Thunderwyrm V

‘The fact of the matter is, we could not have taken the Squalltoll Road. We’d be in the heart of the enemy by now had we done so. At least this way we have safety of my people nearby, and I doubt deeply that the Perytons would openly rebel against the royal family, especially the Squalls,’ Willaem told a passing Petty Lady, trying to offer something of assurance. The fact of the matter was that the Perytons would side with whomever they thought would win. And if they called their vassals’ banners to war, it would be a matter of pledge or family that fealty struggles to prioritise. Not to mention should he break his dues there was no way of organising anything – for though the troupe was passing through Cesternshire, he was on the northern fringe; the wrong fringe, and weeks’ worth of riding from his seat of power. No such assurance had any guarantee but hope. Perhaps that was all that was needed.

‘You lied to that Lady,’ Edicus said, waving his wrinkled arms at the southern Duke. ‘Do you Greeners always lie to ladies?’

‘Lord Whitewall,’ Fiara interjected, ‘do you always pick fights with your own allies?’

‘I pick fights that I know I can win. I know that because I’m right,’ he replied. He made sure his voice was softer when he spoke through the white whiskers of his beard to Fiara.

‘So you pick on the weak then? A little cravenly, no?’ Fiara rebutted. ‘I don’t want to quench your fire, Lord Whitewall, I only want to ensure we can build coordination. There’s no need to fight amongst ourselves here, when the enemy is looming at our heels. We’re near-horseless and without proper arms. Our only advantage is our minds and our unity, let’s not lose that now,’ she said proudly. Something like triumph stroked her words.

Whitewall stopped, placing a hand on her shoulder. Jaedd Summerose placed his hand to blade as fast as he saw the old Duke’s movement. ‘My Lady Squall, I owe nothing but the highest allegiance to your house. I always will, as my foremothers and forefathers did, just as your family has helped mine over our many Aeons of connection. But, I have seen a great deal many things more than the most of these women and men. I have called my vassals, and I have sworn my sword to you. But I will not be called coward. I will offer my advice, and if you are a good queen, as your father was a good king, you will use it. You already seem learned enough.’ He coughed into a whisper. ‘However, if you are to be a great queen, then you will consider it. Every word I say is a word worth hearing,’ Edicus finished. He dropped his hand, and joined the current of marching nobility once more, plodding as he would.

Fiara weighed on that advice as Jaedd watched. Such arrogance, she thought, but he’s right. For a great gift had been offered to Fiara then, and she knew it well: with her walked the knowledge of two hundred rulers, and their mistakes can be learnt from, and their advice be heeded. All her duty should ever be, is to act and to inspire.

‘Just because he can monologue, it makes him no less of a craven or a fool,’ Maerk whispered into her trance.

Jaedd Summerose released his hand from Lodestar’s hilt with a scoff. ‘Ah, Maerk Gaile, prospective Chiron. I must ask, are you aware of the whereabouts of our Pious Celestiam? I should much graciously wish to speak with him.’

Maerk twisted his face in thought and worry. ‘I’m afraid not. I don’t remember him ever coming out of Silversalt through the old servants’ way, nor in from the castle, now that you mention it. Do you suppose the Hedets have the doggedness to kill a Pious Celestiam?’

Jaedd gave an oddly happy laugh, ‘Saint De’elys the Second is probably the most manipulative man in all of Loullands. I’m telling you, as someone who has shared counsel of the Stone in the Blue Chamber with him for my years, if anyone can talk themselves out of death, it is that man. Though I wouldn’t put it past the Hedets. They were ruthless to no end. But for all we know, De’elys was on their side the entire time.’ He shrugged his shoulders and pushed flowing dark hair back as the afternoon sun beckoned a fair breeze through the verdant flats of the Greenway Road. ‘My thanks, anyway, Maerk Gaile.’

The procession had slipped out of the Seashell cliffs through the old servants’ tunnels and out onto lower Scarshire, crossing the Green-Grass Reservoir and past a fairly modern recreation of a once ancient statue of the first Stone, king Karavas Kius of the Mountain. They said he came from Vyrvalk, the frozen fatherland to the north, with an elite procession of select companions to build a new realm. Their travels had them found Snowshade, the regional capital of Brishire, and then Oldaspinrake, before settling on the tallest of all the Eggshell hills to be crowned Brighthelm’s Stone of the Mountain, to rule for a mythic two-hundred-and-twenty-two years.

His was one of the few Stones that had their memory continuously etched in the earth. A symbol of historic pride; a king that knew the names of every man and woman and child that was born or came or left his proud country. Despite the relative smallness of Loullands near four-thousand years ago, even then that task seemed impossible to Fiara. And yet it was glorious to wonder. For perhaps that is the mark of a monarch: a legacy of awe, Fiara pondered.

‘We’re near Old Low now,’ Maerk spouted. ‘I remember taking this route in my first week at the monastery; we had to cross Old Low to find the Ruins of the Watch – the old temple dedicated to Antosius. I can tell you now, it isn’t – or wasn’t when I was there – populated by Zoanthropes nor Therianthropes, or cultists of Khynigosh, or anything, like all the rumour tends to be. But it’s still the only temple to the god of the harvest and patron of mindful hunting, you know. I’m surprised the Cesterners haven’t built him a new cathedral, especially since the Free Farm Shift,’ he said.

Fiara was balancing her thought with his eager histories, though she knew better than to outright ignore him. A queen respected her subjects; the greatest way to do that is to know their story. Bastard. Bore. Fanatic. Those were Maerk’s three stings, and for each Fiara knew the boy would recoil. It was in her duty to ease that pain.

‘… also the only thing left standing of Patriarch’s Watch, after most of house Purch were eradicated by Sellus Sileni the First, landing them to the lower nobility. Bit of history, bit of faith. It was a good time. I think you’ll like Old Low, too, it’s awful windy for a bridge in the centre of the country. Reminded me of home,’ Maerk finished with varying levels of excitement. Of course, “home” for Maerk was a difficult word. As one of the children conceived out of wedlock by the Viscount of Riverside, he was amongst many that had to face the trials of the ostracised. For his home was as much the monastery as it was the court, the cathedral as much as the Grand Balcony at Cliffhaven Keep, and anywhere in-between.

‘So this bridge is the only way over the river Yolk?’ Fiara asked, interested as she might.

Maerk produced a humming sound. ‘Well that’s not strictly true. There are smaller crossings to the south, but Old Low’s the main one. The Yolk’s long, you know.’

The column ahead stopped, and like dominoes did everyone else stop too; Fiara tried to find the cause, though the heads of interested women and men made that arduous as it was. The sudden movement travelled like a jerking motion down the line, swollen bigger by riders of the road and mercenaries that were offered coin for their protection of the royal procession. It had amazed her how fast coin drew power when fealty was so delayed.

‘Here already,’ Maerk noted.

‘Here? Oh – Old Low?’ Fiara breathed a puff of underwhelmed air.

Maerk laughed. ‘Yes, just Old Low. I guess its not that exciting, though if we’re filtering like this, then it must be a tad smaller than I remember.’

An arrow sailed through the sky, from far beyond the opposite bank of the river Yolk. It bore the sound of something hissing, and from its node leaked a fern-green rain, oozing the terror that spread rampant through the column. The affinity shrieked, steel unsheathed, horses whinnied.

Jaedd Summerose slammed his palm upon Fiara’s shoulder. ‘My Stone, there is no shelter. Stay from the horses, and beside my sword arm. I will protect you,’ he commanded.

She was terrified, in truth. But what few lessons she had learnt so far compelled her to feign strength if she could not find it. ‘No. You are my fury,’ Fiara was evermore adamant, ‘you will Enforce my Will on this field upon this day. Avenge my mother and my father, and see to it that… See to it that as few people are hurt as possible.’ Her brows seemed to have grown thrice as thick with determination; her tired face fierce. Jaedd was stunned for response. Her order was paramount. ‘Now, present a face of action for our people and go.’

The Duke of Maben failed to present such a mask. His worry was personal – to lose another Stone was a blemish on family as much as person. ‘I… I cannot, my queen, I must,’ he wished. And an arrow sung of death overhead, one directed by a ghastly reaper. It found its target: and the Fury was silenced.

Fiara stood in open eyes. The arrow did not glance. The arrow did not miss and scar. The arrow found the exposure of Jaedd Summerose, Duke of Maben and Fury of the Queen of Brighthelm, Most Honoured of Hille, in where his neck was steel-plate-less. It had pierced through skin and flesh and neck and flesh and skin again, so that death’s steel, poison-laced head, peered through the neck of her guardian. Words struggled, though her face truly felt torment. The agony of death sprayed itself upon the green grasses of northern Cesternshire all the same. For that was the nature of war; to channel death is to purge empathy – a state of ill emotion that those untrained bear the burden of processing.

Jaedd made trembling fingers and a reaching arm, but it did not straighten. His breath was not of proud last words, nor of any at all. The dying breath of fury was weak mumbling wishes.

The arrow brought its allies, and soon the sun was slit through a rain of muddied terror. Horses shrieked. The thin silks of noble folk welcomed cruor and pestilence all the same, carrying the agents of sickness when they were trapped in new wounds made. Fiara saw those faces around her as arrows thrust earth. Time seemed silent then, and the souls of the departing slowed it to an anguishing crawl.

Maerk threw himself over his love and his friend and his queen. She was too still for the gluttonous agents of mortality to miss. Such that they did not: it was only for the thickness of a cleric’s robes and one’s own body that she was denied meeting her ancestors. The beaten body of Maerk Gaile, bastard boy of Riverside, Chiron aspirant, and firm believer in the goodness of gods, lay outspread from head to fingertips covering Fiara. As a dying star, made spiny beside the mutilated armour of Jaedd Summerose, he was her shield. Fiara knew nothing. The blood of conflict was firm in its lesson, and brutal in its methods.

His face still bore something like whetted eyes wet. They were over-whetted though, and chipping, bleeding the sorrows of iron in brine, and his lips had never been so full. Something like a bloodied damp kiss happened. And still, Fiara, Cardinal Lady of Scarshire, Stone of Brighthelm, and Queen of Loullands, was wordless.

‘You think the gods are out to get you, is it Fiara? Be a little more positive.’

Fiara’s eyes bled blue tears. She hadn’t even been offered the semblance of chance for… It came then. And it came with two more arrows. That green-grass-turned-red was brown. Muddy and dull. And Maerk Gaile’s bleak cloak covered the lands by Old Low in some plain defence against the death of that terrible rain. Maerk could hold his head from hers no longer.

Such proximity was highly unorthodox.

The pounding of that muddied earth beckoned the noise of horns, and from the east, two-hundred charged. They bore the regal wyvern, with the cascading of thunder, and they were her bannermen. When the rains of death slowed, Fiara knew they had arrived; and the playing of the river Yolk sloshed against their hooves and flashed against their steel.

She rolled over, letting Maerk to his back, where his peaceful face was left with harrowing scorn. ‘Thank you, Chiron Gaile,’ Fiara told the martyr’s body. Beside was the crouched frame of blood-laden steel, housing the hollow body of Jaedd Summerose. His wife was due notifying, and Fiara’s people needed more than raw fury to channel.

Over the horizon, a wide stone bridge rocked, over a broad river, that was draining a deep crimson to its mouth. The bodies and limbs of horse and man and the steel of armour and pike flowed with the rush; beyond that were the rest of the cavalry. Their determination was all bringing retreat to the vassals of Hedet at the edge of the horizon, though in that determined path lay yet more dead, and more arrows growing from torn ground.

That’s enough.

Fiara unclasped the Duke of Maben’s deathly grip. Lodestar was a blade of perfect balance, and of a hilt of rubies and purple diamonds that reached in resilient crossguard-arms and a pommel with the face of an amethyst rose. She held the blade as a pole, and thrust it down in to the ruinous soil, so that it stood to her shoulder, proud and sagacious.

‘My people!’ Fiara bellowed. This voice was more than her own; and yet it was shy of capacity. Faces under bodies of horses and crouched forms that feigned death stirred. ‘You are not to die at the hands of those lesser. Our resolve is infinite. Our conviction unwavering. We are the masters of Loullands, and we are the masters of fate; for our journey is long and will continue to wind, but we will not fail.’ She stepped forward, into the heaps of dead, snapping arrows underfoot, ‘now, to join those illustrious banners and drive back our assailants. For we are the privileged; we are borne under the children and siblings of Silversalt. We are the vanguard of the east. We are the honoured, such that we mount dragons for our pleasure where these lesser folk mount horses. And I am the most grateful.’

Edicus Whitewall raised a fist, clasping one sword of a blinding silver. ‘The Stormlord has been reborn and I pledge my soul to her,’ he called. It was not moments before the fatigue of that affinity fell away. There stood some many more dozens than Fiara realised should have survived. ‘She bears ardent Lodestar of Maben, and she offers her life; well, I say we donate her ours,’ Edicus pledged. That moment told Fiara what the world could be.

And with that sword raised high, Fiara was the enforcer of her own will. And around her was the fury of Loullands. For the noble folk and their household were together in every stride they took. Their flank crippled the rest of those Hedet men, and fighting was swift; even armour-less, even untrained, even against all ahead. Their unity was incomparable, and their morale raised that of the Squall cavalry to levels unprecedented.

Victory was assured, and joy ran rampant in the lands beside Old Low, seeping into the night, and receiving the swelling of local riders and yet more bannermen. Fiara had decided that they earnt the rest for their triumph. Fiara decided that the dead were burnt in a grand pyre, trailing the snowy greys into tendrils that kissed the dusk of three moons. That stroked the encrusted sheet of a temperate night. Heralds scribed: for that was Fiara’s first victory.

And yet, we should have run.