Chapter 44: A Cleansing Fire

Honor Madoun, First of the Eleventh, strode wearily through the dying light, a large saddlebag clutched in his left hand. He rolled his shoulders as he walked, twisting his back slightly at each step. His aged shoulders ached from bouncing on the long ride and his back hurt from the constant motion of the saddle.

He spat out the dust and dirt of the town. Dirt and dust was a problem in many of the hamlets and towns of the kingdom. Without stone or brick paving, the roads of the towns grew hard packed and were prone to clouds of dust, dirt and grit rising as people and animals traveled over them. Under the gritty odor lay the more putrid odor of the unwashed with a sour hint of urine. For reasons he couldn’t fathom, every town seemed to have some foul odor of urine surrounding it.

He had never before commanded so many knights and the burden of leadership wore heavily on his shoulders – but it was by choice rather than necessity. He knew the commanding officers of the Twelfth, Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth platoons and he trusted them. He knew them to be capable and careful and he was certain they would see to their own troops. It was leadership in times like this which ensured promotion, however. As such, he wanted to be certain everything went exactly to plan so he’d gone back over their work. He hadn’t found anything amiss, but he hadn’t expected to, really. It was more the point of being seen.

Leadership wasn’t always so much doing as being seen doing.

Krieter Madoun dropped the saddlebag with a solid thud onto the porch of the small inn before stepping up. It wasn’t much of a stair, only a single step no more than six inches high, but as fatigued as he was it was enough. He grunted as he leveraged himself up with one hand on a pillar. He paused there, leaning against the crude, square, wooden column. He looked at the worn post and then his eyes travelled higher to the worn boards forming the worn ceiling. It seemed everything was worn out these days. Even him.

The knight was tired. Tired of the armor, tired of riding into the unknown, tired of the countless battles. Just tired. He was approaching fifty-two seasons and lately he felt like the seasons were piling up on top of him, robbing him of his breath and his strength. Maybe it truly was time to retire and find another, less vigorous, calling. Chaos knew his wife and husband would enjoy having him around more often. Their family had seven children – two daughters and five sons – but they were all grown and most had children of their own.

He allowed himself a moment of rest. He closed his eyes, feeling the cool breeze of oncoming dusk brush against the skin of his face, ignoring the odors on the wind. It was all the slight breeze could touch because the rest of him was covered by the cloying, stagnant weight of his normal plate mail. Even the plate mail felt old against skin worn weary with dirt and blood and sweat.

Krieter lifted his head, hoping for the smell of honeysuckle or jasmine or maybe even gardenia. He wanted something to raise a memory of home.

His husband had several flowering gardens planted strategically near their windows so the breeze through their home was nearly always rife with the smell of flowers blooming. Unfortunately, the smell of flowering plants didn’t come to him. He was disappointingly rewarded with only more of the foul odors of the dredges of humanity. Urine and sweat and even darker, more pungent odors crossed over him and he wrinkled his nose in disgust. Opening his eyes, he dropped his head back down and reached a final crossroads in his life. He weighed his options carefully.

As he pushed himself off the pillar, he decided it was time. This would be his last adventure. When he returned with the princess and her platoon, he would file for his retirement. His only regret was he’d never advance to become a member of the royal platoons. If there had been but one more child or if the Queen had married just one more time, he would have been called on to fulfill that role. It was something he’d waited for the past seven seasons – but it had never come. Now, he was certain it never would.

He stooped down with the soft screech of metal on metal and grabbed the bulging leather saddlebag. He missed his squire. Carrying his everyday leather armor was normally Pfloud’s job but Honor Kotliss had ordered them to leave their squires and pages behind and make all due haste toward Cava.

It was probably for the better. Pfloud was more than ready to assume sword and shield. She’d served faithfully and with honor – and had gathered her share of glory in the tournaments. He’d recommend her for knighthood at the same time he applied for retirement.

His face pinched again as he walked through the door to the inn. The place was filled, and the revelers were loud. What space wasn’t occupied by unwashed, mostly drunken bodies was filled with rather thick smoke. He coughed lightly as he adjusted his breath. It didn’t take long. He never smoked while on duty but at night or in the comfort of his home, he usually could be found with a thick-stemmed pipe between his lips. He knew it sapped the wind, but he decided several years ago he’d earned the simple pleasure.

“Krieter!”

He squinted, peering through the smoke to a table on the right. He turned to find Honor Jacine Loware, First of the Twelfth, waving him over. She was a comely enough woman, in a rough, crude sort of way. Her nose was as crooked as a tax collector’s smile, broken in several places and set incorrectly a few times. He knew she could have either had it repaired by a priest or priestess or even repaired it herself with her considerable healing prowess, but she wore it as a badge of honor. He’d asked her about it once, several years ago, before she’d been elevated to commanding a platoon, but she’d just smiled and said she’d earned each break so saw no reason to hide them.

Her ears were slightly too big for her head, and she had a scar along her left cheek and another scoring her chin. Her lips were thin and hard, but her smile was warm, even with its crooked teeth. She had hard, gray eyes that gave you just a hint of her formidable implacability.

That relentlessness was her hallmark. Her body was thin, like a whip, and she carried herself with purpose. Her movements were economical and drawn, each one apparently thought out to be as quick and as long as necessary – and no more. A capable knight, though not as talented as some, she advanced through the ranks on sheer will alone.

He nodded, walking the few steps to the table where she and the other commanders were sitting. He noticed the table was in the far corner, away from the doors and most traffic.

Sensible.

He also noticed Jacine was seated with her back to the corner, the other commanders arrayed around her. Only two chairs were unoccupied, and both had their backs to the room itself.

“Let me get out of my work clothes,” he rumbled. The other commanders chuckled. They’d already divested themselves of their heavy, metal armor in favor of more comfortable clothes.

Each had their swords within comfortable reach, however.

He considered changing into his studded leather armor, but the other commanders hadn’t. Besides, they were in Klevel, an interior town about a week’s ride from the capital city of Callisto – they were probably as safe as a babe in their crib.

When he made it back downstairs after swapping his plate mail for a linen shirt, soft cotton pants and comfortable shoes, he noticed no one had moved. The two chairs with their backs to the room were still the only ones open. As the commander-in-charge, by virtue of his higher platoon number, the corner seat should have been his.

He frowned but took a seat. Like any knight, he didn’t care to sit with his back to any doors or windows. He didn’t like sitting with his back to the room at large either. He preferred to keep things in front of him as did any knight worth their salt.

He shrugged it off. It wasn’t really a slight. He had been the last to arrive, after all, so he would need to take what was available.

“Took you long enough!” Honor Oloid grunted before taking a long swallow from a metal goblet.

Krieter looked at the large man, his face impassive. He took in the man’s close-cropped brown hair and piercing blue eyes. Unlike most knights, the man’s jaw sported the growth of a day or more. Coupled with a bulbous nose which had obviously been broken several times and a large, hulking body, Oloid gave the appearance of a wild savage rather than the gentrified noble most knights aspired to.

Torus Oloid, commander of the Fourteenth platoon, was not most knights. Word was Oloid had a problem with strong drink and loose women as well as gambling. Rumor also had it the man was near unstoppable on a battlefield. In the long, storied history of the Wenland Knights, he was one of the few berserkers which had made it to commanding a platoon. Berserkers were fine in the ranks, but their reckless style of combat did not lend itself to teamwork. At six feet eight inches and somewhere around two-hundred seventy pounds, the man looked like a mountain of muscle. He was especially intimidating when clad in armor.

“Some mead, Honor Madoun?” Honor Interook asked, shaking the man out of his silent analysis of Honor Oloid. She pushed a metal mug towards him from the middle of the table.

Accepting the mug, Krieter turned his attention to the young woman. Carann Interook was one of the rising stars. At barely twenty seasons, it was remarkable she was commanding a platoon at all much less one as prestigious as the Fifteenth. Except by appointment, a knight managed to rise to commander only when there was an opening. Even then, the newly minted commander would start at the end of the line - the lowly Seventy-Second platoon. Commanders rose through the ranks of the Royal Platoons – the Royal Thousand, as it was called, though there were half-again more than a thousand Royal Knights – only through promotion or assignment.

Which was the rub here. Interook had been assigned to the fifteenth. It had rubbed some commanders the wrong way – especially those she’d by-passed – but her appointment came from the Queen herself. A tiny thing at barely five feet, four inches tall, she didn’t look particularly impressive even in armor, but her serious green eyes hid a sharp, tactical mind. She’d managed to capture over two score of Tylnanari brigands by herself, using only marshy terrain and some props made to look like soldiers.

“Thank you,” he replied, pouring himself a draught from the pitcher in the middle.

“Do you think this is more than a baby-sitting run?” Zyffour Mont asked quietly. Then again, despite her six-foot frame, Honor Mont, First of the Thirteenth, did everything quietly.

At thirty-six seasons, she was one of the oldest of the five commanders, second only to himself. Only a season earlier, she’d been given her appointment by King Andin, Second Husband to Queen Synel. As such, she was the newest commander present. Her primary claim to honor was her woodcraft. Her company boasted she could track anything, even after a heavy rain. They boasted she could sneak up on death itself and it would never know she was near. They boasted she was handy with a blade and deadly with an arrow.

She herself never boasted.

It was true none-the-less that her skills were somewhere beyond reason but just short of supernatural. She’d been trained as a Ranger early on but the death of her older sister – whose name escaped Krieter Madoun’s recollection - before Zyffour reached her majority had opened the way for her to inherit land from her parents. With land, she was able to change professions and became a page and then a squire. She was knighted three or four seasons later.

Oloid laughed, spilling some of his drink. Even Interook and Loware smiled. Madoun just wondered how she kept her naivete after all this time as a knight.

Mont looked around the group defensively, her bronze complexion turning slightly rosy. Her brown eyes narrowed, and her left hand went to her long, thick, brown hair, stroking it nervously. “I mean, the Third is led by Gillen Hawksley. Surely she doesn’t require our help.”

“Of course, it’s a baby-sitting mission,” Madoun said roughly. “That doesn’t mean we take it any less seriously. Honestly, I expected we’d meet Honor Hawksley on the road from Callisto to here ... or here in Klevel, at the very least.”

He shrugged. “I expect we’ll catch up to Hawksley within the next day or three. I asked around before we left. The Third left Callisto on the ninth of Yanae. Three weeks to Callisto, three weeks back puts their return on the twenty-second – tomorrow. Even if they’ve run into trouble, they’re likely not more than a few days out.”

“This is all just a plan to get us moving around,” Oloid belched. He took another long drink. “Kotliss worries we’ll get fat and lazy if we just lay around all summer.”

“Honor Kotliss said the Red Guard were after Princess Ataya,” Mont interjected reprovingly, her head tilted slightly to the left. The light gleamed off her dark skin, her eyes looking more intent because of the contrast between her skin and the whites of her eyes. She was sitting forward, her gaze moving intently to each of the commanders.

“He also said it was one of the clergy that sounded the alarm,” Interook shrugged. “I’m not sure I’d put my life on anything a cleric claimed. Besides, the First of the Third can handle herself.”

“Against several platoons of Red Guards?” Mont asked dubiously. “Honor Kotliss said there could be as many as four or five platoons.”

Interook sat back, staring at Mont. “I take it you’ve never seen Gillen Hawksley in battle. I have. It was three, maybe four seasons ago – before she’d taken the mantle of First of the Third – and we were up in a skirmish against the Tylnanari militia – what Tylnanari claims are common ruffians. Chaos, they’re better equipped than some of the Queen’s Guard.”

She shook her head. “Regardless, I was there with the thirty-eighth and Hawksley was with the thirty-seventh. We were forty up against nearly a hundred, maybe more, and the Tylnanari had the high ground. I was commanded by Honor Gralam at the time, and he wanted to make a defensive stand – basically hold the bastards to a stalemate until reinforcements arrived. Unfortunately, Hawksley’s commander was a chaos-infested idiot named Sitchen. Since Sitchen was the ranking commander – thirty-seventh to thirty-eighth, you know – she ordered us to go flat out against them. Forty against over a hundred fighting uphill. It was a bloodbath. Most of the thirty-seventh died right there. In fact, that was how Sitchen lost her leg. Quite a few of the thirty-eighth lost their lives on that field. Not Hawksley, though. She fought like a woman possessed. I swear, she single-handedly pushed those chaos-vermin back. When the Tylnanari finally turned tail, bodies were stacked up around her like cordwood. There must have been two dozen bodies lying in a circle around her. Gralam asked her how she managed to take out so many and I’ll never forget what she said. She said ‘They killed my horse. I really liked that horse’.”

Madoun, Mont and Loware joined Interook in a good chuckle. Oloid just grunted and tipped his mug up, draining it. “Even if they bring the whole Red Army,” Interook continued. “Hawksley will flay them alive.”

“Bullshit,” Oloid mumbled, reaching for the nearly empty pitcher.

“What are you on about?” Interook asked with a scowl.

“I said ‘bullshit’,” Oloid stared at the other commander. “I’ve heard the story, too. Only thing is, it gets larger with each tellin’. Pretty soon, it’ll have Hawksley killin’ the entire Tyln Army by her lonesome.”

“I was there,” Interook hissed.

“I’m not disputing that,” Oloid snarled, pouring the remainder of the pitcher’s contents into his mug. “It’s your memory I have trouble with.”

He held up his hand to forestall Interook’s next outburst. “I’m six-feet, eight-inches tall and I practice a minimum of six hours every day I’m not afield. I’m also a berserker so trust me when I say that when I enter a battle, everyone runs scared. Chaos, I’m not even certain what I’m going to do. On my best day – maybe – I can account for a dozen attackers.”

“What are you saying?” Interook spat through clenched teeth.

“Simple,” Oloid shrugged, taking another long swallow. “I’ve met Hawksley. She’s a fine sword. She might even be the best of us. She ain’t weak, either. But she ain’t no berserker. Maybe she killed a half-dozen ... but I doubt she managed more than that.”

“I’m telling you, I was there,” Interook’s voice rose. “Are you calling me a liar?”

“Not at all,” Oloid retorted. “I’m sayin’ the memories a funny thing. What you remember can change over time. What you remember isn’t necessarily what happened.”

“Why, you...,” Interook started, standing. Her hand drifted towards her sword, leaning against the table beside her.

“Enough!” Madoun barked. “Save it for whatever enemy you face next.”

Oloid stood, setting his mug down. He grabbed his scabbard in his left hand. “Whatever,” he shrugged. “I’m off to the jakes.”

“He’s a drunk...,” Interook started but again Madoun cut her off.

“And he’s not necessarily wrong,” Madoun stared down the young woman. “Memory is a funny thing. It really does change over time. Maybe Hawksley killed two dozen or three dozen or ten dozen. Then again, maybe it’s your faulty memory. The point is it doesn’t matter and isn’t worth arguing over.”

--- ∞ ---

Oloid leaned his scabbarded sword against the corner of the outhouse, making sure it was within easy reach. He was aware of the third platoon’s motto and he agreed with it. He knew to be prepared in enemy territory. He quickly undid his buttons and pulled himself free. There was a moment when nothing would come but then a full, thick stream erupted. He sighed as he felt his bladder drain. There was something about holding his water until he burned with the need to release. It made peeing feel so much better.

He chided himself as he directed the flow of his urine into the small wooden hole. He shouldn’t have pushed Honor Interook’s buttons. The story was probably better than the truth, anyway.

He frowned as he realized his problem with it.

The story made him feel small. He’d worked hard to get promoted to commander. He’d worked even harder to rise in ranks to the Fourteenth. He’d had to overcome the stigmatism associated with being a berserker, of becoming so filled with rage on the battlefield that he pushed past his fears, worries and doubts and became a beautiful machine of death. He’d had to overcome his propensity to drink too much. He’d had to overcome his propensity of losing his money at dice or races or cards. He’d clawed his way to this post and, gods willing, he’d claw his way higher.

Hawksley hadn’t had to crawl. The Third had been given to her. He had no doubt the battle had been impressive ... but it couldn’t have been as impressive as the tales which had risen around it. It couldn’t because he knew he would not have been able to take on two or even one dozen and he couldn’t face the fact Hawksley might be better.

He heard a muffled noise above him as he shook the last drops from his manhood. He immediately turned and grabbed his sword, his mind suddenly alert through the fog of drink and his hands hard and steady. Left hand holding the scabbard and right hand on the hilt, he looked up at the wooden ceiling, his head cocked to the right, listening hard. He waited a few moments before he let the hilt go, using his right hand to tuck himself away. He shook his head.

“Probably just the breeze through the trees,” he mumbled to himself. Left hand loosening on the scabbard and the other buttoning up his pants, he kicked the door open with his foot.

Using the same foot, he pushed the door shut behind him as he exited, but the slamming of the door coincided with the same rushing noise from above him. A shadow darker than night moved across him, darkening the short grass at his feet. He immediately looked up, his head moving back and forth, looking for the cause of the shadow.

There was nothing. It was a clear night and all he could see were stars and the light of the two moons, Fiere and Melur. Fiere was nearing a new moon – or was just past it – but Melur was almost completely full, drenching the darkness with the boon of her light.

“I’m drunk,” he sighed. “And hallucinating. Or maybe it was a cloud or something.”

The hot day had turned into a warm night, and he wiped the sweat from his brow. There was just a hint of a breeze making the evening heat bearable, though the unctuous odor of the dregs of humanity caused his nose to wrinkle. The knight took a single step before he once again heard the rushing noise.

His head jerked up just in time to see ... something ... fly overhead. It was too quick and its underside too masked in shadow to make out any details. It appeared to be some kind of bird but a bird like none he’d ever seen before. Unless his bleary eyes were deceiving him, it had been as big as a barn with huge, leathery wings unfurled on either side.

Silently, he waited. He jerked his head rapidly back and forth, looking for the next pass of whatever it was.

He didn’t have long to wait. His jaw dropped as the shadow crossed yet again, the soft rushing sound of displaced air preceding it. It was huge, bigger even than a barn. It had a long, thick neck like some kind of exotic bird, but its head was crowned by horns and its jaw was long. A snout, not a jaw, he corrected himself.

It had a long, sinuous tail undulating behind it and the tail ended in a thick, triangular shape which looked sharp and insidious. Its wings were large, but they were the arched, webbed wings of bats instead of the curved, feathery wings of birds. Each webbed finger in its wings was surmounted by a single, gleaming claw at its apex.

For a moment, he could not move. His jaw closed a few times only to drop back open. His eyes grew wide as saucers.

His mind wasn’t working as he stumbled back. He nearly lost the grip on his scabbard as he lifted it up and his right hand had trouble gripping the hilt of his sword. His hands were clammy and shaking and he felt like he might vomit at any moment, but he wouldn’t let his eyes fall from the skies. He had to see it again. He had to know.

When it crossed back into his sight from the opposite direction, he felt the fear flow through him. For a moment, it overwhelmed him – until the reasonless rage clawed up to fight it back.

It was the secret of the berserker: though they appeared fearless, it was all an act. Berserkers were filled with fear. Even, sometimes, unreasoning fear. The anger, though, rose over it, stifling it. Berserkers were killing machines, but they had nothing against the opponents they mowed down. They were not angry at their foes. They were angry at the fear which consumed them.

His sword slid from its sheath with a steely rasp as his eyes began to burn with the heat of his rage. He had taken a single step towards where the shadow had disappeared before he caught himself. Over the rage, his intellect barely managed to rise. It was his personal secret, a discipline he’d not found in any other berserker. For short periods of time, he was able to throttle his deadly rage. For short periods of time, he was able to contain the berserker instinct.

He managed to turn. He managed to force his legs to stride to the door of the inn. The rage roiled and lashed out within him, begging to be free. In truth, he looked forward to releasing it.

This, however, was something more. This creature was the stuff of nightmares, told around hearths and campfires to scare little children. While there’d always been rumors, there’d not been a sighting in Wenland in hundreds or maybe thousands of seasons. They were told they didn’t exist. They were told they were extinct. It had either been hopeful thoughts or outright lies.