Eathel the Bastard: Chapter 1
Rumors & Departure; IN WHICH a wanton act of violence precipitates a desperate chase across the burning plains of Crestel Reondir!
I WILL TELL YOU THIS, here at the outset: to lash at other men with sword and strike at him with spear, to set upon his works, his properties with fire and then to spill the blood of his family upon his own fields, this is the great sin of all of our race in this fallen world.
Let us reapportion the funds we have promised the army. Let us give the poor of our foe, so-called, bread in place of body; wine in place of blood; help in place of harm. Let our diplomatic missions come in the form not of the saber-rattlers who browbeat our neighbors in one-sided negotiations, but in food and aid to their populace.
Can you not see how beloved would be we by the people of that invented opponent; they should not raise arms against us, for to do so would be to undermine the instrument of their prosperity.
As surely as comes another generation, violence will serve in that cohort’s retinue.
The prospect we might abandon this evil adventure appears too far away to grasp, but it is not.
We can attain it if we but reach a little farther—if we want to have peace, we can. Let us teach the same to that generation. Let us be the last to suffer the horror of war.
𐫱 𐫱 𐫱
So long as man has walked the earth, another has plotted to kill him. To end war is to end men.
– ᴷ Sínitas Raidré ad HESSEL ♜ 4
💥 REVOLT ! 💥
The Southeastern Barons have yet again risen up against their overlord, the Duke of Tera. To put down the insurrection, he personally marches an expeditionary force deep into the lands of the defiant vassals.
To guard the home front in his absence, the Duke has recalled his son Eathel from foreign campaigns and appointed him Marshall General of Tera, empowered to lead the garrisons remaining in defense of the main part of the realm. His father far away, indefinitely absorbed in quelling the rebellion, the new marshall spreads his trusted Band of Veterans and green recruits in defense of the vast Teran home front.
As the summer turns to autumn, Eathel has barely made his preparations in Tera’s defensive outworks when word of mayhem in a border region makes its way to him…
…
The rumor was of danger racing through the south. Serixiphina, the phantom who resided somewhere in his brain, was especially attuned to rumor. She had a great instinct for the general mood of any situation.
For Eathel’s part, he had excellent hearing. Or perhaps it was Sera, through him, extending and deepening his hearing to some pitch beyond what could be captured by others’ ears. He would ask her. She’d claim the interpretation most favoring her; she would, in exquisite nonchalance, assert that credit was hers for any ability he might have. But she always claimed that, especially when it wasn’t true.
So, with his hearing or with Sera’s he heard some mixture of the following: armed men were coming from outside by way of the south.
He was at the fort where he was taking inventory and performing an inspection of the garrison’s progress there. Word differed. Sometimes those around him said the band was coming from the west. Sometimes farther east. But mostly the talk was on the southwest.
An alien incursion was not an outlandish notion. But it required a great deal of speculation based on the information now available. He would wait until he heard something real. Perhaps it would remain only a rumor.
Still, Sera told him to watch that rumor. I cannot say for sure, she had said, but I think there is something to this.
The talk of the purported invasion started so quickly none of the men around him had even mentioned it to him in passing. // Do the men not trust you, I wonder? asked Sera. He saw her glinting, glowing grin.
But Sera deigned to inform him what pitch the talk was at, as he was apparently losing the confidence of his troop. She only interceded, she always said, when he was in danger of killing them both.
Whereas he had only his ears, Serixiphina claimed she could listen to the world about them as only a scáth,5 a shadow, could.
She informed him the susurrus of raspy whispers had quickly become a droning hum. When she made her findings known to Eathel, he’d already resolved to take it to an officer to get a verified report.
Someone is coming, she said.
He looked over at her. All he could see of her was the light of her smile. It looked like some trick of the sun, flickering just next to him. It levitated about as high up close to his face as a woman’s smile would be, if a woman actually stood there.
It was her broad smile that always meant one more thing than he could figure. She smiled that way most often, her smile of two smiles.
A small commotion had developed by the main palisade. Someone called him to come over. In the misty wind and cold and muck, he walked toward an exchange of information that would set off the second great adventure of his life.
A HERALD HAD ARRIVED. Not even taking the time to dismount, the newcomer waited to be invited to speak, panting quietly with alert eyes. They were agitated and had dark circles under them.
Under stains from mud and weather, the young man had on the livery of a prominent lord south of the mountains. Eathel recognized the worn orange lion as representing one of his father’s vassals, but didn’t know the family it armigerated. It was hard to keep track. Eathel’s father, the Duke of Tera, had many lords under him.
“Water?” asked Eathel.
“Thank you, lord,” said the herald.
Tastya traded canteens with the young man and sent a retainer off to fill the young man’s while they spoke. The herald took a long drink and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Speak,” said Eathel.
“Lord marshall,” the herald began, “on behalf of my liege, it pains me to inform you that our realm was three days past attacked.”
Well, it wasn’t a rumor anymore. // Told you, Sera said. I didn’t disagree that keeping an eye on that rumor would be good, said Eathel. // No, Sera said. I just mean I told you and so I was right.
Despite their filial bickering, every now and then Eathel and Sera were so in accord they would say the same thing at the same moment.
“Where are you from and who is your lord?” they asked.
He heard her languid voice blend into his. Eathel’s voice was the only one the world outside could hear. But sometimes she spoke to people as if they could hear her.
“I am from Cehedos. And my lord is the count there.” the herald said. Cehedos. It was at the southwestern terminus of Tera. The Count of Cehedos was…Sonocel? Eathel wondered. Corowel, said Sera.
Eathel didn’t think either of those were true. “Is Corosel still in control of his lands?” he asked.
“He is,” said the herald. // Lucky guess, said Sera. Correct guess, he said. Mine was closer, she replied. Mine was right, he said. “So far, said posse’s conduct has been that of a band of marauders, not an army vying to spar with us on the field.” // Rules out a state, said Sera. Perhaps, he replied. Be quiet.
“Go on,” said Eathel.
“It was in the morning of that day, three days past,” said the herald, “when we first heard report some travelers had seen a large band of warriors a-mount, making their way through our lands unchecked. According to a second report, this band apparently merely rode at first, but then they set fire to a village. The few travelers who had brought the news into the capital that morning disagreed on where, but they were agreed on the notion these men came from the southern border.”
“How many are these men?” asked Eathel.
“Three score. Of those armed, at least,” said the herald.
“What else have they done?” asked Eathel.
“They burned a place where locals congregate. It’s near a town,” said the herald. “There is a little market. The people gather there for trading crops. Many were there the day they came. They killed at least ten there first. The invaders burned the exchange so that the people there lost three siloes before they put down the blaze. The lost many thousand pounds of grain. The riders then set upon another town ten miles north of there.”
“At the town,” the herald continued, “they killed anyone they saw. So far we know they lost three tens dead, struck down with no cause. Of material damage, several houses and part of a wall. They robbed a church, seizing gold in coin and silver pieces of liturgy. This was all I knew when I was sent here.”
“Who were they?” asked Eathel
“I do not know, my lord” said the herald. “As it concerns the witnesses who relayed the news, they did not notice anything particular about them. They had no emblem discernible. They bore no distinguishing marks. Nor did they appear foreign.”
“Where are these men now?” asked Eathel.
“By the time they left, they were making for a manor nearby. The owner there is my lord’s neighbor; their properties share a border. So my master was compelled to fortify his own estate,” the herald said. “When I departed the brigands were moving east at speed. It is my current understanding they are moving north also, my lord Marshall.”
Ask him where they came from, said Sera. “Where did they come from?” he asked.
“They emerged from our southern side. I know nothing else,” the herald replied.
A force needed to be sent south, right into to the area under threat. He needed to know more, and provide what protection they could. But it was at least three days of distance between them and the general area of where Cehedos began; and this was the case only if you pushed the horses. Cehedos was big, and he wasn’t even familiar enough to know how far away the epicenter of the attack took place. It could easily be another two days’ ride. // Yes, Sera said, but with the distances in play here, you’re going to need to plan on going where they will be rather than where they are now. Based on the herald’s report, the marauders are also wending east. I think those places are pretty squarely east of each other, one after the other in a string. Wait, just ask him to confirm they’re moving east.
“It sounds like the host is moving east based on their course when you left, yes?” Eathel asked.
“Yes, lord,” said the herald.
I don’t like this, Sera said. A band of brigands with enough armament to destroy a town, murder dozens and move so quickly in formation? Something doesn’t fit.
I feel the same, he said.
Eathel remembered someone telling him during his last campaign abroad, amid a stream of battles and camps and the smell of dead bodies, that, when it came down to it, the only form of tactical preparation that made any sense was to prepare, not with stratagems, but to prepare to be caught off your guard.
Sera rolled her eyes, eyes which could neither see nor be seen. The thought seemed poetic as he entertained it.
Ah yes, she sighed. The only thing to plan for is that you will be taken by surprise. What a priceless jewel of counsel.
The herald looked at Eathel. Now it was up to the person charged with protecting the realm, stewarding it in trust while the real leader, his father the Duke, was occupied, to act.
But above all the other lessons he'd learned from those faraway campaigns, there was one lesson that was hung higher on the wall in his mind. Well above all the others.
It was the lesson he’d learned during the first few months of real campaigning that guided him now.
JUST LIKE THAT, HE WAS BACK ON CAMPAIGN with Hejyman in the Tandheran. The thrill and adventure and ugliness, the smell of dead bodies. They were all there.
Hejyman and Eathel were on a hill overlooking their own doom. Eathel, perched atop his destrier Vampest next to Hejyman on his mount, wanted to weep and crawl into a hole, a vault beneath the earth. Anywhere but here.
It physically hurt Eathel’s eyes to look across the field at the enemy’s charging cavalry line. They were 30 seconds away from hitting their thin line of infantry.
‘Take an action,’ Hejyman had said. Eathel saw the moment in his mind now. He heard Hejyman, the young man who was like his older brother and uncle at once.
In malevolent formation, two lines of 75 knights leveled their lances. Each capped with a polished silver spearhead sparkling as the sun glanced off the metal.
Hejyman and Eathel looked at their meager, foot-bound shield wall he’d had the men form up into minutes before. Some were still planting their feet and locking into place with their neighbors as the thunderhead of steel set its mind to wash over them like divine vengeance.
The enemy’s first line of horsemen was 65 tons of metal and muscle traveling at 40 miles per hour. It bore down on them like a god of laughing rage descending from the sky.
‘It’s your battle,’ Hejyman’s voice drifted like a kind of distant, taunting music through Eathel’s head.
The nostrils of the enemy’s horses were 20 seconds away. Eathel imagined how sharply those horses would be gasping in the morning air.
This wasn’t a cavalry charge. It was an avalanche.
Each knight on horseback weighed 1,200 pounds. That was a boulder. The boulder had a spear that concentrated all its force into a foot-long spike, sharpened to the point it drew blood at just the feathery tap of a finger.
Some of the sergeants behind Eathel and Hejyman’s tepid line of infantry looked back at Hejyman for something. Anything. Hejyman simply turned his head and looked at Eathel.
‘The men are looking to you, Eathel,’ Hejyman had said. His voice was growing sterner.
The steel-armored warhorses flew over the turf, pummeling the earth. They sent great clots of dirt in a cloud underneath them like a swarm of flies.
The strange song in his head was the sad and increasingly worried melody of Hejyman’s voice. It lilted over the rhythm of hoofbeats, the rapid drumbeats of death. Their doom, distributed upon four heavy legs. 75 times over. Followed by another line of exactly the same.
Five heartbeats away. The lances were going to touch the shield wall.
To him, it was a tidal wave, the color of death.
Eathel froze. If he were able to think about moving his arm or leg, he would not have been able to.
The first line of lances hit in uncanny unison across the entire shield wall. ‘Wall’ was too generous. It was more a fence than any kind of wall.
The enemy’s cavalry knew what they were about. While their first line had accelerated, their second had pulled up their horses to slow and came in with a smooth lance rush into their broken shield wall right between their comrades who had just broken it.
‘Now Eathel,’ Hejyman had said, furious and screaming. ‘Now or everyone dies.’
And then he was back. That fight would be three years past next month. The sounds of the crashing of the lances and the screams slipped back into their place in his ancient memory. The fever dreams of those sounds swept themselves back into the corridor of remembrance Eathel wanted nothing to do with. But he was resolved not to make the same mistakes that had turned that battle, all those years ago, into the great tragedy of his young life.
So, now, he must move forward.
“All this is very troubling,” Eathel said. “Our sympathy is with those who are suffering, and our hope is your safety. We will do what we can to deliver it.”
The herald nodded.
“Tastya?” Eathel called out. Tastya stepped forward. “You will take half the riders we came in with and some spare horses. It should be about 50 men. Transfer provisions enough onto the spares for a rapid ride to Cehedos and back.”
Eathel pointed at the herald, “Take him. Make the journey as quickly as you can. Provide help you can if it can be done quickly. But unless you encounter the outlaws themselves, do not stop until you reach the environs of the attack. The herald will guide you there.”
Tastya nodded and turned to a youthful man close by. “Yreda, get the kit loaded on the horse and meet me at the top of,” he pointed, “that hill.”
This Yreda, a new soldier Eathel did not yet know, rode off to get it done. The men around them dispersed. They would get their orders soon, but in the meantime, they at least knew they must be ready to ride hard.
Eathel then motioned to Tastya and a slight, dignified man next to him. When they came over, he told them the overall plan.
“Ballant,” said Eathel to the dignified-looking man, “we leave today; I’m going to go down in tandem with Tastya. I’ll take my people, but I need you to finish the progress west across the garrisons. Give out orders based on the fact you’re leading the party. I’ll be in the south.
Once the western garrison is in full muster,” continued Eathel, “delegate someone to lead here. Return home to the capital. Resume the works projects there, make secure the city, and protect the realm. Frustrate any threats to the city.”
“Yes, lord,” said Ballant. Eathel surveyed the young man’s face for any indication of confusion or doubt. Eathel supposed he needed to get used to never seeing either one, though they had not been long in working together.
“Ballant,” said Eathel, “you’ve met my clerk, Master Elmandt?”
“I have, lord,” said Ballant.
“Elmandt will be going with you,” said Eathel.
“Lord?” asked Ballant. Usually, Eathel’s trusted courtly operator went with him everywhere.
“I need him in the city,” said Eathel. “And lawyers cannot go where we’re going.” Ballant smiled. So did Tastya.
“Tastya,” continued Eathel, turning to his black-haired friend, “debrief that herald en route and record the particulars. You know what we need.” Tastya nodded.
“And Tastya, however it is you move down there,” Eathel went on, “I want to close off this rabble if they continue moving east. I’m going down the central corridor, directly south. You’re going southwest right into the attack. If I don’t see you at,”
Eathel looked around and found the herald. “Cehedos,” he called out.
The herald was making his way to the rallying point Tastya had indicated. He stopped to listen. “If you were these riders,” asked Eathel, “and were making exactly east, how would yo u go?”
The weary herald leaned back in his saddle and thought a moment. The stalking orange lion on his breast rumpled as he did so.
“Were I among these riders, lord,” said the herald, “and we were heading east, I would have us skate Midarid down and stay north of the plate. // Get Dhalen, Sera said. He is from there, just south of Dandarken. That’s right, said Eathel. He had Dhalen come over and the herald relayed all this. Then, after getting up out of the pedemontium, they could make for the Dandarken to the north. // Dhalen arrived about midway through the herald’s assessment. That way affords them the most flexibility. // Dhalen tucked a golden lock of glimmering amber hair behind his ear. His blue eyes looked into Eathel’s and his handsome head nodded as he gathered what the man was on about. There are the highlands east, the herald conjectured. Or, they’d have a week’s easy ride south. After that, they’d be truly away.”
Eathel turned to Dhalen. “Where is a good spot to meet along that course where we can be in four days’ time?”
“I know a place,” Dhalen said. “There is a long gulley that turns into a loch as it goes east. It’s wide and flat. Its nadir wends close to the Hewyn for some miles. There is a long and shallow valley where that river bends south. It’s about as close a solid landmark midway through the steppe as you’re going to find.”
“Dhalen, you’re coming with us.” Eathel said. “How many under you?”
“Five, lord,” said Dhalen.
“How green?” asked Eathel.
“Veterans all.”
“Bring them. Join me by the entrance at the southern wall,” said Eathel.
“Yes, lord,” said Dhalen, the long blond hair he was so proud of bouncing behind him as he jogged off. // He should be proud of it, said Sera. That's a fine-looking head of hair.
“So, Tastya,” said Eathel, returning to his scoutmaster, “I was saying, if I don’t meet you at this Eikenderry spot, then make for Menacalçë.”67
Tastya nodded. Menacalçë made sense. It was the largest city in central Tera.
Located right in the middle at the fords of the Hewyn and the Able Rivers, Menacalçë was surrounded by over 12,000,000 acres of productive farms. The food stores had never disappointed the peripatetic and hungry Teran armies ever on march across the wide grasslands of the Teran heartland.
Floating in bucolic meadows and gentle slopes all around, especially in the east as its suburbs blended into the southern prairie of the Crestel Reondir, Menacalçë was the rallying point and base of operations the Terans relied on again and again.
Tastya had assembled the force that would rush down into the heart of the turmoil.
Along with the herald, Tastya led it and started to move the mass south, picking up speed at a gradual acceleration, and they had opened into a gallop just as they slowly disappeared over the top of a long, sloping, grassy hill that stretched out far into the horizon, broken by little clumps of trees and bushes.
Tastya’s new man, Yreda, rode down the line, making sure all the avant garde were clear about the direction they were going, and what each man’s job was to be. Or rather, what each man or woman’s job would be. With them rode Axiomania Shelham, the tall and stoic woman of the north, and his lone cavalrywoman. Woman or no, few others could wield the warhammer as well as could she.
Even though she had to whip it around herself with two hands, she whirled the sledgehammer around her tall, powerful body like a hollow baton.
He was proud of the organization and the self-direction of his little army. He and Sera had made the conscious effort to create an army that allotted much leeway for each general to run things as he saw fit, with authority delegated clearly down the officer ranks, all the way down to the corporal of a cavalry unit.
He trusted his commanders to achieve his goals by way of their own device and guile. Eathel need not tell any of the contingents himself that they were now under Tastya. Ten of the men were his already, but Tastya had been with him as long as anyone and had authority approaching Eathel’s to command the Marshall’s corps.
Tastya even knew Eathel would want to take Casselton and Eathel’s usual companions with him, rather than sending them south with Tastya.
Casselton himself rode up. He had missed the herald, but only because he was just returned from an errand run for Eathel’s clerk, Elmandt, on Eathel’s behalf.
“Lord,” said Casselton. Casselton was Eathel’s squire. An inexperienced, yet well-trained and deadly warrior, learning from an experienced knight. Eathel would grant him knighthood soon. By the end of this campaign, Sera had predicted, his contributions will demand that kind of recognition.
“Cas,” said Eathel, “gather the balance of the riders and do the same with provisions on spare horses as I told Tastya. Make ready to go at once. I will find you inside of the hour. You’re coming with me.”
While Cas was thus occupied, gathering up the guard that would join Eathel as they tried to head off the marauders, Eathel braced himself for paperwork.
Eathel walked over near where his, Tastya, and Cas’s tent was in the center of the camp. He stopped to gather his folio and book. His clerk looked up from his standing desk.
Elmandt was middle-aged—not an old man—but constantly complained of various ailments and head colds. This hypochondria didn’t prevent him from establishing his base of operations near the damp opening of his tent.
His marshallship’s tent was a kind of open-air affair anyway. Wide apertures on all sides allowed for the coming and going of various soldiers, advisors and attachés.
Eathel gave Elmandt what were to be his instructions. The lawyer would remain with the retinue.
“Your lordship is going?” asked Elmandt.
“Yes,” said Eathel.
“Then you'll be wanting to know about Miss Cagenet then,” said Elmandt.
“You aren’t among the afflicted are you?” asked Eathel, making a play of backing away from him in mock horror, as if the bookish man had leprosy or plague. “Are you in my head?” Eathel joked. “Can you see my soul?”
Elmandt smiled the calm smile of someone who had never met one of the Afflicted, the rvaingen,8 and had never lent a thought to what it might be like to be treated like one.
“Nay, your lordship,” said Elmandt with a patient and bemused smile. He recited from a holy book:9
If I were accurséd so, and with such sin bereaved, I would make sure my leave. ¶ A blade by mine own hand led, would end my breath at razor’s edge, and thus quit the agòn of living death.
“Well, then I suppose that settles it,” smiled Eathel. He hated the verse passages in the holy books. He tolerated it in his mentor; he knew Elmandt delivered these verses only with several extra undertones of sardony.
“All has been taken care of with young Madta,” said Elmandt.
“How is she getting there?" asked Eathel.
“If I may, lordship?” asked his lawyer.
Eathel nodded.
“I advise a tacit posture to discussion of this endeavor. The less your lordship knows about these matters," pause, “the easier it is to play the part. As it were.”
“Down to whether she’s in a carriage or a wagon?” asked Eathel.
Elmandt said nothing. His lawyer would have told Eathel if had his master demanded it, but Elmandt knew his business. He’d proven it again and again.
Eathel decided to trust that Elmandt would control this little mission of theirs. The younger man nodded in agreement with his attorney and advisor.
“I will say,” said Elmandt, “your lordship knows it was squire Casselton who saw the maid Madta off. He has a good hand with these sorts of things.”
Eathel eyed Elmandt and smiled. “I do,” he said.
AS HE SAID FAREWELL to Elmandt and began walking away, Sera floated in and asked, aren’t you forgetting something?
He thought about it. This was one of her most infuriating habits. He had a tendency to leave behind little, important things. He always felt as if, whensoever he departed any place, he feared he was leaving some secret part of himself exposed. A secret missive. His folio with all his thoughts. All the more so when he was, as he was now, distracted by matters of larger moment.
It got worse the more distracted he was by matters of large moment. He currently found himself decidedly within one.
How is it you have secrets so scandalous anyone would care?
Eathel wondered idly if this was another one of her bits.
She seemed to know what he was thinking.
No, there really is, Sera said. I’m not trying to fool you.
It wouldn’t be the first time, he replied.
I’m not, she said. I’m not going to waste time making fun of you. On the one hand, it’s too easy.
On the other, she continued, referencing hands that weren’t real, there’s an invading horde roaming our home.
Word will make it soon to your father. Think of it. His wayward half-son attacked by a militia, not one month after assuming command?
He already knows about it, she went on. You had better make damn sure that the very next thing your father hears from this corner of Tera is a report you tracked them down personally, alone. And killed all of them. And put their heads on spikes along the border to warn the rest.
We’re agreed that action is needed, said Eathel. So, what am I forgetting?
Bring a short blade, she said. You have one don’t you?
Yes, I have Hejyman’s that he gave to me, said Eathel.
You’re heading south eastwardly, said Sera. If they are indeed on the trail that herald said they were on, you’re going to run into this band in the tight forests and ridges down there around the southern edge of the Dandarken.
Go and get it, she repeated. If you do wind up in those woods, you’re going to have to hope you’re in a clearing if you want the space to swing a sword.
That was right. In fact, he should have known to pack that already. It was a good idea to bring something besides a heavier sword.
Eathel doubled back to his tent. He got a knowing nod from Elmandt. The lawyer had had a feeling he’d see his master at least once before his lordship left.
He had grabbed the ornate dagger in its white and silver scabbard and stuffed it into his belt.
Do you not have any other? asked Sera, as he mounted Echo and skipped her up ahead to ride the line of men heading south at a gallop. Cas was moving the men out.
If I had one, I’d bring that, Eathel said. Men raised their shields or right hands as he flew by. He returned their love with his powerful, sincere smile and warm gaze, acknowledging each one of these men who toiled down in black mud to build walls that would protect him more than they ever would them. It was remarkable, this gift of service and life that the nameless soldier rendered to his leader. Eathel was not sure how love worked; he'd read about it in poetry and various media. Outside of the page, he was hopeless.
But he tended to be able to somehow gather the love and the respect of his men. This gift was only his because of what Hejyman Altamani had taught him.
I know it was Hejyman’s, said Eathel; it’s all I have left of him, Eathel said. I don’t want to lose it either.
Everything passed them by as they ride caught up with the column Cas was herding rapidly south down the wide plains leading south toward lower Tera.
I don’t care about you losing it, Sera snapped. I care about it distracting you. You get all up inside your damn head when you remember him. You don’t have a spare dagger in a boot? A paring knife? What, were you going to fight an army with a sharpened branch?
Eathel didn’t respond. She was being nasty about it, but she had a point.
With all the hardware you have access to, she driftingly mumbled along, and you picked that gaudy thing? And you just have your sword besides?
What? he asked.
He could feel that her eyes had rolled into a stop, staring at the upper corner of the sky.
You have got to be the worst warrior in the world, Sera said.
I’ll have you write my next speech to rally the troops, he said.
He wasn't in the mood to go back-and-forth with her.
The worst warrior in the world he may be, but he rode what was certainly the best creature in it—Echo the blue. The pistons of the milky white, slate-dappled courser10 chewed up the silty earth of the grasslands and spat out chunks of dirt and weeds in a furious smoke of debris.
The sun broke through the dense cloud cover. Eathel sat back in his saddle and closed his eyes, feeling warmth slowly spread across his face, like ink poured on a flat cloth of cotton and spreading its stain to the edges.
Echo closed the distance to the back of the column of his men with an almost supernatural speed. The lady was ecstatic to be free of that damp lean to.
Serixiphina was in a cantankerous humor. Of all things, ’twas boredom she was most loath to court. She saw his bow, wrapped in a piece of leather, poking out of his saddlebag and bouncing as they rode, and decided to pick a fight.
Now that, said Sera, that you can leave. You’re the worst shot I’ve ever seen.
Then what was all that admonishment at not being well armed? Eathel asked.
A longbow—for you, dear heart—is not an armament. It’s a hazard to thine own health. ‘Twould be safer we stow it in a funeral pyre. You should probably just give that thing to a needy hunter. Or anyone you hate and want to give a bad bow.
Now the bow’s bad? Eathel asked.
It’s all bad, Telly, she said. She never called him that anymore. Was Sera growing soft on him?
Bad an eye as I have, said Eathel, which is nothing more than a stance you continue to take. It’s not a settled fact. I’m not that bad. He trailed off after that, losing whatever wisp of fiber may at one point have threaded the needle with which he haphazardly darned his arguments with clumsy stitches.
I don’t care anymore, said Sera.
It weighs so little and one needs a bow and arrow, said Eathel.
Again, I care not, said Sera. Though be advised you don’t have any arrows.
Eathel realized that this was, unfortunately, true.
Well, in any event, I need to get better at making them, said Eathel. Cas said he’d seen straighter horseshoes.
Well, I agree with him for once then, Sera said.
I thought you liked Casselton, said Eathel.
He’s easy on the eyes is all, she said.
It was indeed possible: one could be both wistful and thoroughly disinterested. At least Sera could. She could speak with a lilt that was somehow flat. // A flat lilt is a paradox, said Sera.
Eathel had never seen anyone else pull it off.
But she rarely had eyes for anyone; it was odd to hear her express what little ardor she’d deign to scatter at the boots of someone like Cas.
Sometimes he forgot Sera would never meet Casselton. That she had no body. She acted as if she did. He shivered. She was an odd presence in his life.
A paradox can be true, said Eathel. Now that I think of it, they always are. Isn’t that interesting? // No, said Sera. Eathel was undeterred. But a paradox is supposed to describe something that cannot be, or shouldn’t be, right? If you want peace, prepare for war. It doesn’t make sense —it’s a paradox— and yet it’s true. The best defense is to prepare a good offense. // How about if you don’t want to get disowned, prepare to gallop harder, Sera said. Miles and miles lie ahead. You spend too much time with that lawyer Elmandt in your nonsense theo logico plexio horseshit.
Eathel raised his hand as Casselton’s fiery horse whipped up in a little cloud of dirt in riding up to him. Soba bid Cas goodbye and nodded at Eathel, “lord,” Soba said.
Cas was learning how to run scouts from one of the best—Soba Calley.
He found his seat again in the saddle and lightly squeezed his thighs in a few small kicks around Echo’s flanks—far more than enough to spark her off.
Casselton rode over to him after wrapping up the conference he was holding at a trot with Eathel’s adjutant scoutmaster.
Had Cas ever served another military commander, he would have seen how many scouts Eathel sent every which way, constantly, and wondered what in the world was going on.
Eathel pressed his scouts out in every direction at all times. Sometimes it was up to one third of his light cavalry, most of whom were fine and sneaky scouts.
Eathel himself loved to ride alone or with just a few men and collect everything that was going around him
And that’s what he’d been doing. The general of this little cavalry had been roaming up and down the 60-odd men and beast in wide lines that were chasing down the marauders and maintaining them on their trail.
Any fresh recruit knows the necessity of effective reconnaître, but most commanders, Eathel found, preferred to keep their troops as unified as possible. They may break into separate armies, divisions, squadrons and so on. But each of these was far too liable to clump together and send out the bare minimum to know the terrain and environs.
To Eathel, knowing as much as he could about everything that was happening around him all the time was the only thing that mattered at all.
And it was in that way, using Eathel’s obsession with fanning out scouts in all direction, in interchangeable little corps that were like little cavalry detachments unto themselves, that they followed the trail of the evil invaders.
THE YOUNG MAN who had been following Tastya’s direction rode up to him. It had been week or so ago since they decamped after the herald found them. They appeared to have crossed paths with Tastya’s main force, the one Eathel had watched go off into the distance a week ago.
“Lord marshall,” he said. “my lord Tastya is but a few mile from here. He would have you come and give you his report these past few days.”
Eathel had already forgotten the name Tastya had been shouting to the youth. They joined him and rode toward Eathel’s scoutmaster.
“What was your name?” asked Eathel.
“Yreda, my lord” the boy said.
They followed Yreda to Tastya, whom Eathel wanted to embrace. He was not used to going more than a few days without hearing from his main source of intelligence in the field.
Tastya looked weary. After a heartfelt embrace, he wasted no time laying into what had been happening on their ride from west to east.
“Once we had tracked them to where their horses were going,” Tastya said, “we found the trail, a few hundred miles south from where we left with the herald last week.”
‘Our far scout, riding further southwest, had told us that, although still bereaving their loss, the people where the attack originally happened did not seem to be in any immediate danger.’
‘I bade three men ride forward and help where they could. That was all we could spare from our 60,” Tastya said.
Eathel still worried over that town. What if they heard nothing from the Duchy charged with protecting them from the storms of violence that tumbled through the world?
Tastya was his master scout. If Tastya believed the better course was to move the men under him east instead of going to the place of the attack, then he trusted Tastya.
“Any losses?” asked Eathel. A little tension flashed in him, always apprehensive to hear of a loss of any man he commanded.
“Besides the three I assigned to help in the aftermath of the attack, lord, no.”
It appeared clear everyone was far too late. Not only had Tastya missed them in the west, they’d ridden past Eathel’s party—the one he’d hoped would cut them off before they absconded.
“Back when we first came upon it in the west, the trail was unmistakable. Like someone had taken an immense brush, like those for painting murals, and rolled it right across the fields. That’s how many of these men were. They rode in strong formation and fast. But as you can see now, the trail is thinned.”
If the trail had been like the stroke of a ‘giant brush’ when Tastya had come across it, then it would be fair to say it was a faint line drawn by one of the graphites Eathel rarely let out his hands.
“As far as we can tell, this is what remains of the main trail,” Tastya said.
“Remains? asked Eathel. These men rode west to east. You’ve been chasing them here, toward us, west to east. Shouldn’t the trail be getting fresher if they’re moving toward us? Easier to see?” asked Eathel.
“My lord is correct,” said Tastya. Tastya was well aware this did not make sense without one crucial detail. He looked toward the east, where the faint trail of the men led. The space before his eyes thickened with suspicion.
‘that this trail ought be easier seen this easterly,” Tastya turned to look squarely at Eathel with a face weighed down by worry. He continued. “But, begging your lordship’s pardon, you are in error that it be not fresher.”
“What?” asked Eathel
“The trail is fresher; it’s just from fewer horses. Yreda was our forward scout and he met you. I bade Yreda follow this trail that happened to lead him to you. But they have been dropping men and moving through the local populace one by one.’
‘If we split off troops every time riders broke off from this trail, we’d have none left. Look, my lord,” Tastya pointed at the trail that was indeed there. Just a few horsemen had made it. The divots of dirt were as if just made. They headed straight to the Dandarken.
Just a single horse’s tracks. All this way and they were down to one, lone, man. Not even a man. All they had were his tracks to show for a desperate response to a brazen attack.
“I fear we have lost these marauders,” said Tastya. “And we have no time. Your father has need of you.”
“Of me?” asked Eathel. “He’s coming here away from the Barons?”
“There was a battle lost by your father’s forces some days back. The Baronials make for the coast and”
A rage and fury that he had not known had been gestating in him suddenly came out. “Goddam it,” he screamed. He yelled and stamped the ground. After one more big heaving roar, he gasped himself back down to some measure of control.
The confusion. The directions. The skill. Who were these men? It was not often he was so thoroughly been taken apart. Whatever happened, he was going to find one of these men. He was going to make one of them talk. He would not face his father again without something.
“No, lord, your father is still” started Tastya.
“The trail leads into the Dandarken?” Eathel spat bitterly. “Well, then that's where I’ll go.”
Driven merely by fear of what his father might do to him—or not do for his career—Eathel jumped on Echo and dashed to the forest, alone.
Nearly everyone screamed and yelled as he left off. Some men just stood and watched him go. Tastya and Eathel’s closer circle ran to their horses and started them toward their impetuous young leader.
“My lord, no you misunderstand, Haldric is come” Tastya shouted, before the underbrush of the forest muffled the rest of it.
Eathel heard the shouts of Tastya and the others fade behind him, something stung his eyes that came not from the leaves whipping close to them.
Of course, Haldric ad Seanë was here. The knight for whom he was squire. Come to see his young apprentice’s failure.
And here, out of sight of any of the men who followed after their unprotected lord, he felt his heart and lungs collapse in on his belly. He felt terrified and alone.
It had now been one day since Serixiphina had come to him. She was never there when he needed her to tell him that this was but a moment of fear. That soon, things would unfold in perfect order. She was never there when he wished someone would tell him he need not be afraid.
Then again, as Sera would be the first to tell him, she had never needed him to comfort her. And that was true. She had always been the strong one.
HE WAS FAR AWAY FROM HIS MEN NOW. It was the trail of a single man, and he had never been the best tracker, but he could see it well enough.
Before long, the half-mile or so of thicket through which he and Echo had been going opened up and sunk a bit into a gulley. Soon they toed their way out of the morass, out of the dell into more varied landscape. There was still a dense press of trees, and the buttresses of their boughs interwoven together obfuscated the high-noon sunlight enough that it was as if he were riding Echo—they could trot now—through a coral cove within a rolling sea of emerald and blue light.
There was no breeze here deeper in the forest, but it was cool. The air, though ensconced between dewy green grass in the rivulets of root and rock upon the earth below him, the tall ferns and the awning of the tree branches, seemed still so fresh; it were as if the blanket of air and flowery smell had been banded together expressly for him, so that, for some strange reason, though in close pursuit of a bedlamite invader, he might still experience this place, this passageway of the broadest and tallest trees, invigorated by tranquil magic.
For what seemed two miles, the landscape went on in little pockets like that, with the elevation rising gradually the further east Echo ran. The larger trees grew fewer as the long ascent became slightly steeper. There were many trees, but thinner. He needed to go no further east until he had a sign. His eyes had scanned along every place he passed, up trees and in the wet banks of a little stream that swerved now and then across his path. No broken branches or strange disturbances of the low bushes that grew farther up the bank. He saw nothing here either.
He had to go north or south and work his way back to the signs he saw shortly after the fork in the field with Tastya and Yreda, unless he saw another sign that seemed like it might be a man before going the entire way back. he felt himself being pulled toward the south.
In his moment of doubt, Serixiphina sauntered into his mind.
Yes, said Sera. His trail is south.
When it suited her, only when she decided that it was time for her to make her entrance, when the stakes were highest, would she float in from whatever deep and distant part of his mind she locked herself into when not berating him.
He would deal with her later. He was angry, but still secretly glad Sera could not be with him for all of his thoughts. Presuming she was something to ‘deal with’ might set her off into an agitation so acute he'd lose whatever valuable information she had for him.
You say that with certainty, said Eathel.
I could be wrong, she said. But when am I ever? asked Sera.
He sighed. There had been many times she had been wrong. Her cadence sounded as if she never had been.
Back into the woods, he climbed up a bit of a hill that looked down over a shallow ridge line, but one that then dipped into a deep gully. He got off Echo and loosely tied her to a nearby cedar, so that she could still get out if he took too long.
You see why I tell you to bring a dagger?
The rocks had deep crevices in them. Though they were deep, they were some wide enough that a man could walk a horse through. The crevices were overgrown at the top with trees and brambles.
The dagger was safely tucked into his belt. His longer sword was out and ahead of him, ready to strike or parry, whatever it was he would need to do.
For a moment he saw Hejyman’s face. Although it was in shadows, the sun was ablaze behind his head. // Don't think about him, Sera said. The sharp beams of sunlight bending around made a crown. Then it was gone. // I’m not, said Eathel.
He tried to slow his breathing as he reconnoitered what looked like an altar surrounded by upright stones taller than any man.
You’re lying, she said. She was convinced he was distracted.
Where are you right now? he asked. I’m here. We’re in danger. Get it together.
Some of the tall rocks were toppled and crumbling. The space over there made it easier to see in this forest of rough, rectangular pillars.
He made his careful, padding way there, sword out. // She paused a moment. Something made her smack her lips in frustration. On second thought, she said, since you seem to be feeling yourself today, maybe you probably shouldn't have even brought the dagger. You could probably take on someone with your bare fists.
She dropped it as they entered a new area. It was a little knave-like place. It must have been a little knave or side room at some point.
He and Sera just listened to the quiet late afternoon lilting the high air of the woods.
The little clearing opened up to a view of the low valley below, the downward hills sinking into the basin as if weighed down from the shadowy covering of pines that coated them in dense follicles.
At one point, this place must’ve been quite a stark, bare patch of felled land, surrounded by a tattered circle of smaller square blocks with ominous ruins carved on them. "Recognize them? he asked Sera. // You’d know better than I, you little monk boy, she said."
The runes were worn in so deep as to look almost as smooth as the grooves made in stone over many years by a steady stream of water. They seemed ancient and recondite.
There’s a clearing ahead. I can feel an open space past these stones, said Sera.
Sword raised up, dagger at his belt, he listened at the gigantic rocks that formed the half-fallen stone frame that once was an arch.
He held out his sword and looked at the reflection of the corner. It was a little dilapidated room that was part of a ruined stone abbey.
Seeing nothing in the reflection, nor hearing anything, he walked in. He passed the ruins of the old pile. There were more tall rocks about them and, just like Sera had said, a broad view of the valley, and there was an altar there in the middle paved with stone, where leaned the man he had chased for six nights and seven days.
ᴷ indicates that the person holds the rank of knight
∫ is pronounced ‘sh’ like in ‘sheep.’
from Contáre Rackáta ad Lyseklesta Ⅰ-Ⅲ, the first of Aberrand’s three orations to the Tandrat against going to war with that country.
Collected Sayings of Sínitas.
scáth is an Irish word for “shadow.” It can also have extended meanings depending on context, such as "shelter" or "protection" in certain idiomatic uses, reflecting how a shadow can both obscure and shield.
I’m not introducing some fantasy species here; it’s just a cool word. Sera does have some otherworldly powers, and she (usually jokingly) refers to them as her ‘scath’ powers.
ç is soft, like ‘center’
ë is a long ‘e’ like ‘seek.’ Like Danaë in Greek myth. We’ll later meet a character “Sonë,” and it’s pronounced Sony.
“rvaingen” [/rəˈ:veɪn:ʤɛn/]. ‘Unclean,’ ‘afflicted’ Oltera.
Koson Mendam 78:47 ; at this time, chapter 78ⁱ was one of the more widely known sections of the Mendam. Authorship was widely attributed to Pelmount. Most reputable scholars now believe that not to be the case. It appears that most, if not all, of the chapter is a composite document compiled over several hundred years before the Duchy of Tera was established (The Duchy was founded some two hundred years before the events of this story).
ⅰ. Chapter 78 in the Mendam is often known as the ‘samma’ chapter for its consistent parables relating to sheep, and particularly their young–‘samma’ is ‘calf’ in Oltera)
A courser is a swift and strong horse, frequently used during the Middle Ages as a warhorse. It was ridden by knights and men-at-arms. As we shall see, ‘courser’ and ‘destrier’ refer to selectively bred variants that are bigger, stronger and faster, but no less lovable, than our non-fantastical equine friends.
In this world, "coursers” are unusually fast and “destriers” … well. Let’s just save that one for now 😀
oooo this is very neat. i'm drawn to your writing style and i can't wait to read more when i can.
Really like the authorial move of creating a mental character! Really cool how you made Eathel’s internal monologue a dialogue. It pulls me along as a reader, giving me so much more than exposition. Respect!