Chapter 24

AFTERWARDS, TEN YEARS LATER

Rowan and Boyle smiled as they sunned themselves after a brief swim and watched their wives and their children splash and play in the cool but refreshing waters of Lily Lake in Swanford. It was still early summer, and the shallow river waters had not yet warmed up very much, but they had been eager to leave Tellismere, and the requirements of duty, for a long summer of rest and relaxation.

Swanford, still essential as a trade transit town between Crystal Lake and the still rebuilding eastern settlements of the Duchy, was one of the first villages to be rebuilt and already it was growing to become nearly the size of a small town. Rowan was already itching to get back to his rebuilt smithy and beat some metal into submission, while Boyle was quite equally content to take long rides, groom their horses, and dote upon his adoring wife and children.

Already the Duchess had delivered three heirs to the Duchy, and a fourth was already now growing inside of her. Gwenda had already since bested her by bearing her fourth, and she also had another well on the way, soon to be born in Swanford, where the happy couples both spent their summers away from the court.

Rowan and Gwenda were becoming increasingly uncomfortable with their roles as living legends and fixtures of the court, and had laid down the law to their Duchess that immediately, if not sooner, they planned to spend more time raising their growing brood of children in the green grasses of Swanford, rather than at the cobblestones and whispering walls of Tellismere castle. If Rowan had his way, he would indeed now completely live here once again at his own village home, and never again leave it.

The duties of being the champion to the Duchess, indeed also quite the champion of the entire five duchies as well, made for a life of constant ceremony, and very, very little action. His sword had not been drawn in anger in over eight years now, that last time when dealing permanently with a rebellious baron incapable of seeing reason, and now Rowan doubted it would ever need to be drawn again, at least by him. And he couldn't be happier.

He was still reluctant to talk of his deeds, to passing traveling gléamen or foreign skalds who yearned to hear the stories directly from the source, or harder still to the veterans that had fought under his command, that traveled to pay their respects to their reluctant commander, and to revisit the old battlefields.

Just last fall and winter, a great series of memorials was held for each of the great battles of the war, the victories that Rowan had commanded, and the disastrous sieges where the towns and great cities had fallen one by one to the now already legendary boarman wizard, his dragon, and his mighty horde. The now fully grown man was often without words at what he should say, what heroic speech of remembrance he should give to the waiting veterans and citizens, eager to see and hear their hero once again. When suitable words failed him, he had Gwenda write him out a short speech that said all the right proper things and let the Duchess and her consort, the near equally famous Boyle, make the long political 'rah-rah' speeches.

He hardly recognized the old battlefields anymore, even after just ten years. He had willed himself to forget so much of those hard terrible days, that when he did see the old sights again and shake the hands of old friends and companions, the old fears and depression fell back hard upon him once more, and for a full month after their return to Tellismere he felt lost again in gloominess until the cheerfulness and love of his wife and his adoring young children restored him again to the present, and away from the horrors of the past.

"You could have had it all you know." Boyle gently whispered to Rowan, who was lost once again in old thoughts as they lay resting upon the soft grass of the island. The same grass where a gay red and white striped pavilion had once stood, and nearly exactly where an old lover had met an untimely and terrible fate, changing everything in the lads' lives.

"I know." Rowan sadly replied. "After the battle, after I had slain the boarman wizard and led the advance of the Everdun heavy infantry into the center of the battlefield to crush the horde, all four Dukes were kneeling before me on that bloody miserably cold and wet field of slaughter, offering me their homage ... to become their chosen king. I had done what generations of feuding lords had not; bring the entire Southern Duchies together for a single great cause, and under the sword of a single man. The crown was there, offered to me for my taking ... and I said 'No'. Three times. The Foole couldn't believe it and he spent the next week trying to talk me into accepting it, and he nearly succeeded, but Gwenda told me that I'd be miserable within a year, and I'd start to lop off annoying noble heads right and left. She was right ... and I was indeed right to decline in the first place. I don't have the patience that you have, and you're really the Duke now of the Duchy in all actuality, ruling in your wife's name! I'm happier remaining the silent menace behind the ducal throne, to ward off any thoughts of treason. The duchies are still all free and independent, and we are all still slowly rebuilding from this dreadful war."

"Aye, our children will still be rebuilding from this war too. Our cities and towns have too few remaining survivors and the rebuilding goes slowly. You remember how fast those chests of gold we took from the old Viscount's treasury were spent! More gold than Ayleth's miserly old father had ever dreamed about, and we spent it those first years like water. Even today, if it wasn't for the half of the rentals on those Corælyn estates that I share the revenues with the temple, we'd be broke and bankrupt long ago. Taxes won't pay for anything but a pitiful few guardsmen and repair work for decades still yet to come. I know our own barons are poor now as well and any further increase in taxes will only hurt the common people more. We're broke, and likely to stay that way for a very long time!"