*Scene 01* 4:15 (The Bruel)
The rain had just begun to fall when the Xarmnian troop leader, called a “bruel,” kicked in the door to the Inn and the main dining hall. The door was unbolted, but the bruel didn’t care. He wanted a show of violence to punctuate his entry.
An olive-skinned woman, matronly plump, yet by no means obese, came out of the kitchen area wiping her hands with a dish towel.
“Now what is this?” she demanded, seeing the Xarmnian bruel standing like an imposing shadow in the door way of the Inn, rain hissing behind him on the threshold. The door swung against the inner wall, its hasp and catch splintered by the kick inward. A pool of water ran in rivulets into the room, blown through the rudely opened doorway.
“Where is the keeper of this Inn?!” the bruel demanded.
The woman quietly dried her hands and draped the dishtowel on the serving counter, before answering.
“He and the missus are out. It’s the off-season. Annual restocking trip. Can I get you and your men rooms for the night?”
She looked past the man at the broken latch and the heaving door, then back at the man.
“Was that necessary?” she asked, but the man did not respond to her question.
“Ale!” the bruel demanded.
“Just as you please,” said the woman, rounding the bar, reaching under the counter and bringing out a tall metal flagon and turning towards a tapped barrel along the back wall. She eyed the handle of a small dirk, lying just under the lip of the barrel rack, barely visible to anyone not standing just so.
The wind behind the man tugged at the open door and knocked it against the wall post.
“Mind getting the door, luv?” she said, with a slight grimace, her face averted.
When she turned with the filled flagon, the bruel had moved closer to the bar and had unsheathed a long knife, laying it horizontally along the surface of the bar, under his cupped hand. The woman’s eyes flicked to it, and then looked past the cruel man, daring her to meet his eyes.
She started to set the flagon down on the bar, and the man’s other hand flashed out catching her wrist in a cruel and tightening grip.
The woman winced as the pressure increased but she did not drop the flagon.
Quietly, her teeth gritted against the crushing pain, she said, “You want the drink, or not?”
“Set it down on the bar,” the bruel growled, glaring at her, waiting for her to look up and meet his eyes.
“You’ll have to release my hand,” she said, swallowing, eyes fixed on the wooden bar.
Suddenly the pressure subsided, but the bruel’s other hand flexed around the handle of the knife, his fingers curling under the prone handle.
The woman shakily sat the flagon down, the foam almost spilling over the rim.
The bruel took the handle of the flagon and raised it to his lips, turning his head slightly to keep an eye on her.
“To your health,” he growled the threat, as he took a long draught, downing the contents, keeping his eye on her for any sudden movement.
Finished he sat the flagon down on the bar with a slight knock, then wiped his mouth and beard with the back of his hand, this time lifting the knife off of the bar.
Four Xarmnian soldiers stepped into the dining hall from the open doorway behind him, their clothes dripping wetly from the outside rain, two holding long pointed throwing spears, the others bearing swords tinged red with fading gore.
“Now I’ll ask you again,” he said, carving the air in front of her, waving the gleaming blade from side to side across the bar, “Where. Is. The Inn keeper?”
*Scene 02* 9:05 (Rank Armory)
An outpost stood within miles northeast of the town of Crowe on the a fortified hillock of stone. Smelters were built along with fire kilns to forge weaponry from the ores quarried out of the Iron Hills mine.
It was said that The Pan and his Half-Men once haunted the Iron Hills, before they migrated further inland to the northwestern forests stepping down from the highlands and eventually inhabiting the more dense forests that ran along the sea lochs and fjords of the lakes of Cascale.
The Iron Hills was an ancient site of odd ruins and strange prehistoric structures built of stone and cavernous dugouts. A volcanic vent provided ash and heat, but also was partially toxic and sulfurous. Crude hammers were found in the site along with chisels and stone channels where the rods of molten iron were poured and shaped, before being pounded into shapes of blunt cutting blades and rods for spears. If not for the yellow-haze and smell of rotten eggs, the site would have been a vulcaner and smithy’s paradise.
A narrow gorge provided natural cover to and from the spanned edifice that served as a large storehouse for the hammered blades, and honed spearpoints that lined racks and walls of the inner honeycombed carry slings. The Xarmnian armory on the northeastern hills was just one of many strategic installations throughout the Mid-World lands within the domains under threat of the Son of Xarm. These served as weapons caches for military exercises, where Xarmni might arm and refit its soldiers, rather than have them carry large quantities of heavy armament overland.
The installation was strategically located, but not critically held at the present. An advantage that The Resistance forces had, however, was this particular armory was remote and minimally guarded, as Xarmnian soldiers were being called back towards the capital city of Xarm. Something was happening that was causing the monarch grave concerns.
A fissure crag held five Lehi warriors, poised to rappel down upon the upper guard loft. Eight Lehi took positions below the outer wall, slings in hand, setting the tension catches on a set of small catapults they called “hurlers”. Each hurler, contained a loosely held bag of granite and flint rock chips and shards, designed to scatter sharp raining debris over the wall to create not only a pelting hazzard but just enough noise to create a diversion and give the illusion that those outside the armory walls were more than they were.
Xarmnian soldiers were more cowed than courageous. They relied on numbers of troops overwhelming an objective, rather than individual skill and might. Their bruels were often cruel taskmasters, hired and paid for their reputation for brutality, rather than for their prowess or skill to inspire feats of individual courage.
By contrast, The Lehi were committed zealots, viewing their exploits as morally required to resist the evil regime that was taking their families and lands hostage. The Lehi trained and studied to make themselves a coordinated and effective team to not only outmanuever and outmatch their adversaries in direct combat, but to outsmart them as well.
They were the voice for the voiceless. The answer to tyranny. The jawbone taken from each of the disfigured skulls of their dead left to rot in the aftermath of a Xarmnian scourge. Lehi meant jawbone.
Storm Hawk watched the men take their strategic positions, wishing that her captain was here to take point. She had trained for this, but she was never certain before each skirmish if “this one” would be her last.
She gave a hand signal to the front man in the crag, and he returned the sign. The timing would make all of the difference.
The natural inclination of a sentry would move them towards the unexpected noises, but only for a few precious moments.
Mind games. Warfare was mostly mind games and misdirection. An understanding of natural preclivities and responses. Every now and then, they may encounter a seasoned warrior who did not follow their first impulse, but thankfully these were rare. An outpost armory, in the backlands to the east, was not an assignment given to Xarmni’s elite. More likely, it was given as a penalty, for the lingering presence of sulfur stench, that invariably infused their outerwear was not a smell one associated with honor among the military ranks. The continued exposure to the gaseous smells eventually tainted even the smell of their natural skin. The more bellicose among the Xarmnian infantry troops might even kill a fellow soldier that spent time of any prolonged duration at the outpost, just to rid themselves of being quartered with such a stench mate.
The Son of Xarm prohibited the officers from that particular outpost from ever coming into the courts in Xarm City to report on their battle-readiness.
For those alone, he left it to field marshalls to relay and convey any messages needed. The metal and ores were badly needed from the Iron Hill mine, and the armaments forged in the place were particularly well-crafted, but they smelled of the deaths they would bring, before having ever been utlized in combat.
Storm Hawk, smiled slightly as she knew how the raid would begin.
Below, one of the Lehi shouted upward at the guard on the upper parapet.
“Hey, stinky!”
Four Lehi repelled downward from the crag.
Within seconds the guard was subdued and pinned to the walk.
The front facing Lehi let fly a fulisade of rocks and debris from their “hurlers” as Xarmnian troops ducked and flinched under the sudden clamor, attempting to rush towards the gateyard of the armory.
A Lehi stepped out from behind a column, moving swiftly behind a sentry on the upper wall. With a quick shove, the sentry fell forward and toppled over the wall down onto the paved receiving floor with a crunch of bone and a wet cough.
Thwang! Zzzzzzzst!
An archer dispatched a guard roused out of a bunk house. His fall in the doorway, causing another soldier rushing behind him to stumble over his slumped form and receive a similar fate.
The armory’s sidewalls were natural sandstone, rising on either side of the protective boxed canyon ravine. Parts of those walls were sheer and thought unclimbable, but the fissures of the rains had created enough channels and chimney grooves to provide a skilled climber with an opportunity to put the lie to that assumption. Hidden folds and curves in the cliff faces were naturally camoflaged against view from the armory enclosures and courtyards. As rains began to fall, more Lehi rappeled down into the armory, following each volley of the hurlers operated skillfully by the Lehi.
Archers launched arrows, sizzling through the falling rain, as they landed, giving the lax Xarmnian watch barely any time to mount a response.
A contingent of soldier drew swords and pole-axe weapons, but could hardly defend themselves against the stealthy movements of the Lehi raiders.
Within minutes, the armory was secured. A battalion of thirty soldiers knelt, subdued by twenty-five skilled warriors with practiced intention.
Storm Hawk rode horseback through the creaking barrier gate as the stone bar was wenched back, and chains pulled its oaken doors back on rusted hinges.
One of her men approached, “The signal on the ridgeline has been set up. When are we to expect the Inn Keeper?”
“He was told to give us a half-day to prepare a shipment. We will load all the weaponry we can in their stock wagons and then drive them to the coastal forces. The Xarmnians have moved their garrisons on to the plains. They’re hiding what is happening with their stone under the cover of field drills.”
“What do we do with them?” the Lehi warrior asked, gesturing to the now kneeling Xarmnian soldier, lined up under the careful watch of Lehi archers with drawn bows.
“Strip them to their undergarments. Tie them up and gather their clothes.”
“To burn?” the Lehi asked.
“To wear,” Storm Hawk replied.
The Lehi groaned,”I was afraid of that.”
*Scene 03* 11:05 (The Cold Truth)
Becca waited until O’Brian and Miray rounded the bend and were out of hearing distance before she rushed ahead of the group and turned to them.
“There is something I need to say,” she said raising her hands to halt the group.
Cheryl, who had been walking beside her, was startled when Becca had bolted ahead.
The men and women, and teens in the group look from one to the other and then back at her.
“What do you need to say, little runt? Gonna tell us a nursey rhyme?” one of the teen boys challenged.
Another laughed, but Becca stood her ground, her hands trembled and fisted at her side, but she curtailed her rage and managed to only stick out her tongue at her heckler.
“Ha, ha,” she retorted, “You think you’re so funny, but this is serious. And you’ll be sorry if you all don’t listen to me.”
“Let her speak!” an irritated young woman said.
And Cheryl, standing behind the heckler, smacked the boy on the back of the head.
“Awwff!” the boy coughed out surprise at the sting of the slap, grabbing the back of his head and turning on Cheryl. “What’d you do that for?!”
Cheryl narrowed her eyes and glared at him, “Don’t tell me you’re that stupid! Shut your yap and let the girl speak!”
“You’re not my mom! You don’t get to hit me!”
“If I was YOUR mom, I’d hit myself!” Cheryl seethed, causing the others to laugh in surprise, a little discomfited for having done so.
Becca waited, hands fisted on her hips, and Cheryl nodded, with a flourished gesture for her to continue.
“As I was saying,” and here she glared angrily at the teenage boy, “I need to tell you all something about Miray. She is not behaving like herself.”
An older man sank down a little and came forward a step.
“What do you mean, young lady?”
Becca realized she had the group’s full attention now, and she struggled to hold down her excitement. She needed to be somber to deliver the lines she planned. A look of glee would not do.
She focused on trying to make her face look like it had swallowed something distasteful, and that she was struggling to get the words out.
“Miray and I came here together, but she has forgotten me. She has forgotten a lot and does not know that she is in danger.”
Concern and worry spread over the attentive faces like a rising tide and Becca knew they were hers.
“How is she in danger?”
“Danger from who?”
“What are you saying?”
Becca gathered the crests of alarm and surfed over them.
“From O’Brian. She doesn’t remember, because of him. What he did to her. She has no memory because the truth of what he did to her was so terrifying that she has blocked it out.”
“What did he do to her?!” the man asked.
“It was…,” she covered her mouth, scrunching her face as if it was too painful to say aloud.
“He did to her, what he tried to do to me.”
Now the group surrounded her comforting her with hands and touches to gentle her.
She buried her face in her hair and turned hugging Cheryl’s leg fiercely.
Two of the men stiffened and moved forward, anger building, showing in their stride to go after O’Brian and make sure he never got near Miray again.
Nell, who had been in the group unnoticed, had been struck speechless for a moment but finally spoke up, her voice generally soothing and calm, was now urgent and commanding.
“Wait! Stop! All of you! None of you can see what is happening here, but I certainly can. As sure as the sun rises, this child is lying.”
The girl reflexively gripped Cheryl’s leg with claw-like fingers, her nails digging into it, causing Cheryl to cry out and grip her hands to release the sudden pain in her leg. When she took hold of Becca’s hands, they felt hard and cold, like she had touched hands of stone.
Becca release her, and turned eyes of fury on Nell, her rage almost projecting heat from within the mane of her dark hair.
“You don’t know!” she screamed, “You weren’t there when it happened!”
One of the older men interposed himself between the accused and the accuser.
“Don’t harass this child! God knows she had been through enough already!”
Nell stepped forward, “And I’m telling you all she is lying.”
“Kids don’t lie!”
Nell bowed, “You obviously have never had kids, if you believe that!”
A woman interjected, “Not about things like this!”
“Ho ho! Another ignorant soul!” Nell returned.
Becca could barely contain herself. She wanted to assault the woman, but she could not without showing more.
“Let’s ask him!” the man who had started down the trail, turned and proceeded forward.
Cheryl, who had recovered from the shock of Becca’s savage response, felt weak and partly numb. Her leg hurt. She felt the bruising beneath her pant leg, and she found it difficult to maintain her balance.
The child’s hands were powerful. She felt dizzy and confused by the implications.
Something was off about Becca. Becca was not the frail and mistreated little girl that she appeared to be, and that thought disturbed her. Unnerved her. Leaving her feeling uncertain and unsure about everything.
Suddenly she felt a strong female arm, come around her, helping her bear up her weight on her uninjured leg. It was Nell.
The group was heading forward, following the man determined to confront their “would-be” leader directly.
“Th-Thank you,” Cheryl said, “I don’t know what to think about all this…”
“You’re very welcome.”
“I felt that little girl’s hands and I…”
“I know,” Nell interrupted, helping Cheryl to move forward, limping on the one leg that did not throb and ache from the bruising.
“I touched the girl myself and couldn’t believe it. She’s as cold as a stone.”
They moved forward. Nell shouldering Cheryl. Cheryl wincing at the soreness of her constricted leg, feeling the pressure points where Becca’s fingers had clawed into the muscle of her thigh.
“How do you know she’s lying? Did you have that problem with your son?”
“Dominic? No, never, bless your heart,” Nell answered, “Though the way to it is in him, the same as it is in any child, mind.”
“How did you feel her?” Cheryl quizzed.
“When you and the others were in the hill, she and Miray were with me in the wagon,” Nell touched the side of her nose with her free hand, a gesture meaning more to her than to Cheryl.
Cheryl’s foot stuttered along the path, and she tried to put weight on her bruised leg, but the pain caused her to suck in a quick breath between her clenched teeth.
“Lean on me now,” Nell admonished, “I’m not much to look at, but I’m a darn good crutch, Lassie.”
Cheryl exhaled and shifted her weight back to Nell’s shoulder.
“Thank you. But from where I come from, the name ‘Lassie’ belongs to a dog.”
“Oh my!” Nell said, and they both chuckled.
“But seriously,” Cheryl sobered, “How did you find out about Becca?”
“Miray tried to tell me, but I thought she was just being…” Nell stopped, mentally chiding herself, “No. I should have known. I should’ve seen it, and trusted it like I did before.”
Nell paused and then proceeded, “Becca is something besides a little girl.”
“What?!” Cheryl began, but Nell stopped her.
“Hear me out, dearie,” she said, “I haven’t always just been an Inn keeper’s wife. I’ve seen sights in my time that you can’t even begin to imagine unless you’ve lived here as one of us Mid-Worlders. You think you’ve seen strange things from meeting that troll, now have you? Then you’re in for a great deal more surprises when you encounter some of the other things living out there in the wilds. Hold on to yer bonnet, Lass…eh…dearie.”
“It’s alright,” Cheryl conceded, “You can say Lassie. I know you don’t mean the dog. It’s your cultural idiom.”
“Husband’s,” Nell corrected.
“What?”
“My husband’s culture…what you said,” Nell corrected.
“You’re not married, are ya?” Nell observed.
“No. I’m still free and single,” Cheryl said, wincing as she attempted to put weight on her injured leg again, “But go on. You were saying.”
“Becca. That one has a meanness streak in her the size of a river,” Nell observed. “Tried to throw the wheel brake on the wagon, she did. Just as spiteful as you please to give young Miray a tumble off of the back of the wagon. Caught her kicking the brake loose and felt that leg of hers. Cold as a snow on the mountain, it was. There’s no give in it.”
“What did Miray tell you?” Cheryl pressed.
“Ahh that!” Nell lifted Cheryl up further on her inner shoulders. “Remember the row the other night? The fit she threw?”
“How could I forget?” Cheryl grimaced, “I had Becca come sleep in my room. But she wanted to stay in the empty room by herself. Didn’t want to be touched, as I recall.”
“Remember what Miray said that night?” Nell pressed.
“Something about being cold.”
“Aye. That she did,” Nell nodded, gesturing to the group up ahead near the wagon, pausing.
“Shhh! Stop here a bit,” Nell whispered. Some of the other women turned and had noticed Nell helping Cheryl and started to come their way to assist.
“Before they get here,” Nell lowered her voice to where only Cheryl could hear, “She wasn’t referring to herself. She was telling us that Becca was cold. I made sure of it the next morning at breakfast. Becca was cold, and colder in ways we don’t rightly understand yet. And if Miray’s talking in her sleep means anything, the girl’s name might not really be Becca. Hush now. Keep it to yourself, dearie. Don’t let on just yet. We’ve got some trouble right now to attend to.”
*Scene 04* 9:09 (The Moon Kingdom)
A ink-blot shadow soared beneath blankets of moss and black, angular limbs, clawing in moldering agony at the dark veil over the night sky. The shadow blinked and splintered under the ghost light of a baleful moon, as its source swirled in wispy gyres over the reaching skeletal fingers looking for a place to land.
Moss and fungi webbed the ceiling of the forest, and kept the moonlight from shining fully on the wet mysterious pools that darkled under the veil.
The Pan was near one of the luminary pools. His large powerful body loomed over its waters, his antlers twisted and swirling in reflection, his face mottled in dark watercolor washes mirrored upon its lapping surface.
His body was marked and smeared with black and white ash, as if he had lain in the charred pit of a dead fire. Its hind quarters were wooly and matted, oily and dirty, clumped with unkempt dead clusters of hair. The reflection off the pool showed his eye sockets as cavernous dark insets, with a shimmering sclera swirling of chalk-white and yellow jaundice.
As the shadowy, dark-feathered being, seeming to be in the rough shape of a large owl, alighted heavily on a crooked branch that groaned and slightly cracked under its weight shift from wing to claw, The Pan rumbled an awareness grunt acknowledging the newcomer’s intrusion into his santum sanctorum.
“Don’t think, I do not see you, Harpy. My eyes may not glimpse the sun light, but my other senses know you well, Harpy Delitch. I can feel you upon that limb of the crooked tree through the roots buried deep within these pools. I am one with these waters and the darkness here. What news from the lighted world do you have for me?”
The Pan had been squatting down over the pools, but here he rose slowly to his towering height, thirteen feet from his massive cloven feet to the skull-top of his horned head. His hoary head was bearded with wild sprouts of uncombed hair, his mouth and face sagged and plowed with age, yet was disturbingly human in structure and form. His upturned face and sightless, cataract-occluded eyes somehow found the Harpy’s position in the trees above and to the left of him.
“I have come from the Xarmnian courts, my Lord. You were correct. Our matron has made a secret alliance with the human king.”
The Pan gripped his black staff, his fists compressing the iron wood shaft,”So, Deliliah has moved against my wishes.”
“And there’s more.”
“Proceed.”
“A warrior of their’s interrupted the proceedings and reported something else, while we were in counsel. One of the King Stones are missing among the Kingdoms of Men. Two of my sisters confirmed sightings of travelers coming from the eastern sea. It appears the outworlders have returned at last.”
The Pan was silent, pondering this news. His teeth champed silently as if he were muttering an incantation and vile curses for which no verbalization could be given.
“Shall we retrieve the red stone? Perhaps its power will awaken again with these new developments.”
A low rumble seemed to rise from somewhere deep within The Pan’s diaphram and rattle threateningly towards maturing into an incipient roar.
“R-Remember your promise, my Liege.”
The Pan strode forward pressing its hands against the stone pillars that fronted the low rock wall surrounding his moonlit palace, its surfaces wet with the humid moisture of the surrounding, decaying forest.
“You have served me in this, but yet you have more to fufill. For this news, what would you request?”
“The Son of Xarm has betrayed you, for working with our matron. His bargain is forfeit. We can take possession of land under his dominion.”
“Speak plainly, bird. What do you want, besides the position I have given to your matriarch?”
“The Forest of Kilrane, my Lord. You know what was done to our former woodlands. The guardians have not returned to that place for many years. Men no longer possess it. Xarmni’s claim to it is forfeit. Give us that forest for our domain.”
The Pan turned and glared unseeing up into the black limbs and greying drapes of moss and parasitic mistletoe feeling on the half-life of the skeletal trees.
“I cannot do this.”
“Why not?!”
“I have already given Kilrane to the Nymphs. Ask for something else.”
Delitch was silent. Her crone face furrowed and crease with an angry scowl she was glad that The Pan could not see. She felt betrayed.
The one place she coveted to set up her domain, had been given to their sworn and most hated enemies–The Dryad Nymphs.
Her silence was telling, and she knew she could not let The Pan know how angered she was by this shocking revelation.
“Harpy Delitch.”
“Yes, my Leige,” she squawked a choked reply, swallowing her rising bile.
“Choose another.”
And with those words, The Pan exited the woodland pools courtyard through the stone archway and disappeared into the mists of the forest of his Moon Kingdom.
When he had gone, the Harpy descended to the floor of the wood and approached the darkling pool as it lapped the edge of the bank.
She thrust her beak and face into the water, and then snapped her head back, sucking and swallowing a large portion of the liquid. Her black eyes began to take on a strange lupine luminescence, as if an inner fire were kindled deep within her pupils.
The dark liquid seemed to swim into her and through her coursing through her veins, stirring her wings and swelling into her ruffled breasts.
The pin-pricks of light from her eyes glowed in the mirrored surface of the pool like individual tongue of fire.
Suddenly, Delitch turned away, her old scowl broadening into a devious smile.
If the Harpies could not inhabit Kilrane she would make sure no one else could. Especially not the Dryad Nymphs. They would be rudely evicted, with the thing they feared most. She and her sisters would set it ablaze with fire.
She would take Deliliah’s place, and rid themselves once and for all of the hated Dryad Nymphs.
*Scene 05* 2:54 (To A Granary Go)
Miray and I arrived back at the wagon where Begglar was waiting for us.
Miray had been pestering me about why the others couldn’t see the blue lights from the horizon, and I could not give her a direct answer.
“They cannot see it, because they don’t believe in its promise.”
“But I saw it! You saw it,” she cried, “It is there!” She stamped her foot for emphasis.
“I know. I know.”
Begglar’s arms were folded. He was standing in the back of the wagon, as he observed our return. He had been erecting the bands on the wagon’s canopy and was getting ready to stretch the canvas cover over the loops and tie the gathers.
“That went well,” he obeserved with a bemused half-grin.
I shot him a withering glare and his half-grin grew in teeth.
“So, we need weapons,” I said, attempting to change the subject, but Begglar looked down and shook his head.
“We are not going to the armory, just yet,” Begglar countered. “Look at the sky yonder. Storm’s about to break over the top. She’s a drencher. We’re about to all get very wet and cold.”
“Where to then?” I ask.
He looked ahead, in the direction we were going, scanning the horizon, clearly looking for something.
Quietly, in only my hearing he muttered, “To the threshing ground and the granary.”
I let that thought hang for a moment, mulling it over.
“Wet or not, we don’t need grain we need swords,” I rejoined, try to search ahead for what Begglar might be hoping to see.
From the corner of my eye, I caught him squinting and then nodding to himself. A poker-tell that he had sighted what he had hoped to see.
“Surely you didn’t think that this day wasn’t planned for in advance?”
“Planned?”
“Well, you did take a lot longer to come back, but I and some of the trusted families of our clan have been preparing for the return for many years now. All we lacked was a catalyst.”
I could not help but grin at that. “So we are the catalyst?”
Begglar shrugged.
“Storm Hawk and her Lehi are securing the armory in the Iron Hills. We were to meet them on the trail later, but we need to take shelter first. The closest place for that is the granary, just over that rise. I’ve made that trek many times. This wagon was specially built for grain transfer, so we need to get the canopy up.”
I moved to help him, and the group rounded the edge of the hill.
“O’Brian!” the lead man shouted, “I want a word with you! Step away from that girl!”
An entourage of others followed him, their faces flushed and angry.
When I learned what caused their sudden ire, I was mortified and sickened.
Someone had planted this accusation in their minds, and in a moment I realized who.
*Scene 06* 5:00 (Out to The Inn)
The wind howled and screamed at Christie’s back and buffetted her face with gusts that threatened to shear her off of the horse she clung to fiercely. She was running blind, praying that the claws that tore at her rain soaked body would eventually numb her against their flash and painful scouring of wet and wind. Her last clear vision had been that of witnessing the mysterious Oculus swallow Laura’s distant image, before the sea appeared to rise up and completely swallow the sandbar which had briefly served as a pier of disembarkation. Foam and luminescent webbing formed a wall of water that crashed into the deluged shoreline, spitting gouts and washes of water up the cliffside. Drawing back all clinging life down into the very throat of the sea.
The sea drank the land. An odd thought, but a persistent one that clung to Christie’s mind like a barnacle. She felt a strange animosity and anger coming from the sea itself, as if it had gained sentience and was enraged that it had failed to claim its human victim, due to the intrusion of the Oculus.
After turning from the sea cliffs, the only thing she knew was that her horse had proceeded inland and had somehow managed to find the sea road once more. They had been running along it for some time now, which had felt like eons.
She imagined herself being locked out of an ancient rail car, clinging to the top of a jostling cargo box as the old, coal-fired train chugged up a moutain pass through a raging blizzard, blanketing her in frost and smoke.
She had felt the land rise and fall beneath her, as if the horse had gained the ability to walk on water and she was being bounced and pitched over a hardening succession of monstrous waves. Flecks of grass, hay, grit and grains pelted her, abraded her exposed skin and white knuckled clutch of the horse’s mane and the wet leather reins she had wrapped around her fists.
She doubted that her horse would return to the old hillside bungalow, and the destroyed cruckhouse barn that she and Laura had quitted, but she hoped and still clung to the possibility that her mount might still instinctively seek out its home stable of Begglar’s barnyard.
The bed she’d slept in the previous night haunted her with its memory of warmth and comfort. She clung hopefully to that fading thought.
At last, she felt the land descend and she squinted through the storm, amazed that her animal had been able to run through it with any sense of direction.
There was a slight corona ahead and an open space that she could just barely make out through the driving rain. An etching of lightning fluoresced across the angry sky and she saw a cluster of buildings up ahead.
“Thank God!,” she exulted, crying with gratitude that the horse did indeed return to the one place in this strange Mid-World land where she had found a degree of comfort.
When she and the horse entered the stables, however, she was less certain.
The wagon was gone.
Six massive black horses were stabled, where Begglar’s team horses had been.
A grain barrel had been overturned.
The floor was mucked and wet with puddles and mud. The air redolent with a coppery smell blended in with the miasma of animal dung and dry straw that was strangely familiar.
A smell evoking a vague memory from her distant life in the Surface World.
No torches shone to clarify the interior of the barn and stable scene anymore than what she could make out through the shadowy red and greenish half-light, glowing from where the dreaming sun had buried itself behind a dark, thick woolen cover of stacked storm clouds. Rain poured down in sheets from the upper eaves of the structure. She could barely make out the glow from the windows and the outline of the white-washed structure of the Inn, itself a mere fifty to sixty feet across the muddy turnabout yard. The smell beckoned her memory again, as she began to slide out of the saddle, to lead the horse further in, but she paused.
Her eyes widened, as the wet drained and dripped down from her rain soaked hair, chilling her bones.
That smell was the rusty, metallic scent of freshly spilt blood.
The Xarmnians were here.
*Scene 07* 10:53 (Days of The Warrior Kings)
The group crowded around the wagon standing below Begglar and I, as if we were elevated upon a stage. The wagon sheet cover flapped in the wind, hanging loosely over the first loop, because we had not yet stretched it over the others, being interrupted and confronted.
Miray was pulled away from the wagonside under protest. Two women folded her protectively into the center of the crowd, almost as if she were a young calf being guarded by a encircled herd against a predator.
“What did you do to these girls?” a man demanded.
“What?”
“Don’t play stupid! Becca claims you tried to assault her.”
I was anstonished at the charge.
“I-I never…”
Becca pushed out of the inner circle, her face reddened and incensed.
“You know you tried. And you did something to Miray, and now she barely remembers me!”
I heard commotion within the circle, but was blocked from seeing the source.
“I just met Miray only moments from coming upon you all on the beach. How could I have done anything to these girls. Becca was already in the crowd when I first saw her.”
A woman shouldered forward, “We don’t know what you did. All we know is you came over the dune from down the beach, shortly after Miray did. Becca was already on the beach when we were dumped out through that portal thingy.”
“Oculus.”
“Whatever,” she shrugged.
“We only have your version and this little girl’s word,” another man shouted above the wind.
“You have been hiding many things from us, so far. How can we know you aren’t hiding many other things?!”
“Look, I…” I began, but Begglar cut me off.
“Well this is a fine kettle of fish! O’Brian leads you all to my Inn. We feed you all and give you a warm place to sleep, and lead you to this sacred place anointed by the blood of martyrs. He confesses to you all his prior failure that led to the deaths of some of my friends, yet you who’ve barely been a minute in these lands, treat him with contempt and suspicion. Bunch of ingrates! Shame on ya!”
They looked stunned for a moment and then properly chastized.
“It’s okay,” I said, trying to let Begglar cool his indignation. “There is a lot they don’t understand yet. It’s okay to give them time.”
“Time is not a luxury we have much of living as we do in the Mid-World!” Begglar shot back. “I might have forgotten what living totally in the Surface World does to people. Have you no spines or respect?”
The lead man raised his hands placatingly, “All I want to know,–directly from you, Mister O’Brian–is if there is any truth in what this girl accuses you of.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Liar!” Becca screamed, and then started weeping, or at least appeared to. Whatever she was doing was convincing enough that two of the men advanced further.
“You’re telling us she’s lying,” one challenged.
“I am.”
One of the men shoved his hands in his pockets, and the other folded his arms.
“Well, I don’t know who is telling the truth. I find it hard following someone that I can’t be certain of, and by your own admission, you have told us that you are responsible for what may or may not have happened to some of the dead here. I am not sure I want any further part of this nonsense. I don’t know why we were brought here or what this place really is, but I do know it is going to get very cold and miserable out there, where ever you think you are leading us. If it’s all the same to you, and if we really do have a say and a choice in this, I’d just assume ponder my decision back at the Inn with some of that ale, next to a dry fire. Who’s with me?”
Miray pressed through and between the legs of the crowd, apparently having just broke free of her attendant captors.
“Becca is lying!” she yelled.
The wind had picked up and was growing colder, and had a biting chill as droplets of rain began to spill over the lip of the hillside and spatter us and the group.
“Oh great!” one of the women groaned.
“How far back is it to the Inn?” one of the men groused.
Begglar sighed, and said, “It’s just over that hill yonder. We had to take the road because of the wagon, but if you’re bound to it, you can get back there if you go over and straight up the hill. You’ll see it from the summit.”
“You once offered us some of the ale you had when we met you the first night. Does that offer still stand?”
“Aye.”
The man nodded, “Then I thank you for your hospitality, but if it is all the same to you, I’ll be heading back. Probably should have gone with those girls earlier this morning, but its too late to think about that now.”
Here he turned again to the group, “Who else is with me? Dry room, good night’s sleep, warm fire, or get soaked again on this strange quest for some mysterious stone no one know for sure where it is or who has it now?”
“I’m coming,” a man in his mid-twenties said. “I just don’t trust this guy.”
“Girls?” he queried.
A woman hesitantly stepped forward, “Well, it does sound much nicer than standing out here in the rain.”
“Just over the rise, you said?” the mid-twenties man asked Begglar again.
“Same as it has been since I built it,” Begglar said, muttering and turning his attention back to pulling the wagon canopy sheet over the middle loops.
Another turned back to me. “Can you give us a good reason for going out in this wet? Can’t we just wait until the storm passes, and leave when its dry?”
Begglar nudged me to continue helping him pull the cover over the loop, but he addressed her question. Dominic held the wagon team of horses steady as we worked.
“Leadership has become soft, since the days of the warrior kings. What you all may not realize is that a leader role here is different from what you may be accustomed to back in the Surface World.” He jerked the sheet taut over the middle loop, drawing up the slack. Rain continued to fall and pelt with a greater intensity.
“Time was when a leader went with his soldier on their campaigns and didn’t merely await the outcome sitting in a palace or some place far from the fields of war.”
“A leader led others. That is what a true leader does. He doesn’t just command and then sit back in leisure. He takes the field. He endures the trouble and difficulties that he asks others to face with him. He inspires by demonstrating that he has the greatest commitment to pursue his objective. To act upon his vision, to charge into the fray of difficulties, meeting those dangers with determination. You can almost be certain that a leader unwilling to share in the risks taken to pursue an objective, will be the kind that is most unwilling to share in the spoils when it comes time to claim the reward.
That is the difference of a warrior king and a king growing soft in his kingdom. It is the truth of why the Son of Xarm has no real authority other than that which he administers by threat and fear. His subjects follow his ordered merely because they are afraid of what his hired brutes will do to them if they resist. If ever, the collective were to stand together against him and refuse the threats, they could defeat him. But the threats have power when the people are afraid. That is why we must resist or lose all hope. They can kill several, but they can’t kill all of us if we stand together.”
We tied the gathers and pulled the cover over the last loop in the wagonbed and lowered the gangway gate, as those who had decided to linger were helped into the back of the wagon toget out of the hardening downpour.
“When one leads. He leads with inspiration, because he is willing to take upon himself the same or greater risk that is necessary to achieve the goal. A leader that inspires by enduring everything he calls others too, if worth following. O’Brian here is a wanted man. When those who believe him dead find out that he yet lives, he is their one primary objective. He is the warrior king in the fray. If they can kill the warrior king, and those who follow him, see him fall, they will lose heart, so they will strive to take him down harder than any other.”
The woman who had raise the question, stared hard at Begglar as she seated herself under the canopy in the bed of the wagon.
“So what are you saying?”
“That O’Brian is putting himself in the greatest peril merely by agreeing to come back here. And that peril is increased by even higher degrees by choosing to once again take up and lead a quest of legend in service of The Marker Stone.”
“Gee thanks,” I muttered to Begglar as we came around from the back gate. “A warrior king, huh? Now they’ll regard me as a danger magnet. You’ve been a big help.”
Begglar growled, “I’ve only bought you a little time to prove yourself to them. A man who would have friends, must first show himself to be friendly. [Proverbs 18:24] What you do with that time is up to you.”
Nell and Cheryl came up to the wagon, and two of the other girls assisted them. Cheryl had apparently suffered some injury, and Nell and one of the girls helped ease her up into the back of the wagon.
When all were in and secure, Begglar closed the drop gate, secured it and we tied the back cover flaps of the canopy.
Nell took charge of Miray, putting her arm around her, and holding her close.
Becca sat in an opposite corner, her knees drawn up, her head down. Her dark hair hung stringlike under the rain. She wouldn’t look at any of us, except me. Her hatred was stropped and as sharp as a poignard. She had accomplished one thing with her accusation. Miray would not be left alone in my company without one of more of the others present. I could not longer rely on our candid conversations and her childlike and unclouded observations to bolster my own misgivings. Whether I had been cognizant of it or not, she was becoming like a daughter to me, and I grieved over the shadow cast over that.
Even if there was no truth to the accusation, Becca has raised, she had also accomplished another thing by making it. She had planted a seed of suspicion against me, and all she needed to do now was cultivate and water it as it quietly took root. I had no idea why Becca might hate me so much, but I knew, given time, I would soon find out.
Excavatia 