Eldest

by Christopher Paolini

  Gertrude stood forth and recited the men’s names: “Parr, Wyglif, Ged, Bardrick, Farold, Hale, Garner, Kelby, Melkolf, and Albem.” She placed black pebbles over their eyes, then raised her arms, lifted her face to the sky, and began the quavering death lay. Tears seeped from the corners of her closed eyes as her voice rose and fell with the immemorial phrases, sighing and moaning with the village’s sorrow. She sang of the earth and the night and of humanity’s ageless sorrow from which none escape.

  After the last mournful note faded into silence, family members praised the feats and traits of those they had lost. Then the bodies were buried.

  As Roran listened, his gaze lit upon the anonymous mound where the three soldiers had been interred. One killed by Nolfavrell, and two by me. He could still feel the visceral shock of muscle and bone giving…crunching…pulping under his hammer. His bile rose and he had to struggle not to be sick in full view of the village. I am the one who destroyed them. Roran had never expected or wanted to kill, and yet he had taken more lives than anyone else in Carvahall. It felt as if his brow was marked with blood.

  He left as soon as possible—not even stopping to speak with Katrina—and climbed to a point where he could survey Carvahall and consider how best to protect it. Unfortunately, the houses were too far apart to form a defensive perimeter by just fortifying the spaces between buildings. Nor did Roran think it would be a good idea to have soldiers fighting up against the walls of people’s houses and trampling their gardens. The Anora River guards our western flank, he thought, but as for the rest of Carvahall, we couldn’t even keep a child out of it…. What can we build in a few hours that will be a strong enough barrier?

  He jogged into the middle of the village and shouted, “I need everyone who is free to help cut down trees!” After a minute, men began to trickle out of the houses and through the streets. “Come on, more! We all have to help!” Roran waited as the group around him continued to grow.

  One of Loring’s sons, Darmmen, shouldered to his side. “What’s your plan?”

  Roran raised his voice so they could all hear. “We need a wall around Carvahall; the thicker the better. I figure if we get some big trees, lay them on their sides, and sharpen the branches, the Ra’zac will have a pretty hard time getting over them.”

  “How many trees do you think it’ll take?” asked Orval.

  Roran hesitated, trying to gauge Carvahall’s circumference. “At least fifty. Maybe sixty to do it properly.” The men swore and began to argue. “Wait!” Roran counted the number of people in the crowd. He arrived at forty-eight. “If you each fell a tree in the next hour, we’ll be almost done. Can you do that?”

  “What do you take us for?” retorted Orval. “The last time I took an hour on a tree, I was ten!”

  Darmmen spoke up: “What about brambles? We could drape them over the trees. I don’t know anyone who can climb through a knot of thorny vines.”

  Roran grinned. “That’s a great idea. Also, those of you with sons, have them harness your horses so we can drag the trees back.” The men agreed and scattered through Carvahall to gather axes and saws for the job. Roran stopped Darmmen and said, “Make sure that the trees have branches all along the trunk or else they won’t work.”

  “Where will you be?” asked Darmmen.

  “Working on another line of defense.” Roran left him then and ran to Quimby’s house, where he found Birgit busy boarding up the windows.

  “Yes?” she said, looking at him.

  He quickly explained his plan with the trees. “I want to dig a trench inside the ring of trees, to slow down anyone who gets through. We could even put pointed stakes in the bottom of it and—”

  “What is your point, Roran?”

  “I’d like you to organize every woman and child, and everyone else you can, to dig. It’s too much for me to handle by myself, and we don’t have long….” Roran looked her straight in the eyes. “Please.”

  Birgit frowned. “Why ask me?”

  “Because, like me, you hate the Ra’zac, and I know you will do everything possible to stop them.”

  “Aye,” whispered Birgit, then clapped her hands briskly. “Very well, as you wish. But I will never forget, Roran Garrowsson, that it was you and your family who brought about my husband’s doom.” She strode away before Roran could respond.

  He accepted her animosity with equanimity; it was to be expected, considering her loss. He was only lucky she had not started a blood feud. Then he shook himself and ran to where the main road entered Carvahall. It was the weakest spot in the village and had to be doubly protected. The Ra’zac can’t be allowed to just blast their way in again.

  Roran recruited Baldor, and together they began excavating a ditch across the road. “I’ll have to go soon,” warned Baldor between strokes of his pickax. “Dad needs me in the forge.”

  Roran grunted an acknowledgment without looking up. As he worked, his mind once again filled with memories of the soldiers: how they had looked as he struck them, and the feeling, the horrible feeling of smashing a body as if it were a rotten stump. He paused, nauseated, and noted the commotion throughout Carvahall as people readied themselves for the next assault.

  After Baldor left, Roran completed the thigh-deep ditch himself, then went to Fisk’s workshop. With the carpenter’s permission, he had five logs from the stockpile of seasoned wood pulled by horses back to the main road. There Roran tipped the logs on end into the trench so that they formed an impenetrable barrier into Carvahall.

  As he tamped down the earth around the logs, Darmmen trotted up. “We got the trees. They’re just being put into place now.” Roran accompanied him to Carvahall’s northern edge, where twelve men wrestled four lush green pines into alignment while a team of draft horses under the whip of a young boy returned to the foothills. “Most of us are helping to retrieve the trees. The others got inspired; they seemed determined to chop down the rest of the forest when I left.”

  “Good, we can use the extra timber.”

  Darmmen pointed to a pile of dense brambles that sat on the edge of Kiselt’s fields. “I cut those along the Anora. Use them however you want. I’m going to find more.”

  Roran clapped him on the arm, then turned toward the eastern side of Carvahall, where a long, curved line of women, children, and men labored in the dirt. He went to them and found Birgit issuing orders like a general and distributing water among the diggers. The trench was already five feet wide and two feet deep. When Birgit paused for breath, he said, “I’m impressed.”

  She brushed back a lock of hair without looking at him. “We plowed the ground to begin with. It made things easier.”

  “Do you have a shovel I can use?” he asked. Birgit pointed to a mound of tools at the other end of the trench. As Roran walked toward it, he spied the copper gleam of Katrina’s hair in the midst of the bobbing backs. Beside her, Sloan hacked at the soft loam with a furious, obsessive energy, as if he were attempting to tear open the earth’s skin, to peel back its clay hide and expose the muscle beneath. His eyes were wild, and his teeth were bared in a knotted grimace, despite the flecks of dirt and filth that spotted his lips.

  Roran shuddered at Sloan’s expression and hurried past, averting his face so as to avoid meeting his bloodshot gaze. He grabbed a shovel and immediately plunged it into the soil, doing his best to forget his worries in the heat of physical exertion.

  The day progressed in a continuous rush of activity, without breaks for meals or rest. The trench grew longer and deeper, until it cupped two-thirds of the village and reached the banks of the Anora River. All the loose dirt was piled on the inside edge of the trench in an attempt to prevent anyone from jumping over it…and to make it difficult to climb out.

  The wall of trees was finished in early afternoon. Roran stopped digging then to help sharpen the innumerable branches—which were overlapped and interlocked as much as possible—and affix the nets of brambles. Occasionally, they had to pull out a tree so farmers like Ivor co
uld drive their livestock into the safety of Carvahall.

  By evening the fortifications were stronger and more extensive than Roran had dared hope, though they still required several more hours of work to complete to his satisfaction.

  He sat on the ground, gnawing a hunk of sourdough bread and staring at the stars through a haze of exhaustion. A hand dropped on his shoulder, and he looked up to see Albriech. “Here.” Albriech extended a rough shield—made of sawed boards pegged together—and a six-foot-long spear. Roran accepted them gratefully, then Albriech proceeded onward, distributing spears and shields to whomever he encountered.

  Roran dragged himself upright, got his hammer from Horst’s house, and thus armed, went to the entrance to the main road, where Baldor and two others kept watch. “Wake me when you need to rest,” Roran said, then lay on the soft grass underneath the eaves of a nearby house. He arranged his weapons so he could find them in the dark and closed his eyes in eager anticipation.

  “Roran.”

  The whisper came from by his right ear. “Katrina?” He struggled into a sitting position, blinking as she unshuttered a lantern so a key of light struck his thigh. “What are you doing here?”

  “I wanted to see you.” Her eyes, large and mysterious against her pale face, pooled with the night’s shadows. She took his arm and led him to a deserted porch far out of earshot of Baldor and the other guards. There she placed her hands on his cheeks and softly kissed him, but he was too tired and troubled to respond to her affection. She drew away and studied him. “What is wrong, Roran?”

  A bark of humorless laughter escaped him. “What’s wrong? The world is wrong; it’s as askew as a picture frame knocked on its side.” He jammed his fist against his gut. “And I am wrong. Every time I allow myself to relax, I see the soldiers bleeding under my hammer. Men I killed, Katrina. And their eyes…their eyes! They knew they were about to die and that they could do nothing about it.” He trembled in the darkness. “They knew…I knew…and I still had to do it. It couldn’t—” Words failed him as he felt hot tears roll down his cheeks.

  Katrina cradled his head as Roran cried from the shock of the past few days. He wept for Garrow and Eragon; he wept for Parr, Quimby, and the other dead; he wept for himself; and he wept for the fate of Carvahall. He sobbed until his emotions ebbed and left him as dry and hollow as an old barley husk.

  Forcing himself to take a long breath, Roran looked at Katrina and noticed her own tears. He brushed them away with his thumb, like diamonds in the night. “Katrina…my love.” He said it again, tasting the words: “My love. I have naught to give you but my love. Still…I must ask. Will you marry me?”

  In the dim lantern light, he saw pure joy and wonder leap across her face. Then she hesitated and troubled doubt appeared. It was wrong for him to ask, or for her to accept, without Sloan’s permission. But Roran no longer cared; he had to know now if he and Katrina would spend their lives together.

  Then, softly: “Yes, Roran, I will.”

  UNDER A DARKLING SKY

  That night it rained.

  Layer upon layer of pregnant clouds blanketed Palancar Valley, clinging to the mountains with tenacious arms and filling the air with heavy, cold mist. From inside, Roran watched as cords of gray water pelted the trees with their frothing leaves, muddied the trench around Carvahall, and scrabbled with blunt fingers against the thatched roofs and eaves as the clouds disgorged their load. Everything was streaked, blurred, and hidden behind the torrent’s inexorable streamers.

  By midmorning the storm had abated, although a continuous drizzle still percolated through the mist. It quickly soaked Roran’s hair and clothes when he took his watch at the barricade to the main road. He squatted by the upright logs, shook his cloak, then pulled the hood farther over his face and tried to ignore the cold.

  Despite the weather, Roran soared and exulted with his joy at Katrina’s acceptance. They were engaged! In his mind, it was as if a missing piece of the world had dropped into place, as if he had been granted the confidence of an invulnerable warrior. What did the soldiers matter, or the Ra’zac, or the Empire itself, before love such as theirs? They were nothing but tinder to the blaze.

  For all his new bliss, however, his mind was entirely focused on what had become the most important conundrum of his existence: how to assure that Katrina would survive Galbatorix’s wrath. He had thought of nothing else since waking. The best thing would be for Katrina to go to Cawley’s, he decided, staring down the hazy road, but she would never agree to leave…unless Sloan told her to. I might be able to convince him; I’m sure he wants her out of danger as much as I do.

  As he considered ways to approach the butcher, the clouds thickened again and the rain renewed its assault on the village, arching down in stinging waves. Around Roran, the puddles jumped to life as pellets of water drummed their surfaces, bouncing back up like startled grasshoppers.

  When Roran grew hungry, he passed his watch to Larne—Loring’s youngest son—and went to find lunch, darting from the shelter of one eave to another. As he rounded a corner, he was surprised to see Albriech on the house’s porch, arguing violently with a group of men.

  Ridley shouted, “…you’re blind—follow the cottonwoods and they’ll never see! You took the addle-brain’s route.”

  “Try it if you want,” retorted Albriech.

  “I will!”

  “Then you can tell me how you like the taste of arrows.”

  “Maybe,” said Thane, “we aren’t as clubfooted as you are.”

  Albriech turned on him with a snarl. “Your words are as thick as your wits. I’m not stupid enough to risk my family on the cover of a few leaves that I’ve never seen before.” Thane’s eyes bulged and his face turned a deep mottled crimson. “What?” taunted Albriech. “Have you no tongue?”

  Thane roared and struck Albriech on the cheek with his fist. Albriech laughed. “Your arm is as weak as a woman’s.” Then he grabbed Thane’s shoulder and threw him off the porch and into the mud, where he lay on his side, stunned.

  Holding his spear like a staff, Roran jumped beside Albriech, preventing Ridley and the others from laying hands on him. “No more,” growled Roran, furious. “We have other enemies. An assembly can be called and arbitrators will decide whether compensation is due to either Albriech or Thane. But until then, we can’t fight ourselves.”

  “Easy for you to say,” spat Ridley. “You have no wife or children.” Then he helped Thane to his feet and departed with the group of men.

  Roran stared hard at Albriech and the purple bruise that was spreading beneath his right eye. “What started it?” he asked.

  “I—” Albriech stopped with a grimace and felt his jaw. “I went scouting with Darmmen. The Ra’zac have posted soldiers on several hills. They can see across the Anora and up and down the valley. One or two of us might, might, be able to creep past them without notice, but we’ll never get the children to Cawley without killing the soldiers, and then we might as well tell the Ra’zac where we’re going.”

  Dread clutched at Roran, flooding like poison through his heart and veins. What can I do? Sick with a sense of impending doom, he put an arm around Albriech’s shoulders. “Come on; Gertrude should have a look at you.”

  “No,” said Albriech, shrugging him off. “She has more pressing cases than me.” He took a preparatory breath—as if he were about to dive into a lake—and lumbered off through the downpour in the direction of the forge.

  Roran watched him go, then shook his head and went inside. He found Elain sitting on the floor with a row of children, sharpening a pile of spearheads with files and whetstones. Roran gestured to Elain. Once they were in another room, he told her what had just occurred.

  Elain swore harshly—startling him, for he had never heard her use such language—then asked, “Is there cause for Thane to declare a feud?”

  “Possibly,” admitted Roran. “They both insulted each other, but Albriech’s oaths were the strongest…. However, Thane
did strike first. You could declare a feud yourself.”

  “Nonsense,” asserted Elain, wrapping a shawl around her shoulders. “This is a dispute for arbitrators to resolve. If we must pay a fine, so be it, as long as bloodshed is avoided.” She headed out the front door, a finished spear in hand.

  Troubled, Roran located bread and meat in the kitchen, then helped the children sharpen spearheads. Once Felda, one of the mothers, arrived, Roran left the children in her care and slogged back through Carvahall to the main road.

  As he squatted in the mud, a shaft of sunlight burst underneath the clouds and illuminated the folds of rain so each drop flashed with crystalline fire. Roran stared, awestruck, ignoring the water streaming down his face. The rift in the clouds widened until a shelf of massive thunderheads hung over the western three-quarters of Palancar Valley, facing a strip of pure blue sky. Because of the billowy roof above and the angle of the sun, the rain-drenched landscape was lit brilliantly on one side and painted with rich shadows on the other, giving the fields, bushes, trees, river, and mountains the most extraordinary colors. It was as if the entire world had been transformed into a sculpture of burnished metal.

  Just then, movement caught Roran’s eye, and he looked down to see a soldier standing on the road, his mail shining like ice. The man gaped with amazement at Carvahall’s new fortifications, then turned and fled back into the golden mist.

  “Soldiers!” shouted Roran, jolting to his feet. He wished that he had his bow, but he had left it inside to protect it from the elements. His only comfort was that the soldiers would have an even harder time keeping their weapons dry.

  Men and women ran from their houses, gathered along the trench, and peered out through the wall of overlapping pines. The long branches wept beads of moisture, translucent cabochons that reflected the rows of anxious eyes.