It was an ugly dawn, an ugly sky over ugly roofs of windworn straw atop weathered wood. Already some men were at work toiling in the sparse fields where discrete spots of green peered in from drying, greying dirt. Western Loclain was often like this, Stelmaria knew well, while further east it was constant rainfall instead which threatened harvest. The past day, she had noticed that the folk sheltered behind the walls of the fortress had nailed a poppet to a pole and placed a needle in its hand, a poor imitation of harvest rituals which were only barely not heretical. They had the good sense to tear it down this morning, thankfully. Stel doubted Yawen would look kindly upon superstition.
And neither would I, for that matter. The common people throughout the land could claim that placing a harvest hand with sickle and rattle amidst growing crops was only a charm for fine weather, but much diabolism began as charmings and herblaw. She was glad to see the poppet gone.
Sieglinde had assembled them and half a dozen Dawners at the courtyard, which in the past may have served to marshal troops and to spar and hone one’s skill, but today was filled with clothes hung and left to dry, with lumber strewn about, and a bucket full of pachidon shit that a group of resourceful tillers had shoveled with the intent to use for composting.
Stel wondered if, despite Sieglinde’s insistence that they remain cordial, she did not appear overly distasteful of the Dawners in their midst, to the point of giving offense. She did not consider herself subtle, and feared that, despite her best efforts, she would appear hostile, glaring at these outsiders almost as though the Good Men of the Dawn were murderous sectarians whose notoriety was earned by a thousand pyres of dwerghes, ielfe and of those who disapproved of such burnings, for fire’s nature was always to spread and consume. But Stelmaria was a portrait of indifference compared to Erika, who was civil only in the sense that she kept her sword sheathed, but otherwise made it clear she would rather kiss a viper.
That was still better than Yawen. She was silent, unlike Erika in her constant provocations, but her eyes only hated. Instinctively Stel realized that was how the expression she made when she thought of the dregs of the Gairning Host. Best not to leave the Dawners alone with her, for their sake, nor with Erika, for her sake.
“I mistrust them,” Erika said from her side, as though anyone could yet be unaware of her distaste. Stel agreed, of course, but Chantesse’s griping was draining, aimless, and repetitive. “All endeavors are judged by the worth of their actors, just as all men are judged by the virtue of their associates. All women, too, lest we forget. ‘Tis folly to disregard affiliation so… A cultist deserves but a rope and sudden stop.”
“It is not for us to decide,” said Stel, “not our duty to pass judgment. Not now, at least.”
“What then is the purpose of a Blossom?” She questioned. “Blood seeps and stains. Blood tells. It is why Graufor is a brume-crested realm of ghosts and foul magic. A season in Mahenvort or in the Spires of Heavenscorn is preferable to Graufor. There the slaughter bore the mark of man’s hand.”
“So it is in Loclain as well,” said Stel, hoping to silence this prattling. “So it is everywhere. Nonetheless we persist in our duties. That is all we can do about these Dawners, as happy as I’d be to see them deprived of any place they may alight. We have, now, an enemy that demands our immediate attention.”
“That is true enough, and I spoke in haste,” this was the closest to an apology Stel ever expected to hear from Erika. “What do you make of these movements of the Gairnites? Is there any chance they’ll make war on the capital?”
“With all their Sects now uniting, perhaps they might,” said Stel. “They’ve sated themselves with raiding and pillaging for now, but their Red Whore would not have gone to war to subjugate their myriad Sects just to carry on despoiling villages and ransacking caravans. Sieglinde has proposed a wise course of action, loathe as I am to not simply march into the holes of the Gairnites and bring them fire and steel.”
We must learn more about our enemy before we take any decisive action, Sieglinde had told them. When we set out tomorrow, our most urgent task will be to gather all the information we can, to ascertain the Host’s plans of action. It was not as satisfying as killing them to the last, but you have to start with something.
To that effect, Stelmaria had even begun to read the book Elanor had given her before she departed. The Book of Grief and Dust, it was called, a wretched read for a wretched creed. For the dead and the lost there is no greater grief than to have never lived. The Duskspeaker has not illuminated us to suffer but to thrive. The dead envy us our pleasures, and despise us who do not indulge. Most of it was not so straightforward, however, and Stel had not been able to understand if their Mother Dusk was goddess or prophetess. Perhaps when next she felt the urge to torture herself she would skim through some more pages. Thus far, the parables and sermons seemed like little more than justifications to indulge in one’s basest urges.
No man was born who ever needed to be advised to look out for himself and damn the world. They needed only their guilt assuaged, that they could quell the last gasps of their soul.
Even so, she must admit that Elanor was correct in that there was something to learn. How strange that in the guiding precepts written in their oldest scriptures, there was nothing to be found that spoke of the demon worship that brought the Gairnites such infamy. To Stel that seemed a rather important detail, its absence peculiar enough to be questioned.
But such questions were not for now. Loclain opened up for them now, as soon as the bars of the bailey’s gate were lifted. East of the fort, the scenery changed little, still the same greys flecked with shrubbery and hardy trees, but now no crags or hills rose to conceal the horizon. All was revealed, great lengths of kilometers far and wide, shrinking into the distance. Stelmaria had expected the sight, but it still took her breath. To know that Agaepsonia overlooked the Dreighern Range and the plains of Comirset was one thing, but to actually see all of it, all at once, with no impediment… It was enough to tempt Stel to doubt all cartographies which had Loclain as one of the smallest territories in all of Siodrune. She saw rivers wind and saw clustered spots that must be villages; she saw Quansmont reduced to a pinprick in the distance, but even from so far away she thought she could see hints of the mountain’s reds; she saw the Border Road and King Myrwin’s Bridge not so far north, and wondered if the refugees who sought salvation deeper in Loclain saw their hopes rewarded or dashed. And still this was but one province, and not even all of it.
Like any other land, one step after the other would see all those distances crossed, so Stelmaria was the first to step through the gate. The roads were mercifully wide, so their inclines did not seem so treacherous, but they were still high up enough that she would rather not look down and see how far a fall awaited. Briefly she turned back, curious to see what it was like to see the fort’s wooden walls loom above, to say nothing of Agaepsonia’s ancient stones, an imposing nightmare. If a commander ordered her troops to rush up these slopes to storm the gates as arrows rained down on them, her throat would be slit by her own men as soon as she said those words.
Millicent and Prishia remained behind to further inspect Agaepsonia and to make sure the bailey was not under the command of brutish cultists who pretended to be civilized. Sieglinde was willing to work with them, but she was no fool to trust them more than necessary. Before they set out, Millicent had sent out a pair of ravens with letters to Iserncredel in the capital Heedseylond, to inform the Regency of their preliminary plans in investigating threats to Comirset, the most tempting target for plunder. They requested aid, as well, though Stel knew better than to expect any meaningful help from the mice of the Regency. They were scared old men and women and distant cousins raised high not by merit but because following the assassination of the Prince and Princess, Loclain’s future was snuffed out, leaving only the dross issued by royals both lecher and lesser all too eager to spread their seed. The main line of the House of Reidspryd was all but extinguished, so it fell upon an assortment of unremarkable nobles to rule as a council.
Loclain is bled dry, and after so much loss and grief, there is no pride left in our lords and ladies, nothing but dust and a hope to survive or, failing that, to die peacefully. Stelmaria oft resented them, but understood that they had no ambition but to shield the common folk of Loclain from war. But for an orphaned swordswoman whose lieges perished along with her captains and fellow kynesguard, it was no difficult choice. Marinor is safe in the Tower of Rebirth, and she is all that remains to me. There were other Loclainites then, before the Blossoms were scattered, withered, but now only Marinor lived. Emeri and Cyrilda, Patricia and Mannaig, all pitilessly, coldly devoured by the unnameable darkness, morsels fed to the abyss… There is nothing for me to preserve. I live not for any hope or for any tomorrow, but for the promise of warm blood on my face and the pained shrieks of dying Gairnites. To take revenge, to return to them all that they have given us… To butcher them to the last elder and to the last babe, wiping their past and future along with their present. And then their unholy scriptures would be naught but the last vestiges of a vanquished, forgotten people.
The Rose's Torn Petals 