Eathel the Bastard: Chapter 6
IN WHICH; Serixiphina the She-Ghost hatches a PLAN most CUNNING; RAGA SWAY makes for a meeting with the FAIRY SONË & begins her BREAKNECK JOURNEY across the edges of the civilized world.
As I gazed up, there descended upon my right a spiraling fire of argent light, as though angels unspooled a thread woven by the moon. […] It turned in its descent and within itself, a living complexion of radiance, till it came near my shoulder and there itself contorted into the semblance of joyous expression, like unto a smile—contrived not of lips but soft, phantom ember, a grain of celestial gleam, as if the very dust of heaven had taken on the form of mirth.1
– The Ecstasy of Roben Thurand2
SERIXIPHINA DESCENDED IN SINISTER HELICES by his right shoulder; she was all strands the color of ember, that glowed and had the same heat as embers.
The threads she was sewed themselves into brocade; her filaments coiled and she was gradually condensed into a gleaming smile, floating right next to him, for him alone.
They had to make a decision now or else: pursue the wagon train with all the gold the Barons had, or double down and pursue the main host seeking to reinforce the nascent trade line.
Just like she always did, she had waited until the final hour.
Well? he asked, can we do it?
The decision needed to be made so quickly that Sera didn’t even deign to torment him by withholding her plan. But he saw sure enough by herself, satisfied smirk that she did indeed have one.
“Where’s Raga?” she asked.
WARASCA SWAY SPAT OUT a chunk of medium-rare squirrel and jutted her chin out up at the sky.
A thin constant ribbon of sound pealed, high and far away, almost barely perceptible, but there were no ears better than Raga’s.
It was the sound of a horn blown by an army about to die—some scared herald, miles and miles south, was begging for aid.
The trees under which Raga sat had been good cover. Their thick branches started low to the ground. Easy to ascend quickly.
The towering one she had been leaning against was large enough around to flue the smoke; it was dry now in late august; and she had a preternatural fear, even if it was unfounded, of drawing others to the strong signal a dark line of smoke would make.
That was one of the most common ways Raga used to track down her quarry. She wouldn't let herself be one of those.
She darted along the tree tops be half mile or so it took to reach the northern Teran blockade of the Baronial forces.3
Obviously, Raga wasn’t the only one to hear the herald, and by the time she’d reached the northern Teran blockade, a detachment was already riding out to receive the herald, whose sounds only grew closer.
Meeting Sonë was always something Raga had to be careful against. She had trouble maintaining her infamous sangfroid around her chief deputy.
Having any excuse to be close to her fellow Leego4 was the main thing that spurred her hardened the bare feet across the lattice work of branches.
When Raga wasn’t watching the life drain from her opponents’ eyes, she quite enjoyed watching the life bloom in Sonë’s.
But she’d need to get there first, and Sonë was far away.
Raga would certainly be infamous for the ruthless efficiency with which she barreled through whatever distance separated where she stood for where she intended to be. Whatever her target, she riveted the steel of her mind to its fulfillment.
A second thing was the cold, quick manner with which she dispatched with men when got in the way.
A third was the peculiar expression of plaintive stoicism while she did it. She didn’t mind killing. And killing had all been men up until this point, which was a happy state of affairs. If she ever had to kill another woman, Raga wondered, would it be as easy with a woman as it was with a man for her to thread a screwdriver through her victim’s right temple so thoroughly that the tip of the tool made blood vomit out the head’s left side?
But her main fame would come not from any act of violence or vengeance, but from a comprehensively epic test of endurance.
The run she made on Ol’ Rel’s back across the Teran frontier was what her name would be associated with far into the future. She rode over 3,0005 miles of rough Teran frontier backcountry east to west, until the sun made her mustang’s buckskin coat shimmer silver at the edges, all along the curves of her sturdy muscles.
To everyone else, Ol’ Rel was homely.
To Raga, Ol’ was freedom. She was the capacity and the opportunity to fly, to dance like a hart through woods, to soar and to cut across the oceangrass like the birds that slowed to keep pace with the rider and her mustang.
She was not in the rolling, reedy sea of Central Tera now—the Crestel Reondir.6
It was not 75°F7 now, like it was when she and Rel leapt like a rolling forest fire, loosed from a longbow.
Raga was a witch. Ol’ Rel was her fell broom. Together they were savage hearts that would never die.
Dying was what Raga made other people do.
Propelled by Rel the Honeygold, Raga tore through the rough country ahead of her like it was a smooth lawn.
What Thurand relays here came to be known as the luthaeralis, and to consort with this agent shape was gradually tantamount to apostasy.
Hexem Cancri Fosevet; banned writings and collected during the reign of the II Duke of Tera (Eathel’s great grandfather).
Remember that Tera split its force into two blockades of the Barons to hamper supply lines; they had one on the north under direct command of the Duke of Tera and one blocking the Barons’ west, whence ᴷHaldric ad Seanë and Nordelay. Included in these were ᴷRhosson Gaudric Savenneᴮ, Viscount of Terenholm and ᴷOsric Edran Meadow de Vendrellᴬ, Count of Valçerre.
The term ‘leego’ originated in the southern Teran frontier, whence hails Raga Sway. In the local myths of that region, the leego are a species of killer fairy—diminutive, unassuming and lethal. In the Keta Kendo (‘honey song’), a popular myth from that region, the leego are led by a ruthless fairy queen Warasca.
About 4,800 kilometers; and around 114 marathones of Pheidippides in succession
Serengeti, grasslands, steppe and rolling plains and prairie, in varying degrees of above elevation going on forever. The land of the pale green esupremu psesec, (literally ‘ocean,’ ‘grass’ in Olteran) the grass native to the Crestel, often called ‘oceangrass’.
24°C