Talon let out a loud shriek from Hyden’s shoulder. The sound drew the feral gaze of all six yellow elven eyes to him.
“And some people are so afraid, that they only crawl out of the forest once a year to the one place where we humans are sworn not to fight,” Hyden returned hotly.
He wanted to say more, but held his tongue and fought down his anger. If the elf had been trying to unsettle him, the trick had worked.
The elves kept their eyes on Talon, but Hyden’s sharp words caused all three of them to narrow their brows, and the elves were colored with rage. The elven archer gave Hyden the slightest of looks, then pulled his bow from its leather case and began to string it.
The crowd around the tournament field quieted as the Valleyan archer took the line. He looked resplendent, in his ringed leather armor, sporting the yellow and red checked Valleyan shield patch on his breast, and a similar shield shaped symbol of his kingdom’s honor guard on his shoulder in shining silver. It had been rumored, and in fact was true, that the man’s mother had been born in Dakahn, so a sort of alliance had formed within the crowd. The part of the story where the Valleyan horse trader had bought the Dakaneese woman from a slaver, for an old mare and some sacks of meal, had been conveniently left out.
Hyden watched with respectful understanding as the young man took several deep breaths and squeezed his eyes shut for a quick prayer. No doubt someone had piled up a wagonload of pressure on his shoulders too. The myriad distractions that seemed to come from everywhere were probably weighing on him. Only the glittery haired, alien looking elf seemed oblivious to the tension that was humming through the air.
The Valleyan man took his time and shot well. He repeated the Westland archer’s results, to the boos of the greater kingdom’s overwhelming numbers.
A large Valleyan man wearing ringed leather armor, probably the archer’s father, bolted across the field hurling curses and insults at the whole of the Westlanders’ bleachers. Before the Redwolf soldiers could get to him, a pair of green and gold clad men, rushed out to rebuke the man’s words, and a fight erupted. There was an explosion of screaming and yelling between the two sides across the archery field, and Hyden was a little concerned that the whole place would turn into a battleground. Finally, the skirmish ended when the three men involved in the actual fight were put in chains and marched slowly across the field for all to see. Needless to say, the crowd settled down. The place was at a near hush when the combatants were placed in a wagon cage, near where the targets were, and hauled away.
As soon as the Wildermont soldiers motioned for the event to continue, the elf stole away all of the kingdom men’s hope for victory. He loosed five arrows at his target in rapid succession, as smoothly and calmly as if he were merely sipping wine from a cup. All five arrows appeared to be sprouting from the Wizard’s Eye, but Hyden could see plainly when he looked down at the target that only four were completely in the center mark. He would have to match the score or the event was over. Either way, the crowd had been silenced completely. Neither of the kingdom men could win now. It took a few minutes for this to sink into the minds of the spectators, and when it did, they all seemed to lose interest, and started to filter away from the stands.
Hyden took his place at the line, and then urged Talon from his shoulder onto his finger. He traded Little Condlin the bird for his bow with, and then took a deep breath.
It occurred to him that it was more of a distraction to see all those people leaving from out of the corner of his eye, than it would have been if they stayed and had made some noise. He forced it all out of his mind, took another deep breath, and sought out a place inside him that was both calm and serene. From there, he began to focus.
His eyes seemed to zoom in on the Wizard’s Eye, and before he knew it, he had loosed an arrow. Seeing the shaft sprouting out of the dead center of the target helped keep the world around him at bay. In a daze-like state of concentration, that had him seeing the coin sized Wizard’s Eye as if it were the size of an apple, he pulled back on another arrow and let it fly. Twice more his arrows struck the Wizard’s Eye true. As he put his fourth arrow to the bow string, he distantly wondered what Shaella and her company were doing at that very moment. It took a moment for him to find the space in the target’s center for the fourth arrow, but he saw it between the first three, just a tiny triangle of black that grew in his eyes, like a rabbit did from the sky. He loosed the arrow at it, and knew before the arrow had even struck the target that he had hit his mark. He reached for his fifth arrow, if he could fit it into the crowded Wizard’s Eye somehow, he could end the tournament right here, but, it would be next to impossible to make that happen. Already the target’s center was full.
Somewhere, outside the world of his focus, he heard the trio of the elves gasping and grumbling. He let the satisfaction that the sound gave him fade, and studied the Wizard’s Eye. Even if he put his fifth arrow in the center, it would force the edge of one of his previous shafts out into the King’s Ring. It was worth a try though, so he raised his bow, drew back on it, and took aim at the center of the target yet again. A flicker of movement, that he thought was far beyond the target, caught his eye, and then disappeared again. Maybe it was an insect up close that had distracted him. He wasn’t sure. No, he could still see it. It was moving through the air, too uniformly to be a bug. Finally, he realized that it was an arrow arcing towards them from a great distance. A glance at where it would’ve been loosed from, revealed a small group of mounted men. A banner wavered in the light breeze among them. It was a white rectangle, with a black sword emblazoned on it horizontally. It was the Blacksword of Highwander, Willa the Witch Queen’s men.
Hyden almost loosed his arrow astray when he saw the face of a woman that greatly resembled Shaella peeking out from under a hood amongst them. Was it her? He looked again, but they were too far away for him to tell.
The arrow was coming down towards him now, and it was fast. Hyden could tell that it would miss him, but it would be close. He followed its trajectory with his eyes. It was coming down right at the elven archer. There was no time left to think. He turned swiftly and loosed his arrow at the incoming missile. It was a one in a million shot, but, he somehow found his mark only a few feet before the shaft pierced through the elf.
All three of the elves shrieked in startled pain, as they were showered with wooden splinters. Thinking instinctually that Hyden had attacked, one of them drew out a dagger and charged.
“HOLD!” the elven archer screamed out, so loudly that it startled Hyden out of the strange, trance-like state he had fallen into. The knife bearing elf froze in his tracks. The elven archer was looking up at the sky with his hand held at his brow to shade his eyes from the sun’s glare. Several trickles of blood ran down his cheeks like tears. For some reason, Hyden was reminded of the tear drop scar on Shaella’s otherwise perfect face. Then the sound of fat heavy rain drops, and the screams of people from several different directions, filled his ears.
The elf was screaming something that Hyden couldn’t understand, and then Little Condlin made a wheezing, muffled grunt behind him. Hyden whirled around, to find that the boy had an arrow sticking up out of his shoulder. His cousin was trying to scream, but for some reason couldn’t manage it. It wasn’t raindrops he was hearing, Hyden realized as tears filled his eyes. He dove to catch the boy, as he staggered to his knees. Talon somehow got pinned between them, and was shrieking and flapping madly. Blood dribbled down Little Condlin’s chin from his mouth. Arrows were raining down on them, and Hyden had no clue as to why it was happening, or what he could do about it.
Without any regard for his own safety, he hovered over Little Condlin and Talon, shielding them with his body, while shouts and screams, and the sound of ringing steel filled the air around them. A perfect Summer’s Day had just turned into an incomprehensible bloody nightmare.
Skinning the huge barkskin lizard would’ve been an easy task if Mikahl hadn’t felt like a one-eyed sack of broken bones.
Upon waking, he found that one cheek had swollen his eye closed, and that his body ached and burned in places that he never even knew existed. Loudin, the hunter, seemed to be in a hurry, but he didn’t push Mikahl too hard. Mikahl was glad of it because it took most of the morning just to get all his parts moving properly. After that, besides the pain, he was able to help get things done in a reasonably expedient fashion.
Once the lizard skin was sliced away from the beast and rolled up like a castle carpet, Mikahl washed the gore from himself in the pond. The cold water eased the pain and swelling in his face. This, in turn, eased the anger he felt when he found out that his old sword had been badly bent during the creature’s death throes. All of that was forgotten though, as a flood of embarrassment washed over him. Loudin had found his abandoned bow and was laughing at his shame.
Loudin rigged the surprisingly lightweight roll of skin between their two horses in a way that allowed him and Mikahl to still ride them. Windfoot had to walk directly behind Loudin’s roan, and Mikahl had to keep the distance between them from stretching or shrinking too much. The amount of attention this required kept his mind off of his pain as they traveled. The whole situation was awkward. Having the long, bulky tube of rolled skin tethered alongside the horses caused Mikahl and Loudin both to have to sit with one leg cocked wide and thrown over the roll. Today was right leg day, Loudin had explained. Tomorrow, he would rig the roll on the other side of the saddles, so that their left side would suffer the uncomfortable position. Mikahl didn’t complain. In his battered condition, walking would have been far worse than riding.
Most of the Reyhall Forest was openly spaced and easy to traverse, with little undergrowth and plenty of shade, but a few places were extremely dense. The going seemed slow. More than once, they had to dismount and cut a path through the underbrush, or maneuver the horses around closely spaced obstacles so that the skin didn’t get snagged, or torn, or pulled out of its bindings. For the most part though, the spaces between the old tree trunks were wide enough that a small wagon could’ve probably made it through. But only if the driver didn’t mind his tracks looking like a snake trail.
Considering that they hadn’t gotten underway until early afternoon, they had traveled a great distance by nightfall. When they stopped for the night, it was nearly full dark. Mikahl built a small fire, while Loudin unrigged the lizard skin from the saddles, and hoisted it up off the ground with ropes he’d thrown over some tree limbs. He explained as he worked that keeping the roll off the ground would keep insects and varmints out of it, but Mikahl was softly snoring before the old hunter had finished speaking.
Mikahl wasn’t sure how long he had slept. It was still dark, and the fire was nothing more than a pile of glowing embers when he woke. Above the natural and chaotic chorus of insects and other nocturnal creatures of the forest, the rhythmic, snorting growl of Loudin’s snoring filled the night.
Mikahl’s aching body protested as he sat up. He almost cried out from the pain caused by the movement, but he managed to bite it back. As he caught his breath, the faint outline of Windfoot and Loudin’s roan jostling on their picket lines caught his eye and startled him.
He spent a few minutes rolling and rubbing his neck and shoulders, and then craned his head back. He searched the underside of the forest’s thick canopy for any sign of the sky. He wanted to see the moon, or at least a few stars. He found neither. He harrumphed with frustration, went to his saddle bags, and rummaged for some food. Ironspike was there; safe in its leather sleeve, and the sight of it caused his curiosity to take a hold of him.
He checked to make sure that Loudin was sleeping deeply; by the sound of the snoring, Mikahl was confident that he wouldn’t wake anytime soon. Dawn was still a few hours away, so this was about as much privacy as he could expect to ever have. He took a deep breath, shoved the hunk of cheese he was eating into his mouth, and held it between his teeth. With his hands now free, he unstrapped the leather bag that protected, and concealed the sword, and carried it back to his bedroll.
He’d seen the sword a thousand times, while it was hanging menacingly from King Balton’s hip. He even got to handle it, but only when he was cleaning and polishing it. The blade had served as a warning to those who thought to cross the old man, and it gave comfort to those who looked to him for protection. Mikahl remembered cleaning the battle gore from its gleaming surfaces a few years ago, after one of the battles up in Coldfrost. More recently, he had wiped away a Dakaneese sell-sword’s blood from its razor edge after he had been beheaded for robbing and killing a Portsmouth merchant. Mikahl had polished the sword’s beautifully etched blade and its jeweled hilt a score of times, and could remember every single one of them. All of those memories caused him to think about King Balton. He started to take the sword out of its protective cover but stopped as a flood of warm, salty tears poured over his swollen cheeks.
He missed his king. The old man had been wise and kind. Except for the time Mikahl had gone exploring off into the Northwood without telling anyone where he was going, he had never so much as cuffed him on the head. Most young squires got whacked regularly, when they messed up, or caused problems. When Mikahl did wrong, he usually got a fatherly lecture.
Mikahl missed the castle too. The room he shared with the King’s two Royal Pages was warm and close to the kitchens. He had ruled the roost there. He tried to wipe away his tears, but found that his face hurt too badly to touch. It wouldn’t have done any good anyway, already more tears were falling. It was as if a dam had broken inside him. The idea that King Balton was dead, and that he could never go back home again wouldn’t leave his mind. It was a long time before sleep found him again, but thankfully it did.