The sun was bright but not hot. Autumn still hadn’t decided to turn towards winter, even if there were few leaves on trees and the air was colder every passing day. Alouette raised up a tanned hand, blocking the sunlight from her vision as best she could while squinting her eyes to look up into the sky. It felt like there was a bird following them. She had never seen a bird of prey fly for so long and so leisurely. Whenever she got too suspicious of it then it had already disappeared. It was back, coasting through the air currents.
“I wonder how bad it was,” Ulrika said, bumping into Alouette as the wagon wheel went over another large rock. There seemed to be many rocks on this road. The village must have partook little in trade, instead relying on each person to do their job to prepare for winter. The stretch of barren land reminded Alouette that there had been a lot more trees here not long ago. The soil was dark, replanting efforts already taking place. “Your scarf is warm.” The older squire said, briefly snuggling her cold pale cheek into the red knit.
“It’s what I brought to help.” Alouette leaned over, loosening the sack that she kept securely in between her boots so it wouldn’t slip and slide all over the wagon. She pulled out a knitted scarf, shorter and wider than the average scarf but with a button on one end to make keeping the shorter scarf around one’s neck easier. There was a series of runes engraved around the cheap wooden button. “Rune activates when the button loops through because of the wool fibers are laced with larimar. It should at least last through the worst of the winter season.”
“Scarves are already warm, though.” Ulrika said, inspecting the scarf.
“It’s going to be a cold winter. It also does more. It traps heat and helps create more of it.” Alouette shrugged, taking back the scarf and putting it back in her pack. She tightened the opening back up. Her fingers were stained in hues of reds and orange, the colors of the few scarves she had a chance to make on short notice. She had planned on selling them but when Syr Noa asked her to go to Crusoe to help with the aid efforts, the scarves seemed like the only good thing to bring. Maybe she should have tried knitting as many socks as she possibly could?
“You just don’t like the cold.” A corner of Ulrika’s lips lifted in a lopsided grin, strawberry blonde hair catching the wind in just the perfect way so it flew back from her face instead of getting stuck in her pink lips or snotty nose.
“I like the cold plenty when I’m kept warm with a scarf.” Alouette crossed her arms over her chest. Ulrika continued cuddling up against her, nuzzling more into the scarf than Alouette herself.
“You really are warm. Super warm. You’ll be just fine if I do this, won’t you?” Ulrika pressed her icy fingers into Alouette’s cheek. The young squire squeaked and jumped up as much as one could while sitting, hands meekly shoving the belly-laughing Ulrika away from her. It would be a lie to say that Alouette was not grinning giddy and giggling alongside her friend. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”
“Hush.” Syr Cymbeline, usually found in the library instead of the front of a wagon, turned around to give the two squires a look. “We’re nearly there. Crusoe is still in shock and mourning. You all need to be respectful. Thank you.” The knight turned her head back around, going back to her book. Alouette figured it was due to Syr Cymbeline’s reading that had caused them to hit so any bumps on the road. With the scolding hanging in the air between them, Alouette cleared her throat and tried to get comfortable as the wagon rattled along, trying to keep her lips in a tight line.
Valborast's face was sour to the saccharine, and would have made further expression of revulsion would it not rob him of his cigarette. He shifted the thing in his mouth as he did shift his frame alongside the rocking wagon's shudderings, ember the only warmth he cared for. His own reds did not need the addition of a scarf, however imbued, he had made such known very clearly and loudly even before an offering might have been made.
At Syr Cymbeline's comment for respect, Valborast drew in deep of the burning paper, his eyes to the path behind them, huddled in his robes as he were sulking. He could not resist adding his grim signature to the utterance. Eyes still to the road. Smoke rolling out from the wagon, back in the direction where they had came.
"Such canoodling is fit for a private carriage, not this humanitarian ride along. People don't need to see you in throes of being cute as we dole out aid," Valborast said in light witherings, tapping his cigarette out onto the road, drawing in again the smoke. He couldn't resist another pull of it, and the remark that was implied couldn't be resisted made explicit. Said quieter in drawl as he were mourning his own presence in the wagon.
"I don't need to see that."
He ended the cigarette in a sharp pull and flick away into the road. Folded his arms. Thought of his book that needed his penmanship, how this duty they were road bound to be carried through hardly superseded his duty to literature. But command was command, he knew, and ink spilled from duty rendered. He inhaled deep of the cold air, rueful of the rationing situation of what he had thrown away. Glowered at stones and road as they made their way, and was the very picture of discontent.
Gruki's face, on the other hand, was the mirror image of serenity. 'I much prefer their canoodling to your brooding, Syr,' she interjected lightly, in between puffs of smoke and sullen stares, the latter of which Valborast directed at the road, as if personally affronted by the way it meandered indecisively. Most roads were like that, Gruki found, but at least they tended to lead places. Crusoe, for example.
Restoration order. Full complement.
The wagon train snaking along the road in their wake contained more than a few bundles of Alouette's excellent scarves and well-wishes. Laden and leaning, sometimes careening, they bore supplies for the present and hopes for the future. The land had bled, aye, but it was in the process of healing.
A cigarette butt spun to the earth, and was driven deep by one of Pepper's iron-shod hooves. 'You really shouldn't litter, y'know,' said Gruki to the grouch, red braid coiled about her shoulders, armour hidden beneath a surcoat of deep blue, like the Mheara come dusk. The steel kept the blades from touching her, but Syr Valchek's gaze was sharper still. Perhaps a nightcap with tonight's meal will thaw him out, the she-ork mused quietly. Too choleric by half.
Everyone needed a reason to smile. The goodfolk of Crusoe needed more of a reason than most.
With a swish of reins, Gruki rode up alongside the wagon, leaving Syr to conversate with his inner self. The big draft horse shook slightly, head lowered, ears forward. Content, perhaps, or just relieved to see the end in sight.
Figures swathed in furs and thick winter cloaks paused their work to observe the convoy. A young half-elf child chased an older human up the road towards them, stick sword held high, laughter robbing him of precious breath needed to continue the pursuit. A woman's voice called them to heel before they reached the wagons.
'They seem surprised to see us,' the redhead blinked, turning to Syr Cymbeline. 'Did no one send word?'
Esota scowls from atop the rouncey she rides. The beast, by the name of Suretride, a boring, overly straightforward name if you asked her, but she didn't right care, because she didn't right name the thing. "Damn right," she mutters under her voice at hearing the squires in the wagon receive their scolding. Grin creeps a little wider when the funny man in red adds to their reprimand.
And. You know. The word canoodling was kind of funny. But fat chance in the shattered mirrors she'd let anyone know that's part of why she was grinning. The tickly part. That didn't feel so cold and sharp.
What was his name again? Oh shit, the big one was talking now. Esota sucked in a breath and sat up tall and proper like. Shield at her back, and a few bits of steel to her person strapped to her blue gambeson. She almost looked a proper squire.
All the while, the wagon wheels rolled on toward the village proper.
Hector's eyes trailed the bird that had seemed to be trailing them. Gaze shaded by the wide brim of a tobacco colored cavalier's hat. Took out his folio, scrawled down a note. "Squire Esota,"
She muttered a curse beneath her breath. Double took. Had she. "Um, Y-yes Syr?"
"Do you see that bird, south by south east of us?"
"South by," she whirls about. Legs work against her horse's side, she whips around. "Uh, ye-yes? Big bird, Syr? Dark wings?"
Hector nods, makes a mark. Puts away his folio and point. "Keep an eye out for it as the day goes on, make note of it if you can while performing our duties," he dawns a green tabbard above the brick red of his gambeson. A white feather proud above his cap. He looks to the villagers. A mix of worry, and disbelief upon their faces.
He can't hear Gruki's question towards the rear of the train as they are, supplies rattling, wheels creaking, horse hooves clopping and cart oxen pulling.
But he does his best to smile for them. Nod. Make felt that they are here for them.
"Um, aye Syr," Esota turns back to spy the bird. But its gone.
At Esota’s other flank, the big dawnling’s counterpart ushers her big grey in a little closer. Near enough that Osytha’s voice can carry over the relentless percussion of heavy hooves, trundling wain-wheels, and scandalised reprimands from possibly the world’s most curmudgeonly vampire-hunter. The dusker lowers her skyward gaze toward Syr Hector and his flamboyant hat, feather and all.
Her eyes land on his folio next, lingering for a second there. Curious, only moreso now she’s had a glimpse of what lay within and knows it’s not all curt little notes on suspect avians. Osytha doesn’t let her glance insist by turning into a stare, though, and she lifts it back up. Sweeps her eyes along Hector’s sequoia palette of russet red and green in which he’s draped the rich earth of his skin. She spends a little longer peering into the shadows under his big hat — between that and his kettle helm, the man simply seems to like those broad brims — at the stoic, chiselled face therein. There’s that iron of his, she can tell from his demeanour; the Hector who’s prepared for when the crossbow bolts start flying out of nowhere, who’ll use that unshakeable steel to hold it all together in the face of carnage and panic.
Alas, their posts as rearguard mean actual canoodling is off the table. But she can at least spare a few seconds here and there to admire the man.
“Et’s a fine owd hat,” she remarks, nodding at the ambitious piece of millinery. “Yon feather makes thee look a bit like Syr Sando, an’ all.”
For herself, Osytha travels armour-clad as the cooling weather permits, with gambeson and hosen hid under her long hauberk, greaves and sabatons, bevor and sallet with the visor raised up. A blue-and-brown shepherd’s plaid cloak is thrown back over one shoulder, displaying her emblazoned surcoat: per pale argent and azure, a chrysanthemum counter-charged. It still sometimes surprises her when she looks down and sees those colours. It’s rare for Osytha to wear the thing for a variety of reasons — but, there it is now. A bold form of the order’s heraldic device, proudly declaring her allegiance.
She’s a proper Knight of Anathaeum. Gosh. Well, she already knew that, obviously. It’s just… for some reason it’s odd to be so reminded every time she goes to brush hard-tack crumbs off her chest.
Laughter from up ahead draws Osytha’s attention forward, to the rambunctious forms of an elfin bairn chasing after a taller figure fleeing in mock terror, and then to the sharp warning shout from an adult calling them back. She can only catch glimpses of them past the convoy, flickers of motion around wagon awnings, lumbering draft animals, and the mounted vanguard at the fore. Guess they’re close to Crusoe at last.
“‘Big bird’, ‘dark wings’,” she intones, repeating Esota’s words back to the other two. “Coud’st tha tell what kind of bird et were, Hector? Ah wasn’t quite able to, missen…”
“Surely not,” says Esota, drolly, from the middle of the sandwich. “You mean the ornithologist has met her match?”
Osytha gives her an impressed look. “Look at thee, usin’ fancy words,” she replies with a smile. “That monastery education’s payin’ off already.”
But if the dusker still sounds a little… uneasy, that’s because she is. Osytha can identify a great many native fowl at distance, can imitate a healthy number of their calls, as well. So to watch that silhouette in the sky and keep thinking, White-tail? Nay. Golden eagle… happen so? But… — well, on the one hand, she’s fascinated at the prospect of observing a heretofore undiscovered raptor. But on the other hand, the one which knows how unlikely that is, that enigmatic bird is troubling her.
“Good thing we getten us seein’-stones,” Osytha mutters. “Ah’ve an ill feelin’ abaht usin’ carrier pigeons.”
¹ Pynot/pyenot — a magpie. Or at least, something that looks like a magpie.
"Sorry, Syr Valchek." Alouette apologized solemnly, head lower, looking up between her eyelashes in case the Knight's scorn might be too much to bear. Every bit the sorry puppy she felt, Lou hugged her legs to her chest tight, even if it meant she was more prone to getting knocked over the next time they hit a bump.
"You think we're cute?" Ulrika asked, suddenly beaming like a sunflower to the sun. Lou gave her roommate a look of horror. Thankful for what could only be Tsoai-talee's intervention to keep Lou from dying of embarrassment, Gruki interjected with a playful quip. Both squires turned towards the Knight, memories of her being a squire just like them still fresh in their mind despite the time that had passed.
Syr Cymbeline squinted up from her book, furrowed irritation brief across her face before her round features smoothed themselves out upon realizing it was Syr Gruki and not the giggling squires behind her. She cleared the slight knot in her throat, taking in the surroundings, and the road, for the first time in awhile. Still hit a rock, but she grabbed on the reins as if she meant to do something about it. The horses turned without needing prompted to, following the bend in the road.
"Well, Noa and Ne should be there waiting for us." Cymbeline sounded uncertain about it despite it being the truth. The one to call for aid had been Noa herself. "They did send a lot of us, didn't they?" She turned and looked back, catching Syr Hector and Osytha, the squire Esota, before turning back to face Gruki. Blue eyes suddenly grew worried. "I did overhear that communication was brief and not exactly clear but Crusoe was said to have been raided by bandits."
Alouette lifted her head, quietly joining in Gruki's and Cymbeline's conversation with big ears.
"Noa made it quite clear that she couldn't, or perhaps in her case, wouldn't leave. I suppose we're lucky that Crusoe is close enough to us that we only needed two days of travel." Cymbeline finished, brushing nothing off of her nose with her finger. "Everything looks fine, doesn't it?" She leaned back as they began to go up a hill. The thought was enough to convince the librarian Knight to get back to her book, a breeze ruffling the pages to remind her she needed get back to studying up on Storm Mothers.
Upon reaching the top, four hanging bodies could be seen with a fifth being skewered onto a wooden wheel. Alouette covered her nose with a hand, looking away from cloth that blew easily around dangling legs. Ulrika was the opposite, wide eyed, unable to do anything but to look.
Below the dip of the ridge in a valley more brown than green, lay Crusoe hidden behind a thin layer of white smoke that coiled around it like a long, lazy snake. Shapes of buildings were blurred like ink that had been smudged, nearly recognizable yet entirely foreign.
"Something really bad happened here, didn't it?" Ulrika turned to look at the Knights in the wagon, any sign of joy swiped off her face like crumbs from a counter. Cymbeline was quiet, Ulrika leaned over and poked Valborast in the knee with a boney finger. "Right, that is like a bad omen or something? Should we tell the Captains? Like, look at that cloud, it looks like the death bringer! Do we tell Captain Helena or Captain Selene about that, I think Captain Selene, right?"
"The death bringer doesn't exist," Lou murmured, pulling on Ulrika's padded vest to keep her from crawling over to Syr Valchek and annoy him even further. She thought about how she would have bothered Gruki with questions, if only for her warmer disposition. "The bodies are old, Ulrika. You can tell by the smell." But that didn't help soothe the feeling of her stomach falling into a dark pit when all she could ask was why?Why did bodies hang there, why not pull them down?
Cymbeline shut her book tight with a smack, brown paper bookmark holding her place before being put in a bag, finally, truly focusing on the lonely road that led to Crusoe. Dark trees without many leaves left were crowded with birds, silent and watching. Lou frowned, catching onto quickly how every bird was a a corvid. Carrion Crows, Altalusian Magpies, Silver Jackdaws, Woodland Jays, Star Studded Rooks, and even a lonesome Raven, nearly hidden by all the others.
In front the veil of smoke without a scent sat the albino tiger, limpid blue eyes paler than the autumn sky above. A growl and twitch of his white whiskers in a greeting that was more surly than kind, but Lou guessed not many could parse the displeasure in Ne's words. He turned, a flick of his tail beckoning for them to follow as he padded into the smoke. It looked more impressive than it was, as the wagon crossed the threshold, Lou had held her breath for no reason at all, it was all an illusion spider silk thin, even water held better against the dive of a single finger.
Burned remains met the Knights as if they had walked into a unkempt cemetery, fallen roofs, doors hanging off of hinges, fences broken. Everything was night-scorched but the smell of charcoal and fire had long passed. The dirt was wet and muddy, sticking to every shoe and letting everyone make their mark against the black Crusoe dirt. It didn't stop a group of kids from playing in it.
"Guys, look at this worm, it's white!" One of the kids held it up, all the kids oohed and awed at it, each one grabbing it to inspect it. Alouette wanted to warn them that what they held was a maggot, which meant that they had been digging into some.... "Can't wait to feed this to Brenan, that snitch." The three others in the little dirty kid gang agreed with head nods and smug smiles.
"Snitches get stitches!" They crowed before looking at the wagon and the horses walk towards the center of time, suddenly, all of them looking like dirty innocent angels with big eyes and bigger smiles, hiding their hands behind their backs. Every step brought them towards homes in less disrepair, although some still had broken windows and doors. Gardens uprooted, chicken hutches smashed, farming tools cracked in half and left to sink in the mud.
A woman standing on her porch was the first resident of Crusoe to come greet them, hand over her belly that didn't look round enough yet for Lou to assume if she was with child. She whistled, using her lips and fingers, and other women and children came out from corners and doorways, relief soon melting away any worry wrinkles. All the women wore colorful garb despite the dreary backdrop of a raided town. Some of the kids came running, none taller than Lou, boys and girls smiling and cheering. They didn't care much about the wagon, instead running to the Knights on the big horses. The few chickens meandering through the muddy streets ran quickly out of the plodding hooves of doom.
There were no men, no boy over the age of twelve, no mule or horse. Only grim-faced women who wiped their hands on their aprons, eldest daughters sharing in the burden so the younger children could shout:
The Knights are here! The Knights are here! The Knights are here!
The remark about littering did not in turn litter Valborast's thoughts. A turning of a page of time in his mind did flip, wishing less scrawls in the ledger marks.
A new page, an old smell. The rot from examples, laid out. Reaching the nose, accessing the memory.
His boots landed into the tapestry of troubles. His eyes did sweep the thread and fabric of it, all scrutiny and sleuthing of miseries. These grim decorations were catalogued by his eyes, turning to each sign of the smothered and extinguished light of serenity without marvel, without sufferance. One might think that the saccharine chat to get here had caused greater vexation for Valborast than this morbid and ruined displays he stepped into.
And one would think right.
Valborast made slow sure tour of this place. The broken, the burned. He let the people meet people, let people greet people. He moved as if apart of their concerns. Other meetings were his to make.
He gave solemn nod to birds, as if in agreement, or recognition of what procedures parliaments here held vigilance to.
The corvids no doubt had no questions that did not pertain to the introduction of what the youths did cheer, Valborast thought. They knew what they ought by right of their dominion.
His eyes to the sign of ruin, not a glance those who cried out titles. Others will parse them, Valborast thought. I will parse what else remains.
Such a thought did guide his eyes upwards to what held court in the sky, and so, it did fill his shadow with expectations as a greeting did arrive.
The visage of the clouds so did fill him with a grim wonder. A feeling akin to seeing a painting within a familiar home, knowing that the sight meant doors that opened to familiar things. Familiar, and a sense of place in where one could hang one's shadow sure. He did not let this portent creep into his mouth, for the ways of his own wits were heightened by the sight, and he would not allow himself to slip. Already, his eyes were becoming, developing, attuning. Already he did sleuth finer in the grimness. He moved independently, investigating, observing, discerning, requiring no council, letting others work as he did draw in. Like a quill taking upon pitch font.
The mundane was chartered, noted.
Those upon the hill, he finally turned to, but not before the same respectful nod to the omen in the sky, as he had done with the corvids who held their watch. To do more would make his fellows enfearful perhaps, suspicious. To do more would risk an indecorous display to the parliament, to the conspiracy.
To the bodies he did affix himself, his eyes. Dauntless. Unblinking. Stillness within him entirely now, not held of fear, not of the stiffness of apprehension or caution. His burgundy robes gathered tight about himself, as if he like the corvids that observed them from enshadowed treelines did amass himself in watching vigil. Eyes upon the spokes, the hub, the hanging, the ended, the placed and the displayed.
If one were to look at Valborast's eyes in this moment, it would seem akin to some fracturing thing of onyx, grinding, milling, churning. The white of his eyes remained, the black developing it's pitch refractions in turn by inward turn. Contained.
What remains I ask.
What was known to some as the death bringer to some here was felt as a gesturing hand by another name entire by one known as Crimson Knight. Within the sky it's guise and within the weave it's feeling, and within the black sheen of void did things envelop imagination. Valborast accepted invitation to look, to see, to peer, and watch, and perhaps, armed with the same style and affectation of the birds that did observe, Valborast might draw back the curtain to understand the nature of this display upon the ridgeline. If there was something beyond the mundane...
I will know of it.
The thought was not a request, the injunction declared in his soul in demand to the sight.
In stillness. In dedication. And in duty to his comrades who would greet the living and parse their troubles. Valborast would not distract, nor shirk to his affixedness. He worked his ways in silence.
Of those of the Anathaeum, some might place ear upon the ground to feel the tremble of what was ahead and far away. Some might place palm upon the still waters and know the ripples of thought in time. Valborast now did look direct in the lightless place with eyes blind to horror's disguise, and did bid the long shadows cast by deeds done and dead to endarken his understanding. If there was understanding for him to be bid privy to...
Lou answers Ulrika's question before Gruki gets the chance to, words accompanied by the creaking of ropes drawn taut and the distant cawing of the black-feathered mob. Bandits did this? Gruki wondered as they rode past, she herself unable to look away, eyes glued to the grizzly sight laid before them, yet another fresh horror to haunt her dreams. The smell lingered longest, though it took her a moment to realise it wasn't coming from the bodies but Crusoe itself.
Raided by bandits under the Death Bringer's supervision.
Gruki felt her throat tighten and her mouth go dry. Something in her chest started to ache. Vacant gazes followed the procession down the hill and into the village. Smoke clung to the ruins like a shroud whilst children chased each other around puddles of congealed blood, pretending everything was fine, because that was what children did best. Perhaps it was all they could do, given the circumstances.
Whatever hearts had wrought such destruction were too cold to touch.
Glancing down at her hands, Gruki watched absentmindedly as they curled into fists, the tremor working its way through her body much akin to an earthquake, a force of nature, distilled down to its purest form: wrath. It took some considerable effort to recall Master Hawken's teachings. Before long, the shaking subsided, the waters of her soul stilling in time to perceive the flapping of wings.
The lone raven swept low past the convoy to alight on the branch of her arm, talons scribble-scrabbling for purchase as it made itself comfortable.
Tock-tock, it bobbed up and down in greeting, head canted, studying the big green face with its rounded beak and gleaming eyes. Tock-tock-tock, it repeated, and Gruki felt her wrath recede for good, a small smile tugging at her lips as she caught a few of the children staring.
'What have you got for us, friend?' The she-ork asked the corvid quietly.
She had yet to fully-learn the wylder tongue, but as Master Brambleshell had been quick to remind her, that was a lesson best learnt over the course of a lifetime. Croaks and clicks. Alarums and warnings. Mimickry.
Bad, trees, the raven warned, leaning into her hand. Trees, bad, trees. Trees.
A couple crumbs torn from a heel of hard bread were just reward for the information. The raven took to the nearest eave as Crusoe's smallfolk appeared from those few homes left untouched. Mothers and daughters, venerable grandmothers and suckling babes. No men.
The boys playing in the road were too young to hold a spear of beat a drum, the eldest amongst them yet to see his twelth nameday, presumably. Gruki saw a lot of gaunt figures and hunger-bloated bellies. At the corners of her mind, the old rage stirred.
Bandits did this? Again, Gruki wondered, the echoing report of raised voices sounding so very far away to her ears.
Swinging from her saddle, the Dawn Knight walked amongst the chanting village folk, accepting brief touches and hugs, so that the less sociable of her companions could remain ahorse. A little girl wearing a crown of dried thistles tugged at the hem of her surcoat, and Gruki scooped her up, ignoring the mud staining her dress. There were worse things to be afraid of.
'Anyone see where Ne crept off to?' She asked her fellows, pausing to gaze back down the column, spying Hector and Osytha towards the rear. 'Or Syr Noa, for that matter?'
"Didn't think such birds took wing to these winds this time of year," he confessed. Smile easy on his lips as he played a Sworn Knight's game. A bit of coded talk that would be taken up by sharp squires, and seasoned knights alike. Eyes steady on the road ahead. "Useful, to keep notes on their migration though," he nod. Head keeled. He eyed her sidelong, soaked up the sight of her like a leaf to the sun. there in the bob of the steady canter of their steeds.
"Et's a fine owd hat... look a bit like Syr Sando, an all,"
"And you?" he asked, playful. "Proud in all your heraldry," couldn't hide the warm swell of it in his own chords, despite his own lack of loyalty emblazoned. "Shame about the armor though," he teased with a bob of his brows.
Esota made some disgusted sound. "I'd say get a room, but I think then I would puke outright," she groaned.
Hector just laughed the more. "Better to love than to war, Squire, never you doubt that,"
Another sound of annoyance, and she urged her horse forward to a trot.
Hector shook his head, still wearing warmth on his features. Adjusted his hat with a pull of its brim. Rode a little closer to his Dusker. The wagon train went on its lazy roll. "Full of cold fire that one," he said with worry there tinged.
"Good thing we getten us seein’-stones... Ah’ve an ill feelin’ abaht usin’ carrier pigeons.”
"Such were the wings over Lethoja," he said, solemn.
The wagons rolled, and the wagons slowed. Mutters and worries rippled over them, cold as autumn's waters. Eyes set high unto the crest of the hill. Hector's own grown wide at the site that peaked over the stone and green that grew there between the crags.
The dead hung from their nooses. One from their wheel, and there behind them, the reaper did loom. "Come to claim the harvest," fell from the Dawn Knight's lips. His eyes found Esota, tall and straight backed upon sure stride.
As the other squires spoke to one another, the young Laverock stared on in silence while the wagons passed her by. Grim faced. Leather squeaking where gloves gripped reins. Hector rode up beside her, and brought Ronja to halt. There he would stay as smoke rolled over Crusoe and all those dark wings that flew over it darted and bobbed there through the veil.
"Did they love themselves there, Syr Hector?" Esota dared. Eyes unflinching from the sway of the four. Ears full of the creek of the axle and groan of the woods.
Hector too, watched a long moment. "Would that one's love could stay such fates, Squire Esota," he said, and turned his horse on towards the wagons that began to roll down away from them. "Might that our duties see less suffering strung so easily,"
A click of her teeth. A furrow of brow. "What is that even supposed to mean?!"
Hector shrugged. Nodded his head toward the wagon. "It means we have the rear guard,"
The fanfare didn't quite suit Hector. Still, he met the people's eyes, and wore a face that sewed calm. His eyes fixed on the kids, playing amidst the dark mud. The dirty little angels.
"Squire Esota," he spoke.
Her eyes were squinted, and brows cocked, like she was trying to make sense of what she was seeing around her. "Why are they cheering?"
"Never mind that," he hopped off his saddle, and got unto the wagons. "Did you see those children picking through the shit when we came in?" he was already helping Syr Cymbelyn direct people into an orderly line. A few over eager souls started getting too close. Reaching, grabbing. He stood there with them, squatting low as he ushered them back. "You'll get your supplies, Mistress, you need only wait your turn, go on then," a child snuck behind him, reached down and with their muddy hands grabbed for a load of apples.
"Hey you!" Esota snapped, moving Surestride there to the action. Hooves stomping. "Get your-"
"Squire Esota!" Hector snapped.
Her own eyes went wide.
The kid's eyes were wide. Hand still tight around the sack of apples. He yanked it up with all his might, but Hector's hand was already there.
"You'll get them dirty," he said calm to the boy. "And you'll get sick,"
"Si-sick?" The filthy little angel said.
Hector nod. "I'll give you an apple, but we have to get those hands clean first,"
He blinked. Let go. His little gang was there beneath him, hoisting him up and turning purple in the face as they sweat.
"Ranji! Hurry the hell up!" one of them cried out from under the strain.
"Uh, well, I mean," Ranji stammered as his base wobbled under him.
"Esota," Hector said with more calm. "Dismount, and help these children get their hands cleaned," Hector went back to helping the line get in order.
Secrets of the dead, a niht-hróc’s scavenged wisdom, portents and promises as posed in the heavens; such things are not for Osytha to decipher. She hasn’t the weave to even begin pulling at such threads, draw her eye as they might. The gibbets. That too-perfectly-shaped cloud. Yet, dwelling most of all upon those swarming corvids.
Dorps, rooks, caddows, jays. A solitary raven; no unkindness there. For Syr Gruki to choose that one out of all those perched about, well, that holds some significance with the woman of the Leah. Satisfied that the lonely sage has just become a little less lonely, Osytha brings her attention back to the last remaining members of this eerie flock.
Pynots — and so very many of them. Before the train quite disappears into the billowing veil looming up before them, she begins to count…
“Ane for sorrow,
Twa for mirth,
Three for a funeral,
Four for a birth.
Five for siller,
Six for gold,
Seven’s a secret,
Nivver to be told.
Eight for a wish,
Nine for a kiss,
Ten’s a surprise
Tha mun’st ne miss.
Eleven for peace,
Twelve for t’ risen,
Thirteen beware —
’Tis t’ devil hissen.”¹
Osytha frowns. Her eyes are still skipping from bough to bough, the tally of those piebald birds mounting higher up until a senseless fog takes them from view.
“Bugger,” she mumbles. “Don’t reightly ken what ’appens beyond tetheradick².”
It’s belike to be nowt good, she thinks to herself, as the charred husk of Crusoe takes on excruciating, imminent detail around them.
Razed homes. Not just looted; these outlying houses have been gutted by fire, hollowed, left as black bones smearing across the mud. But this destruction is more complete than a simple runaway blaze, and that becomes evident further in. Without as much fire damage around, it’s all too easy to see that which has been wrought by hands.
This kind of deliberate carnage… this is what invading armies do to cripple enemy infrastructure. There’s no reason for simple bandits to go this far. Except, Osytha knows that there is. And it’s the simplest reason of them all: because they wanted to.
As the caravan comes to rest and she dismounts with a muddy splat, Osytha looks first not to the gaggles of blackbright bairns and women of all ages emerging from their homes, but to the state of her own dawnling and duckling.
“Full of cold fire that one.” Yes she is. Esota came to them not even a year ago, already a lass of seventeen summers then. Osytha told her she’d have to work twice as hard as anyone else to catch up — so she’s been doing thrice instead. There’s some white-hot point of fire driving Esota on, a fire which Osytha suspects was lit in a place very much like Crusoe. If this all starts to get a little too familiar… well, she’s seen first-hand what the girl can do when she snaps.
As for Hector—
“Hey you! Get your—”
“Squire Esota!”
Classic tykes… of course they look like little angels; it’s selective pressure. If the surface matched up with the vicious buggers they are on the inside, they wouldn’t get away with half as much. Could be this ‘Brenan’ is merely an escaped chicken the kids have rounded up, or something like that… but Osytha wouldn’t be surprised if the truth is crueller than that.
Time to reveal her secret weapon…
While cooler, handsome heads prevail over the apple crisis, Osytha’s hands stow away her helmet, then move to a blanket over the pillion cushion behind her saddle. A cold, wet nose snuffles excitedly at her fingers as they undo a couple of buckles. Copping a few licks while she’s at it, too.
“Good lad,” she croons, lifting her silly potato out his basket. A dark, happy face stares eagerly back at her, tail fully a-wag. “Art tha a good wee Guffers, then?”
Those mud angels’ eyes light up as she sets her boyo down. “Doggy!” Cry the multitude of reaching, grubby children.
“Aye, an’ you can all play with ’im after you wash your ’ands like Syr Hector says,” Osytha tells them. “Now, shape yersen! There’s better’n apples waitin’ for you, an’ all.”
Just before Esota can follow that gang away, though, the badger gently catches her elbow.
Snitches get stitches!“Listen close,” she whispers to the Laverock lass. “Try an’ get them talkin’, but don’t push too ’ard.”
Esota gives her a surly sort of look, but nods in understanding.
When their squire’s gone after the bairns, Osytha steps over to where Hector’s started on getting things organised. The dusker finds him directing folk into a line for their supplies, and she watches him a second before coming up close.
The damnable, nagging mud. Those burnt-out shells of buildings. All this death in the air. Is Crusoe a little too familiar for Hector, as well?
Osytha finds a spare moment to wrap a hand in his. To give a meaningful look into his eyes.
Remember, says her touch, her rain-soft gaze, I’m here. Thy dusker is with thee.
Long enough for that, and then she lets go. Lets him get back to work, so she can get to hers.
Osytha starts on moving supplies: shifting sacks, cracking crates, rotating whatever’s empty out with freshly full containers. Simple work which leaves her mind free to scan the collection of villagers… do another little counting game, in her head this time. And she doesn’t need to go all the way up to Old Nick, either.
No men. Even the boys are all young, the eldest barely being in what you could call their teens. And that’s… odd.
Conscription could account for some of the men in their prime, but for what conflict? Casualties defending against the raid, that might explain others who are missing. Then what of the elderly, those too old to fight? What of any lads with just a summer or two over the eldest boys picking out maggots from Crusoe’s filth — they’d yet have been too young to fight. Were they all just slaughtered for the hell of it? Taken? But if so, why doesn’t it seem like the women, the girls have suffered the same? In her experience, bloodthirsty raiders tend not to be especially picky about the sex of who they’re massacring. Nor the age.
Something doesn’t add up. Snitches get stitches! Maybe Osytha’s just being paranoid. But she would like to know who this ‘Brenan’ is. Maybe have a little talk, if Esota learns enough to point them in the right direction. Perhaps someone else will do in the meantime…
There’s a lass; one of those ‘eldest daughters’, though hardly ‘old’ by any means. All of about thirteen years and four and a half feet tall. Canola yellow kirtle, mousey hair in pigtails, one over each shoulder. Her reedy arms trembling under the weight from her sack of provisions.
“Ee by gum — let me ’elp carry that, love,” Osytha ‘suggests’, as she chipperly liberates the bulging burlap sack from her arms, “afore t’ mud beats us to et. Tha just show’st me where to go, now.
“What’s thy name, pet? Ah’m Osytha.”
¹ This is a slightly adapted version of ‘the’ (there are quite a few) magpie-counting rhyme; One for Sorrow.
² No, she’s not being rude. It means ‘thirteen’. Promise.
The birds continued to huddle around, and if anyone had a gimlet gaze they might find that green eyes would be reflected in each bird's dark look. Only inside the pupil, like looking down into a deep, dark well and seeing something that shouldn't belong. The green eyes held a faint, chatoyant glow, nearly unnoticeable. When one bird turned it's head, so did the others, all of them behaving like puppets, no longer masters of their own will, the entirety of Crusoe their cage.
They were directed to observe and only observe, and that command came to them the moment the Knights stepped through the smoke that meant to hide Crusoe from their eyes. Lou watched the raven fly to Syr Gruki, the last bird left with the right to choose. She could hear it, too, the trees, the other birds.
Then there was something more: Watching. You.
Some of the jet black corvids flew closer to the Knights, choosing to perch on a roof as they peered at them. Lou didn't warn Syr Valborast when a group followed after him. One of the crows left a white present on the invisible path he followed, cawing as it splattered into the mud to sink as if laughing.
The squire got off the wagon alongside Ulrika, both helping Cymbeline in the organization of the aid, moving bags here, boxes there, but Lou kept her pack of scarves close to her. Seeing the hungry children had Lou's stomach flipping, suddenly guilty that she could only share memories of their pain, as if she needed to be hungry, too. She remembered the tightening of the belt as a girl, even now she could remember the bitter taste of her dry tongue in her mouth.
The girl with pigtails didn't smile, only blinked and nodded. Her eyes were set in deep hollows, a constant shadow over them, cheekbones and jaw too sharp to be deemed pretty. Lips pressed into a thin line, she pointed down the road where it began to gently slope up, overlooking the destroyed fields of Crusoe was a temple with the broken wooden mark of Gobinh the Tending hanging from the roof that was only meant to keep out the rain. Many large and wide open windows, stained glass shattered but some intact enough to reflect the light.
To the temple did the girl walk, the only one left to tend to it. It would not take them long to reach the wooden steps, getting a better look at the destruction. They had tried burning it down, too, some of the pillars holding the doorway wide and open were all black, the smell of charcoal lingering about. The girl walked inside and pointed at where she wanted Osytha to drop the supplies, all of it tools for mending.
Some of the glass that had shattered onto the floor was red, but the glass stained with blood looked closer to black.
"Don't place it on Master's thumbs." Was all the girl said, all the warning she would give about the wooden plate on the nearby alter that held a pair of thumbs, white bone sticking out from them. She was quiet again, more sullen than thoughtful, the temple that had once made her feel safe now a nightmare for her to never forget. All she could think about was how she was glad she didn't yet know how to read or write or else they would have done to her what they had done to the Master Priest.
Ulrika came up to Syr Gruki's side, offering the little girl in her arms a small piece of chocolate.
"Don't tell anyone?" She asked the redheaded knight with a devious smile. "This is from my own stash but I figured something sweet was needed. Other than myself of course" It wasn't as practical as what the Knights had brought, or as made with as much care as Lou had put into her scarves, but Ulrika knew that no matter the tragedy, chocolate always did melt good on the tongue.
A warm and spicy scent that reminded Lou of some of the baked goods offered at the Festival of Lights, none of which she could have of course, but smelling was always free. Smoother than water, more sinnuous than the black smoke wafting from her pipe, Syr Noa strode out to greet her fellows. A tall woman without any remarkable features other than the baby she cradled in her arm was the one leading the blind knight to where most of them stood, Ne followed behind the two women.
Lou nearly missed it, but in Syr Noa's fluid gait there was a misstep, or rather a limp. The black socks Lou had made for her when they had first met were not on the Knight's feet, giving the squire a chance to glimpse purple and burgundy patches of chilblained toes, sandals doing little to ease Noa of the pain. Lou knew it well, during the really bad winters everyone in her village suffered from it.
Where had Syr's socks gone? Lou couldn't help the frown. She had worked hard on them.
"Nice," Noa said with a smile, black smoke from her pipe slowly turning white, filtering up to the smoke dome she had created. The birds had learned that they could indeed fly through it, whoever commanded them didn't seem ready to test it out themselves. "You guys came quick, and you brought Gruki." Lou paused for a second, in the middle of handing out a scarf. Syr Cymbeline had told her to give it to the older children first because they would be subject to having their little sibling's toes and hands pressed against them for warmth.
"This is Sidnia, the wife of Theo, who is sorta in charge of village matters." Sidnia dipped her head in greeting, letting go of Noa who held her pipe as if she might take a drag any second.
"What happened?" Syr Cymbeline had been quick to come back to the front, she had been talking with some of the women, explaining how to make a broth that would get stomachs strong again, prevent midnight crapping from a belly unused to being all the way full. The uncertainty was back, the mystery of Crusoe heavy in her brows.
"Long story short? As Sidnia tells it, Bellamy's were extorting Crusoe, fees went up this summer, a contract couldn't be negotiated. Three months ago, random bandit attacks. The first few, Crusoe could handle, but then they couldn't manage it. Master Priest then writes a letter on Crusoe's behalf to Lord Aldeppo to get some help, but he says he won't send down his men unless Crusoe pays more in taxes. The golden root should bring in quite the profit so give me a bigger cut sort of deal.
"I'm in the area, forest around about... there, I think. I hear horses and men telling others to shut up, pick up the pace, so I check it out. There's blood in the air, people are asking for mercy, they cut some guy's thumbs off, yanno, so not hard to figure out who's in the wrong. I try to help, but one of the guys grabs me, tells me Crusoe is still being attacked, to go there because the "bandits" only took the men and older boys and any grandfathers. So, I come here, clean up what I can, find out that sure, some are bandits, others just brutes wanting to join Bellamy rank, but...." Noa brought the pipe to her scarred mouth, a moment of reprieve as Sidnia shakes her head as if not wanting to remember any of it.
"The men are still gone and Crusoe is clearly being watched. The harvest is destroyed, valuables stolen, and they've been sending us these giant letters. Reading has never been my thing and only the Master Priest here handled legal documents and letters." From her robe, Noa pulled out three letters. It was Cymbeline who grabbed them to read. "I'm getting a little too close to my limit, here. I tried purifying the fields, but there's something wrong there, doesn't feel like the blight, though. The temple is destroyed, only left one apprentice behind." Cymbeline didn't say anything, too intent on quietly reading the letters.
Dear Vagabond Knight,
TAKE NOTICE that this correspondence shall constitute formal and unequivocal notification that your actions on or about the 22nd of Kurkis 352 EOD have been determined to constitute, prima facie, an unlawful and wholly unjustified act of aggression against persons lawfully present within the territorial jurisdiction under Bellamy Protection.
Notwithstanding any characterization you may subsequently attempt to advance regarding the circumstances giving rise to said incident, including, without limitation, any assertion that your conduct constituted “defense,” “protection,” “self-preservation,” or any other intervention; such characterizations are hereby rejected in their entirety as legally insufficient, factually immaterial, and contrary to the prevailing interpretation of applicable law.
It has been alleged, and the undersigned maintains, that you did intentionally initiate and escalated to a violent confrontation resulting in damage to property, disruption of civil order, injury and murder to persons associated with the undersigned's party and the peoples of Crusoe.
For the avoidance of doubt, the fact that certain individuals may have been present in or around the village at the relevant time does not, in and of itself, confer upon you any unilateral authority to employ force against them. Any contention that such individuals were engaged in an unlawful incursion is expressly denied.
Furthermore, any attempt to characterize your actions as a response to an alleged imminent threat shall be deemed an after-the-fact rationalization unsupported by competent evidence.
Accordingly, you are hereby ORDERED AND DIRECTED, to the fullest extent contemplated by whatever lawful authority may be asserted herein, to:
Immediately cease and desist from any further interference with the undersigned, their associates, agents, representatives, or affiliates including the peoples of Crusoe;
Refrain from entering, approaching, occupying, or otherwise interfering with any property claimed by the undersigned including Crusoe;
Surrender, return, or otherwise account for any property alleged to have been unlawfully taken or damaged; and
Submit written assurances that no further acts of aggression, interference, intimidation, or materially similar conduct shall occur and that you sign with your thumb to leave Crusoe and never enter the land it sits upon again.
Failure to comply with the foregoing demands shall be construed as evidence of continued noncompliance and may result in the commencement of such civil, criminal, administrative, or equitable proceedings as may be available to the undersigned to enforce mandatory incarceration.
You are further advised that ignorance of the law, mistaken assumptions regarding self-defense, purported humanitarian motivations, or the asserted protection of third parties shall not be presumed to excuse your conduct.
Should you call upon reinforcements of any nature whatsoever, regardless of their personal relationship to you or the circumstances under which such assistance is rendered, any resulting participation shall be deemed an escalation of the underlying offense and shall expose you to a greater and/or aggravated penalty than that otherwise applicable.
You are therefore advised to govern yourself accordingly. Leave Crusoe immediately or present your argument to the Courthouse at Pyndrr by the 27th of Kurkis, 352 EOD.
Respectfully,
The Shield of Crusoe, Naomi Bellamy
Security Consultant
FINAL NOTICE OF MANDATORY INCARCERATION
TO THE VAGABOND KNIGHT:
Whereas you were previously informed with unequivocal notice to vacate Crusoe, and whereas you have demonstrably failed, neglected, and otherwise declined to effectuate such departure, your continued presence shall henceforth constitute deliberate and AGGRAVATED NONCOMPLIANCE.
Accordingly, pursuant to the wholly authoritative provisions herein invoked, you are hereby sentenced to immediate incarceration for the duration deemed appropriate by the undersigned authority.
Any further refusal to depart shall be construed as an additional affront to lawful order and may result in the imposition of further punitive, custodial, and decidedly unpleasant consequences.
Your continued presence is no longer a matter of choice.
You have been duly notified.
Respectfully,
The Shield of Crusoe, Naomi Bellamy
Security Consultant
VAGABOND KNIGHT!
Be advised that the undersigned has, through the diligent procurement and formalization of testimonial evidence, obtained the signatures of multiple inhabitants of Crusoe in support of the undersigned’s account of the aforementioned incident.
Each such individual has signed their name to a written declaration purporting to establish, affirm, corroborate, substantiate, and otherwise lend evidentiary legitimacy to the proposition that the undersigned was, in fact, the aggrieved and RIGHTEOUS PARTY; the Bellamy family are the rightful protectors of Crusoe, the bandit attack was not related to the Bellamy's provision of aid and that any contrary characterization constitutes a fundamental misunderstanding of the circumstances.
Each individual therefore declares that the attacker of Crusoe was the vagabond knight and their white tiger familiar.
These attestations, having been duly signed and ceremonially accumulated, shall then be henceforth regarded as Irrebuttable Presumption documentation of the undersigned’s version of events.
Any villager who has affixed their signature thereto is hereby presumed, for the purposes of this correspondence, to have provided an unequivocal affirmation of the undersigned’s innocence, virtue, and righteousness.
Accordingly, any attempt to dispute, invalidate, retract, reinterpret, or otherwise undermine these declarations shall be met with such further legalistic measures as the undersigned may deem appropriate.
The signatures have been obtained.
The record has been established.
Their thumbprints signed in blood is proof that the narrative is therefore, ostensibly, settled.
Your punishment is no longer mandatory incarceration. The peoples of Crusoe and their protectors demand justice: on the 28th day of Kurkis, year 352 EOD, you shall be hanged. Nothing less than the DEATH PENALTY is required to put the heavy hearts of parents, brothers, sisters and orphaned children at rest.
Signed,
The Shield of Crusoe, Naomi Bellamy
Security Consultant
Cymbeline unwrapped the entirety of the third letter, finding pages with columns of thumbprints and names written in cursive beside them. The same sort of cursive that had written the other letters. Cymbeline began to sniffle as she folded up the letters, stuffing them back into their packaging as tears welled in her crystalline eyes.
"What did they say?" Noa asked. Sidnia was eyeing Syr Cymbeline with a look filled with uncertainty.
"The Bellamy's are saying that you're the one at fault, you attacked the Bellamy's for protecting Crusoe from the bandits which helped the bandits to plunder," Noa started to laugh humorously, Cymbeline raised her voice and kept talking. "Noa, they're saying tomorrow they're coming to hang you! The men they captured, they all signed this paper saying it was you - I suppose some may be the Bellamy Brutes but I did see a Theo.... but that doesn't matter. They want you dead." Noa stopped laughing long enough to take in a lungful of clove smoke.
"That can't be possible," Sidnia hissed. "Neither my brother nor my beloved Theo would ever lie like that. He knows the Bellamy's have been wringing us dry, he knows they were upset when we ended our protection contract with them, and they did this, two weeks before the tax collector comes to our doorstep? Theo knows better!"
"He does, but you're forgetting what he doesn't know." Noa rubbed the back of her neck as if it were sore while she exhaled, smoke lingering around her face. "He doesn't know I'm here with you. He doesn't know that you're safe, that your daughter is safe, that his son is still alive. He doesn't know others are here to help. All he knows is that he was taken. He's scared for his family, as any good man would be, and yeah, I don't blame him for lying if he believes he could go back to protect you. I don't see shame in that."
But Lou did, Lou saw a lot of shame in that. She turned away from the Knights discussing the letters, looked towards Ulrika, sneaking her chocolate to the kids, looking over her shoulder as if she were handing them shroud dust instead. It was overwhelming, deciding how to help, what to do. Everything felt important, everything needed to handled, and everything altogether felt like too much. So Lou stood there, eyes everywhere despite how still she was, immobilized like she were some useless statue without meaning or purpose.
She wished she had brought more scarves to pass out.
"Yo, Lou, over here," Syr Noa gestured her over. Lou went, seeing that while Syr Cymbeline had stopped her tears, now Sidnia looked ready to burst. She held her heartache better, able to swallow it all back down inside her so only her pale face looked pinched. "Can you go with Val and make sure he's not like, yanno... lookin' how he usually does?" With a quiet nod, Lou obeyed, running after where she last saw Syr Valborast. She'd never in a hundred years to speak about him as casually as Syr Noa had, not even if he were dead, certain he'd haunt her for a while to teach her a lesson.
"Syr Valchek, please wait!" Lou called when she was close enough, still jogging towards him until she was at his side. A small boy had stepped in front of them, quiet and serious-faced. He pointed at the Knight and squire, brows raised. The silent child then pointed at where Crusoe's fields had been, fabled for soil so healthy it was the only place the golden root could grow.
Inside the destroyed fields kneeled an old man, hunchbacked and balding, skin so thin even paper cuts would leave a deep scar. He had thick green veins protuding from his spotted hands, and beneath his finger nails were dirt. He was digging for something, a broken shovel head beside him, but like a mole, he dug with what he had.
The small boy snapped his fingers at them and then ran over to the old man. On the back of the boy's thin shirt was a letter that Lou recognized: B.
Recline in the shaded valley, take in the cold shiver as a luxury, peer across fathoms in coaxing entropic drapery currents. This Valborast did, betwixt the mundane and the omen ways. Reclining and submerged, his enthroned mind did seek to glean what meanings cast out glimmerless here before him.
Each layer phantomesque he faced, turned, and let not fetter him. He found grave solace in the chill and hinting macabre. Suppressing his living aspects, he did dip his mortal wick in torrents of the beyond grey so that shadows beyond shadow could reach his vision without his own vitality banishing.
Yet he fresh sparked routinely his soul's illumination, as was his discipline's mandate, taking in gasps of life between drinking of glooming omen antitheticals. To not remain vigil would inexorably drench his essence in the axiomatic of the living, but to not seek in the shaded valley would be to bury his talents. He dimmed himself, and in so dimming, saw more of overcast omen predictions.
Reclined in the shaded valley, chill shudder as essential, unblinking across the fogs of portent and inviting doom. Another turn to dip the light of his soul. Like eyes adjusting to pick up pricks of starlight in canopy of pitch he affixed and affirmed the vastness of astral significance to his singular witnessing. Internal and echoing, his reverence turned widdershins to defiance. His demands of the omen place foreboding, rising in insistence, each proclamation revealing what was sought in ebb and flow at death's promise at his soul's wax and wane. His soul's decree and demand against the howling overwhelming nothings. An incantation provoking.
I, Valchek, witness. I wield vision to yield the shaded manner, hear as I do see! Show this one the essence of the nullified, to whom I do allow the tide of nothing to crash against, to be beheld and known! Hear and yield as I do see! I-
"Syr Valchek, please wait!"
A flint crack sparked flash and snap in the real world. Setting powderkeg attentions to smoke.
That utterance of his name set his eyes returning, his sense of self and place lurching, like someone pitched too far back in a chair that rocked too deep behind. To his own name his soul lurched to prevent his falling, reflexive, full flame of being igniting to this summoning back to his corpereal structure.
Valbroast's fingers seized tight at nothing, eyes painted themselves mortal and correct, a snarl upon his face as he felt himself stolen from there to here before he saw more, the truth he demanded of eluded.
“What is it?” Valborast snarled out, as if he were interrupted in the throes of something carnal by a rude knocking at his chamber door. Most might be gasping out shock and appallation, but much used to morbid encounters was this knight of Crimson. He snapped eyes at the one who called his name, accusatory, and snapped his collar and cloak as if to remind the world he stood within it. His neck strained as he did so.
A blink or three as he became himself in the mundane, understanding he had been ripped from whence he had lingered back into the field of duty. He sheathed his displeasure as he understood his attention was needed by a fellow of the Order, leaving thin lips and narrow eyes to scrutinise. Pain trickled as ice water through his veins as sensation provided it's cruelty for returning so sudden. All added to his grimness and scouring bitterness.
The silent youngster's pointing was followed by those eyes. The destroyed fields Valborast did turn toward, and enter them did he immediate. Jaw clamping as he felt the tremors against his soul's foundation from the whiplash. Slow did he affirm what had coalesced in meaning from dispersing his soul's illumination. Slow was his pace as he collected his rudiments of being, each fall of foot reminding him that the world he now walked was home.
For now.
Now forthwith did Valborast approach the old man, like a spectre of blood, pallid and dry of mouth. Sterness in the jaw, judgement in the eyes, silent in movement as he saw the frantic burrowing, his wrists bore sharp frigid pains, his neck cold snaps of frost needle scratch sensation.
To the old man he did extend his words, harsh in it's quietude, like a viper demanding poison from it's fang.
“Explain yourself, this burrowing, this seeking.”
An insistence, like a flick of a knife outward from hidden chamber. Eyes flaring authority, asurrity in the flash, as if he sought confession for being so transgressed against.
“Now - before that dirt becomes a grave to these deeds arriving. You will tell me of why, tell me of how. Without hiding.”
'What do we say to the nice squire?' Gruki smiled warmly as the girl reached for the chocolate, both arms outstretched, chubby fingers kneading the air. Gimmegimmegimme! Too young to give proper thanks; the delighted look upon her face was enough for Gruki. Ulrika seemed to agree. 'Have some yerself, while you're at it,' she nodded, balancing the bairn on her hip, opposite the steel she used to right wrongs.
Pepper nudged her shoulder, jealous of the coddling, and Gruki took up her reins with a smile.
'Let's go help the others unload,' she said, handing off the Thistle Queen to her mother, pretending not to notice the hollowness around the woman's eyes, or the bruise someone had left there. 'Food and medicine first, then clothes and quilts.' Starvation and sickness, lists and priorities. Procedures to be followed or ignored as was practical. The she-ork fell into step behind the others, helped, as was her remit.
The gang of children gave her a wide berth, for the most part, though a couple offered to lend a hand. Maybe they were tired of feeling helpless. Or just plain tired. Gruki took stock of her new workforce, then delegated command to Ulrika. Who knew, a bit of responsibility might do them all some good, give them a sense of belonging, of worth.
'I'm going for a walk,' the she-ork told her friend, laying a hand on her shoulder in passing. 'If you need help, see the syrs.'
There wasn't much left in the wagon, anyhow. Nothing Ulrika couldn't handle. Call it faith.
Leading Pepper out into the sodden fields, the Dawnling peeled towards the road they had ridden before entering Crusoe. The bad trees were eerily thick with observers of the winged variety. Crows, jackdaws, magpies. A superstitous mind's worst nightmare.
Disquiet laid a finger on Gruki's shoulder, and she brushed it off, just in time for her raven friend to make a reappearance.
A chill breeze ruffled the she-ork's surcoat as she gazed up at the creatures. Murder and mischief, side by side, silent as the grave. Colder still. Odd. Gruki felt the pull of Shroud, saw the glow of something other in the stares reflected back at her. The blood in her veins thrummed as she picked out the individual threads, like lines drawn in sand, waiting for the tide to come and wash them away.
The Watcher watched as she followed the threads back to the Source. Too many to sever with ease; reason allowed that she need only cut the one. There! The gathered corvids started to sing as she raised her hand to pluck at the too-taut shroudstring. A bit of theatre to frighten the Watcher into doing something foolish. It worked like a dream.
The thread disappeared in a deluge of wings and scattered feathers. Taking to the skies, the mob circled and sqwuaked, dispersing in the time it took her to pluck a black pinion from the air. A sense of wrongness, righted.
'Tree?' Went the raven, tucking itself tight against her head, before nipping at her hair playfully. 'Good, tree?'
'Yes, Crick,' the orkin replied, letting out breath she hadn't realised she'd been holding. 'Good tree.'
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