Chapter XVI

Wren Hawthorne loomed over me and grinned. Trying to keep the unease growing between my shoulders, I met the challenge in his gaze with one of my own. "Keilvey mentioned a bounty on a blonder from the west." I fingered my first knife as though I wished to bury it in the back of all westerners, but Hawthorne's back came to mind. Easy, Wren. My conscience whispered. Vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord. Hawthorne pursed his lips and waved my statement away. "We have a trace on the man. Word is he is hiding in the valley. Only a matter of days before we know where." "You are not pursuing him yourself?" I asked. "I have moved up in the world." He gestured toward the heavy gold collar around his neck. Red rubies winked at me as he threw his chest out with pride. "I am the Enforcer over the whole valley." "Impressive." I watched a bird take flight from the most distant guard tower. Please don't let it be one of mine, I prayed. "Never thought I would amount to much did you?" I didn't answer and he didn't seem to expect one since he continued. "I have my own rookery now and my own birds. How are your falcons, by the way? Are they still coming at your beck and call?" I was saved from telling him it was none of his business when a man in a guard uniform approached from the prison. He informed Hawthorne that the prisoner brought in the night before was dead. "Dead?" A red flush crept up his face from his neck and his eyes glinted in anger. His hand went to his dagger, the ill-balanced one I recalled from last time we had met. The young guard stepped cautiously back, out of reach. I didn't move, but my muscles tightened in readiness. "He could have given us more information. Tell me he was at least interrogated last night." The guard's face drained of color. "No, your eminence, he was not because he was obviously ill. He was scheduled for a session with Vicron this morning before the execution." "Bring me Vicron," Hawthorne ordered through clenched teeth. The young man ran on his way before he had fully spoken the name. "I do hope you still plan on remaining with us," Hawthorne said to me as though he had been discussing the weather. "If you wait long enough, you might be allowed in on the capture of the Westerner. Besides, there are plenty of other bounties at large in the area. The old lord of the valley had a son. The prisoner," he indicated the jail with his thumb, "was supposedly a comrade in arms with the whelp. I was hoping to find out a bit more about him before the rat died." My heart stuttered. "Is there a price on his head?" I asked calmly. "No, but there should be." Hawthorne smiled a slow creepy smile. "I plan on having the whelp and the Westerner in my goal or mounted above my gates before the celebration." He indicated a series of iron spikes adoring the archway to the main gate. "Speaking of the celebration, you must stay for that at least. Surely you can remain with us for a month until the end. King Orac himself is due to arrive within a fortnight." A man who resembled a brick wall on legs approached in the wake of the young guard. "I will need to leave on business shortly, but I will be certain to return for such a festive occasion." I timed the last words so that Hawthorne only managed to open his mouth to protest before the guard interrupted. "See Keilvey about rooming in my name," Hawthorne said before turning away to deal with Vicron. ~~~~~~~~~~~~ Tourth The steady rhythm of the mallet striking the wedge, the pull and release of my muscles, and the smooth shifting of balance from one side to the other was just mindless enough to ease my crazed mind. I could use no other word to describe my state beside obsessed. No matter how I tried to distract it from the memories of the battle of Catorna, they lurked on the fringes of my consciousness. "Shouldn't you place a new wedge before that one is completely imbedded?" Hiller commented. I paused to eye the log. The wedge was almost flush with the wood. I should have placed the second wedge strokes ago. Now my work was going to be twice as hard. You deserve it. I grimaced. "Place the wedge and I will start it," I replied, turning toward Hiller only to pause. Dardon and Svhen stood behind him, looking like they wanted to be anywhere else. Dardon glowered as though someone crossed stolen a win in the practice field. Svhen frowned, which for him meant trouble. "These two say you need some help." Hiller waved in the direction of my comrades. "Then grab a mallet and a wedge." I knew that wasn't what he was saying, but I intended to make them work for it. "Not that way," Dardon barked. "You haven't been this intense since…" His voice dropped to nothing, leaving the sentence hanging. We all knew he was thinking of the journey home from the war. I jumped at every snapping twig, rustle of the wind, or thickening shadow. Arthus startled me one night and I nearly took off his head. Only his swift reflexes had saved his life. "Iscarus mentioned your conversation last night." Hiller placed the wedge, holding it in position, but both Dardon and Svhen stepped back. "He had no right." I drove the mallet at the wedge with all my might. Metal bit deep into the wood and the muscles in my shoulders protested. Ignoring them, I lifted the tool again. "No one has a right to discuss my thoughts but me." The slab on metal whizzed past Hiller's head and missed his hand by a breath. The crack of the impact echoed through my head. "Unless you won't let them rest and it is endangering you and those around you." Svhen stepped forward to stay me from lifting the hammer again. He spoke as though I had done nothing more than tripped over a pail of milk. Something of his tone reminded me of Wren's eerie calm in the face of my rage. Hiller looked up at me. "Right after I came home from the war, I almost cracked Warwick's head open on a brick wall. Do you know what his offense was?" I shook my head, trying to envision mild Hiller enraged. "He told me my hair was standing on end." "The point is," Dardon said, "we were all there." Not Catorna. "Maybe not Catorna, but some just as horrible." He answered my thoughts. "I led a scouting party into a trap." "Failed to defend my swordmate's blind spot," Hiller admitted. "Attacked an unarmed man," Svhen offered. We all stared at him in horror. Not that we all hadn't do the same in the heat of battle when the adrenaline high burned in our veins, the blood rushed in our ears, and our opponent dropped his sword. However, just the idea of him, honor bound, cool-blooded Svhen, losing control to that degree shook me. If even Svhen can be shaken… No! "Three hundred seven lives gone." The pain jammed itself into the back of my throat, making me gag on my own spit. I wanted to heave, scream, and cry simultaneously. The conflict tore at my gut, bringing tears to my eyes. Tears? I lifted a hand to touch the foreign wetness. When was the last time I had cried? "Iscarus told us." Hiller's hands gripped my shoulders. "Aron." The name ripped past the knot in my throat despite my best effort to keep it inside. The sound of his name was enough to bring his face to my sight. Burned in my memory were the look of horror, fear, and confusion as he looked down at the arrow in his chest and the slow melting of his features into the slack contortion of death. "Your father would have understood," Hiller informed me. Suddenly my parents joined the ranks of dead encroaching on my defenses. The walls I had erected around my soul over the past years trembled. Crumbling from the inside out, what I feared loomed. I lowered my head. Svhen lifted the handle from my slack fingers. The lump in my throat threatened to choke me. I couldn't breathe against the pressure in my chest. A voice murmured in my ears. At first I thought it was one of the spirits haunting me, but I gradually realized it was Hiller praying for me. I was a fool. Conviction struck my shoulders like a load of stones. I staggered. Then lowered myself to sit on the log. Hiller joined me. "All our righteousnesses are as filthy rags." Hiller continued to quote and pray, but the sentence burned itself into my brain. Without the grace of God, I was lost. I couldn't even save myself, let alone the ones I cared about. It wasn't my place to carry this weight. Deus had already taken it from me, I just refused to let go and it was poisoning me slowly. All those months that I thought I was winning with my own strength, He was working beneath the surface. Wren had seen the struggle and poked it, opening the festering sore to the air. Like any disease, The poison fought back against the remedy, but now it was losing its hold. Deus was prying my fingers loose despite my protests and stubborn tenacity. He would win. He always did. It was simply a matter of whether I would give in with the threads of dignity I had remaining or continue to throw a tantrum. "I surrender." My words slipped out as a breath, but I knew the Lord heard them and would hold me to them. Tears followed. I wept for my parents, Aron, and the men who had died at Catorna. The knot at the back of my throat washed away and with it swept the grief that I had hoarded for two years. When I finally lifted my head, hours later, Hiller sat beside me, silent and peaceful. Svhen and Dardon were not in sight. "At peace?" he asked. I nodded wearily. I ached physically, but I knew to the depths of my soul that I was finally at peace before God again. "Welcome home." I looked up. Iselyn rose before me, a majestic shadow of its former glory in the fading light. Then I noticed a figure climbing the trail toward us. He spotted us and waved, yelling something. "Something is wrong." Hiller rose to his feet and started down the trail to meet the man. "What is the news, Troj?" I dragged myself upright and picked up the mallet. Regardless of the news, I was not up to splitting anymore logs tonight. When I finally joined the two men, Hiller's face looked fierce. "Arthus returned. He never reached the border because he was picked up by a press gang." "Is he alright?" I asked Troj. His face answered for him. I plowed past him and started toward the castle. "He will live," Hiller yell after me. "He better," I hollered back, "for Kat's sake." He caught up with me as I strode across the courtyard toward the barracks. Men moved about as though they were productively occupied, but I intercepted worried looks every way I turned. "What do you mean 'for Kat's sake'?" Hiller grabbed my arm before I reached the door. "He loves her." That caused him to pause long enough for me to pull away and push through the gathered men outside the kitchen door. ~~~~~~~~~~~~ © 2011 Rachel Rossano