North by Northwest (storyline)/Chapter 2 (vignette)

Rheshay

“Keeper o’ the Ember Vale…” A voice crackled like grinding bones as it mocked from deep within the shadows.

She could never forget that voice, or that face, or that stench. But it wasn’t just the blood of their enemies that he was bathed in. Now she could smell her own. A people she vowed to protect against all odds and all threats. A people she fought and defended. A people she would die for. Soon she might just do that.

“Have ye nothin’ ta say?” Tyeid folded out of the shadows as if detaching from the darkness. His eyes were like sunken pools of a starless night, partially concealed by matted locks of reddish-brown hair. Ashen bone studs rose with his eyebrows when he spoke, and one clanked against his sharpened teeth when he grinned.

He grinned a lot.

She hated that and hated him.

Tyeid thumbed at the nightshade purple eyeball dangling from a cord around his neck. Twice he pulled it up to his mouth, licking it and smiling wide as he paced before her cell. Cage to cage to cage. That had been her life most often these days. But she cared little for her own imprisonment, so long as her people were free. Currently, that was not the case. Some were lost to the Hills of Koar, some entombed in Arachne’s embrace, while others hung in the balance.

“Keeper…” he laughed again. His dark eyes sparkled in that moment, so full of himself, so enraptured in delight. “There is still a place for ye. Take the blood. The shield is nae how we survive. We are ta be the spear.”

She would not answer him again. Her mind had not changed. The warchief would come for her. Hagga’s blood or not, his mind and heart were true for their people. She would wait, and knew that on that day, if Koar should have it, she would bite that grin off her enemy’s face and feed it to him.

A shuffling came from the shadows behind Tyeid. Figures approached, swathed in red robes, with their hooded cowl bathing their faces in darkness save for the glistening sheen of their eight ruby eyes. Shambling in chains behind them came several reivers, some warriors still bearing fresh wounds and some children with wide eyes trailing them.

Tyeid almost squealed when he turned around, slowly circling each prisoner as he inspected their faces, arms, and hands. He pointed to half of them, then motioned to the right, and they were escorted away. Those that remained, he motioned to the left, and they were dragged off.

“What is ta the left?” Rheshay finally spoke from the solitude of her cell.

“Oh! She speaks finally.” Tyeid grinned, his dark tongue flicking across the bone stud of his lip.

“What is ta the left?” she asked again, foolishly. She knew the answer.

“Dinner.”

Enisius

“Is this it?” The man’s voice cracked with age.

The wizard blinked in response. It was still never enough, it seemed.

“I have a collection a hundred mages would salivate over.” Enisius tried to foolishly reason with his father.

“The room is small, is all I’m saying.” Ferwin strolled along a wall, lifting a few trinkets off a shelf, turning them around as he surveyed them and put them back down. Immediately Enisius flowed to the shelf, rearranging every item his father had touched. Every single one.

“Little dusty in here too, don’t you think?”

“Dusty?” He looked around, squinting, inspecting, eyeballing for any speck of dust. Not a single one.

“It’s not like home, is all I’m saying.”

“This is home now.”

“That’s what your mother and brother keep saying. Just doesn’t feel like it, you know?”

“Do you want to go back?”

“That ain’t what I’m saying. You’re not listening boy. You read so much, you think so much, sometimes that’s a bad thing.”

“I do not understand.”

He truly did not.

“It’s okay, your brother gets it. Which is good. At least one of you do.”

“Can I help you?” He straightened more of his belongings. Dusted off a few. But they were already clean.

“How’s that reiver bolt coming along?”

That was not what it was called.

“Still storming the castle soon?”

He wasn’t literally, no.

“That lady in the forest sure is creepy.”

“You would need to speak to Elidal about that.”

“Ain’t my business, she just feels odd, is all I’m saying.”

“Can I help you?” He fought hard to hide his agitation. He was unsuccessful.

“Don’t get worked up boy, I just came to visit, and maybe give you some advice. This isn’t like back home. You mess up there, we eat less for a while, but we remake our profits in time. You mess up here, people die. We can’t remake people.”

That was not true. “My team and I have processed over one thousand and seven calc….”

Ferwin laughed. He shook his head. “Boy, there’s always going to be surprises in life. Hell, you were one yourself.”

“We were?”

“Not what I said.” Ferwin chuckled, “But you have to be ready. There’s isn’t a book on everything.”

Also, not true, but he let it go.

His father walked to the door and turned back. He touched his face. It felt odd, his father’s skin on his, his eyes upon him. It was as if Ferwin saw someone else and wished for someone else.

That he knew, was true.

“This could be a good thing, for your brother, for your mother. This could be home. It ain’t yet, but it could be. Don’t mess it up, is all I’m saying.” With that parting wisdom, his father left the room.

At once, Enisius rushed back to the shelf. Then the desk. Then the chairs. He dusted every spotless item in the room until night fell beyond the windows.

Haidan

His blood would deliver a people to freedom.

That’s what he was told. That’s what the heavens depicted in the blood of the intestines smeared upon the ground. That’s what was proclaimed from the mouth of a serpent, no, a spider. He was declared a savior for his brethren, the heir of a warrior and witch, one who would claim the mantle of warchief and define a new future for the reivers.

Now he was none of those things. But oh, there was blood.

A trail of it as he stumbled more than walked through the forest. It had been hours, perhaps days since the battle. Since the betrayal. It wasn’t even ironic. Arachne was known for such, why expect anything less from her servant. He still felt feverish. The sounds of the woods grew more and more distorted with each passing moment. Every time he blinked; new tears filled his eyes. Every time he swallowed; more blood filled his throat.

A lesser man would have succumbed to his wounds, or even the weakness of surrender. He was content to die, as all true warriors and leaders would one day, but he would not accept it on that day. He was blind to the web of his true enemy all around him, but he refused to let the spider prevail.

He slumped against a tree to catch his breath, to steady his thoughts and feet. From the forest he heard a snap. Faint as it was, it was still nearby. Haidan held up his hatchet, the handle almost slipping from his blood slicked grip. Metal, fist or teeth, he would go out fighting.

Her eyes were the first thing he noticed. Dark, vacant, but enthralling. She reminded him of a ghost, a great specter of the woods with skin paler than he had ever laid eyes upon. Pointed ears, he knew her to be an elf. What kind he could not tell, nor did he care too. But the lattice work of black veins along her brow, it took him back. He thought for sure an agent of Tyeid’s stood before him. His fingers clenched and he prepared to strike.

“I do not belong to any of your enemies.” The woman spoke, her voice quiet and serene like the calm of a storm. “But you know this, you see this and feel this. Because you are still a great man and a leader of a great people.”

It was seconds before he noticed his axe had even fallen. Its bloodstained shaft resting in the foliage at his feet. He grew weak in his legs, fighting back a bout of dizziness. In his vulnerability, the elven woman closed the distance between them. Her hand was already to his chest, palm against his exposed skin.

“Let me mend you, let me guide you. Your destiny is not written in blood, but in stars.”

Her voice trailed as he watched the ground rise up to meet him, as he landed with a thud, his eyes drawn to the scarlet smears along his weapon before darkness set in around him.

Sablo

He would never get used to the smell of canvas.

Or the enclosing walls around him.

Some prisons are cold and metal and barren. Others have walls of cloth, and wooden map markers, and scroll tubes and muffled voices beyond. He still itched for the wild lands, where no rampart touched the sky for thousands of miles and where no whimpering children disguised as men would balk at the truths of war and of survival. The world grew and flourished from the blood of enemies. Empires crumbled and monstrous hordes smashed to dirt. There was always someone new to feed the soil, a barrier to civilization.

But before every expansion came men like him. Pioneers, if he dared to call himself that. Which he did not. No wall can rise in a land littered with danger and debris. No farmer will plant without a field prepared for seed. But the lands of men and masked monsters do not celebrate those that go before. They do not sing ballads of those who must put scythe to sheaf, or sword to bone. They want only to pretend that monsters do not exist, and that man dwells in unclaimed lands, unblemished and set aside for them.

But before peace, there is always horror. Before peace, there is always conflict. Words may placate the masses, and weave a tapestry of illusions, but they do not instill strength and they do not keep enemies at bay. It is through fear, and it is through might, that true order is established and maintained. It is not earned by nobles or councilors, but by warriors, by those who dangerously risk their own humanity for the sake of it in others.

He is a monster. He knows every last action he has taken in his still relatively young life. He may not recall all the faces, as such repeated onslaught blurs even time, but he never stirs in the night. Not since before coming here. Now each sleep lessens and shrinks. His mind is not fed with the glory of battle, the thrill of victory or the collapse of the enemy. Instead, he sees the books they thrust upon him. Lesson after lesson. Learn their code, honor, chivalry, mercy. Learn their people, soften the truth, speak to hearts, nod and grin.

But they want his claws. He just can’t sharpen them. They want his ferocity, but they won’t remove the chain. They want to mold him as if he is clay, but he is in fact stone. Something that is lost on all of them. Well, most of them.

The flap of the pavilion lifted. He smelled her before he saw her. Lavender this time, but it was still not strong enough to hide the scent of the earth. The feral aroma of a time before, when metal won the day, not words. Her gold-haloed green eyes regarded him as he stood to meet her. Her hair fell down her shoulders like spiraled rays of sunlight. He felt his throat tighten, but he matched her gaze and nodded.

A tome in one hand, an empty glass in another, Aronia smiled as light from the brazier flickered across her face. “Hello Commander. Shall we?”

Sablo Marsh only grinned.

Elidal

Fireleaf and faewood.

The arrows were sharpened with care and were only the latest addition to come to the camp, to help support its defenders and people. Donation bins burst at the edges. Several packages of knitted clothing still remained, which would only prove more valuable as summer gave to fall and then winter. The camp never rested it seemed. Not anymore. It had grown over the last year, with palisade walls to enclose their families, and tall towers to alert them to the danger beyond.

Smoke curled up from firepits and he could not walk several feet without his senses ignited with the mouth-watering scent of seared boar. Sunup and sundown, axes dulled against the great modwirs that brushed the sky. The ring of a blacksmith’s hammer on metal was almost endless and no spot in the camp was ever far from the glow of a weathered forge. Knights came and went, wearing both a bracer with a silver gryphon and a polite, welcoming grin. His men had spent days and weeks following their command, trained to fight, trained to strike, trained to think.

Sometimes it did not feel like his men. Or any of them. Sometimes he drifted about the grounds like a specter, observing all around him but the world would not bend to his presence. Many of the settlers had found their new life, and their new home. Once where they had fallen at his feet begging for help, they now stood beyond his shadow, risen to a status of preservation and purpose.

That is all he had wanted, after all. A shepherd does not walk for his sheep. He does not graze for their nourishment. Only they can do that for themselves. But he was lying if he said he did not miss it at times. Settling a squabble between teamsters. Leveraging coin to repaint a broken wagon. Helping a young boy acquire tomes of lore and heraldry. Did the comfort of small problems make him a small man?

The future weighed heavily on him. The decisions he would soon be faced with were much larger than the scope of angry winemakers or befuddled fishermen. Savages and spiders across the river. Washed up krolvin from a shattered land upon their shores. A dark castle brimming with evil and dread. A logic defying mountain with the potential for catastrophe and a mind-warping boy hidden within it. Those were his new problems, whether he liked it or not.

He walked the camp for a few more minutes, primarily undisturbed. A wave here, a nod there. While every life encircled his, it did not engulf it. He inhaled, taking in the mixture of oil, and meat, and sweat and life. He would miss all of it. Because he knew the moment was fleeting. The walls would come down, the towers broken apart. Every tent, every cooking pit would vanish.

The future would not look like that. It would be trails and cobbled roads. High walls, gatehouses, and towers of stone. It would be ballrooms, courtyards, dignitaries, and endless posturing. Dinnerware, linens, imperial decrees, and tournaments. Heavy perfumes, heavy men, boisterous egos, and treacherous resistance. He was just a simple boy from the plush Riverwood, where comfort came in the form of a hunter’s bow and Aronia’s smile. Not a day passed that he did not wonder if his heart and his shoulders could carry the burden of Darkstone.

He remembered then his mother’s wizened words. “To care, is to reign true. To feel, is to reign long.” If the weight of his role and his people did not press upon him so hard, then perhaps he would not be truly fit for the job at hand. But with each scar, he wore it with them. With each death, he cried beside them. For each name they would never forget, he too would carve into his mind. The way forward was not clear, and the path was littered with obstacle after obstacle. But with those few he trusted still around him, his circle of reliance endured, and he had little doubt he could succeed and bear the torch forward.

Thadston

His steel eyes matched the storm above.

He had already said his farewell the night before. She had shared with him her trials, and he almost shared all of his with her. But she would never be allowed behind both walls, it was a miracle she had crept behind the first. Only one woman had stepped beyond both, and she was violently ripped from the world.

So, when the militia arrived for Casiphia, he did not protest, or shout in defiance. He did not kiss her, or squeeze her, or even reassure her. He wasn’t going to make any promises he could not guarantee. She had chosen her path, time and again, and he had sworn to keep her alive, but his duty had ended there. When she looked back at him, she mouthed something. No one heard it, no one saw it, but he had a good idea of what she said. He nodded in return, and she smirked. She knew it was all she would get in that moment.

He watched the faces of the young guards escort her away. He didn’t recognize a single one of them. Had he been here that long? A generational cycle of militia spanned across his time within Wehnimer’s Landing? He felt older than he ever had in that moment. But the pain in his heart and head was still dim in comparison to the raw wounds along his arms. If he could call them that. The healing had been slow, and the more he moved the more the wounds ripped back open, leaving his flesh gnarled and bloody.

Rest, the healers kept telling him. Herbs, balms, ointments, they applied it all. Even magic, but his recovery was slow. He bit his lip to fight wincing as he moved back to his home. A half-eaten meal for two still cooled on the table inside. He went to sit just as a knock came at the door. Now he protested, both in voice and the creaking of his bones.

A town hall clerk in crisp livery waited outside. He snapped to attention, awkwardly saluted which was not proper formality, and handed the man a weathered parchment sealed with the wax crest of a blue phoenix. He looked down at his sore and mutilated hands. “Read it for me.” He almost snarled.

The clerk broke the seal, cleared his throat and upon eyeing the document said nothing. He instead turned the parchment around to show the words.

Thadston sighed and muttered, “Damnit.”

“Come in and close the door.”