by GJ Kelly
“Do you still think he has no spell for running like a horse, Leeny?”
“I think we need to push harder,” was all she could think to say in reply.
Push harder they did.
She missed Gawain, and not just for the sake of her aching heart, but because he would be able to make so much more sense of the signs and portents the three of them had encountered since leaving Tarn. Croptop Hill had made no sense. The shipwreck at Comfortless Cove had made no sense. The dark wizard’s seemingly ceaseless flight southeast towards Sudshear made no sense. Of all places in Arrun south of Fallowmead, Sudshear was the one place where the Goth might encounter wizards of the D’ith powerful enough to destroy him in a battle of mystic staves.
Sticks, she heard Gawain’s voice mumble, a battle of mystic sticks…
And yet that was where he was running…
They smelled the remains of the eleven refugees from Fallowmead before they saw them scattered in a clearing between blisters of gorse where they’d been struck down while camped and cooking wild goat. It was the odour of burning meat which first drew their attention, but when the Sight revealed nothing, they rode cautiously, until they found the camp and all that was left of those who’d fled the village.
The scene, compressed into so small a space, was if anything worse than the aftermath of the battle which had so stunned the men who’d taken part in it. Black fire had devastated the camp, gouging great furrows in the soil as well as sundering limbs and bodies. Five men, four women, one of the latter with child, and two children, lives extinguished in streaming gouts of searing black lightning loosed upon them from behind a shrub, simply so the wizard could steal and eat undisturbed the goat they’d been cooking. Half of it remained still in the cold ashes of the camp fire, one haunch missing, and the remains of the other nearby, imprints of the wizard’s teeth still in what was left of the flesh and gristle.
Meeya eyed the children’s remains, her face ashen, refusing to look at Elayeen.
“Behold the enemy’s deeds,” Elayeen sighed. “And if you feel the need for troubling memories in years to come, recall these to mind, rather than anything I ordered at the Battle of Fallowmead. Come. There is nothing we can do here, nor can we spare the time to bury the remains of these folk.”
“Not even the children?” Meeya whispered.
“Not even they,” Elayeen announced, feeling for her friend’s sorrow, but not entirely sharing it. “There are many more people to the south, Meeya. The Goth must be stopped.”
Meeya turned baleful eyes upon her friend and queen, but said nothing, and simply nodded and looked away. Elayeen nudged her horse, and rode around the camp, following again the wizard’s trail and now with greater urgency; though whether this was to hasten their encounter or to flee faster the carnage behind them, none could say.
After three miles, though, and still no sight of their quarry, the trail took a sudden and distinct turn towards the southwest. At first, Elayeen thought it might simply be to avoid an area of hillier terrain, but when the trail continued in that direction as evening approached, it became clear that the dark wizard had some destination other than Sudshear in mind.
Incredibly, they still hadn’t caught up with the wizard when nightfall again made continuing the hunt too dangerous, and for the sake of the safety of their horses, they made camp.
Elayeen studied her map of Arrun, but like that of Mornland they’d obtained in Tarn, detail was sparse.
“If he continues on this course,” she muttered, holding Valin’s pocket glowstone over the map, “He’ll end up in the hills bordering Callodon near to Lake Arrunmere. There’s nothing in the between, save perhaps farms, hamlets and villages not marked on lord Rak’s charts. Here,” and she handed the map and the light to Valin.
“Perhaps he is simply hoping to end any pursuit by hiding in the wilds, miThalin,” Valin announced, though apparently without irony. “There is no reason I can fathom for the enemy’s presence aboard a ship in eastern waters, much less for the dark wizard’s course now. Unless of course he is merely avoiding Sudshear, as must we also.”
“True. But like Meeya, I find his pace astonishing, and his ability to maintain it. I am beginning to think he does have some kind of foul wizardry that permits him to run so far so quickly.”
Valin shrugged. “Thalangard Yannis once ran from Correnath to Impseneth on the Threnderrin Way in a day, sunrise to sunrise, without stopping. That is almost two hundred miles.”
“Thalangard Yannis was as mad as a sack of bats,” Elayeen sniffed, remembering the lanky officer in Gan’s ‘gard who’d once run the entire length of the Threnderrin Way, almost six hundred miles, for a bet. And had won that bet in six days.
“Yet is still the only elf ever to have achieved such a feat.”
“We have a choice, then. We can continue as we are in the hope of encountering this insane running Goth when his speed and endurance finally falls below that of our labouring horses, or we can shed the loads we carry, and ride fast and true.”
“If we do the latter, then we lose all our supplies save for frak, and will be reduced to foraging for other food along the way. And we still have some distance to go to achieve that region of southern Arrun where dwell the last riders of Raheen.”
“Or we might store our supplies here in orderly fashion, perhaps within the tent you had from Tarn. Destroy the creature, and then return for our supplies and commence a leisurely journey south again.”
“Yes, miThalin, these would indeed seem to be our choices...”
Elayeen waited, but Meeya was sitting with her knees drawn up under her cloak and seemed to have no interest in the discussion, and Valin was gazing out to the southwest.”
“But?” she sighed.
“MiThalin?”
“The way you ended your last curt sentence seemed to indicate a ‘but’.”
“Ah. I was simply thinking back to Fallowmead, and the weather forecast given the day before the battle.”
“What of it?”
“Rain is due, possibly tomorrow. To abandon all our belongings for a sprint may well leave us badly exposed should the weather turn foul.”
“A risk we shall have to take. I want that Goth destroyed more than I want the peace of mind of a tent and dry clothes tied to my saddle. You’re very quiet, Meeya.”
“I am sorry. My mind was elsewhere.”
“Back at the camp of those who abandoned their friends and neighbours and fled, taking with them the only ranged weapons Fallowmead possessed,” Elayeen nodded, her voice as dead as her feelings this night.
“The children had no part in that decision. They did not deserve such a fate.”
“Not even those who deserted hearth, home and kinfolk deserved such a fate, Meeya, yet it was perhaps the inevitable outcome of the decision they made. Even had we lost the battle, and the Meggen prevailed, the outcome of their choosing to flee would have been the same, and perhaps even worse.”
“Is there no pity left in you now, Elayeen? Has the one called Eldengaze robbed you of all warmth and left your cherished heart cold?”
Elayeen sighed, and gathered her cloak and blanket around her before laying back on the stony ground for sleep. “The children are dead, Meeya, they cannot now feel your pity nor the warmth of your heart. Turn your feelings instead towards the destruction of the black-eyed vakka who killed them, and the even blacker vakka lurking beyond the Teeth who empowers him still and is responsible for all the death we have witnessed.
“Morloch is responsible for our shivering on this cold ground tonight, and for those who lie still upon it never to know a shiver again. Rest. Tomorrow we stow our provisions and equipment here, and ride hard to the destruction of the Goth.”
Elayeen lay awake for a while longer, listening to the breezes rustling in the shrubs dotting the rolling land around them, and the trickling of the stream a dozen or more yards south of their camp. Meeya, she knew, was as fierce as any elf could be in battle or when a thr
eat presented itself. But afterwards, soft-hearted, and gentle. She would, Elayeen knew, make a wonderful mother. But those thoughts merely reminded her of the choice she must make before August, and her own uncertain future.
Instead, she imagined what Gawain might say, where he here with her, alone. Perhaps he would repeat his mother’s lesson to his brother, Kevyn, on the eve of his banishment four years before Gawain himself was expelled from Raheen, for it was a good one:
It is right that you live, and wrong that others should strive to see that you don't. Be a friend to all, except to those who would be enemies, and if they should choose to be the latter, be utterly ruthless that you may return home, to those who love you.
Gawain had learned the lesson well. Elayeen finally understood it too, and the words her own mother spoke when it became clear that the Toorseneth was moving against the family Varan, after Gawain left Elvendere the first time, leaving her, unwittingly, athroth.
The wolf pities not the lamb nor the sheep,
And the fox pities not the chicken.
The cat pities not the bird nor the mouse,
The dog not the cat nor the kitten.
The bird pities not the worm nor the spider
And the spider has no pity for the fly,
Issilene pities neither you nor I,
Nor any other creature neither.
Perhaps if or when the Shi’ell walked the lands again, Meeya would understand too. If you can’t expect pity from nature, don’t expect it from the unnatural. And don’t you dare give any to Morloch and his spawn, either…
oOo
31. Curtain Rods
Valin did his best with the canvas tent, shoving as many of their packs, bags and sacks as he could into its maw, using it as little more than a large and increasingly less waterproof sack. The loss of the packhorse grieved him, even more so since the battle had been ended almost before it had begun and the sending of Steffen had ultimately proven unnecessary.
But Elayeen pointed out that the journey from Ferdan to Raheen had been made with little more than frak and a change of clothes, and her word was final, so after a hasty breakfast on a blustery morning with dampness in the air around them, they set off in pursuit of the dark wizard that was their quarry.
The horses, freed of much of their burden, ran well and with joy, and in no time, or so it seemed, the scrubbier land gave way to expanses of verdant grassland and gently rolling terrain once more. Spring and stream and winter rains had fed the grasses well, and this made it easier to follow the dark wizard’s trail, his path southwest clearly marked by crushed stalk, stem and blade.
It seemed impossible to all of them that anyone could simply run, and keep on running through the night, heedless of pain in joints and muscles, heedless of exhaustion. True, there was water aplenty to be had in this verdant landscape, and the food stolen from Fallowmead’s refugees might keep someone going for a while, but the dark wizard seemed to be running sunrise to sunrise with scarcely a pause, and some two hundred miles in his wake each dawn.
“Aquamire,” Elayeen announced, breathing a little heavily as they jogged along beside their horses, giving the animals a well-earned break from their running. “He must be using the aquamire he took back from the Aknid somehow.”
“If he continues at this pace he’ll be at Lake Arrunmere in a week!” Meeya called.
It was true. Elayeen knew from the maps that it might take the elves a little over two weeks at a military sixty miles a day on horseback to ride from Fallowmead to Lake Arrunmere. But that was with the horses laden with supplies and equipment. They could cover more ground and quicker too without such a burden. The dark wizard, however, had stolen a march on them. His endurance running was unforeseen, and quite simply astonishing. They knew, all of them, that it might take days to whittle down the advantage he already had over them.
Hours disappeared in a blur for the elves. Elayeen remembered another of Gawain’s lessons, the running while horses rested to continue gaining ground, and the drizzle, when it came, gave more relief than discomfort, serving to cool horse and rider alike. The terrain, too, continued to favour pursuer rather than pursued, allowing the elves to continue their pursuit later into the night than the rockier ground nearer the coast had permitted.
That night, March 13th and three days after the Battle of Fallowmead, the camp they made was nothing more than saddles on the ground. It was raining steadily, and they simply sat on their saddles, cloaked and hooded, and dozed while the horses slept.
The following afternoon, Valin announced that what they’d hoped for seemed to be coming to pass; the dark wizard was slowing. And an hour after that they found a patch of flattened grasses and scat which showed them the wizard had stopped for the night.
“He has stopped running,” Valin declared, eyeing the trail leading southwest out of the wizard’s sleeping area. “The strides are much shorter, impressions of his heels much deeper. He is walking, and at a comfortable pace.”
“With the lead he has obtained he probably thinks himself safe,” Elayeen agreed. “It occurs to me now that if the ship they were sailing had come from Gorian waters, then the Goth may not know of the ninety-five, and the restoration of eldeneyes amongst us. He might simply have run, thinking to avoid forces of the Kindred, or a wizard of the D’ith. He may now no longer fear pursuit by horsemen.”
“That makes sense, Leeny. But this camp wasn’t made last night. He’s still a very long way ahead of us.”
“Agreed,” Valin climbed into his saddle. “And it would appear he has turned a little more to the west.”
“Then let us ride hard. The sooner we find and destroy him, the sooner we can return to collect our supplies and stop eating frak.”
The horses worked hard that day.
They worked hard over the days that followed, too. With the Goth having achieved such a healthy lead over them, it was taking a long time to close the gap. Elayeen calculated that with the wizard walking at a comfortable pace and the elves riding hard, they were closing the gap at the rate of some fifty miles a day, perhaps a little more. But of course the wizard did not remain stationary, and not only did they have to close the lead he’d obtained before the elves left Fallowmead, they also had to make up the distance he was still travelling every day.
On March 19th, still heading west southwest, they smelled burning wood on the breezes, and several hours later, the charred remains of a homestead and its former occupants hove into view. Sheep, too, had been blasted asunder. Only the well, not much more than a hole in the ground and a bucket on a beam, had survived intact, along with a few chickens in a scorched coop and an empty pen for the sheep.
Valin scouted, picking his way through the wreckage of lives destroyed by black fire. Meeya’s eyes kept being drawn to the smaller of the charred figures huddled together in the remains of what had been their house, and gave but the briefest of nods when Elayeen asked if she was well.
“It is hard to understand the reason for this destruction,” Valin declared, sadly. “There was no need for it. The wizard could have passed around this place, gone his way entirely unnoticed. This destruction and death is without reason, and entirely meaningless.”
“We pursue a dark wizard, and likely a staff bearing Goth-lord of a kind similar in power to Salaman Goth,” Elayeen announced. “This is what they do, unless stopped. And stopped by any means necessary.”
Valin nodded. “He took his time, and it looks as though he paused to cook meat in the flames and eat it. He should be visible to our Sight tomorrow.”
“And dead very soon after,” Meeya hissed through clenched teeth.
That night was dry, their camp and their meal frugal, and while the horses rested, they examined and prepared their weapons. The engines which had rained death upon the Meggen had spared their slowly dwindling stock of Threlland-made arrows, though few were left now in the stout leather case tucked in the tent stowed for safekeeping almost a week ago. Their quivers were full though, and s
trings taut and dry on their bows.
Elayeen studied the blackened blade of her sword in the silver-grey wash of starlight and the light of a moon shining bright now a day past its first quarter. That quarter-moon hung high above the horizon just to the west of southwest, as if pointing the way to where their quarry might even now be resting.
“It doesn’t swim or crackle like Thal-Gawain’s,” Meeya noted, nodding towards the shortsword resting in Elayeen’s lap.
“No, it is strange. There much was that strange, on Croptop Hill.”
“And much that was dark, and evil.”
“Yes. But did you notice, the Yarken, and the Razorwing, and even the Goth we are pursuing, all seem to glow black with the evil of aquamire. The creatures atop the Hill did not have such a glow.”
“True,” Valin nodded, eyeing a strip of frak with great distaste. “They seemed lighter, somehow. More grey than black.”
“They were old, Vali, perhaps their blackness simply faded with age.”
He nodded, but Elayeen’s worms still wriggled, refusing to be pacified by so simple an explanation.
“Morloch is old,” she said, “And he glows blackest of all.”
“Those things had been there at least three hundred years, Leeny, and until the boy Gillane ventured too close to their lair, had little on which to feed.”
“Also true, miMeeya, but look at this blade. It struck clean into the heart of that beast and the shock of its power hurled me clear across the glade, yet the steel looks merely burned, or seared with oil in a blacksmith’s forge. G’wain’s sword swam as though alive with foul stuff just from taking the heads of Black Riders.”
“His sword is certainly enchanted by those he calls eldenbeards. Didn’t you tell us the story of how his forebear, that boy-king of Raheen, drew the blade one-handed and cut down the Goth-lord whatever-his-name and his claw-flies?”