by Alex Aguilar
Then, of course, there were the stories. If Hudson had anything good to contribute to the journey aside from a good stance in a fight, it was a good story. And oddly enough, they all began the same way… With a question.
“Have you ever shagged, farmer?”
The question nearly made John choke on his last berry, the sour juice giving him a slight sting in his throat. “I-I’m sorry?”
“You heard me perfectly.”
John stammered for a bit, trying to find the right words to say, and Hudson was finding his reaction rather amusing. “W-Well I can’t say I’m very experienced, no… After father died, I became far too busy helping mum tend to the farm. Not much time to think about marriage.”
“Who said anything about marriage?” Hudson remarked. “I asked if you’ve ever shagged.”
John tried to clear his throat, but he had nothing to wash down the knot of food with. And much to his embarrassment, his cheeks had turned a bright shade of red.
“D-Don’t say that so bloody loudly!”
“Don’t say what? Shag?”
Suddenly, and to make matters worse, Syrena appeared out of the blue from around the large grey boulder. “What’re you two going on about?”
John panicked slightly. “Um, Combat techniques…?” he said, his voice overlapping with Hudson’s as the thief said “Stringed instruments.” The two men glanced at one another and then back at the witch.
“…And combat techniques,” Hudson lied. “I was just, um, explaining how to play a mandolin while fighting. Neat trick.”
“Well that’s funny,” Syrena said. “Sounded like you were talking about sex.”
The redness in John’s cheeks had by then spread all around his face.
Hudson smirked and said, “I'm appalled you would think that of me.”
Syrena sat on the other side of the thief, cross-legged and with her back to the boulder. “You think because I’m a woman, I can’t know a thing or two about it?”
“I don’t think that,” Hudson replied. “But Sir Huxley here seems a bit ashamed of not having ever partaken in such an endeavor.”
“There’s no shame in that,” Syrena smirked at John. “In fact, some say that witches who’ve never done it often end up a great deal more powerful than those who have. In some ways you can say, it, uh… weakens us.” She winked.
John looked uncomfortable and startled. With a grin, Hudson pulled a winesack from somewhere within his coat and handed it to him.
Immediately, John took it. The presumably stolen wine was far stronger than any he had ever had. He felt the warmth of it in his chest almost instantly; it seemed to almost cleanse him. Hudson was whispering something into Syrena’s ear and they laughed together. And seeing just how relaxed they were, John somehow felt a weight lift from his shoulders. It wasn’t exactly something he felt comfortable talking to his mother about, or anybody else in Elbon for that matter. It simply wasn’t talked about much.
“Actually,” he decided to speak out after a brief silence. “There was…the one time.”
He took another sip of wine, before he realized the thief and the witch had shifted their gaze towards him, both of them more than intrigued.
“But… It’s, uh… Never mind, it’s not really very interesting,” John said bashfully.
“Mate, you’ve opened your mouth. Too late to shy away now.”
“You either tell us, or we’ll get you drunk enough until you do,” Syrena added.
John smiled. They smiled back.
It was a nice feeling for a change.
“Fine,” John said, his eyes beginning to drift. “She’s, uh… She was a girl from back home. A blacksmith.”
“Excellent so far,” Hudson said, snatching the winesack from John’s hands and stealing a sip, before handing it to Syrena.
“Her family and mine have been lifelong friends,” John went on. “So she and I saw a lot of each other growing up. Then one evening, during Elbon’s autumn festival, she, uh… She was acting rather strange with me. Timid, quiet, nothing like herself. Turns out, she had stolen a bottle of liqueur from her father’s cabinet and was waiting for a moment to drag me away… Anyway, we managed to stray from the crowds and climbed up to the rafters of our family’s barn.”
“I thought you said that was your sister’s hideout,” Hudson raised a brow.
“Well she wasn’t there,” John said. “And with everyone in town for the festival, it was the only place we could go to be alone.” The farmer took a moment to chuckle softly upon reminiscing on the one memory he hadn’t spoken of to anyone since the night that it happened. “It was the first time I ever had a drink. Didn’t have anything to compare it to, but the taste was quite awful.”
Syrena chuckled.
“No one cares about the liqueur, mate,” Hudson said, his eyes genuinely intrigued. “Skip to the interesting part.”
“She was the one who pulled me closer first,” John said. “I hardly knew what I was doing. It was… peculiar. She was, after all, my best friend… And yet there she was lying with me, the both of us fully unclothed. It felt so wrong yet so right all at once.” John paused and his gaze lowered, the expression on his face beginning to change.
“What was her name?” Syrena asked.
“Evellyn,” John replied. “Evellyn Amberhill.”
“What happened to her?”
John’s smile was no longer there, as if the regret in his chest wouldn’t allow it.
“I still see her now and then… Few weeks later, my father became ill and died. She and I never spoke about that night ever since.”
John said no more. It had been ages since he spoke of that night to anyone, and yet here he was sharing it with two most unusual companions. For a brief moment, the river flow was the only sound for what may have been miles.
“Well that took a painfully sad turn,” Hudson said as he took the winesack back from Syrena and took a gulp. He then handed the wine back to John, who took it rather willingly.
“You want to hear sad?” Syrena said as she wiped the wine stains from her chin. “The only man I’ve ever been with was hanged for lying with a witch. How’s that for a dramatic turn?” Syrena did not appear bothered to share. In fact, she was grinning from the irony.
Though it may have been the wine taking effect, John managed to smile with her. He realized he hadn’t been this calm since before the journey began. He kept the winesack for another few sips. “What about you?” he asked Hudson. “Care to share another of Hudson Blackwood’s tales of mischief?”
“Not really,” the thief answered. “They’re all about the same.”
“Well who’s the one shying away now?” John teased him. It was then that he realized the wine was most definitely taking effect.
“Have you ever been in love?” Syrena asked somewhat suddenly, and for the first time since meeting him, Hudson did something rather odd… He hesitated.
“I, uh… No… No, I can’t say I have…”
He snatched the winesack from John’s hands and took another gulp. A large one.
“Came close to it once,” he went on, wiping his lips with his sleeve. “She was a beautiful woman. Daring and mischievous, too. And she made the best damn meat pies in all of Merrymont. Normally, I don’t pay anyone much mind. If I get an urge, I find someone who has the same urge and we shag. Simple as that, no complications. But this woman was different. I was more… invested in her. Then, one frosty winter’s night when we were lying there in her bed, I realized the sensation in my chest was still there even after we had finished. I told myself it was the wine, but as good a liar as I am, I couldn’t deny to myself that I just might be falling for this woman…”
John and Syrena remained silent, pondering on the idea of Hudson Blackwood romancing a woman. It was quite an image. And suddenly John felt empty of any resentment, realizing the thief had a human side after all.
“Anyway, I was gone before I got a chance to tell her anything,” Hudson sighed.<
br />
“Too embarrassed?”
“Not at all, mate… Actually, her husband walked in and all hell broke loose.”
The three of them shared a laughed. It felt good to remind themselves that they were human. For a moment they had entirely forgotten they were on a journey to steal back a princess. And John had even forgotten that, just a week prior, these two people he was laughing with were his enemies.
Because in that moment, none of it mattered…
He wasn’t John Huxley, the farmer. The other two were not Hudson the thief and Syrena the fire-conjuring witch. They were just three simple people having a conversation by the river.
It was quite a nice moment, while it lasted.
“If you’ll excuse me,” Hudson leapt suddenly to his feet.
“Where to?” John asked.
“Nature calls, mate.”
The thief walked off into the trees. And John leaned his head back against the stone, closed his eyes and took a breath, allowing for the warmth of the wine to consume him. “You know,” he said, “I think I’m starting to like him.”
Syrena smiled earnestly. “Me too,” she said, feeling somewhat shy about saying it out loud. She proceeded to dig through her rucksack for anything that wasn’t berries or wine.
John opened his eyes again and admired the beauty all around him. He felt at peace for a change, the afternoon breeze cool against their skins. The verdure of plant life and moss-covered wood radiated under the sunlight, what little could trickle through the roof of leaves. John now understood how a place like this could be home to a vast array of others just like Elbon was home to him.
Then, however, something caught his eye, something that broke his peace.
A familiar figure was approaching in the distance…
“Syrena?” he said, somewhat worried. “Do you see that…?”
She turned and saw the figure.
Too familiar, it looked, as if she had seen the same exact figure just days prior. It was the figure of a man with curly grey hair, and on his right shoulder was a brown gangly-tailed little beast.
Her eyes widened. Her shoulders tensed.
“Oh shit…”
* * *
Even from a half-mile away, Captain Malekai Pahrvus swore he could smell the awful odor coming from the Rogue Brotherhood camp. Anywhere they traveled, it seemed they couldn’t camp in one single place for too long without that damn smell coming back to haunt them. He had half a mind to order all of his men to hop into the Spindle River for a bath.
He walked, more exhausted than he had ever been. His band of raiders followed his lead, or rather what was left of them. A measly fifty men or so, that was all. A bloody disaster, it had been. Their first raid with him as captain and it was more chaotic than he’d hoped. So sure, he was, that they would take over the Wyrmwood camp. He was to face Sir Percyval Garroway himself and slice his throat. That was the plan.
It would have turned out fine, the captain thought. If it hadn’t been for those damn ogres…
The only good things they had gained from the raid were a few bags of gold and about a dozen horses. But it was nowhere near enough to make up for the loss of life. Malekai’s own horse had run off, and when the ogres arrived he’d mounted the first horse he could find. A beautiful white stallion, it was. Its seat was made of black leather and attached to it were several bags of coin and leather armor undergarments.
A knight’s horse, no doubt, Malekai thought.
Little did he know that it was Viktor Crowley’s horse he had stolen amidst the chaos.
The morning sun’s light was piercing his eye. He tried to squint, but it only sent a sting to the tender wound on his hollow eye socket. He could see the camp just ahead, the row of tents set up just the way they left them. There was a scoff just next to him, which he chose to ignore. He was far too infuriated to even talk.
“Damn it all to hells,” Borrys Belvaine said. “What now, cap’n? If we go after ‘em, w-”
“By the gods, shut the fuck up, Borrys…”
They reached the camp, each raider silently heading to their own tent to either rest or mourn or both. Malekai walked towards the captain’s tent, the only tent in the camp with the sign of the scorpion. Normally, it would bring a grin to the man’s face, that reminder of how far he’d come. At that moment, however, it enraged him.
The last time there was a defeat this bad, the Rogue Brotherhood had rebelled and chosen a new captain, and the prior captain had been killed in the dead of night. But Malekai refused to allow that to happen; he was to sleep that night with a blade under his pillow. He figured he could send word to one of the other Rogue Brotherhood clans in the southern Woodlands, a request for more men, in which he would avoid any ugly details. But there were only 5 clans, and he’d nearly wiped out one of them overnight with his poor leadership. Questions were bound to be asked, he knew.
He entered the tent, and immediately his eye moved towards the corner…
He saw nothing… Nothing but that pile of junk of his…
His eye then glanced all around, under his desk and his butchering table, in the corner near his bed, but still there was nothing, no sign of her…
He felt his heart start to race. His brows lowered. His teeth started to grind.
“Cap’n?!” Borrys peeked a head inside. “Th-They’re gone, sir! The slaves… they’ve escaped!”
“Get… out…”
Borrys noticed the empty tent, his eyes widening.
“Oh… I see… s-sorry, cap’n, I didn’t mean t-”
“GET OUT!!”
Borrys took a nervous step back, but he didn’t leave. He watched as the captain growled with rage and flipped his desk over, kicking and slamming and destroying anything and everything in front of him with his swinging blade. His chair broke into pieces, as well as his desk. The pile of junk in the corner became a pile of rubble.
Malekai then fell to his knees, shaking violently from his wrath. He breathed, slowly and heavily, welcoming the pounding in his chest like it gave him the vigor he needed. Too much had gone wrong. Far too much. Any further, and the man was surely to lose his mind.
Borrys Belvaine cleared his throat. “I-I’m sorry, cap’n… I’ll bet it was her… She must’ve freed ‘em. She’s the only one nervy enough to do it.”
The captain said nothing; his mind was preoccupied obsessing over the girl that had managed to slip from his grasp when no one else had before. This girl, Robyn Huxley, who had nothing but a bow and a quiver, not even a dagger.
Outsmarted by a farmgirl, he kept thinking, and his dry fists shook, reddening with fury. There was a long uncomfortable silence in the tent, as Malekai lifted himself to his feet, slowly and menacingly, his sole eye staring blankly into space, like a man who’s lost any heart he had left in him, what little of it there was.
“Tell them all to gather their tents and supplies,” he said at last. “We must prepare to march west.”
Borrys cleared his throat again. “West, cap’n?”
“Aye,” Malekai said. “We’ll make way to Grymsbi. There, we will recruit as many blades as we can and get our numbers back. Tell them we march at noon… And if anyone sees that little bitch… She’s mine.”
* * *
The grass was just as green. The dirt was just as thick and brown.
The birds sang just as harmoniously and the sun’s glow was just as splendidly lucid.
It was the smell that was awfully different… It smelled like death…
With every step that Robyn Huxley took, there was a shiver. With every breath, there was a scowl. Slowly, as she walked, the greenery of the Woodlands became stained with red. And when she walked around a pile of rubble that may have once been a cart, her tired feet froze where they stood. Her muscles went numb suddenly and her knees were aching, shivering, struggling to keep her balanced. For a moment she doubted her eyes; she figured she had to be imagining things.
By the gods… Is it real?
“What on earth happened here?”
“The Brotherhood happened,” Nyx replied, his fox whiskers twitching as his nose examined the air. “This was a Halghardian troop’s camp. See the banners?”
“They’re… madmen.”
“No, Lady Robyn. They’re just men…”
Anywhere she turned, there was a corpse. They were scattered throughout the ruined field, stiff and mangled and unmoving. Her stomach began to turn and as much as she tried to breathe through her mouth, the foul smell managed to sneak into her nostrils.
Nyx’s nose suddenly latched onto a peculiar scent and he turned to follow it, walking carefully through the field, hopping over puddles of mud and chopped limbs; his orange tail seemed to drag behind, as if he still wasn’t used to it. After the sickness settled down a bit, Robyn tried to adjust her sight so as to purposely blur every face in the field.
Breathe, Robyn, she told herself. They can’t hurt you…
She couldn’t possibly imagine a more horrifying sight. Bodies were stacked against other bodies, some bent and broken beyond recognition. It was a sight Robyn was unused to and would only ever see in her darkest nightmares. However intriguing life outside of Elbon may have seemed to her before, if this was the reality of it, she wanted no part of it, not anymore. Her frightened eyes followed Nyx, as the fox brushed past a body, a familiar bald man dressed in red leathers, except now his throat had been slit.
“Looks like the Brotherhood lost a good deal of their own,” Nyx said.
Robyn felt her heart race. Malekai? Borrys?
She immediately searched for any signs of them. The beaded black dreads on Malekai’s head, his red captain’s coat, the black rag he wore as an eyepatch… And Borrys’s lanky figure, his thinning chestnut hair, his red vest and old patchy trousers…
But there was nothing. Red raiders, there were many.
Malekai and Borrys, however, were nowhere to be found.
Damn it all to hells…