“Hey there, boy.”
Jorrell looked up at the shout. He had to squint against the grey rays of the sun, but he smiled broadly when he recognised the rider as En Balamon.
“Better late than never,” Jorrell called back, earning a laugh from the En Dek commander. “How’s she doing?” He inclined his head at the gryphon, who nudged him again. Jorrell reached out to stroke Kai’s beak, earning a chuff of acknowledgment.
“You’ll lose your hand.” Jorrell had almost forgotten that Cael was with him until he heard the concerned exclamation.
He looked over at his friend. “Not this one, she’s a sweetheart.”
“Oh yeah. That red stuff on her talons just screams come on over and cuddle me. Does she roll over and let you rub her belly?” Cael replied sarcastically.
“Only if you ask nicely,” En Balamon called down. “She’s doing extremely well.” He answered Jorrell’s question. “Gets bored easily, though. We have to keep taking her out on the wing or she starts fights with the others.”
“She’s taken to battle, though?” Jorrell asked.
“Like a duck to water,” En Balamon confirmed. “How’s your pretty miss? Lonely now you’re all the way out here. I might visit her.”
Jorrell swallowed the sudden lump in his throat. He hadn’t expected that En Balamon would remember Serwren. “She’ll be married by now. Her engagement was due to be announced as I left.”
“It’s probably for the best. She was far too good for you,” En Balamon mocked in a friendly manner. “I might still visit her, though,” he added with a teasing wink.
“I can’t disagree with you.” Jorrell shrugged as best he could, considering his shield was still fastened to his arm. He’d rested it on the ground, and now it was rapidly sinking into the mud.
Kai whickered, growing impatient at being kept still when surrounded by so much temptation. “I best get her back up to some clean air.” En Balamon shifted his seat preparing to take off. “Take care, boy. I still have hopes that you’ll make it back to us one day.”
He called the necessary command to Kai, and with a shrill squawk, Kai launched into the air, wheeled three times, and flew off to join the rest of her flock. Jorrell, his head bowed by disappointment and regret, set off for his tent.
“You know gryphons? I’m impressed.” Cael had fallen into step beside him and nudged him in the arm. Nudge wasn’t really an accurate description; he had shoved Jorrell with his elbow hard enough to make Jorrell take a half step to the side.
“I was sent to do stable duty for seven nights as a punishment, but En Balamon took pity on me, I suppose, and showed me some of their training. That one, Kai, wouldn’t let any of them ride her. At least, she wouldn’t until after she’d let me ride her.”
“A charmer of gryphons as well as of women. Is there no end to your talents?”
“Yes.” Jorrell returned his friend’s grin. “I can’t get you to shut the fuck up.”
~o0o~
Later, after the night had closed in on the camp, Jorrell found his tent, having completed a self-decided mission. He lifted the flap of canvas and crouched down as he shuffled inside. Cael was sitting by the lantern, trying to warm his hands on the glow of the candle. The tent was occupied only by the two of them now, at least until new recruits arrived. One of their tent mates had been cleaved from shoulder to belly by a Naidacan axe; the other had been whipped for breaking ranks in the midst of battle and was being bandaged in the infirmary.
Cael looked up as Jorrell crouched on the other side of the lantern. “Where’ve you been?”
Jorrell didn’t answer immediately. He reached into the folds of his threadbare cloak and pulled out a small roll of parchment, a stubby quill pen and a small vial of ink.
“What’s that? Are you going to start a diary? Maybe write a great theory on how not to fight a fucking war? How much did that bundle cost you, anyway?”
Since many of the soldiers were uneducated, writing materials were not commonly found outside the tents of officers. Cael's rapid questions were understandable.
“I had to promise my firstborn,” Jorrell muttered, almost joking.
“So, why are you bothering with it?”
“I need to write a letter. One I should have written before I left.”
“To your lost love?”
Jorrell thought about punching Cael, but he really quite liked his friend, and it would be shame if they fell out. Not least because Cael didn’t snore, which made him almost ideal to share a tent with. “Yes,” Jorrell answered simply.
“I think there’s more to this tale than you’re telling me,” Cael said, showing his usual astute insight.
“And what makes you think I’d want to tell you the whole sorry tale?” Jorrell asked, a little more archly than he’d intended.
“Because I’m your best friend in all the world.”
“Cael, right now, you’re my only friend in all the world.”
“Still your best friend. Besides, it’s not healthy to stew on these things.”
“And you’re an expert in matters of the heart?”
“Yea gods, not at all, Jor. All I’m saying, is if you want to share the burden, I’m here.”
Jorrell thought in silence. Seeing En Balamon had reminded him of home. As well as opening the festering wound that was his hurt over Serwren, it had reminded him of everything else that he had loved and now missed. He hadn’t even had chance to say goodbye to his little sister. He wondered what their father had told Elthrinn, how he had explained where her brother had gone and why. He wondered if he’d ever make it back alive, or if he’d die in this forsaken corner of the world leaving Elthrinn to think she’d been abandoned by everyone who loved her.
“You asked what I did that got me sent here. Serwren and I got into trouble over the gryphons. We had been told to stay away from them when the First Father had called the En Dek to Thrissia.”
“So naturally, you didn’t stay away.”
“Naturally. We were caught stroking one of them. Kai, as it happens.” At Cael’s look of confusion, Jorrell clarified, “the friendly one on the field today. I was sent to the En Dek for seven nights, to do any menial work they gave me as punishment. I returned, only to be told that Serwren was betrothed and that I had been conscripted into the army and was to sail the next morning. I don’t know what happened to anger my father so while I was gone. He said it was because I couldn’t be trusted around Serwren after she was married, but I’m beginning to think there was more to it than that.”
“Could you have been trusted?”
“Probably not,” Jorrell admitted. “That night, I found Serry, and...”
“Your father was right, you couldn’t be trusted.”
“Neither could she,” Jorrell said bitterly. “It was obvious that I was not her first lover.”
“You’re sure? You couldn’t have been mistaken?”
“Wouldn’t you know? If a girl was innocent or not?”
“Yes. So you believe she lay with someone else while you were playing with the gryphons?”
It was not a pleasant sensation, to turn over all his memories of the times that he and Serwren had been intimate, but Jorrell did so, examining each one for clues to her behaviour. “Yes. I don’t believe that she did so before I was sent away.”
“She sounds like a fickle one, to spread her legs for someone else just because you were absent for a few days.”
Jorrell gave his friend a hard look for his coarse language, but Cael’s words triggered a dark thought that had been lurking in the recesses of his mind. “She told me she loved me and I believed her. We... we were waiting until we were married... before we...”
“Did you have any reason to disbelieve her? Some women will say anything if it brings a man to their beck and call.”
Jorrell shook his head vehemently. “I believed her. Serwren wasn’t like that. She was honest in everything she did.”
“So, if she wouldn’t bed you, the
love of her life, why would she bed someone else that she had no feelings for?”
“She wouldn’t. Not willingly. There was no one...” The truth of what he was saying hit Jorrell before he’d even finished speaking the words. “We didn’t associate with anyone else. Serry and I... we didn’t have any other friends. We didn’t need any other friends. We had each other.”
“So she didn’t invite someone else into her bed. Someone else invited themselves.”
Jorrell choked on rising bile as he remembered the covetous look in Erkas’ eyes when Serwren had kissed him goodbye before he journeyed to the Isle of Gryphons. “No... It couldn’t be... He wouldn’t...” Jorrell whispered in disbelieving astonishment.
“The brother,” Cael stated.
Jorrell stared at his friend, more shocked than he had been in moons. “It couldn’t have been. Her own brother...”
“I’m a farmer’s son, remember? The villages are not so refined as the city. Such a thing is not so unusual where I’m from.”
“I should have stayed. I left her. I abandoned her to everyone that was hurting her.”
“What could you have done that wouldn’t have gotten you both killed, or you killed and her married off anyway?” Cael asked honestly.
“I don’t know. But I should have done more. I should have done something.” Jorrell felt the desperation of his mistake acutely.
“I say we stick with the original plan,” Cael suggested. “If we try to leave, we’ll be hung as deserters. And I don’t know about you, but I don’t fancy trying to sail that fucking ocean by myself. First, we survive this. Then we kill all the bastards when we get home.”
“We?”
“You don’t think I’m going to let you have all the fun, do you?”
In the middle of the horror that was the war he’d been thrust into, and surrounded by the agony of his new realisations, Jorrell couldn’t stifle the small thankfulness that everything that had happened had brought him to this place, this time, this true friendship.
Cael left him in peace after that, while Jorrell filled the parchment with his apology to Serwren. He had procured the writing material with the intention of writing to her. Seeing the gryphon had reminded him of a time when life had been simple and happy for them both, but he’d had no idea what he was going to write. Now he knew. He should have trusted her. He should not have walked away and let jealousy and insidious thoughts of infidelity eat him alive. He had no idea if the letter would ever reach Serwren, but he had to at least try to explain himself. He had to try and make things right between them, even from so far away. He had to try.
Chapter Eleven
The season of Taan had not yet even begun, but it promised to be one of the hottest in years. Serwren did not relish the thought of the coming moons. Plants were already struggling against the heat and the lack of rain. As Serwren had expected, as the fierce fighting in Naidac had continued and as the casualty lists had rolled in, public opinion was turning against the Forum and their justification for war. With the addition of the drought that was forecast, and the looming possibility of the failure of the harvest, Felthiss was a nation in unrest.
But Serwren had more reason than she might usually have had to dread the prophesied heat wave. Before her wedding, her misery had been so complete that it had obliterated all other concerns from her mind. It was only after her wedding night, when she had caught a whispered conversation between the maids, of which she had been the topic, that she had realised there was something quite important that she had not been paying the proper attention to.
She had had to think quickly. Her first course of action was to ensure that she became well-liked and respected by the household staff. That was not a hard task. Her husband was belligerent and snappish, and prone to groping the maids.
Serwren made sure to catch him in the act, and then politely requested that he cease doing so. Bornsig had offered to comply, if Serwren would offer her own body in compensation, and had reminded her that she had said she didn’t mind where he found his release. Serwren pointed out that she still didn’t care, nor would she relent, but that the staff were conscientious and hard workers, and that it would be difficult to recruit new staff if the current maids handed in their notice, especially if they started to spread rumours of his abusive behaviour. Bornsig had grudgingly agreed to keep his more obnoxious habits from their house. He liked his comfortable, clean and well-ordered home, and the threat of disruption to that was a dire one.
The maids had been thankful enough for that, but Serwren had proceeded to prove herself capable of managing the household smoothly. She was not afraid to ask for guidance, to enquire of people more knowledgeable and experienced than she. The staff appreciated that. They had been afraid that a capricious youngster would arrive with a list of outrageous demands. She also intervened when her husband thought up ridiculous ideas, such as extravagant dishes for meals when they entertained company, and she re-directed his anger if he looked to be directing any bad mood at those undeserving of it.
Thus, when the time came, and passed, in which Serwren’s cycle could have been expected, and did not arrive, the staff were happy to become her cohorts in a deception. For Serwren had realised that she had not had a cycle in several moons. There was no chance that Bornsig could be the father of the child she was carrying; she had been pregnant before the wedding, but had not realised it. She had calculated that she must have been so for five moons, more than half the length of average gestation. Her stomach, which had remained conspiratorially flat beforehand, seemed to swell almost from the moment that she acknowledged her condition.
So far, she had been able to disguise her condition with her clothing. The dress she was wearing that day did not seem so very out of the ordinary, given the weather. Swaths of soft cotton draped from wrought iron clasps at her shoulders. There was something about the dichotomy of the hard metal at odds with the breezy fabric which appealed to Serwren. Still, she knew that time was running out, and that there were excuses that she would have to make, or admissions, in the very near future.
Those thoughts, coupled with her trepidation about pregnancy, birth and becoming a mother at all, were causing a great deal of unrest in her mind.
This day was her eighteenth birthday. She preferred not to concede that it was also relevant for Erkas, but had decided to visit the palace in hopes of seeing her father. Even before their marriage, Bornsig had shown little enough interest in any details about her; after her threat to his life and his manhood, he had shown no interest in her state of being at all. Since she had not felt the desire to make a celebration of the event at home, she had ventured up to the palace, to visit what scraps of her family remained to her, only to find that her father and brother had gone hunting in the countryside and were not expected back until evening.
As it was also the anniversary of their mother’s death, their birthday had never been celebrated in an overt manner, but their father had always taken care to recognize the date in some way, to not allow his grief to deny his children the pleasure of the day. Now it appeared that as well as his refusal to hear her accusations against her brother, her father had developed a wilful amnesia regarding her very existence.
Feeling self conscious and emotionally delicate, and not ready to return to her gilded cage, Serwren had sought refuge in the palace library. If she appeared to be paying attention to the books, although she did not currently have the concentration for study, no one would think anything amiss with her presence there.
Serwren chose a volume, thick enough to dissuade anyone who might chance to find her from speaking to her, and tucked herself into one of the padded window casements. The glass in the windows was the same mosaic of colours as the other windows in the palace. Serwren opened the book in her lap at a random page - she had no idea what topic it covered - and stared out over the city, over to the bay and the sea beyond, and lost herself in the fantasy of a different life.
Although the palace was a home to the Fir
st Father and his family, it was also very much a public building, as the Forum was located within it. The library was at the disposal of anyone who wished to use it, so it did not surprise Serwren when she heard someone enter the room.
“I must say, I didn’t expect to find you here.”
Serwren’s head shot up at the sound of the soft voice. Consul Remmah spoke quietly, always, but had always had an enviable talent for making her displeasure at any mistakes her students had made known without having to shout.
“I’m just taking some time to read...” Serwren had to glance down at the book. She had no idea what title she’d picked up. “A History of Shipbuilding.” Damn. Not a very convincing alibi at all.
“Of course you are.” Remmah replied wryly. The consul walked over and sat down opposite Serwren in the casement. She took some time to arrange her skirts until she was comfortable. The window casements were not designed as formal seating. “Tell me, Serwren, have you given up your ambition to enter the Forum?”
Lost in the Dawn (Erythleh Chronicles Book 1) Page 12