by Alex Aguilar
Even Cedric felt out of place as he rode near the middle of the formation.
“They’re supposed to be on our side, are they?” the young squire asked nervously. He was riding next to Gwyn, as he had been for the past few days despite Thaddeus Rexx’s objections.
“Really makes ye think, don’t it?” Gwyn scoffed. “When ye feel safer in the bleedin’ Woodlands than out here… it’s how ye know the outside world is shit.”
Cedric gulped nervously. Thaddeus Rexx, who was riding just a few strides behind, must’ve noticed, for it wasn’t long before he remarked. “Settle down, lad. We didn’t come all this way only to die in Halghard.” Cedric glanced back and nodded. And then he realized Gwyn was silently rolling her eyes.
They kept riding. The soldiers appeared to be closing in on them the further down they made it through the campgrounds. Sir Percyval arrived at the king’s tent and turned his horse halfway, glancing at his second-in-command Sir Antonn Guilara.
“Keep an eye on them, will you?”
Sir Antonn’s eyes widened. “Are you joking?”
“Just for a few moments,” Percyval said. “I must speak with our king alone.”
“Yes,” Antonn sighed. “And while you do that, who’s to stop them from butchering us all?”
Percyval leapt off his horse and shot his second-in-command a grin.
“I think you can handle them. They don’t call you Sir Antonn the Tenacious for nothing,” he said. “Besides, fret not, my friend. The gods are with us today.”
Sir Antonn scoffed. “Are they, now? ‘Cause I can’t see them.”
Percyval straightened himself up and cracked his neck. And then, after one last deep breath, he stepped towards the king’s tent.
“Percyval,” Viktor approached the man just in time. “Will you be all right?”
“He’s my brother,” Percyval said with a shoulder shrug. “How bad can it be?”
Fifteen minutes later, the king’s thundering voice was shouting something along the lines of “Are you out of your fucking mind?!”
The shout must have been heard for a mile. Sir Percyval had no other choice but to sit there and take in his brother’s wrath.
King Alistair Garroway was a tall hefty man in his late fifties with a wide face, ebony-colored skin darker than Percyval’s, and long grey dreads of hair that he kept tied behind his head. His meaty fists were shaking from the rage and as he spoke specks of spit managed to fly out and strike Percyval in the face.
“I only did as you instructed,” Percyval argued calmly.
“I instructed you to recruit able-bodied men! Not a pack of savages!” the king snatched the parchment from the table and threw it in Percyval’s direction. Percyval looked at the parchment as it floated gently down to the ground. The name of every human, elf, and gnome that had been recruited was scripted onto that parchment, and there were a few names that had been crossed off after the unprecedented attack.
“That’s an overstatement, brother,” Sir Percyval said, his voice still soft and composed. “If you just got to know one or two of them, you’d realiz-”
“Have you any idea what we’ve had to deal with in the last few weeks?!” Alistair paced around the war table and stared down at his brother. He was only slightly taller but certainly larger at the sides, as he always had been since they were children. At that moment, however, the king was not looking at Percyval like a brother, or a knight for that matter; he was speaking to him like a child.
“I’m terribly sorry, brother,” Percyval said.
“You’re sorry?!” Alistair shouted. “I lost five hundred men up north! Balthazar’s men threw their bodies into the Rift! I’ve had scouting parties go missing! I’ve had watchmen butchered in the dead of night! And where were you?! Wandering through the Woodlands with a bunch of rabbits?!”
“Hey!” Percyval raised his own voice in protest. “Those men out there hav-”
“They’re not men!”
“They’ve risked their lives to save mine! They marched all the way here to serve you, and this is how you greet them?!”
“You brought them here!” Alistair raised an angry finger at his brother’s chest. “I never asked you to bring them!”
“I only did what I felt was right, brother…”
“What you felt was right?!” Alistair’s owl-like eyes were growing broader by the second. “This is no time for politics, Percyval! We are at war! Have you any idea the loss of life that we’ve already endur-”
“Yes!” Percyval shouted. “Yes, I do! Which is why you need every soul that’s willing to fight by your side, human or not! What difference does it make?!”
“What difference?!” Alistair’s face began to swell with a shade of red. He took a moment to catch his breath and lower his voice.
Percyval knew to expect resistance. His only mistake, perhaps, was believing his brother’s conscience would allow him to see things differently. But it was of no use… From the beginning, the man knew what was at risk. The dread he felt in his chest was agonizing, and the idea of confronting his recruits and telling them it had all been a waste of time was unbearable. He did not have the heart to do it, certainly not after marching all this way.
When King Alistair finally spoke again, he sounded more exhausted than angry.
“I’m hanging by a thread here, Percyval,” he said. “The people of Halghard look to me for guidance. They call me their liberator, their true king… How do you think they’ll react when they see me advocating for rabb-”
Percyval shot him a glare, so sharp that Alistair did not finish his sentence.
“What I’m trying to say, brother,” the king rephrased himself. “Is that it makes no difference what you or I believe. It’s one thing to try and convince me, we are family. But the people…? They will never accept them. They would much rather join Balthazar Locke than to be allies with Woodland folk.”
Percyval took a seat again, looking quite exhausted himself. “What is it you’ve always told me?” he asked. “Nothing brings folks closer together than fighting a common enemy…”
“Yes. But in their eyes, the Woodland folk are the enemy.”
“Because no one has tried to show them otherwise!” Percyval argued. “If you led by example, you could make a difference! You coul-”
“We’ve no time for that, Percyval. We can’t abandon one battle to fight another,” Alistair rose to his feet again. “The people of Halghard have suffered enough. They need us! With every hour that Balthazar Locke sits on the throne, someone is dying of starvation.”
“And what of the hundreds that die in the Woodlands every day?” Percyval challenged him further. “Are their lives not worth saving, then?”
“That isn’t our fight!”
“Is it not?”
“They’re not our people, Percyval… Those soldiers out there risking their lives, they are our people. Their starving families are our people. You’d sooner die for a pack of savages rather than stand by your real brothers and sisters?”
There was a brief moment of silence. Percyval sat there with a stern face and a chest full of dread and defeat. He knew his brother wouldn’t see reason by talking politics. And so he tried a different approach.
“Do you remember what mother used to say?” he asked calmly, and he could almost see the displeasure in Alistair’s eyes.
“Of course I remember…”
But Percyval reminded him anyway. “We are all equal in the eyes of the gods,” he said. “Who are we to pass judgment on those who have never wronged us?”
Alistair sighed, slouching back into his chair while rubbing the side of his temples in a circle as if he was in pain. “I always knew it would come to this,” he said bleakly. “You know I loved mother just as much as you did, Percyval… But the woman was living a fantasy. She filled your head with all that nonsense, and look where it’s gotten us…”
Percyval felt his fist tighten almost involuntarily. For a moment he was afraid of what he
might do if his brother pressed him further.
“The real world isn’t a fairytale, brother,” said Alistair. “I cannot risk losing more than we’ve already lost. Not now… Not when we’ve come this far… I’m sorry.”
Percyval sighed, rising gently to his feet. He walked towards the entrance to the tent and took a gander outside, his mind racing with a million thoughts. He could see them all. His recruits had been secluded to the edge of the camp and were standing about, waiting for him, guarding each other’s backs like proper comrades, humans and nonhumans alike. He closed his eyes briefly.
What a fool I was, he told himself. To think it would be so simple…
He glanced back at his brother. By then, Alistair was already huddled over his map, plotting his next plan of attack and hardly paying him any more mind.
“What do I tell them?” asked Percyval.
Alistair didn’t even look up. All he did was shrug a shoulder.
“You brought them here. You can take them right back to where they came from.”
Percyval felt his gloom turn into rage within seconds. He stepped towards the war table once more. “Are you that heartless, brother?”
“This isn’t about what I feel.”
Percyval’s face tightened. “You’re the bloody king. Yet you’re still behaving like a knight.”
“Watch your mouth, brother…”
“These are people’s lives we’re talking about! They marched all this way to fight for you! To start a new life, a better one! And you would dare send them back to their deaths?!”
“Enough!” Alistair stood up.
But Percyval was not backing down. He stepped valiantly forward and addressed the king in the same form as he had been addressed. “You would turn your back on them all simply because it doesn’t benefit you to help them?! In that case, tell me, how are you any different than Balthazar Locke?”
Alistair was no longer shaking from the rage. The question had infuriated him to the point where his body would no longer move, only his lips. “One more word, Percyval,” he said, “And I will remove you from my council.”
“You don’t have to,” Percyval said. He then untied the green cape from his chest armor and removed the golden pin with his brother’s sigil from his chest. He threw them both on the nearest chair, glaring at his brother as he stepped towards the tent’s entrance.
“I remove myself from your council,” he said, and then made way for the outside.
“Percyval,” Alistair called for him, but the man did not turn back.
Percyval walked, as always, with his chin held up high. He had never been one to question his beliefs, as his mother had always taught him. The gods are with us, he told himself again, in an effort to lift his own spirits. So long as we serve them, the gods will never abandon us…
“Percyval!” he heard his brother shout.
But once again, the man did not look back.
“Goodbye, brother,” he said, just loud enough for the king to hear.
And so it was that, as fate would have it, this was to be the last time the Garroway brothers would ever speak to each other.
* * *
With the sunrise, much of the aura in the pixies’ lair lost its glimmer. In broad daylight, it looked like any other place in the Woodlands, green and fertile and astoundingly humid.
Still, when Syrena of Morganna awakened she found herself utterly in peace, a feeling that had been quite rare as of late. She was entirely nude underneath Hudson’s coat. It had a certain smell to it that she couldn’t quite grasp, like a blend of leather, sweat, and sweet liqueur.
She smiled. It may not have been the most pleasant smell, but it was his smell.
And rather than shy away, she pulled the coat up and nestled herself in it.
Next to her was Hudson, still lost in a deep sleep, just as bare and exposed as she was. As usual, her body naturally radiated heat and when she saw the cold bumps on his bare chest, she latched onto him to keep him warm. For the first time in a long, long time, the witch was happy.
To think that only weeks prior, Hudson Blackwood was a complete stranger, a mere story, a sketched portrait… It was strange, the way it all happened. Because in that moment, he was possibly the only person she fully trusted other than herself.
Even John Huxley, she couldn’t fully trust. After all, had it not been for his reckless whims, Hudson would never have been imprisoned in Val Havyn… Then again, Hudson wouldn’t have met Syrena either. The witch would have either died in the palace dungeons or hanged for her alleged ‘sins’. Remarkable, the way fate worked.
Hudson’s breathing began to deepen, as if he was having a very pleasant dream.
She looked up at him. So calm, he looked. So at peace.
How could such a conflicted man be branded a monster? She wondered. He was a murderer, that much she admitted. But so was she, and so were most people she’d ever met. It was simply the world she was born into. Carefully, she sat up and stretched her arms and back, trying not to disturb him. Gradually, however, his eyelids began to blink and his body began to turn, his mind slowly coming back to the world. He felt the heat of Syrena’s body against his. And when he finally recalled where he was, he smiled.
“Good morning,” Syrena spoke gently.
Hudson stretched himself, the wound on his shoulder nearly fully sealed and recuperated. “Better than good, darling,” he replied.
“Better, eh?” she said as she lay back down next to him.
“I’ve a tendency to awaken with plenty of regret and sorrow,” he remarked. “This is quite a lovely change.”
She felt the heat overfill her body, only this time she was much more in control of it. In the thirty years she’d been alive, she hadn’t felt so strong and able. She felt essentially unstoppable. And, of course, it didn’t hurt having the thief by her side, this simple man who looked at her as if she was a queen while the rest of the world labeled her a freak. It made her nervous and aroused all at once.
“Careful what you say, now,” she said with a grin.
“I never say anything I don’t mean,” he replied. “Which reminds me, I didn’t talk in my sleep again, did I?”
She chuckled. “Not that I remember. You did moan quite a bit, though.”
“I figured so. I dreamt I was in Roquefort, feasting on a plate of their famed smoked duck.”
“That sounds delightful.”
“We’ll go there someday,” he gave her a gentle kiss on the forehead.
“Will we now?”
“Someday.”
She couldn’t help but sigh somewhat hopelessly. “You’re a dreamer, I see,” she said. “Remember what happened the last time you set foot in a city?”
“Of course,” he said, and then looked down into her strikingly orange eyes. “It was the best decision I ever made.”
Her heart raced all of a sudden. Unable to withhold herself, she gave in to his flattery, grabbed him by the neck and kissed him. It felt just as it did the night before… It felt right.
Suddenly, they heard footsteps approaching, boots crunching against dry leaves. John Huxley looked tired and parched, his golden hair disordered and full of grease. His face and most of his clothes were riddled with specks of dirt and muck, suggesting he had passed out under a tree somewhere.
“H-Hello?” the farmer called out as he rubbed his eyes, his knees quivering weakly with every step. When he walked through the curtain of vines, however, he took one look at his companions and quailed all of a sudden. And when he saw the pile of clothes, he realized the thief and the witch were both nude under the black coat.
“Ohh dear…” he said, and then gazed embarrassingly up at the trees. “P-Pardon me… I’ll just…”
“Don’t look so bloody frightened, mate,” Hudson sat up, chuckling.
Syrena grinned, holding the coat over her chest and reaching for her clothes.
“I-I didn’t know that, uh…” John stammered. “That is, I-I didn’t hear anything,
I swear.”
“How could you have? Your snores were much louder than we were.”
“Leave him be,” Syrena placed a gentle hand on Hudson’s shoulder as he began to slide into his black trousers.
“Stop me when I lie,” the thief smirked. “For a moment, I thought it was a bloody ogre.”
John tried to chuckle, but he couldn’t hide his discomfort. He moved and stood behind the vines, turning his gaze into the distance, allowing them some privacy.
“Sleep well, farmer?” Hudson asked as he buttoned his shirt up.
John groaned and rubbed at his temples. “Me head’s killing me. Is it always like this?”
“The less you think of it, the less it hurts, I find,” Hudson chuckled. “Have I ever told you about the worst hangover I’ve ever had? I went drink for drink with an orc once. Massive fellow with a great scar across his chest.”
“N-No,” John kept gazing about embarrassingly. “No, I don’t believe you’ve told me.”
As the thief and the witch finished dressing themselves, the place became more and more illuminated by the second. It wasn’t the sun, however… The trees were abundant enough to shield them. It was a more eerie blue glow, and it was coming from the leaves above. Syrena was the first to notice, a strange movement in the corner of her eye, and instantly she felt vulnerable and exposed.
“Think we’ll make it to Halghard today?” John asked, oblivious to the eyes watching them.
“Don’t see why not,” Hudson replied. “So long as we limit our rest, we can m-”
“Hudson,” Syrena whispered anxiously.
The thief gave her a glance, and as if he could read the distress in her eyes, he felt a pinch in the back of his neck as if he was being watched. He followed her eyes and soon after that, John did the same.
A herd of pixies, silent and observant, had gathered in a swarm. And as the three misfits became captivated by their ghostly stares, more and more were flying out of the holes in the trees and crowded around the rest. Their entire façade may have been beautiful, but the look on their tiny gazes was not… They were eyeing the three travelers like a swarm of predators closing in on a prey.
“Um… What is happening?” John whispered.