by Alex Aguilar
The voices sounded inhuman… deeper and much rougher than any voice she had ever heard.
“I says we snatch the bitch ‘n’ leave!” the first voice said; a raspy growl of a voice, it was.
“Not now,” said the second voice, this one deep and disquieting. “Soon, my brothers… Soon we’ll be rid of the human scum.”
“You said tha’ weeks ago, Okvar,” the first voice protested. “You said we’d follow Baronkroft overseas. Now we are overseas. Why’re we still ‘ere?!”
“Could I have the wee one? I’m starved,” said the third, this one snorting at the end of nearly every sentence.
“Then you shouldn’t have finished your share,” Okvar replied.
“How can you sit there ‘n’ let some wretched human decide when we get to eat?! Like we’re a bunch o’ hounds!?” Gruul protested, his voice louder and angrier.
“Lower your damn voice, you stupid pillock,” Okvar said menacingly. “Just a few hours ‘til midnight, now. Perfect time to sneak off.”
Magdalena was growing restless. Her breathing quickened against her will and the sweat began to build at her temples. Suddenly, however, she became distracted by a nervous breathing to her left, and could almost feel the heat of it in her cheek. She turned her head and her eyes widened as she stared at the smoky green face of a female orc sitting among the prisoners. She had only seen portraits of nonhumans in her short life, and never encountered one in person. And almost always the portraits were male.
The orcess looked much less menacing; she looked almost like a large woman with dark green paint all over her skin. The only thing that made her look inhuman was the pair of sharp fangs sticking out from her lower lip. She looked tired and hungry and her clothes were less filthy than the rest of the prisoners, as if she had also been recently captured. She had cuffs on her feet, and the cuffs were linked to a chain that ran along every pair of feet in the muddy cage. She held a bundle of cloth tenderly against her chest, rocking it back and forth and whispering to it, and the princess could see the horror in the orcess’s expression.
“Sneak?” Gruul spoke again. “How low have you sunk, Okvar? Orcs do not sneak!”
“Have you a better idea?”
“So I can have the wee one, right?” Snort.
The incoming footsteps appeared to have suddenly startled the three orcs sitting near the prisoners. A huskily built bald man with a tattoo on his cheek and an impressive orange bush of a beard approached the prisoners’ cage. He was dressed in dark furs and held a rope in his sweaty hands, dragging along the five children that were tied to it.
“What’re ye lot going on about?” asked the bearded man, who was quite obviously inebriated.
“Mind your own business, human filth,” Okvar replied, spitting at the man’s boots.
The man with the red beard said nothing, but could see the dishonesty in the eyes of the three orcs. They were hiding something, he was sure. But in his drunken state, he was also sure that he cared very little. He continued to guide the children towards the pit. Magdalena heard something vaguely familiar in the man’s accent. It was Halghardian, with perhaps a decade of foreign influence, but Halghardian nonetheless; it was there despite the drunken slurring of his words.
A traitor, the princess thought to herself. In her father’s eyes, there couldn’t possibly be a worst kind of coward than one who allies with a foreign force to attack his own native lands.
The man threw the children inside, shot them an intimidating glare and as he spoke, his beard moved gracefully with his jaw. “I find one of ye’s missing ‘n’ I kill the lot of ye. And if anyone gets any funny ideas, one of ye bett’r squeal.”
With that, the bearded man closed the wooden gate.
And it was then that the princess saw her first familiar face.
Once the man was out of sight, a young boy rushed towards the princess, his hands still tied behind him, and kneeled just beside her. His enthusiasm gave her the impression that he would have hugged her had it not been for the ropes.
“Your majesty,” the boy said, his brown eyes weary and his face smeared with dirt. “Thank the gods you’re alright. I thought you had…” he didn’t finish.
Magdalena was perplexed. She stared at the child with awe as tears began to unwillingly swell up her eyes. Despite her upbringing, she was never known to be a naïve woman, and she was well aware of the monstrosities humankind was capable of.
But children? This, she thought, was inhuman to say the least.
Why? She asked herself, and at the same time doubted every single thing her father and mentors had taught her while she was growing up. Every single lecture about there being goodness in everyone was proving to be wrong right before her eyes. She was angry with them, even, for making her believe such nonsense.
“It’s you…” was all she could muster to say, and even then it was nothing more than a whisper. She didn’t have the heart to tell the boy she had forgotten his name. After all, she had known him for mere minutes; yet at that very moment, the princess couldn’t have been happier to see the boy’s face.
“Thomlin,” he reminded her with a nod.
She remembered how he tried to pull her away from the danger. And how, when she refused, he had stood bravely by her side rather than running away. And now he was here… because of her. A single tear ran down her face, leaving a cold wet trail in her cheek. “Do you know where we are?” she asked him, her voice faint and weak.
“Few miles south of Elbon,” Thomlin said. “I heard word among the men we’ll be heading to the shores of Roquefort. A ship’s waiting for us there, they said.”
“A ship…? A ship heading where…?”
His reaction was blank. He had no words for her.
“Did they…” the princess cleared her throat, struggling through a wall of tears. “Did they hurt you?” she asked.
“No, your majesty,” he said. “They had me serving them supper.”
“Did they feed you…?”
“They did, your majesty… Yesterday’s scraps, that is.”
Thomlin spoke softer and slower by the second. And his weary gaze began to lower. Then, unexpectedly, he released the soft whimper he had been holding back for hours. It was followed by a flow of tears running down his caramel-colored cheeks. As he knelt, he felt his body giving in and, before he knew it, he fell forward.
His forehead rested on the Magdalena’s shoulder. And it was the first warm feeling the princess had felt since regaining consciousness, and the closest thing to an embrace that they could manage. She pressed her cheek against the curls on the boy’s head and wept with him, only silently.
“Shh, it’s all right,” she whispered. “We’re going to be all right, you’ll see…”
* * *
The night had stretched on for what seemed like days.
Dawn was nearing, and Viktor Crowley’s somnolent eyes struggled to remain alert as he leaned over the wooden table. In front of them was a map… the most precise and detailed map John Huxley had ever laid eyes on, where the nation of Gravenstone had been drawn out with such exquisite detail that John visualized himself inside of it, right beneath the blue hills, where there was a speck of green ink and the name Elbon written over it in tiny black letters. Miles of land had been lessened to mere inches on the parchment, and John realized just how small his humble little village truly was.
The right side of the map, the prosperous kingdom of Vallenghard, detailed every city, village, and keep; among them was the city of Merrymont on the northern coast and Roquefort in the south. Val Havyn was at the center of the kingdom and there was a petite palace drawn out over the black letters to represent his majesty’s home.
A large stretch of green and blue covered the center of the map, where the Woodlands homed nearly every living creature that wasn’t human, banished like prisoners in the dark.
And on the left side of the map was the kingdom of Halghard, and beyond its western coast the parchment was coated with a
shade of blue with the handwritten words Draeric Sea written at an angle. The southwestern edge of the map ended with the sketch of a shoreline where the continent of Qamroth began, only there were no words or symbols on it, as if the whole continent was irrelevant.
“Drahkmere?” Jossiah Biggs asked in bewilderment.
“Are you certain, John?” Viktor added.
“I’m certain. It’s what they said…”
Viktor’s fatigue got the better of him and he took a seat in front of the map while behind him stood Jossiah, John, and Lady Brunylda Clark.
“Yet you can’t recall the bloke’s name, eh?” Jossiah snarled.
John found that he was growing sweatier by the second and his hands were twitching at the memory of those haunting eyes. It was as if the strange man he’d met by the creek had sucked some life out of him through a stare.
Viktor Crowley was depending on him. In a way, the entire kingdom was. John knew this was not the time for frailty but he also refused to lie to them, knowing that if he happened to say the wrong thing the entire voyage will have been futile. “Forgive me,” he said. “My mind fails me…”
“That’s quite a journey,” Lady Brunylda said as she leaned in and examined the map. “I’m not entirely convinced 60,000 yuhn in silver is worth risking over mere speculation.”
“It’s not speculation, m’lady,” John said. “I may not remember the lord’s name, but I am certain they’re heading to Drahkmere.”
“You were also certain you saw the ghost of the Butcher,” Jossiah said as he sipped on his fifth tankard of ale.
“I did!”
“He did,” Viktor reiterated. “And for the bloody last time, old dog, it was no ghost!” He then snatched the tankard from Jossiah’s hands and proceeded to drink from it himself. Jossiah shot him a look of annoyance and then reached for the jug of ale. And when he saw no other tankard nearby, he shrugged and drank straight from the jug.
“Be that as it may,” Lady Brunylda continued, “If it all happened so fast and you hardly escaped with your life, how can you entirely trust what your ears may or may not have heard, Mister Huxley?”
“I-I…”
“Perhaps if there was some proof or a more reliable witness, then we could fig-”
“What’s it to you?” Jossiah asked, much less friendly than he could have been. “Truly? You said yourself you care very little if we get slaughtered…”
“I said no such thing.”
“Insinuated it, then… 60,000 yuhn? One raven and you can get that silver back in seven days’ time. Eight if the wind’s not in your favor,” Jossiah’s relaxed demeanor changed into a more cautious one as he sat up straight and refused to let go of his glare on Lady Brunylda. “Why d’you care about it at all, then?”
There was a silence again.
The Lady broke the gaze first and her lower lip may have trembled a bit.
“I bloody knew it,” Jossiah said as he leapt to his feet again. “She plans to tell the king!”
“I mean no harm to either of you, my offer was earnest,” Brunylda argued, neither confirming nor denying Jossiah’s accusation.
“Bloody viper,” Jossiah growled. “I told you she couldn’t be trusted.”
“If what the farmer says is true and this… lord is taking the princess overseas, I guarantee you there will be far more than just a hundred men waiting for you there,” the Lady said. “Now would you prefer to face them with a dozen men… or the entirety of King Rowan’s army?”
“So what are we to you then, a scouting party for your benefit?!”
“Do not raise your voice at me, Mister Biggs. One word and I could have you imprisoned.” By then, the Lady was on her feet as well and she was facing Jossiah daringly and confidently.
“Better imprisoned than to be a pawn for the likes of you!” Jossiah shouted back.
“I’m your only hope to redeem yourselves!”
“Trusting you will only cost us our heads, and I’d very much like to keep mine.”
“You’ll lose your heads if you don’t trust me! You can’t possibly steal the princess back if she’s in Drahkmere, not without support and reinforcements! You ought to know that, you’ve fought in enough wars.”
“Oh, what do you know about wars?!”
“Who the bloody hells do you think finances every single war you’ve fought in?!”
“Piss off!”
“Enough!” Viktor shouted over them. Had it not been for him, John wondered whether either the Lady or Jossiah would have resorted to physical violence; the rage in both their eyes surely made it seem that way.
“She’s right, Jossiah,” Viktor said, and though his friend’s rage remained, the bickering diminished.
John felt as out of place as he had since he’d been taken in to collect his reward the previous morning. Realizing that dawn was approaching, he thought of his mother and siblings back at the farm. They had not heard from him in nearly a day and surely the news of the invasion would have reached Elbon by then. But he couldn’t bring himself to leave the room. Never had he imagined himself in the presence of Sir Viktor Crowley for longer than minutes at the very least, and yet it was the knight himself that asked him to stay…
Suddenly, there were footsteps approaching from the corridor.
Two familiar voices were conversing, one more confused than the other.
“I do hope this is worthwhile, girl. The king requested I remain within proximity,” said a gallant voice.
“I was told not to say anything until you saw for yourself, Sir,” the handmaiden replied.
“So you said,” the first voice spoke again. “Though why this couldn’t wait until dawn is beyon-”
Sir Hugo Symmond came to a halt at the door, his armor stainless and his chestnut-colored mustache as regal as it always was. He was thrown aback at the sight of the two former knights, his mouth open with surprise.
“Hello, old friend,” Viktor rose to his feet and stepped forward.
“Viktor… Jossiah…” Sir Hugo mumbled; he was glad to see them, there was no doubt. And yet he knew of the severe consequences that would occur if he didn’t immediately send word back to his majesty. The king would have their heads, that much was certain; perhaps even Sir Hugo’s head if he waited another second longer.
“You two should not be here…” Sir Hugo said unnervingly. “And… who is this?”
John couldn’t help but stand and bow. “Um… John Huxley of Elb-”
“He’s the brave lad that took care of Blackwood for us,” Viktor interjected, and Sir Hugo gave John a head nod and a gaze of slight admiration.
“What are you doing here still, Viktor?” he then asked.
“Please sit,” Viktor said. “Would you like some ale? Or you, Brunylda?”
“Never mind the ale,” Brunylda said as she took a seat. “You! Girl! Fetch me a bottle of Roquefort liqueur.”
Brie left the room for what seemed like the hundredth time. John felt bad for the girl, having to remain awake to serve them during a meeting that was not supposed to be happening to begin with; not that Brie would have been able to sleep that night, anyway, she was so rattled.
“I don’t think it would be appropriate for me to drink at this hour,” Sir Hugo said worriedly. “Particularly, considering the circumstances. I-I’m sorry, Viktor, but if his majesty finds out that you’re still here, h-”
“You will keep your mouth shut about it,” Lady Brunylda said, much to everyone’s surprise.
Viktor and Jossiah looked at one another briefly, before turning their attention back to the Lady. Sir Hugo may have felt a bit bothered by her tone, but the mild reaction from both former knights kept his curiosity intact.
“I’ve had enough of his majesty,” the Lady said, and though such comments would often be disregarded and blamed on the ale or wine, she hadn’t had a single sip yet. Nor did she need to… the Lady’s candor and bold honesty was notorious. “Listen closely, all of you,” she said with an intimida
ting pout. “His majesty is but a man… If there is anything to be understood here, it’s that. This city will not rest, it will continue to run with or without him and if he prefers to cry and drink and lay in his own filth then he is free to do so… Meanwhile, someone’s got to take matters into their own hands.”
“And you think that someone ought to be you, then?” Jossiah snarled at her.
“I’ve signed consent from King Rowan himself to carry out any and all business relations,” Brunylda remarked.
“That doesn’t grant you much authority,” Sir Hugo said, unconvinced.
“It’s more authority than you have, Sir Hugo,” she said to him, unwilling to succumb. “And you will be wise to keep all of this to yourself. Two knights have been disbarred tonight. I can very easily make that three, should the matter call for it.”
Sir Hugo had no response; he merely listened to the Lady’s every word.
Viktor felt something like hope fill his chest. Jossiah felt something similar, only his distrust towards the Lady was keeping his demeanor defensive.
“Here’s what you will do, Sir,” Brunylda went on. “You are to gather weapons and supplies, enough for a dozen men. You are to have them delivered to…” she glanced at John, who stammered and came back to his senses.
“Elbon, sir,” he said. “The Huxleys’ farm in Elbon.”
“Elbon,” the Lady reiterated. “And you are to ask no further questions about it, is that understood?”
Sir Hugo Symmond turned towards Viktor, the only person in the room he felt he could trust fully, and even then he wasn’t entirely convinced.
“As a favor, old friend,” Viktor begged, his blue eyes much less stern and more vulnerable than ever before. “Just… one last favor…”
Sir Hugo sighed. At the same time, the princess’s handmaiden entered the room and handed the rare bottle of Roquefort liqueur to Lady Brunylda, who snatched it and drank right from it. And it was then that Sir Hugo gave them a nod. One single head nod, and it was enough to give them all that last shred of hope that they needed.