Draignean's Contest Entry
The bow sang as it had never sung before. Arrows darted throughout the clearing, all striking their mark and leaving a shaft of quivering wood embedded deep within the living trees. The ones protruding from flesh did not quiver, at least not that she could see. The bearers writhed upon the saturated soil, but the arrows never moved. To her, they were the foundations of the world, and she cherished every moment of pain they induced.
Some called her evil; others called her witch, demon and fiend.
She called herself Elegen.
Never before had she had such a crop, such a harvest. She had tried out a new method today and was thrilled with it. She had taken down a deer and left it to rot, then waited as the sun inched on its journey across the sky. One bird alit. Then another. Soon, the corpse was a seething mass of black feathers and cruel, jabbing beaks. Grimly amused at their folly, something she herself was exempt from, she drew back her bow and aimed, a faint smile marking her cupid-bow lips. She loosed, and a cloud of feathers rose to drift from the forlorn shape speared to the dead deer. No exodus. They hadn’t even noticed. She grinned again, a harsh, cruel grin perfect for splitting the hearts of brave, foolish men. By the time the birds knew what was happening, it was too late. Only a few lived to dodge her parting salvo and fly indignantly towards the sinking sun. Her smile had never died, never faltered. Today had been a good day. She laughed and sang as she left the shade of her elm and made her way back to town, her spoils rotting in the still forest air behind her.
******
Gerard stirred in his bed and yawned peaceably at the stream of sunlight filtering through the window to pool on his bed. It was intruding on a pleasant dream that he was loathe to give up to the coming of noon, and so he disregarded it and began snoring in small, breathy gasps.
Normally the guards of the Iron Fort were up at the crack of dawn and patrolling the rocky summit of the keep, but today was different. Today was a Holy Day, and that meant sleep to all but the earliest of revellers. And so Gerard slept and slept, his dreams fractured by images of a single, black father floating through an endless white void. His pleasant memories of an earlier dream, in which a green clothed woman stood graciously in the shadow of an elm tree, were shattered as he saw the red drop of blood slowly working its crimson way down the shadowed shaft. He awoke sweaty and hot, without knowing the reason why.
His armour fit him like a tailored glove as he shrugged it over his broad shoulders, and he gave his hair a cursory comb with his fingers in the watchful gaze of his mirror. A flash of his emerald eyes looked at him before he turned and walked heavy footed down the wooden stairs of the Gentle Inn.
Any who had used this rustic inn knew it was far from Gentle. The fights were bloody and rough saw dust coated the floor. It waited to soak up the blood from inevitable weekend fights. The only benefit was the price; for two pennies a meal, albeit one of dubious source, was served. A room was ten pennies, or one silver. A good price for bad lodging, and Gerard only had enough gold for the meanest of lodgings. Even the mirror had belonged to him; the inn saw such things as an unneeded luxury. The bar keep grunted at him as he walked past, and Gerard nodded passively in return. He didn’t trust the fellow, whose gaze always seemed to be estimating the price of his armour.
This is what honour brings you, he thought wistfully. He had been a promising soldier, one ear marked as an officer. But his father had lived in this town, and knew of its plight. The keep needed men, and few went willingly to patrol the outer walls. He was needed, and he didn’t mind that. But he almost wished he could. A faint breeze carrying the scent of old, dirty washing and the refuse of alleys wafted up to him, but he took a deep breath anyway. Another day, another march on the wall. He hoped he’d live to smell this smell another morning.
Trudging his way towards the grim, overbearing keep, he noticed furtive movement in the shadows. A flash of a green dress caught his eye, then swirled and was gone. He merely blinked and cursed his over active imagination, hardly something required of a fighting man. It must have been something else; no wearer of such fine cloth would be moving in this area of town, Dockwall not being the most attractive of places. He disregarded it and went on his way. The stones made harsh sounds in the still air as he walked in his soldier’s boots.
Gerard strode through the halls of the grim castle, passing tapestries depicting scenes long since faded to myth. The ancients paraded in their pomp and ceremony on the woven cloth; there, Lorren Lore Master rode his pitch-black steed, confronting the fell Goblin Hordes. In another the Silver Maiden ensnared the minds of enemies, and turned them against each other. Gerard ignored them; fancy and magic had no place in his day to day business. He walked through high, plain arches and then up flights of twisting stairs before being released into the cool, chill air of the battlements. He breathed deeply and knew he was home.
A sound drifted from a near-by barracks, and he grinned. His companions were probably drinking and winding down after a long day of work. He recognised the tune they sang, and mouthed the words as he walked the stone fortification, overlooking a sea of green forest and muted browns. The Grellich Demesne. Mountains bordered all, their peaks spearing the clouds. Just short of the walls there came a sudden plane which stretched beyond the town to the roiling sea beyond.
My march will go around the keep,
My feet will beat upon the stone,
And for my deeds I will not weep;
By blade and sword shall I atone.
The sword is silver in the moon,
The sun is risen in the shield,
And on we’ll march by this fair tune;
When foes appear their fates are sealed.
For bread and pay we hack and hew,
For hearth and home we kill the beasts.
The pay is deadly low, it’s true,
While singers sing and gentry feasts.
But men we are, we know the fight
And gold is never cold to see.
We kill because we have the right
To dwell betwixt the plains and sea.
My march will go around the keep,
My feet will beat upon the stone,
And for my deeds I will not weep;
By blade and sword shall I atone.
As the last word fell into the air, he stroked his sword and knew the words to be true. Honour and not pay drove him, but he would still fight for hearth and home. Bravery, that was the thing which pulsed with each beat of his heart. And so he walked, and walked, as below the town celebrated. He returned tired to his room, feet sore. He hadn’t rested once.
The next morning, many were clutching at heads and groaning, but Maner, an old, grizzled commoner of Gerard’s tentative acquaintance , was curing his hang over by applying more. Gerard’s lips twisted upwards in the corners in restrained amusement, and nodded to him as he passed by towards the door. Outside, he walked to the fort, much as he had the day before. Day in, day out. He came and left, flitting through days as if they were the pages of his books; a guilty pleasure of his, as a soldier is not meant to read.
A bell tolled, and Gerard frowned at the sound. It blatantly wasn’t noon; some bell boy was going to get an earful for this. He grunted and kept walking, but then a second peal split the air. He froze. He looked at the keep, at the Fortifications, and saw smoke rising. He ran, and the wind threw his cloak behind him dashingly, its red colour lending him the aspect on a hero. He didn’t even realise it, though those in the street certainly did. They looked from the smoke to the running soldier, and felt their fear lessen slightly. If the fort were full of such men, no wrong could occur, could it?
It could. Gerard now ran through halls burning in fits of hellish flame, trying to get to the Lord of the Keep. The smoke had originated from his chambers, and his honour called him to help. And so he ran, beams crashing in his path, obstacles to be leapt over. On the ancient walls, tapestries shrivelled and un-wove, heroic figures blazing with glorious light before the flame consumed them. He passed a few servants dressed in the red and black livery of the Keep, but ignored them. They were futilely trying to douse the flames that inevitably seemed to tear the very rocks asunder. Unnatural came the word to his mind, unbidden. Witch-craft too, came. Gerard ran, faster, faster. His dash through flame that seemed to hit him with a solid wall of heat ended when he came to a pair of simple wooden doors ripped asunder. Standing in their vacant frames stood Elegen, Lord’s Daughter. Silhouetted by flame she and her green dress stood out like a living gem of vibrant intensity, her beauty alien in its fierce lust. Blood lust. He caught sight of her just as the blade swept through the neck of her father, the Lord, and Gerard’s life of ideals was turned from axis to axis. The flames spun in burning arcs as he fell, heavy, tohis knees. The floor boards groaned, but kept their integrity.
Elegen turned, her dress swirling in a brilliant arc, a perfectly cruel smile on her perfect, angelic face. “Gerard! How nice to see you again, especially after my…” here, her face became harsh and cruel, lit by the flickering flames. From angelic to demonic. “Exile. Of course, you too must die.” Gerard looked on as she raised her hand and flung the dagger at him with strength. Gerard almost absently raised his sword, and the vibrations of metal striking metal nearly numbed his arm. Not natural. Not by any means. The shock shook him out of his stupor, and he leapt to his feet, sword pointed at her breast. She looked shocked, and then amused. “You know what is funny, Gerard? I was exiled by my father because I killed for pleasure. I was called witch. I was not a witch. Not then, anyway.” She grinned, and Gerard saw past the face and clothes, saw her true nature. “I am now.”
And thus, as the flames of his beloved Fort, his symbol of honour and greatness, bravery and honesty, leapt to the sky he again heard the trudge of boots on stone. In his mind they reverberated, the sound his boots had made on his march across the battlements. He had seen the land around, but not its beauty. In these, his final moments, he wished he were back up there again, in the breeze and away from the flames of the Fort. Gerard lifted his sword and prepared to run at the witch Elegen, a charge. His cloak caught flame and truly blazed as he ran, and in his sword the flames reflected a thousand fold. The witch laughed and threw back her own cloak of forest green.
Gerard leapt, and so did the witch. Backwards into the fiery room; the flames fled before her as if she were blackness itself. She whipped her hand up…her bow…aimed…fired. A bolt ignited in mid-air, and with deadly accuracy pierced his useless armour. His last, futile thought as he fell as a dead weight from the air was that he had wasted so long polishing that armour, so long. And for no reason, none at all. The only lights in his eyes belonged to the flames, and his beloved Fort became his fiery tomb.
Elegen laughed at his prone figure, then jumped lightly out the chamber’s window. She had a town to deal with. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned…
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Topic: ___/The Writer's Apprenticeship\___ (Read 314120 times)