by Sean Rodden
“We were just leaving, weren’t we, lads?” blurted Regorius.
“Yes.”
“Of course!”
“We were?”
“We aren’t hurt or anything, not even a scratch, so there’s, ah, there’s really no good reason for us to be here.”
“No reason.”
“None at all.”
“There isn’t?”
There came an audible slap as an anonymous palm impacted with Maddus’ rather profuse parietal bone.
“So if there is nothing more, Commander, we will be off now. Leaving. Going away. As in not staying here.”
The March Fox simply stared, nodded, stepped aside.
And four soldiers spilled by him as quickly as their legs could take them, short of actually breaking into a run.
Axennus peered after them, his stern façade soon morphing into an expression of heightened curiosity, then darkening to one of suspicion. He recalled a number of recent peculiarities and anomalies regarding that particular squad, peculiarities and anomalies beyond those which were the norm for the peculiar and anomalous band of misfits called the North March Mounted Reserve. And their apparent affiliation with the Dicese healer was –
“Oh, dear.”
The Commander turned, his features once again become benign and benevolent. He smiled despite the searing pain in his mouth.
Teji Nashi stood across the waiting chamber, his own smile pleasant, welcoming, and a warm light danced in his thin dark eyes. He was clad in a white kimono, the obverse of which was splattered with significant scarlet splotches and streaks of yellow and green and brown, and unblemished through this collage of blood and bile swam the slender serpentine stencil of a golden dragon. The healer’s hands were concealed within the voluminous sleeves of his robe, his wakizashi scabbarded at his hip. His smooth bronze features veritably glowed, though the subtle and unusual shadow of a thing untoward – fatigue, perhaps, or anxiety – lurked beneath the polish of health and vigour.
“Greetings, Commander Teagh. You have not been within these canvas walls for quite some time. Such is your prowess, yes? Skill in battle is the most impassable of armour, followed soon and swiftly by winsome fortune. And you possess liberal lots of both, yes? But now I sense you are in some distress, though I cannot determine the cause. I am weary, you see, for the night has been long and my special skills were required; therefore my powers of observation and deduction are understandably diminished. You will forgive me, yes? Please, do speak to me of what ails you.”
And, without hesitation, Axennus answered –
“Aw bip mah pung.”
“You bip…?” began the Diceman beneath crinkled brows before comprehension cleared the confusion from his countenance. “Ah, I see! You bit your tongue, yes?”
The Commander nodded. “Bobwee.”
“Badly, is it? Yes, I do detect a fleck of blood upon the philtrum, another on the mentolabial sulchus, two at the left commissure, and several spotting the lower vermillion. The lips do not require the tongue to tell a tale, you see. How did you manage… ah, of course, the perils of fraternal parlance when one’s brother is prone to such lamentable episodes of malapropism, yes?”
A look of surprise swept across Axennus’ face.
Teji Nashi grinned magnanimously.
“I said my powers of observation and deduction were diminished, Commander Teagh, not altogether demolished. A most differential difference. Some evidence is obviously evident and some is evidently obvious, you see. You will settle upon the bench and open your mouth now, yes? It would not do to have you choke on your own blood in my presence. My reputation would suffer for such a calamity, I am sure, and I cannot countenance such regrettably unfortunate misfortune.”
Axennus nodded, stepped over the bench and sat down.
The Diceman glided toward him, smiling.
The Erelian tilted his head back on his neck, opened his mouth wide. He felt something wet and warm and tasting of copper leak from one corner of his mouth, slide slowly down his chin.
Teji Nashi leaned down, his round face aglow, soft dark eyes focused and intent, his hands yet within the capacious sleeves of his gleaming white kimono.
Axennus opened wider, his jaws cracking slightly.
Wait…gleaming white?
“Oh, dear.” The scent of mint was like flavoured chips of ice on the healer’s breath. “Whatever did our gallant Captain say to make you do such disastrous damage to yourself? No, no – do not answer, lest you bite clean through. I must undo what you have done, you see. A simple thing, really. Elementary and incomplex. Fundamentally rudimentary and rudimentarily fundamental. You will close your eyes now, yes?”
Only the stretched skin of his yawning face prevented the Commander from frowning. But he complied. And as his lids slid shut he glimpsed the Diceman’s hands slide from sleeves like blades from sheaths, and at the fingertips of each hand burned warm golden flame.
Axennus betrayed no surprise.
Because he was not surprised.
“Hold still, now, Commander,” intoned the healer, one finger slipping into the Erelian’s gaping maw and pressing down ever so gently, “this won’t hurt a – ”
Had he been able to do so, Axennus would have screamed.
The Fiannar did not revere death. Rather, they held it in contemptuous disdain. A detestable thing, to be deplored, utterly despised. A thing most vile that should never be venerated, would never be celebrated.
A thing to be defied, to be denied.
The sons and daughters of Defurien did not mourn. They did not keen. They did not grieve. They honoured their departed with neither wake nor funeral. They spoke no eulogies, penned no threnodies, sang no dirges. There were no silken shrouds for the dead, nor were there black veils and armbands for the living. No coffins, no tombs, no vaults carved of the rock of the earth in which to inter the deceased. Neither ossuary nor urn, nor crypt nor charnel house. For the surviving kith and kin there was but the unshaking, unshirking resolve to live, and to live with passion. For the slain, there was only flame.
The Fires of the Fallen.
Three hundred and forty-two bodies were borne upon unadorned litters along the pitted Path to the Pyre. Upward, ever upward, to the shallow stone hollow at the summit of Sentinel Ridge. A bowl had been carved there of the rigid rock by millennia of wind and rain, its curvature blushed black by twenty centuries of smoke and soot and the residue of unnumbered fires. The basin had been splashed with pitch and incendiary oils, filled with cords upon cords of long-dried hardwood, unignited fuel patiently awaiting the uncaring, unfeeling dead. Each corpse had been stripped of armour, weaponry and golden rillagh. Even the better apparel had been removed, preserved, with the intention that it would be used again by others. Nothing of value was wasted, nothing was squandered.
But the corpses themselves held no worth. They were all to be burned. Immolated in the Pyre. Bags of blood and bone to be devoured by ravening flame, until flesh became ash, and ash dust, and dust but an ephemeral shadow on the wind.
“Permit me to help you with that, my Lord.”
There was no suggestion of request to the woman’s tone, and Alvarion knew any opposition on his part would have been fruitless. And because he was not a man disposed to exercises in futility, he dropped his hands from the buckles of his armour and yielded to the woman’s dexterous administrations.
“You are a generous woman, uncle-wife.”
Taresse scoffed. “You never were very accomplished in this, nephew. And I have never suffered well the suffering of others. So perhaps I do this more for me than for you.” She pulled the last strap tight, test-tugged a few clasps, then clapped her hands upon the steel scales of the Lord’s broad shoulders. “There. Done.”
The Lord of the Fiannar turned and offered the woman a small smile.
“I would be – ”
“Lost without me, I know. Your mother often insisted the same in the course of my service to her as Shield Maiden for ne
arly a century before she – ” The woman sighed, a quiet sound, softened by an old sorrow. “Before your birth, my Lord.”
Despite the weakness of the tallowlight within the tent, Alvarion could see that Taresse was tired. Lines had appeared about her eyes and mouth, and there seemed to be a slight stoop to her posture, of the kind that comes with great fatigue. She bore an assortment of minor wounds, some bandaged, others left to the healing air, one that would surely have made a lesser warrior limp. But the sheen of her gaze was bright, and if her injuries and weariness might have marginally slowed her, they would not, could not stop her.
“You fought well and bravely, uncle-wife, but you should make an effort to avoid further injury this day.”
“If you will refrain from lowering your guard, my Lord, I may be able to do just that.”
There was truth to her words, Alvarion knew. Time and again, Taresse had placed herself between her Lord and the enemy. She had deflected blows when he could not – and when she could not deflect them, she had absorbed them. On his behalf. In his stead. She had offered her blood, her pain, her life in exchange for his. Over and over. And she would continue to do so. Until the doing became too difficult. Until death made it impossible.
“I will attempt to be less reckless, uncle-wife,” Alvarion vowed as he strapped his scabbarded sword to his side.
Taresse tilted her head briefly, then gestured stiffly toward the tent’s closed entrance.
“Varonin.”
A moment later the Marshal of the Grey Watch stepped past the flaps. Varonin was not quite as tall as his predecessor, nor nearly as old, and was broader of both face and shoulder, but the Marshal reminded Alvarion very much of dear departed Eldurion. The manner of the man, his bearing, the glitter in his eyes. Grim, grey. Hard as steel.
“All is prepared, Lord Alvarion.”
The Lord of the Deathward nodded curtly, slipped his rillagh of gleaming golden chain across his breast, attached the clasps of his cloak.
“I can feel it.” Alvarion’s voice was low and dark, swollen with dread. “Even here behind Lar Fannan. I can feel it in the air.” He raised one hand to his cheek, one finger absently tracing the raised hatches of the scar there. “It deadens the flesh.”
Taresse peered intently upon her nephew, the speckles of her irises flaring like so many silvery fireflies. Words like wishes played across her lips, tempting the stillness of her tongue. Nevertheless, she said nothing.
“The enemy has been gathering their power for a day and two nights now, Lord,” stated the Marshal. “The sorcery they intend to wield this day is truly terrible. But we are ready.”
“And the Roths?”
“Laughing it off, I am told, my Lord.”
“Yes, they would do that.”
“The Northmen were overly restless in the night, but the Dragonsbane has returned from Caramel Dark with his berserkers and his mad priest. Things in the Nothiric camp have calmed now – for lack of a better word.”
“And the Black Prince?”
Varonin shook his head. Once. Slowly.
“Still no word, Lord. The warokka cannot find the scent. And the throkka are… not awing. The Ithramen are vanished – utterly so.”
Alvarion nodded. “No word is good word, my friend, for if the Black Prince were discovered, surely we would have heard.”
The Marshal inclined his head, but voiced neither agreement nor dissent.
“There is more, Varonin?”
“The Pyre is aflame, Lord Alvarion.” The Marshal’s voice held the very oiled iron of that of his predecessor. “The Fires of the Fallen are burning.”
Lord Alvarion closed his eyes, inhaled deeply, his chin dropping to his chest. Within him, his heart slowed, stilled. The strange numbness in his face hummed and tingled, as though Death had cupped his cheek in its cold skeletal palm. He then felt the flat of Taresse’s sturdy hand come to rest upon his back. He raised his head. His eyes opened, and in those steely orbs burned the fierce fires of the living.
“Thank you, Varonin. That is all. I shall join you shortly.”
The Marshal of the Grey Watch fisted his chest, turned upon his heel, and slipped from the tent like a shade through shadows.
The Lord of the Fiannar stared at the flaps, watched them flutter, fall still. Then to Taresse he said, “Varonin is – ”
“ – not my husband,” she interposed tersely. “But he will do.”
The Unchained Celebrant stared at the broad back of the jarl as the gigantic young man sat in animated council with his loyal huskarlar some distance away. Were eyes steel blades, the Mad Earl would have long since bled out and become little more than a desiccated husk, brittle and cracked, waiting to shatter. Tilbeder hissed in satisfaction at the image, hacked a glob of sputum from his sunken chest, rolled the shapeless lump around his tongue. Hunched on his knobby knees, he fingered the links of his gleaming chains, long bony digits sliding in and out, out and in, over and again. There was something particularly unsavoury, even lewd, about the motion that kept the gazes of all nearby hird resolutely averted. Thus, the much-blooded warriors of Invarnoth did not notice the old priest’s preoccupation with their warleader’s unwarded back – they did not see the daggers of hatred cutting through the last gasping darkness of night.
Hatred. A strong word, true, perhaps overstrong, but principally appropriate. Fitting, even. For Tilbeder had come to despise the man – not for his youth, not for his fair features and heart-jarring smile, neither for his prowess in battle nor for his perplexing popularity among otherwise discriminating and desirable women. No, the old man was not one prone to envy. He was not that petty. Because jealousy, petty or otherwise, was merely a misnomer for deeply rooted insecurity. And the Unchained Celebrant was far too old to be insecure.
Bitter, perhaps, but not insecure.
And had he not good reason to be? Bitter, that is. How dare that beardless bastard claim responsibility for Tilbeder’s freedom, for the old priest’s very continuing existence! Sure, Ingvar had climbed the icy face of the Himmilen glacier, and yes, there had been a rather severe winter storm that night. And in all fairness, it may have actually been a blizzard – Tilbeder could not be certain, as he had been unconscious through most of it. And, well, yes, the huge warrior had cut through the chains binding the old man to his frozen fate, or rather to the frozen fate intended him by the torch-waving throng of unhappy inhabitants of Snogarten. Or maybe they had been from Windermere. Or Eberforst. He had not been well-liked in those places either, if his memory served him correctly – only Odwen knew why. And given, Ingvar had borne the insensible priest upon his back, down the sheer face of that mountain of ice, through leagues of thigh-deep snow and soul-shuddering cold to safety and near complete recovery, requesting neither recognition nor gratitude for the fantastic feat.
But that was not the point. Neither was that, nor that, nor that, nor even that.
The point, should there actually have to be one, was that Thyr the Thunderer had guided Ingvar up the Himmelin in the rage of winter that night. It was the god’s magnificent power, not the man’s, which had flowed through the Earl’s hands, into his battle-axe, to sever the chains that had so wrongfully bound the innocent Celebrant to the towering wall of ice. It was a matter of divine intervention, not of human compassion. And certainly not anything remotely related to heroism. Nothing of the sort. Almighty Thyr had merely used Ingvar, as one might use any simple tool.
Ha! Ingvar the Tool!
Several sets of curious sky-blue eyes turned toward Tilbeder at the sound of the ghoulish giggle that escaped the old priest’s rucked throat, only to immediately avert once more as they discerned those ancient digits rapidly thrusting, thrusting, thrusting.
Remarkably, the Unchained Celebrant caught himself, and slowed the sliding of his fingers – slowed, but did not altogether desist, as the action, the stroke, the rhythm reminded him of a thing he had long forgotten – reminded him not of the thing itself, but of the fact that he had for
gotten something that should have been remembered. And remembering that he had forgotten this thing that he did not remember was in itself somewhat comforting.
But he would not forget the Earl’s ignoble capitulation to the foreigners. Especially to that supercilious shit of a Southman.
No, that he would not forget.
Never.
Pain bloomed like a flower of fire, fierce and furious. An explosion of sheer agony. But like all flames that burn hot and wild, it was soon gone, extinguished by its own ardour, leaving behind only the sooty shadow of a vanquished anguish. A heartbeat, two, and even that throbbing memory passed.
Axennus opened his eyes. They were exceptionally bright. And his sight was clear.
“I suppose I have always known,” he confessed quietly.
The little Diceman smiled benignly, slipped his hands back into his sleeves, and stepped back. He bowed slightly, his shaved pate gleaming toward Axennus like a dome of pristinely polished brass.
“There is little that separates intuition from conviction, Commander, yes?”
“That is so.” Then, “What inspired you to come forward now, after so very long in the shadows?”
“Oh, there were no shadows, Commander,” Teji Nashi replied, straightening. “I have always been here, swathed in transparency, protected by pellucidity, as though I was fashioned of glass, yes? Only you no longer look right through me, you see.”
Axennus nodded. “Shadows or no, why now?”
The Diceman smiled, blandly but brightly.
“We are at war, Commander. And our war is not with Southfleetian light cavalry nor painted pirates from Bhaskar. No, this foe is… other. Against such an enemy a masterful strategy is essential, you see, and you are essentially a master strategist. An accomplished military tactician should be made aware of all the weapons in his arsenal, yes?”
“That would be helpful.”
Another small bow. “We are in agreement, then. Please believe that my sordid habit of secrecy was necessary, and pleased me little, less, and not at all, yes? I do not wish to incur your displeasure, you see. Your unnecessary displeasure would displease me unnecessarily.”