sarz
15-03-2009, 21:17
I forgot this place existed. And here I am, two years and many thousands of words later, wanting to finish reading The Winds of Kae Huron.
From the looks of it, though, this section is a bit derelict.
You still take any kind of fiction, right?
Galdur's Gauntlet
Sarah held her brother’s hand as she struggled to keep pace with the seemingly endless line of soldiers. They all looked as haggard and as worn down as she and her brother did. Even the mounted knights were showing signs of fatigue, though none dared remove their heavy armor for fear of a sudden enemy attack. The army stretched out in a tight column that seemed to go as far as the desert itself, though Sarah had no way of knowing how far either of them really went, seeing how they’d been on the march for a week already, and there was no sign that they were anywhere near their destination. The desert stretched out around them like a great living thing ready to swallow them whole. White and unforgiving, it looked the same every day, and, if Sarah hadn’t known any better, she would have thought that they hadn’t been moving at all, though she wouldn’t have been surprised if it were true. The desert seemed to mirror itself stretch by waterless stretch, and the cracked ground was so hard even the horses left barely a trace of their passing, so it was hard for anyone but a tracker to tell whether they’d followed a straight line or had gone in circles.
Sarah’s feet were raw and bleeding, her legs were throbbing mercilessly, her hunger had long turned into an indistinct ache, and her lips, as cracked and dry as the earth, were beginning to acquire a leathery feel. A million different worries weighed on her young mind, and yet the only thing she ever thought about was water. Some riders still carried empty water pouches that they occasionally sucked on, as if hoping they still contained a drop or two that had eluded them. Some had turned to sucking on rags which they used to wipe the sweat off their bodies. Some even drained their own blood. Only the highborn men-at-arms still had any water, though, and they guarded it jealously, keeping their own water pouches around their necks on leather thongs, while they watched over the last water wagon.
Men, crazed with thirst, would occasionally assault the wagon. The attacks were sudden, but brief, as the mounted men-at-arms protecting it had learned to tell when an attack was near. Desperate men had a certain look to them, and they often crept behind or around the water wagon like starving animals, their eyes lingering on both the wagon and the water pouches for minutes at a time. But not only were the mounted knights prepared to defend the wagon, the men assaulting it were also too weak to fight effectively and so several men at a time would be cut down within moments.
Nobody knew exactly how many men had died since their leader, Lord Davin, had begun his campaign across the desert. Sarah only knew that ever since the young Lord Davin had stormed her city and put the Masters to the sword, bloodshed had been a constant presence in her life. Her Grandfather had said that nothing good would come of it, he’d warned them at every corner, he’d said Lord Davin was scarcely more than a boy and couldn’t know the right of things. Her brother Balder said Davin was seventeen already and that many men would never have followed him if he didn’t know what he was doing, but Grandfather persisted. He said they’d been born slaves and lived as slaves just like their fathers before them, and their fathers before their fathers and so forth down to the day when the Masters came riding on their great warhorses, their steel weapons glinting in the sun as they put an end to their people’s freedom.
“Not that freedom ever brought any good, mind you,” Grandfather had said, rubbing one hand over the thin grey stubble on his left cheek while the other searched for what was left of his hair, “Just look at young Lord Davin here. One day he’s as loyal as any squire, ready to lick the dirt off the Great Master’s boots at a moment’s notice, and as soon as he gives him back his freedom and sends him off to learn from Lord Hanley himself the boy runs off to Freiland and comes back with an army behind him, saying he means to rid us of the Masters and free us. Well, he got rid of the Masters alright, but I don’t know about the freeing. Davin’s chivalrous enough, no doubt about that, but he’s young, and he’s stupid, and most of all he doesn’t know the first thing about running a city. His march’s proof of that. Running away, isn’t he? And where? Into the bloody desert. Says he’s going to other cities that are run by Masters, says he’s going to free the entire world. I doubt he can free his **** from his undergarments without his squire helping.”
Balder had scowled at the last remark but before he could reply father had said that it was more likely Lord Davin would have trouble freeing his **** from “that young lass he stole from the freilanders”, and that had the entire tavern roaring with laughter. Most of it owed to the ale, Sarah thought, it wasn’t that funny a jape.
“They say he has a magic sword, “ Balder had said finally, “It’s so bright and light and strong they say Galdur the Smith himself made it with his bare hand for a hammer – “
“And that he used the sun for a forge and Siérie the Maiden’s piss for quenching water, yes, yes, we heard it all before,” grandfather had said to gales of laughter. Father choked on the gulp of ale he’d taken, but his eyes shone with laughter too. “I don’t think the gods had anything to do with that sword, no,” Grandfather had continued after the laughter had died down. Father still smiled, his hands wrapped around a small wooden barrel, and Balder was chuckling silently to himself. “But I’d bet my one and only arsehole that that old wizard always creeping around Lord Davin did.” The others laughed at that too, but Sarah never did find out whether the tale of the sword was true.
A week after taking the city Lord Davin had announced he and his army were going across the eastern desert into the ancient lands of the Masters. The journey would be long and arduous, he had said, and there was no doubt that would some would die along the way, but the road for freedom was hard and painful, it was a road of sacrifice. He said that the gift of freedom was not a gift at all, that one had to pay for it in blood, but that it was a price he’d pay willingly, that he’d already paid in part when he took their city. Sarah had stood on Balder’s shoulders that day so she could see over the crowd. Lord Davin and Balder were the same age, she knew, and her brother was ten years older than her, but somehow Lord Davin looked younger. It might have been that she couldn’t see him properly from the distance, but he didn’t seem as fierce or as wise as the minstrels made him out to be. He was tall and wiry, and probably lean beneath the armor, Sarah thought, but he didn’t look lordly, at least not the way Lord Hanley did. But he was handsome, Sarah had to admit. With long hair that tumbled down onto his shoulder and brilliant blue eyes that shone like amethysts, high dignified cheekbones and the shadow of a beard along the ridge of his jaw. Still, perhaps the most extraordinary thing about Lord Davin was that his hair was silver, but Sarah noted it didn’t shine the way real silver did, it was brighter somehow, as if the sun’s light shone off of it. She remembered Balder had been very impressed when he finally found out.
“That’s the color of the gods,” Balder had said, “And it’s not common silver either, it’s truesilver, like the gauntlet that Galdur gave to Juun when they rode to war against the Durin the Dark.”
Sarah knew that story well. Durin the Dark had raised a host of damned souls from the underworld to tear down the Wailing Wall that separated the world of mortals from the realm of the gods. They said that Durin had shattered Juun’s sword with his great black battleaxe, but when Durin went for the kill Juun caught the blade of the battleaxe with the truesilver gauntlet that Baldur had given him, and had forced the blade into Durin’s skull. That blow drove Durin back, and his host, seeing their lord bested in battle broke and scattered. Durin couldn’t be killed though, because he was lord of the underworld, and an axe to the head was hardly anything he had to worry about. But ever since that day Galdur the Smith and Juun the Warrior had been closer than brothers.
“Like any lord and his smith should be,” Grandfather had said, “Especially when going off to war.”
Balder had wanted to join the army when he reached his fifteenth spring, but their father hadn’t allowed it. “And for good reason,” Sarah remembered their grandfather say, “ They say soldiers have but one duty, obeying, but that means doing a score of other things, and there’s one thing in particular soldiers are bound to do besides killing: dying.” Balder didn’t have anything against killing, not after having been apprenticed to the butcher. He was used to the sight of blood and gore and entrails, and he didn’t think twice about slaughtering animals, Sarah had watched him do it, but Balder didn’t quite like the idea of dying, and so he hadn’t joined the army. But Lord Davin was an altogether different story. Lord Davin was charismatic, Lord Davin was valorous, Lord Davin cared about his men. They said he’d went to Freiland a beggar but after proving himself to the lords there men flocked to his banner “like flies to a corpse”, or “maggots on a festering wound”, as Grandfather said. Father was not quite so eloquent, but even he had to admit Lord Davin was made of sterner stuff than most, and that if any man was worthy of loyalty, it was him. Grandfather had kept arguing that life as free men would be worse than life as slaves, but nobody really took him seriously. It was more likely that they only listened to him because of the way grandfather had always made them howl with laughter.
But on the day after Balder went to war with Lord Davin, Grandfather had made them all cry. It was the early morrow. Nobody had gotten up yet save Sarah. It was the first night her brother had ever spent away from her and his absence was more painful than she’d thought it would be. That night she found she couldn’t sleep for worry for her brother, and so she’d lied awake waiting for day to come.
She crept around the house barefoot, trying to make as little noise as possible. She never really knew why she’d walked into the kitchen that morning. There was nothing there for her for to do that Father wouldn’t do when he woke up. She knew only that when she saw her grandfather sitting on the small three legged stool Balder had brought home one night she regretted walking into the kitchen immediately.
Grandfather had a gaunt, sullen look to him. He looked thinner and paler than usual. Morning stubble laced his face. He hadn’t bothered to comb what was left of his hair, and so the strands of it were stretching out from above his ears in every direction like the specter of what was once a full head of hair. He had shadows under his eyes, which were swollen and red, and Sarah saw that he was crying. He only wore rags, a beggar’s rags, Sarah thought. She could see his ribs and the veins in his hands as if for the first time. As if she’d never looked at her grandfather before, as if she’d never seen the old man that he was, or the worries that he carried.
For a time she simply stood there watching him. He seemed to not be in the real world, but just stared into nothing, and then his eyes went back into focus as they caught sight of her for the first time.
“Well, he’s gone,” he had said, “Your brother. Gone to die in the desert.” His voice was a little more than a whisper. His eyes had a dead look to them. “Your grandmother died putting your father into this world, your mother got sent out into the desert with naught but the clothes on her back.” Sarah knew that had been the punishment for thieves during the Great Famine. Her mother had stolen a bucket of honey which had probably saved her and Balder from starving to death. But she’d paid with her life. “And now your blasted fool of a brother’s gone off to war, to die for this Lord Davin. Fool.” He spat, or at least tried to, because nothing came out of his mouth. “You’re just a little girl,” he went on, “You can’t understand what it means to lose a grandson, after having lost a wife and a daughter. And I know it happened so very long ago, but when I see it happening all over again it all comes flooding back like a curse from the gods.” His head crashed into his hands and for a while there was nothing but Grandfather’s sobbing.
Sarah didn’t know what to say, or what to think. It was like Grandfather had said, she was too young to understand. She looked at grandfather in an awkward manner and fidgeted with the hem of her dress. Finally, she decided it would at least be a good idea to hug grandfather, to comfort him physically if she couldn’t think of any words to tell him. Grandfather stood up suddenly, though, and before she could move ahead to clutch him, he made for front door. He passed her without so much as a single glance. She heard him say, “Goodbye” as he walked into the street, his bare feet trudging against the dusty cobblestone.
She saw him walk toward the nearest guard, and though she couldn’t imagine what he was planning on doing, she felt a tightness in her belly. The guard, big and burly and strong, clad in mail with a longsword tucked neatly in its scabbard at his side, looked down on Grandfather as if he were the most pitiful thing to have ever crossed his path. There was a rapid exchange of words, though Sarah couldn’t hear any of it, and then Grandfather slapped the guard once with the inside of his palm, and as the guard looked to be in complete disbelief, Grandfather backhanded him, then spat at his face.
Sarah had panicked then. She might have been seven, but she knew that you never laid a hand on a city guard, and you certainly never spat at them either. Her call to her grandfather turned into a cry of despair half way through as the guard pulled out his longsword and drove it clean through Grandfather’s chest. By then Sarah was running toward him, and when she had finally got on her knees besides him, she realized he was dead.
There was hardly any blood spilling out, she saw. Grandfather’s dying face had been a mask of shock. His eyes were wide open, and his mouth stood agape, showing off what was left of his yellow teeth. She heard the guard mutter a curse and then walk away. Grandfather had been of such little interest to him. She beat her little fists against grandfather’s chest and for a while sobbed, telling him to get back up and that he wasn’t dead intermittently. She couldn’t remember when it was that Father came and dragged her away, but she could remember the moment she decided to go after Balder. She remembered the feeling, the cold rage mixed with grief. The anguish. It was all his fault, Balder’s fault. If he hadn’t left Grandfather would still be alive. He’d still be making men laugh in the tavern with his rants. He wouldn’t have died in the street like some beggar.
All that seemed to have happened a million years ago now. She and her brother were trailing behind what remained of Lord Davin’s force. They’d crossed the first part of the desert. Then they’d reached a city and Lord Davin had taken that one and freed everyone in it. There had been a lot of merriment then, and Sarah wasn’t that sorry she’d left home. She wasn’t even angry with Balder anymore. But then things took a turn for the worst. She never really understood or even cared to understand, but she heard that a great lord of the Masters who fought in golden armor had raised an army to beat Lord Davin. They called him Haqar.
Everyone thought they were going to trample the champion easily, but as it happened, they were wrong. It didn’t take much for the young Davin to realize that this opponent was a difficult one. He offered everyone the chance to stay behind in the last city they’d freed while he and the main force went on to offer battle to Haqar, but Balder had refused to stay behind, and Sarah would go nowhere without Balder.
And so she walked on besides him, holding his hand as they went on, until Sarah could hear the sound of trumpets again, and realized, as Balder let go of her and rushed away, that they’d finally found the enemy. Or the enemy had found them. There was too much chaos afoot for her to understand what was going on. She could hear some men shouting that they’d been taken in the rear, while others claimed that the column of soldiers ahead had been flanked. She couldn’t even tell afterward if the fighting had dragged on for a minute or an hour or half a day. All she knew was that she somehow found Balder lying in the sand with hands across his belly. Sweaty and pale, he looked a bit like Grandfather had the day he died. Gaunt and tired.
As soon as she made for him, though, she saw that a huge man, clad in golden armor was riding toward her. His steed was armored, she saw, as the beast galloped toward her, leaving clouds of dust in his wake. No sooner had she spotted the rider, a second one zoomed past here, and she could tell by the color of the rider’s hair, bristling out from underneath his helmet, that it was Lord Davin.
Sarah wondered if the golden knight was the one they called Haqar just before they took each other’s lances on their shields. None of them had enough strength to remain in their saddles, though. Haqar tried to get back onto his horse but an arrow, stray or not, flew into the animal’s side and the beast reared and galloped away, leaving the man on his knees while Lord Davin approached, sword in hand, the blade a rod of bloodstained silver sunlight.
She saw then what Balder had meant when he’d said that sword was light. Lord Davin, though he didn’t appear to be particularly strong, wielded the blade with apparent ease, swinging deftly and quickly at Haqar, who despite his size, was quick enough to parry each blow and respond in kind, though he wielded a greatsword. The exchange of blows went on for little time, though to Sarah it seemed like an eternity since the two had shattered their lances against their shields. Finally, Haqar brought his greatsword down on Lord Davin as he was recovering from a particularly powerful blow, and Davin only just managed to deflect the greatsword by bringing his longsword up with a flourish of his hand. Haqar’s blow, though, was so powerful that it shattered Lord Davin’s blade, sending most of it flying away. Lord Davin staggered, and then Haqar kicked him to the ground and raised his greatsword to finish him.
It would be like that battle between Durin the Dark and Juun the Warrior, Sarah thought, but Davin couldn’t defend himself. He’d brought his shield onto him but the golden knight had kicked that away as well. Sarah called out to Davin as the greatsword was raised. She closed her eyes, too terrified to watch the rest. There was a cry of pain then, and she trembled and covered her face with her hands and squirmed as she finally opened her eyes. But Lord Davin was not dead. She saw that he stood above Haqar, who had the hilt of a sword sticking out of his neck. Sarah realized at once that it was Lord Davin’s sword. But then she noticed something else. There was another body besides the golden knight.
And it was Balder’s.
Balder had crept close enough to stab Haqar once in the back of the knee. His blow had toppled the giant, but not before he could swing his greatsword back in rage, slicing Balder’s throat all the way back to the bone. Sarah could see the trail of blood Balder had made as he crawled over the ground, one hand clutching his abdomen, the other pulling himself forward. She stared for a while at her brother in utter shock, and then Lord Davin had one of his men take her away as soon as the battle died out. Davin thanked her for his Balder’s sacrifice. He gave her food and water and shelter, and a spot to sit on the water wagon. But none of that seemed to matter to Sarah.
She had bit her lip as Davin spoke, trying not to cry. He died for you, she thought, just like Grandfather said he would. She had wanted to hurt him, to make him cry the way Grandfather had made her and Father cry when he died. She wanted him to ache and throb inside as badly as she did. What did he know? He was Lord Davin, he didn’t have any family, just that whore from Freiland and she was safe back home, away from the fighting. She wondered whether Grandfather would have died if she’d had hugged him then. The thought brought tears to her eyes but she didn’t care. She wished none of it had happened, that Balder hadn’t gone to war, that Grandfather hadn’t hit that guard, that Mother hadn’t stolen the honey, that Father hadn’t been born. Oh, it would have been so much easier if none of them had been born at all.
The memory of Balder lying there in the bloody sand with his throat opened wider than his eyes, one hand clutching a wound he’d taken to the belly, one reaching for his throat, haunted her. She wished at once that it had been Lord Davin who had died and not Balder. The desire burned in her like nothing she’d ever known, but it would never happen. She knew that. But the knowledge of it didn’t make it any better. It had been just like the story, she realized, just like it. Only Balder had been the gauntlet.
Sarah sucked on her thumb as the water wagon, still protected by mounted knights, rolled on. Another city was glowing far off in the distance, its lights like a thousand times a thousand shiny pearls of moonlight. She thought of Balder as she lied down, closed her eyes, and rested her head on a wool pillow. The last echoes of the city’s lights trailed off into nothing beneath her closed eyelids, and she drifted along with them.
From the looks of it, though, this section is a bit derelict.
You still take any kind of fiction, right?
Galdur's Gauntlet
Sarah held her brother’s hand as she struggled to keep pace with the seemingly endless line of soldiers. They all looked as haggard and as worn down as she and her brother did. Even the mounted knights were showing signs of fatigue, though none dared remove their heavy armor for fear of a sudden enemy attack. The army stretched out in a tight column that seemed to go as far as the desert itself, though Sarah had no way of knowing how far either of them really went, seeing how they’d been on the march for a week already, and there was no sign that they were anywhere near their destination. The desert stretched out around them like a great living thing ready to swallow them whole. White and unforgiving, it looked the same every day, and, if Sarah hadn’t known any better, she would have thought that they hadn’t been moving at all, though she wouldn’t have been surprised if it were true. The desert seemed to mirror itself stretch by waterless stretch, and the cracked ground was so hard even the horses left barely a trace of their passing, so it was hard for anyone but a tracker to tell whether they’d followed a straight line or had gone in circles.
Sarah’s feet were raw and bleeding, her legs were throbbing mercilessly, her hunger had long turned into an indistinct ache, and her lips, as cracked and dry as the earth, were beginning to acquire a leathery feel. A million different worries weighed on her young mind, and yet the only thing she ever thought about was water. Some riders still carried empty water pouches that they occasionally sucked on, as if hoping they still contained a drop or two that had eluded them. Some had turned to sucking on rags which they used to wipe the sweat off their bodies. Some even drained their own blood. Only the highborn men-at-arms still had any water, though, and they guarded it jealously, keeping their own water pouches around their necks on leather thongs, while they watched over the last water wagon.
Men, crazed with thirst, would occasionally assault the wagon. The attacks were sudden, but brief, as the mounted men-at-arms protecting it had learned to tell when an attack was near. Desperate men had a certain look to them, and they often crept behind or around the water wagon like starving animals, their eyes lingering on both the wagon and the water pouches for minutes at a time. But not only were the mounted knights prepared to defend the wagon, the men assaulting it were also too weak to fight effectively and so several men at a time would be cut down within moments.
Nobody knew exactly how many men had died since their leader, Lord Davin, had begun his campaign across the desert. Sarah only knew that ever since the young Lord Davin had stormed her city and put the Masters to the sword, bloodshed had been a constant presence in her life. Her Grandfather had said that nothing good would come of it, he’d warned them at every corner, he’d said Lord Davin was scarcely more than a boy and couldn’t know the right of things. Her brother Balder said Davin was seventeen already and that many men would never have followed him if he didn’t know what he was doing, but Grandfather persisted. He said they’d been born slaves and lived as slaves just like their fathers before them, and their fathers before their fathers and so forth down to the day when the Masters came riding on their great warhorses, their steel weapons glinting in the sun as they put an end to their people’s freedom.
“Not that freedom ever brought any good, mind you,” Grandfather had said, rubbing one hand over the thin grey stubble on his left cheek while the other searched for what was left of his hair, “Just look at young Lord Davin here. One day he’s as loyal as any squire, ready to lick the dirt off the Great Master’s boots at a moment’s notice, and as soon as he gives him back his freedom and sends him off to learn from Lord Hanley himself the boy runs off to Freiland and comes back with an army behind him, saying he means to rid us of the Masters and free us. Well, he got rid of the Masters alright, but I don’t know about the freeing. Davin’s chivalrous enough, no doubt about that, but he’s young, and he’s stupid, and most of all he doesn’t know the first thing about running a city. His march’s proof of that. Running away, isn’t he? And where? Into the bloody desert. Says he’s going to other cities that are run by Masters, says he’s going to free the entire world. I doubt he can free his **** from his undergarments without his squire helping.”
Balder had scowled at the last remark but before he could reply father had said that it was more likely Lord Davin would have trouble freeing his **** from “that young lass he stole from the freilanders”, and that had the entire tavern roaring with laughter. Most of it owed to the ale, Sarah thought, it wasn’t that funny a jape.
“They say he has a magic sword, “ Balder had said finally, “It’s so bright and light and strong they say Galdur the Smith himself made it with his bare hand for a hammer – “
“And that he used the sun for a forge and Siérie the Maiden’s piss for quenching water, yes, yes, we heard it all before,” grandfather had said to gales of laughter. Father choked on the gulp of ale he’d taken, but his eyes shone with laughter too. “I don’t think the gods had anything to do with that sword, no,” Grandfather had continued after the laughter had died down. Father still smiled, his hands wrapped around a small wooden barrel, and Balder was chuckling silently to himself. “But I’d bet my one and only arsehole that that old wizard always creeping around Lord Davin did.” The others laughed at that too, but Sarah never did find out whether the tale of the sword was true.
A week after taking the city Lord Davin had announced he and his army were going across the eastern desert into the ancient lands of the Masters. The journey would be long and arduous, he had said, and there was no doubt that would some would die along the way, but the road for freedom was hard and painful, it was a road of sacrifice. He said that the gift of freedom was not a gift at all, that one had to pay for it in blood, but that it was a price he’d pay willingly, that he’d already paid in part when he took their city. Sarah had stood on Balder’s shoulders that day so she could see over the crowd. Lord Davin and Balder were the same age, she knew, and her brother was ten years older than her, but somehow Lord Davin looked younger. It might have been that she couldn’t see him properly from the distance, but he didn’t seem as fierce or as wise as the minstrels made him out to be. He was tall and wiry, and probably lean beneath the armor, Sarah thought, but he didn’t look lordly, at least not the way Lord Hanley did. But he was handsome, Sarah had to admit. With long hair that tumbled down onto his shoulder and brilliant blue eyes that shone like amethysts, high dignified cheekbones and the shadow of a beard along the ridge of his jaw. Still, perhaps the most extraordinary thing about Lord Davin was that his hair was silver, but Sarah noted it didn’t shine the way real silver did, it was brighter somehow, as if the sun’s light shone off of it. She remembered Balder had been very impressed when he finally found out.
“That’s the color of the gods,” Balder had said, “And it’s not common silver either, it’s truesilver, like the gauntlet that Galdur gave to Juun when they rode to war against the Durin the Dark.”
Sarah knew that story well. Durin the Dark had raised a host of damned souls from the underworld to tear down the Wailing Wall that separated the world of mortals from the realm of the gods. They said that Durin had shattered Juun’s sword with his great black battleaxe, but when Durin went for the kill Juun caught the blade of the battleaxe with the truesilver gauntlet that Baldur had given him, and had forced the blade into Durin’s skull. That blow drove Durin back, and his host, seeing their lord bested in battle broke and scattered. Durin couldn’t be killed though, because he was lord of the underworld, and an axe to the head was hardly anything he had to worry about. But ever since that day Galdur the Smith and Juun the Warrior had been closer than brothers.
“Like any lord and his smith should be,” Grandfather had said, “Especially when going off to war.”
Balder had wanted to join the army when he reached his fifteenth spring, but their father hadn’t allowed it. “And for good reason,” Sarah remembered their grandfather say, “ They say soldiers have but one duty, obeying, but that means doing a score of other things, and there’s one thing in particular soldiers are bound to do besides killing: dying.” Balder didn’t have anything against killing, not after having been apprenticed to the butcher. He was used to the sight of blood and gore and entrails, and he didn’t think twice about slaughtering animals, Sarah had watched him do it, but Balder didn’t quite like the idea of dying, and so he hadn’t joined the army. But Lord Davin was an altogether different story. Lord Davin was charismatic, Lord Davin was valorous, Lord Davin cared about his men. They said he’d went to Freiland a beggar but after proving himself to the lords there men flocked to his banner “like flies to a corpse”, or “maggots on a festering wound”, as Grandfather said. Father was not quite so eloquent, but even he had to admit Lord Davin was made of sterner stuff than most, and that if any man was worthy of loyalty, it was him. Grandfather had kept arguing that life as free men would be worse than life as slaves, but nobody really took him seriously. It was more likely that they only listened to him because of the way grandfather had always made them howl with laughter.
But on the day after Balder went to war with Lord Davin, Grandfather had made them all cry. It was the early morrow. Nobody had gotten up yet save Sarah. It was the first night her brother had ever spent away from her and his absence was more painful than she’d thought it would be. That night she found she couldn’t sleep for worry for her brother, and so she’d lied awake waiting for day to come.
She crept around the house barefoot, trying to make as little noise as possible. She never really knew why she’d walked into the kitchen that morning. There was nothing there for her for to do that Father wouldn’t do when he woke up. She knew only that when she saw her grandfather sitting on the small three legged stool Balder had brought home one night she regretted walking into the kitchen immediately.
Grandfather had a gaunt, sullen look to him. He looked thinner and paler than usual. Morning stubble laced his face. He hadn’t bothered to comb what was left of his hair, and so the strands of it were stretching out from above his ears in every direction like the specter of what was once a full head of hair. He had shadows under his eyes, which were swollen and red, and Sarah saw that he was crying. He only wore rags, a beggar’s rags, Sarah thought. She could see his ribs and the veins in his hands as if for the first time. As if she’d never looked at her grandfather before, as if she’d never seen the old man that he was, or the worries that he carried.
For a time she simply stood there watching him. He seemed to not be in the real world, but just stared into nothing, and then his eyes went back into focus as they caught sight of her for the first time.
“Well, he’s gone,” he had said, “Your brother. Gone to die in the desert.” His voice was a little more than a whisper. His eyes had a dead look to them. “Your grandmother died putting your father into this world, your mother got sent out into the desert with naught but the clothes on her back.” Sarah knew that had been the punishment for thieves during the Great Famine. Her mother had stolen a bucket of honey which had probably saved her and Balder from starving to death. But she’d paid with her life. “And now your blasted fool of a brother’s gone off to war, to die for this Lord Davin. Fool.” He spat, or at least tried to, because nothing came out of his mouth. “You’re just a little girl,” he went on, “You can’t understand what it means to lose a grandson, after having lost a wife and a daughter. And I know it happened so very long ago, but when I see it happening all over again it all comes flooding back like a curse from the gods.” His head crashed into his hands and for a while there was nothing but Grandfather’s sobbing.
Sarah didn’t know what to say, or what to think. It was like Grandfather had said, she was too young to understand. She looked at grandfather in an awkward manner and fidgeted with the hem of her dress. Finally, she decided it would at least be a good idea to hug grandfather, to comfort him physically if she couldn’t think of any words to tell him. Grandfather stood up suddenly, though, and before she could move ahead to clutch him, he made for front door. He passed her without so much as a single glance. She heard him say, “Goodbye” as he walked into the street, his bare feet trudging against the dusty cobblestone.
She saw him walk toward the nearest guard, and though she couldn’t imagine what he was planning on doing, she felt a tightness in her belly. The guard, big and burly and strong, clad in mail with a longsword tucked neatly in its scabbard at his side, looked down on Grandfather as if he were the most pitiful thing to have ever crossed his path. There was a rapid exchange of words, though Sarah couldn’t hear any of it, and then Grandfather slapped the guard once with the inside of his palm, and as the guard looked to be in complete disbelief, Grandfather backhanded him, then spat at his face.
Sarah had panicked then. She might have been seven, but she knew that you never laid a hand on a city guard, and you certainly never spat at them either. Her call to her grandfather turned into a cry of despair half way through as the guard pulled out his longsword and drove it clean through Grandfather’s chest. By then Sarah was running toward him, and when she had finally got on her knees besides him, she realized he was dead.
There was hardly any blood spilling out, she saw. Grandfather’s dying face had been a mask of shock. His eyes were wide open, and his mouth stood agape, showing off what was left of his yellow teeth. She heard the guard mutter a curse and then walk away. Grandfather had been of such little interest to him. She beat her little fists against grandfather’s chest and for a while sobbed, telling him to get back up and that he wasn’t dead intermittently. She couldn’t remember when it was that Father came and dragged her away, but she could remember the moment she decided to go after Balder. She remembered the feeling, the cold rage mixed with grief. The anguish. It was all his fault, Balder’s fault. If he hadn’t left Grandfather would still be alive. He’d still be making men laugh in the tavern with his rants. He wouldn’t have died in the street like some beggar.
All that seemed to have happened a million years ago now. She and her brother were trailing behind what remained of Lord Davin’s force. They’d crossed the first part of the desert. Then they’d reached a city and Lord Davin had taken that one and freed everyone in it. There had been a lot of merriment then, and Sarah wasn’t that sorry she’d left home. She wasn’t even angry with Balder anymore. But then things took a turn for the worst. She never really understood or even cared to understand, but she heard that a great lord of the Masters who fought in golden armor had raised an army to beat Lord Davin. They called him Haqar.
Everyone thought they were going to trample the champion easily, but as it happened, they were wrong. It didn’t take much for the young Davin to realize that this opponent was a difficult one. He offered everyone the chance to stay behind in the last city they’d freed while he and the main force went on to offer battle to Haqar, but Balder had refused to stay behind, and Sarah would go nowhere without Balder.
And so she walked on besides him, holding his hand as they went on, until Sarah could hear the sound of trumpets again, and realized, as Balder let go of her and rushed away, that they’d finally found the enemy. Or the enemy had found them. There was too much chaos afoot for her to understand what was going on. She could hear some men shouting that they’d been taken in the rear, while others claimed that the column of soldiers ahead had been flanked. She couldn’t even tell afterward if the fighting had dragged on for a minute or an hour or half a day. All she knew was that she somehow found Balder lying in the sand with hands across his belly. Sweaty and pale, he looked a bit like Grandfather had the day he died. Gaunt and tired.
As soon as she made for him, though, she saw that a huge man, clad in golden armor was riding toward her. His steed was armored, she saw, as the beast galloped toward her, leaving clouds of dust in his wake. No sooner had she spotted the rider, a second one zoomed past here, and she could tell by the color of the rider’s hair, bristling out from underneath his helmet, that it was Lord Davin.
Sarah wondered if the golden knight was the one they called Haqar just before they took each other’s lances on their shields. None of them had enough strength to remain in their saddles, though. Haqar tried to get back onto his horse but an arrow, stray or not, flew into the animal’s side and the beast reared and galloped away, leaving the man on his knees while Lord Davin approached, sword in hand, the blade a rod of bloodstained silver sunlight.
She saw then what Balder had meant when he’d said that sword was light. Lord Davin, though he didn’t appear to be particularly strong, wielded the blade with apparent ease, swinging deftly and quickly at Haqar, who despite his size, was quick enough to parry each blow and respond in kind, though he wielded a greatsword. The exchange of blows went on for little time, though to Sarah it seemed like an eternity since the two had shattered their lances against their shields. Finally, Haqar brought his greatsword down on Lord Davin as he was recovering from a particularly powerful blow, and Davin only just managed to deflect the greatsword by bringing his longsword up with a flourish of his hand. Haqar’s blow, though, was so powerful that it shattered Lord Davin’s blade, sending most of it flying away. Lord Davin staggered, and then Haqar kicked him to the ground and raised his greatsword to finish him.
It would be like that battle between Durin the Dark and Juun the Warrior, Sarah thought, but Davin couldn’t defend himself. He’d brought his shield onto him but the golden knight had kicked that away as well. Sarah called out to Davin as the greatsword was raised. She closed her eyes, too terrified to watch the rest. There was a cry of pain then, and she trembled and covered her face with her hands and squirmed as she finally opened her eyes. But Lord Davin was not dead. She saw that he stood above Haqar, who had the hilt of a sword sticking out of his neck. Sarah realized at once that it was Lord Davin’s sword. But then she noticed something else. There was another body besides the golden knight.
And it was Balder’s.
Balder had crept close enough to stab Haqar once in the back of the knee. His blow had toppled the giant, but not before he could swing his greatsword back in rage, slicing Balder’s throat all the way back to the bone. Sarah could see the trail of blood Balder had made as he crawled over the ground, one hand clutching his abdomen, the other pulling himself forward. She stared for a while at her brother in utter shock, and then Lord Davin had one of his men take her away as soon as the battle died out. Davin thanked her for his Balder’s sacrifice. He gave her food and water and shelter, and a spot to sit on the water wagon. But none of that seemed to matter to Sarah.
She had bit her lip as Davin spoke, trying not to cry. He died for you, she thought, just like Grandfather said he would. She had wanted to hurt him, to make him cry the way Grandfather had made her and Father cry when he died. She wanted him to ache and throb inside as badly as she did. What did he know? He was Lord Davin, he didn’t have any family, just that whore from Freiland and she was safe back home, away from the fighting. She wondered whether Grandfather would have died if she’d had hugged him then. The thought brought tears to her eyes but she didn’t care. She wished none of it had happened, that Balder hadn’t gone to war, that Grandfather hadn’t hit that guard, that Mother hadn’t stolen the honey, that Father hadn’t been born. Oh, it would have been so much easier if none of them had been born at all.
The memory of Balder lying there in the bloody sand with his throat opened wider than his eyes, one hand clutching a wound he’d taken to the belly, one reaching for his throat, haunted her. She wished at once that it had been Lord Davin who had died and not Balder. The desire burned in her like nothing she’d ever known, but it would never happen. She knew that. But the knowledge of it didn’t make it any better. It had been just like the story, she realized, just like it. Only Balder had been the gauntlet.
Sarah sucked on her thumb as the water wagon, still protected by mounted knights, rolled on. Another city was glowing far off in the distance, its lights like a thousand times a thousand shiny pearls of moonlight. She thought of Balder as she lied down, closed her eyes, and rested her head on a wool pillow. The last echoes of the city’s lights trailed off into nothing beneath her closed eyelids, and she drifted along with them.