it didn’t matter. They were doomed to live their lives the way that it had been ordained. They could never hope for anything more. It was the way that it had always been.
But he yearned for something more. He would watch the Grey Guards riding into the settlement and long to be one. In his eyes, they represented everything that he wanted in life. He knew that it was hopeless, but he wished all the same.
The sickness came to the village the year that he turned seventeen. It started with a cough and then a fever. Within three days, most people died. He watched in horror as almost his whole family was wiped out. First his sister, then his mother, until only he and his father remained.
The whole village was the same. Families gone in an instant. Even the Jarle lost many.
One day, he was walking through the village with his father when a Grey Guard approached. The guardian told them to get into the town hall; it was being quarantined. They did as they were told, of course. It was only after they locked them all in, that Everard realized what was going to happen.
He smelt the smoke to start with. And then saw the flames, licking around the building. He turned to his father.
“We have to escape,” he whispered. “They are burning it down. They are going to kill us all.”
He had kicked out a window in the back, and they had managed to climb through it. As they were running away, through the scrub, a local Jarle had seen them and pursued. The Jarle man stabbed his father, but Everard managed to wrestle the sword from the man and killed him.
What were they going to do now? They would be killed straight away. Everard’s father was wounded. Everard stared at the man he had just killed.
They were of a similar height and features. He was also around the same age. Everard knew him, of course. He also knew that all his family were dead from the sickness. How easy would it be to exchange clothes and take his identification pass? They could go to another village and start over.
So, that is what he did. He exchanged clothes with the dead man and took his pass. Then, he carefully dragged his body back to the hall, which was burning brightly. They would assume that he was a Stromel, who had tried to escape.
He and his father had travelled through the woods for days, lying low. Every day, his father had grown weaker. The wound had gotten infected and was slowly killing him.
One day, he had woken up where they had sheltered for the night to find his father dead. Everard had wept, then carefully buried him in the woods. He had hung his head over the grave, for a moment, then he had turned and walked away.
He wasn’t Stromel anymore. Every part of his past was gone. This had given him an opportunity that he would never have had. A chance to start over as part of the privileged. A chance to fulfil his dreams at long last.
He never intended to give it up.
He had become Everard Varr and only he knew that he had not been born with that name. It was a secret that he had guarded fiercely over the years since. The years in which he had taught himself how to fight and applied to become a Grey Guard.
Yes, he had become a Jarle and a guardian of the realm. And he had never looked back…until now.
***
Everard was lost in his memories, staring at the old man. The old man who could have been his father. He could have been walking this same track, walking alongside him, if not for one single opportunity. He sighed, then kept on.
He came to a fork in the road, and he stopped. He knew which road he was supposed to follow. The road toward the west, and his mission. But he stared at the other road. It went in the opposite direction.
Something had happened when he had been talking to the commander yesterday. Another opportunity had presented itself to him.
When the meeting had concluded, they had both stood up. Everard was about to leave the room when Commander Vasslo had suddenly been called out. He had been left alone.
He hardly knew what he was doing when h
e had walked over to the commander’s desk. There was paper work everywhere. Everard had glanced at the door, then rifled through it. He knew he was taking a big risk, and for what? He didn’t even know what had happened to Avalon. It was on a letter, which had been sent by courier, a letter, in which he was informed which camp that she had been sent to.
Everard had read the letter quickly. The camp was near where he had grown up. He knew the area well. He even remembered skirting around it, playing, when he had been a boy.
He put it down and stood back where he had been when the commander had left the room. Everything had been as normal. The commander had come back in and shook his hand, and then Everard had left the room.
The road that he was staring down, now, led to the camp. Or the “Re-Education Center”, as they called it. It also led toward his home, the one that he had thought that he would never see again.
Everard gritted his teeth. He was being stupid. He needed to take the road that led west, to his mission. He had worked too hard to give it all up now, for a woman who didn’t even return his love. For a woman who was going to turn her back on him, to attempt to break out a rebel. Jealousy curled within the pit of his stomach. What was her relationship with him?
Was Avalon in love with Gwalen? Was that why she had done all this?
His heart started to thud, uncomfortably, and he could feel sweat breaking out on his brow. If he took this road, all was lost. He knew that. His life of privilege, the one that he had killed for, would be wiped out in an instant. He would be a deserter. And if he managed to get to the camp and find Avalon, he would be deemed a traitor of the realm. Just like she was.
He didn’t care about the rebel’s cause. He had been brought up a Stromel, and he knew better than anyone what their lives were like, but he also knew how the world worked. There was no way that the rebels could ever hope to defeat the Jarle. It was doomed. The only way to live in this realm was to become a part of it, if you could. And he had been lucky. He had been given an opportunity to leave his past behind.
He couldn’t forsake that, could he, for a woman who was already a lost cause?
The old man, who carried the twigs on his back, had reached him. He stared up at him, frowning.
“Which way are you going, guardian?” he asked. “Are you lost?”
Everard stared down at him. He noticed the deep wrinkles creasing his face, and his white hair. The old man’s eyes were weary, and he was bent so low with his bundle that he could barely straighten. A man this age shouldn’t be working still, Everard thought. A vision of his father flashed through his mind again. If he had have lived, he would be the same age as this old man, and he would be still working, just the same. As would his mother, if she had have lived.
They lived such hard lives, and it never ended until death.
A deep anger filled him, but also a deep sorrow. He had forsaken his family. He had tried to forget them, telling himself that there was no point in it. That he must live for the future. His future—and forget all about the past.
He had betrayed them, just as he had betrayed Avalon.
The opportunity was before him, in the fork of the road, to redeem that.
He turned to the old man. “I am just weary,” he said, smiling. The old man looked startled. He obviously wasn’t used to guardians being so friendly.
“Fare thee well, old man,” Everard whispered, then bent into his pocket, retrieving a single gold coin. He passed it to him. The old man’s eyes widened in shock. It was worth a great deal.
Then Everard spurred his horse on down the road.
Chapter Seventeen
A crowd had started gathering in the large amphitheater of the town since daybreak. The tall gates had been opened, and they had started milling in almost in single file.
There was little talk. The people gathered around the makeshift execution site, their heads lowered, almost as if they were in a town hall about to embark on a ritual or ceremony, thought the guardian. An air of reverence permeated the amphitheater; large grey clouds scuttled across the sky, but not a single raindrop fell—not yet at any rate.
The guardian had just come on duty, ridden in from an outlying settlement. He had made sure that he had dressed with extra care and spent longer than normal on bathing. This was a major event after all. There would be Jarle dignitaries here to witness this event. Rumor had swept through the guardian’s headquarters that Agnor himself might be in attendance. He had to do a superlative job. They all did.
He knew that this settlement had felt the pressure immensely. It wasn’t every day that they were required to host such a key event in the security of the realm. As soon as word had come that it had been chosen, the town mayor had started to work. The amphitheater had been filled with the sound of carpenters, constructing the execution site. Banners had been made, emblazoned with sacred text from the Grey Book, and were now being unfurled and hung between rafters. A second stage had been constructed for the dignitaries. The guardian glanced at it. Five ornate chairs were being placed upon it. A rich red rug had been laid beneath them.
He sighed, staring at all the people, silently waiting. Men, women, and children, they had all dressed in their best clothes, such as they were. The women had all worn grey veils, the official color of mourning. He shook his head. They were so stupid. If he had noticed that then his superiors would be sure to notice. They would all suffer for such loyalty to the rebels.
The guardian had seen it before. Even slight misdemeanors such as that would have repercussions. A later curfew. Provision carts delayed. At the worst, his superiors might order a culling. The guardian had been involved in those before. He still didn’t like them, although he knew they were necessary. He remembered when he had first come to this district and a culling had been ordered; the people had been rounded up and taken to a field. All had died.
He shuddered at the memory. No, he didn’t like them. And that was why he grew angry, now, seeing the women wearing their mourning veils so defiantly. They brought it on themselves – why couldn’t they see that? If they would only comply absolutely, then none of it would be necessary. He would not have to do such things, and it would not haunt his mind. It was their own fault entirely.
“How much longer do you think?” Another guardian had walked up to him, interrupting his reverie.
The guardian shrugged. “Hard to say,” he replied. “The dignitaries are due to arrive any minute now, but they will probably wait another hour at least.”
“For maximum effect?” said his companion.
“Always,” said the guardian. “You are new, aren’t you? Is this your first execution?”
The other guardian nodded. His eyes shone. “I am honored,” he said, “to witness the execution of the great Gwalen and his people. Tell me, have you met him?”
The guardian nodded. “I have been assigned to watch,” he said. “He is intelligent, I will give him that. More intelligent than most of these people.”
“His exploits are whispered about, even in the west,” said his companion. “He is almost a legend among the people there.”
The guardian laughed harshly. “Well, the legend meets his end today,” he said, spitting on the ground. They walked off, patrolling the perimeter.
The dignitaries arrived. The sea of people parted, and they walked in single file to the waiting stage, their ceremonial robes dragging behind them. They sat down, staring out at the crowd.
The guardian stared at the execution site. Four nooses were swaying slightly in the breeze. The head executioner walked up to them, checking the knots. Then he walked slowly back down, standing like a sentinel at the side.
How much longer?
Suddenly, a murmur ran through the crowd. Who had started it? It hardly mattered. The murmur grew until the guardian could hear the people singing. An old song; not one of the official ones. They bowed their heads and kept singing. The guardian glanced at the dignitaries. They were angry. He shook his head again. Why were the people
doing this? Surely, they realized that they and their families would suffer for it later?
Was this Gwalen so important to them to risk repercussions? But he obviously was. The people kept singing softly, even as the guardians closed in on them, pushing them. The guardian saw that there was little they could do other than clear the area entirely.
And so, the people kept singing until the song came to its end. And then there was silence.
A side gate opened. The crowd turned, as one, staring at it. The guardian craned his neck to see. Yes. There they were, at long last. Four figures, their hands bound.
The great Gwalen was at the front. The guardian stared at the rebel leader. He looked different, of course, from when he had first seen him. His head had been shaved and bruises covered him, but he walked tall, staring straight ahead. Even from this distance, the guardian could see his vivid blue eyes staring defiantly out.
Behind him came the woman. What was her name, again? Minna. The woman was still defiant, too. Her gaze darkened, as she stared back at him. He could feel the hatred coursing through her.
And then there were the two other men. The large one, with the long brown beard, and the other. Both staring straight ahead. Unbroken.
The guardian smiled to himself. They made such a show of their defiance, but it wasn’t going to help them now, was it? All of them were about to die. For the glory of the realm.
The guardian lifted his head, skyward. Hail Agnor.
***
Skyresh stared out at the crowd, as he walked slowly to the execution site.
His people. He was amazed at how many of them had come. As he walked through them, they bowed slightly. Some of them reached out to touch him. He wanted to tell them to not do it; he knew that they would pay for it later, but at the same time, he was touched at their devotion to him, and he was also heartened.