NOVEL NEXT 64 - Sowing Hope
"Calcified pains," Stump began. He felt a little silly occupying a chair four or five times larger than himself, but its height conferred an authority appropriate for the situation. "Old wounds. Now that you know more about each other, maybe they can heal."
"Heal?" The word escaped Merra with as much effort as it took her to sit up. She clutched her bandaged belly and wheezed against the burn. "All that has happened is the wound has deepened. Tydas, my husband, has been hunting us for two years."
"I did not know of the lineage of your family," Tydas countered.
"Now you do."
"And I would never harm—"
"You already have."
"That was Kestrel—"
"By your orders!"
The lord of Peaktree winced at the accusation. "He disobeyed me. Merra, I would never… you must know."
"All I know is our daughter lies with the fighters in the infirmary. Burned. Crying. Asking why her friend would want to hurt her. And I'm left explaining to our child that the man who hates her was paid by her own father to hunt her down."
The silence that followed was broken by the crackle of firelight.
Stump, who had tensed during their verbal spar, released a breath, though he struggled with what to say. He recalled his conversation with Kestrel in the same hall, and how the lizardfolk had guided Stump to come to realizations on his own.
Teach others how to help themselves.
He cleared his throat. "Merra believes you were trying to hurt them," he said. "Even without knowing it."
She scoffed. "I don't believe it. I know it. Vampires. Nothing but vampires for two years. They were at the Balin farm. No, the Kuresh farm. Maybe the Ruggans. No, it must be the Orwens."
"I thought I was protecting my family," said Tydas.
"What you thought is irrelevant to what you did—"
"I was trying to keep our enemies—"
"Enemies?"
They were lost in a tangle of rage. They spat insults, volleyed arguments, and eventually they tired of the fighting and sank into their chairs, Tydas having lost his stoic stature, and Merra in more pain than when she entered the room.
This is hard, Stump thought, but he tried again.
"Maybe if lord Tydas tried explaining why he did what he did," he said, careful to frame his words around Merra's reactions to avoid stoking another outburst.
"As I said, Aubany has been under threat for some time," the lord of Peaktree said unconvincingly.
"That's not what I mean. Why do you, Tydas, lord of Peaktree, need to handle this problem yourself? Maybe if you told us about your own pains, we could better understand them."
Tydas stole an extended gaze into the hearth. Firelight shimmered in his dark eyes, like a campfire in a goblin cave. After a sigh and a half-hearted attempt to compose himself, he began.
"We'd lost a factional dispute, and the Dawn of Dusk party took power in Borovic. The vampires. I was trying to stop their plans to drag us into war with Aubany. I was successful, and they hated me—hated us—for it. Some were killed, others fled. I was one of them. I'd lost everything. My home, my line, my wealth, my betrothal."
Stump was attentive to Merra during the story—her disinterest as it began, the way her eyebrows creased as it went on, her stirring at the mention of another marriage.
"But I kept my will to fight," Tydas continued. "They couldn't take that from me. I chose this side of the Brightwater, between Borovic and Aubany. Not the nobles of the city, or their estates south of the river. I chose to fight. I wanted… I thought…" His voice cracked. He leaned forward and sunk his gaze to the floor. "Stump was the one to help me realize what was important. But Kestrel… I… I couldn't control him. But it was my fault. I let my pride come before you and our daughter. I'm so sorry, Merra."
Tenet of Lumensa Fulfilled - Virtue +1 (6/11)
Stump allowed a beat of quiet between the warring spouses. Tydas kept his eyes low and his shoulders slumped. Merra opened her mouth to speak, but suppressed whatever words of sympathy she was about to offer.
She needs a little more, Stump thought.
"You and Maven aren't so different," he said, turning to Tydas. "You both ran from opposite ends of the fighting in Borovic and found yourselves in the same place. Morg, too. And I'm no vampire or werewolf, but I know what it's like to run from all you know. To leave everything behind, the good and the bad." He thought of Yeza, and added, "Especially the good."
With a flick of the wrist the virtue left his fingers. "You both come from the same place, but only Tydas has seen it," he went on, swirling an amorphous cloud of light and colour between them. "Tell Merra what you felt like you were fighting for. Tell me what home was like, and I'll show her."
Moving Image took shape at Tydas' recollection. Grey and black coalesced into towers of stone. Silver and blue into the many canals and bridges that stitched together the streets of Borovic. Clouds circled its highest points, breathed from the summits of mountains in the distance. Vaulted streets tunnelled beneath cobblestone terraces. Trees of bloodleaf scattered diffuse rays of sunlight into orange and red, like the twilight of Aubany.
Merra watched the phantasm with a pinched glare, and when it faded to reveal Tydas sitting across from her, staring back, she said nothing.
He sank into his chair with a defeated sigh. "Thank you, Stump. You've done much more than was asked of you," he said.
Stump wanted to stay, to keep trying until something worked, but he'd learned from Kestrel that the healing of deep wounds was a slow process. Calcified pains especially.
He slid off the chair and made his way down the hall, head low and ears tucked, but before he could round the corner, a celestial tug held him in place.
Tenet of Lumensa Fulfilled - Virtue +1 (5/11)
When he turned back, Merra and Tydas were standing in front of the fire, their shadows long and flickering. She stepped forward without a word and rested her head on his chest, and he pulled her close and held her there.
Stump couldn't find Lyda in the infirmary. He would have asked Eskel where she'd gone, but the old man was barely awake and being tended to by Durgish.
"Left down that hall, last I saw," the dwarf grumbled. His hands were stained red as he moved from wounded to wounded, dressing injuries with chappy gum.
"She went with your friend, I think," Tallas added with a groan.
It didn't take long to find her.
Morg was planted outside the greenhouse, in the shade of the manor, mask off. He'd traded his usual black leathers for a loose grey linen shirt, billowing breeches, and dark boots pulled nearly to his knees.
"Morg?" Stump said.
The dwarf jolted as if discovered naked. "Oh, uh... Stump," he said, then cleared his throat. "Didn't hear ye back there."
"What happened to your clothes?"
Morg looked down at himself and shrugged. "Gets stuffy 'neath all 'em layers. Thought I'd try somethin' different. Why? Ye got a problem?"
"No. It suits you."
"Oh. Thanks, I guess."
"Where's the amulet?"
Morg nodded down the hill, where Lyda sat cross-legged, looking glum and carving the earth with a stick. "Figured I'd watch her while everyone else is busy hurtin' inside. Thought she'd like her fill o' real sunlight, too."
Stump squinted and spotted the stone glimmering around her neck. "She doesn't look happy," he observed.
Morg crossed his arms over his chest. "Might be she needs a friend."
Stolen story; please report.
Stump was already descending the hill before he picked up on the hint. Lyda looked up with disinterest as his shadow fell over her.
"What are you writing?" he asked.
She pouted and rested her cheek in her hand. "I'm not writing. I'm making a picture."
He tilted his head, but couldn't decipher the squiggles she'd dug into the ground. "What's it a picture of?" he said, lowering himself to the ground across from her. The grass was cool between his fingers.
"My ma and pa."
He pointed to two other figures holding hands next to them. "Who's that?"
"That's me and gran. And that's Kessy."
"Why are his eyes like that?"
"He's dead."
"Oh."
She scratched away the two adjoined circles and forking lines that described Kestrel's figure. "Pa killed him with his claws because he stopped being my friend."
"Is that what you wanted to happen?"
She shrugged, and began spoiling the rest of her tapestry. "I wanted him to be my friend," she mumbled. "But he doesn't like me."
The waver in her voice pulled Stump back to his earliest days in the tribe, when the trees were lumber giants, raiding was the distant dream of adolescence, and the world of the tall men was nothing more than the trinkets that decorated the white matron's throne. No one liked me either, he remembered, and struggled to find the words to distill all he'd learned of people and their prejudices into a lesson fit for a child.
But that's not what Stump needed when he was younger, and it wouldn't help Lyda, either.
She needs her own Yeza.
"What about..." Stump caught himself before mentioning Ivis' name, and his chest tightened at the thought of him. "...Celetta? Is she your friend?"
Lyda shook her head. "She's mean. Last time I asked her to play with me she said she's too big. Everyone's too big to play. No one's small, like me." She speared the ground with her stick.
I'm small, Stump thought. And maybe I can be her Yeza.
"I'm seven," he offered.
She narrowed her eyes. "No you're not."
"I am. I mean, I think I'd be almost thirty in tall man years, but for a goblin I'm seven. And I'm always looking for new friends."
She paused her soil skewering and appraised him with apprehensive excitement. "You are?"
He nodded, then raised his hand and summoned a lumen, dim at first.
Lyda jerked back on instinct, her eyes wide with panic.
"It's alright," he said. "It won't hurt you."
She didn't blink as he lowered the lumen to the ground between them.
"Have you ever caught a mouse before?" he said, swirling his hand over the light and nudging its shape and colour into something resembling a rodent.
"No," she said uncertainly.
"Where I'm from we used to chase them, but I haven't found anyone since who'd want to play." The mouse took full shape with Moving Image, complete with sparkling black eyes and whiskers that twitched as it sniffed the air.
Lyda relaxed her shoulders. She looked from the illusion to Stump.
"Maybe I'm too quick for them," he said.
"I'm quick," she challenged. A smile teased the corners of her lips.
With a subtle motion he directed the mouse to dart under her legs. "Look! It's getting away!"
She leapt to her feet with a playful shriek and spun to the skittering creature. "I've got you!" she called, and bounded off on her chase.
Stump followed, weaving the phantasm through grass and dirt and leading her on the adventure. Clouds of dust and laughter trailed in her wake, and shards of sunlight were tucked away in the stone around her neck.
Tenet of Lumensa Fulfilled - Virtue +1 (5/11)
Silence stewed in the dining hall. The mercenaries—the ones strong enough to make it out of the infirmary—wore tight, ponderous frowns.
Stump was barely tall enough to rest his hands on the tablecloth. He'd finished relaying Maven's quest, and the offer had landed like a corpse—with a thud and an increasingly noticeable stench no one dared acknowledge.
"Well?" he said, looking between each of them in turn. His ears curled at the quiet.
Awkwardness urged Boren to clear his throat. "You want to go after them? Out there? Beyond the shroud?" he said.
"We beat them when there was a hundred goblins. Now there's less than half."
Dharmis was next to speak, rushing to his ally's aid. "With our defences and the manor, yes, but out there is goblin territory. Never mind the territory of gorthals and mountain bats!"
"I'm a goblin too," said Stump. "I know where they might try to ambush us. I know where our—their cave is. And what about Denna? She's out there somewhere."
Boren shook his head, and approached his next words with hesitance. "We don't even know if—"
"She's alive," Stump cut him off. "And so is my friend, Yeza. She's a goblin, but she's the prisoner of the one they call their king. If we go, if we all go, we can rescue them both."
"I think we must," said Ilora, further down the table. "We can't return to Shepherd's Hall without the rest of our company."
"We can go to the city and raise more forces, and then come back for her," Dharmis countered.
"She might not have that long," said Morg. He occupied the chair closest to Stump, but his voice boomed loud enough to rattle the opposite end of the hall. "Stump's friend, neither. And this king o' gobby's might come back while yer gone 'splainin' to yer commander about the folk ye lost in the woods."
Both men of the Iron Fleece held their tongues.
Wick leaned forward near the far end, peeking out from behind Hadder like a groundhog cautiously emerging from its home. "I'm in favour of helping."
"There's a silver in it, you said?" Hadder mused.
"Five for each company that joins us," said Stump.
Wick was about to speak again when Rilla cut in. "It might be ten, or a gold piece. The reward is not worth the risk of losing a member of our company. Our job here is done. The rest of you can do as you like, but we return to the Downs tomorrow morning, once Tallas is recovered."
"Well…" Wick squeaked, but stuttered the rest of his thoughts when everyone looked his way. "M-m-maybe… I th… I think we should. They need help."
Rilla scoffed. "We return to the Post tomorrow. That's my decision." She stood and nodded for Hadder to do the same.
"It's not your decision to m-make," Wick ventured.
Already halfway to the door, she turned on her heel with a huff. "And whose decision is it? Yours?"
"That's r-right."
"We've all seen what you do when you have command. I'll save us both the trouble of a second attempt. Hadder, let's—"
Wick's chair toppled as he stood. "Don't you turn your back on m-me!"
She stepped back as if slapped. "You think you have what it takes because you had your little moment in the cellar?" She approached him slowly, her shoulders back and her chin up. "You had command, and look what's happened to your father's company."
He averted his gaze to the floor. "You w-w-would have us w-work with the Ocelots."
"Yes. Yes I would. It's what all the other companies do. Because they're smart. They know they can make bronze if they cooperate." She closed the gap between them.
He backed into the table, knocking over an empty goblet. "W-we can't. They won't let us," he told his feet.
"You're right. They won't let us achieve it because you broke our contract. Your father gave you the reins but never taught you how to ride."
"I… I didn't…"
"What a surprise when you fell from the saddle."
"I only w-w-wanted…"
"To stay in the Post, I know. Your father's dream. You'd throw away his company for that dingy waterlogged box."
"No, y-y-y…"
"Y-y-y what? Speak!"
"Rill, I think that's enough," said Hadder.
He reached for her shoulder, but she swatted him away. "The boy can defend himself. Can't you, Wick?" She gave an ungenerous amount of time for a response before she stepped away. "No, I suppose not."
Rilla only made it partway across the dining hall when steel sang. When she turned, Wick's blade glinted in candlelight, wobbling inches from her snout. A measure of fear crossed her face, but she chased it away with a scowl.
"What do you think—"
"I can speak!" he roared, then added upon noticing her hand on the hilt of her weapon, "Y-you draw that and Durg w-will have another body on his hands."
Her fingers uncurled.
Wick granted a long silence of his own, but nothing, not even breath, left her throat.
"You know nothing about my father, or his dreams," he said. "You didn't believe me about the Ocelots, or their plan to keep us a copper company running the Post for the rest of our days. M-my father, your leader, found out, and I m-m-made the choice to break our contract."
"Wick—"
"I made the choice because I am your leader while my father is ill. If y-y-you'd like to return to Guttershine, I won't stop you, but you'll be leaving your badge on the table. I'll not have your insubordination in our company."
She refused to disarm her glower, but the quiver in her tone betrayed her apprehension. "We nearly lost Tallas. If we follow them out there, beyond the shroud, we might all be lost. Think about what you're doing, Wick."
"I already have."
Rilla flinched at his strike, but his move wasn't towards her. He arced his arm up and around, and sunk his blade into the table with a sharp crack.
"We all, thirty of us, stopped the goblin king and his army of a hundred greenskins!" Wick continued, circling to the other end of the table where he stood with his back surprisingly straight. "W-we did it with wooden spikes and shards of glass. Fire pokers and sharpened table legs. Bottles of wine, broken casks. W-we did it with each other, because we cared about our allies, our friends, our companymen. It doesn't m-matter that we come from the riches of Breakpoint Terrace, or the Mudflats of Guttershine, or from Borovic or goblin caves. We w-won because we fought together."
A slight tremor carried on a low magical hum, vibrating Wick's sword where it speared out of the wood. The sound strengthened the more Wick spoke, and Stump felt it settle in his chest, swirling his rage, his courage.
"Your friend Denna is out there," the muridean continued, pointing behind him where the remnants of shattered doors creaked in the wind. "She's out there with the rest of your company. Stump's friend, too. He started the Nobodies to help those who need it, and my father taught me to stand beside people like him. So I say, with the full power of the Stillwater Fellowship, down with the goblin king."
Morg was first to surge to his feet with the power of Wick's Commander magic.
"Aye, down with the king o' gobby's!" His axe bit into the tablecloth with such force a number of cups tumbled to the floor.
Ilora was second, sinking her sword next to Wick's. "Down with the king of goblins!" she roared. "For Denna!"
Boren and Dharmis, seeing one of their own join the chant, stood with a shared grumble.
"For Denna!" said Dharmis, impaling the point of his rapier.
"For Denna!" Boren echoed.
Hadder looked from Rilla to Wick, then gave a slight shrug. "I've always wanted to stab a table," he said, then did so with glee. "Down with the goblin king!"
Tapestries shook. The hall rumbled with their thunderous cheer and drew curious onlookers from the household, who gasped at the sight of the skewered hardwood, but shrunk away for fear of interrupting the moment.
Wick held Rilla's gaze from across the table with the unblinking stare of a leader.
This time she was first to look away. She drew her weapon and thrust it next to Hadder's, then shouldered out of the hall, grimacing at the floor.
Wick sighed relief, wiped his forehead, and flashed Stump a nervous smile.
Lacking a large weapon of his own, Stump pierced the wood with a breadknife and joined the chorus of voices. But somewhere in the middle of it he whispered, "For Yeza."
They carried the inspiration to bed with them and woke before dawn battered and bandaged and buzzing with the fumes of Wick's bravery, and left the manor as a single company, forged from the alliance of the The Iron Fleece, The Stillwater Fellowship, and The Nobodies.
Show no fear, Stump told himself as he trekked beside Wick at the head of their companies and gazed on the monstrous wall of fungal trees before them. The matrons had instilled in him a terror of the Shadowlands since he was a child, but it wasn't the twilight woods he was afraid of now.
It was home.
A quick survey of his companions told him they were all frightened, from the seasoned and dutiful Ilora to Tallas and Hadder. Show no fear was a powerful chant against a goblin invasion, but it wasn't what they needed now. They needed to know they weren't the only ones afraid, that they weren't alone.
Stump let the fear course through him on a pulsing wave of bloodlust, and stole a final glance at the broken manor at their backs.
Peaktree was little more than a charred pile of sticks and stones in the distance, its owners no bigger than grains of sand on the hill before it. Around them the final bastions of sporegrain swayed and bowed with the wind, bidding them farewell.