The Winds of Crowns and Wolves

THE WINDS OF CROWNS AND
WOLVES

K. E. WALTER

Copyright ©2014, 2015, 2016 by Kyle
Walter.

Follow the author
@kewalterauthor
on Twitter

Cover art by Matthew McNerney

To my parents, who always let my most absurd
fantasies run wild.

Chapter 1: Shine a Light

Chapter 2: Resonance

Chapter 3: Freaks

Chapter 4: Glow

Chapter 5: The Freeze

Chapter 6: Dreams

Chapter 7: The Girl

Chapter 8: Mountains

Chapter 9: A Man about a Book

Chapter 10: Learn

Chapter 11: Questions

Chapter 12: A King

Chapter 13: Wood Smoke

Chapter 14: Out of the Forest

Chapter 15: In the House

Chapter 16: Atop a Pillar of Hope and
Loathing

Chapter 17: A Meal

Chapter 18: Low-Hanging Clouds

Chapter 19: The Dreamer

Chapter 20: Walk Along the Grapevine, Into
the Drunkard’s Demise

Chapter 21: Burn

Chapter 22: In the North

Chapter 23: Drugged and Dreary

Chapter 24: South to Fletwod

The sun shone down on the meadow, creating
an iridescent green hue, which rose from the grass. Miles and miles
of rolling hills and valleys sculpted the area into a beautiful
landscape, rife with the vibrant colors of the wild. At night, you
could hear the distant howling of animals, scampering in the far
corners of the woodland.

Nestled in a small crevice of the Kingdom of
Duncairn, was a small village. Unimportant, and equally
unimpressive upon first gaze, Spleuchan Sonse, as it was known to
its inhabitants, peered out into a vast meadow, unencumbered by the
hills which rose up on both sides. A small collection of straw
huts, which looked as if they had been hand crafted centuries
earlier, lined the flatland.

The night earlier, a couple had ventured
over the hill to the east and found themselves stranded in the
grassy knoll outside the village. The woman, many months pregnant
and exhausted, sat herself down near a small creek that ran
adjacent to the eastern hill.

“
N’er in a thousand years
could I have dreamt of this”, whispered Seosamh.

The sun peered over the eastern hill behind
them and cast a shadow over the majority of the valley. Shivering
from the early morning cold, Maire responded with a simple nod to
acknowledge Seosamh’s statement.

“
Y’know, there’s not much
else we can do from here m’dear, we must simply wait,” a belabored
Seosamh said, as he sat down beside his wife, in what was more of a
collapse from exhaustion than rest.

The trip had taken its toll on the both of
them, but Maire had taken the brunt of it. As the sun rose on that
winter’s morning, the people of Spleuchan Sonse remained asleep,
unaware of the visitors in the plain a half mile ahead of them.

The first to rise was Isbeil. It wasn’t
uncommon for her to rise so early; after all, she had to tend to
the food before her family awoke. In the room next to the kitchen,
Asgall and Ealar slept. Her husband and son respectively, Isbeil
took pride in the work she did, as it made their day simpler when
they set out to cull the land for farming.

Only a few months the prior, Isbeil had
given birth to Ealar on a hot summer’s day. The entire village
rejoiced in reverence of her son’s birth, and her husband could not
have been more pleased with his little boy.

Isbeil went to work, cutting the meat and
bread. In a short while, the hut would be filled with the scent of
sustenance, as the men of the village began their days. She peered
out the slit of her hut at the frosty grass outside as she finished
her preparations.

This year’s winter had been unfavorable to
her family. The crop yields were low, and they had barely managed
to survive to this point. Luckily, the snow had held off as much as
possible, but the relentless freezing temperatures made it nearly
impossible for anything to grow.

A few days earlier, Asgall had proposed the
idea to his wife of moving south to the coast, in hopes that they
would find more fertile soil and habitable weather conditions.
Although the thought of a fruitful journey southward persisted
throughout Isbeil’s mind, on this morning, she could not help but
be grateful for all of the things she had been blessed with in her
life.

Her son had been born healthy, into a loving
community, and had managed to survive thus far through the winter.
He had his father’s eyes, but his nose resembled his mother’s
more.

She gazed into the distance, while Seosamh
and Maire remained huddled in the field, awaiting the birth of
their child. Wrapped in an egregious amount of blankets and even
Seosamh’s own robe, Maire looked up at him with affection, as the
two sat gazing upon the hill to the west.

“
What do you think will
come of this Seosamh?” she asked in a raspy voice, induced from the
sleepless night that she endured the night before.

With a steely look in his eye as he gazed
westward, Seosamh maintained his usual collected nature.

“
I don’t think,” he
proclaimed in a hushed voice, “I simply feel, and the feeling I
have in my heart is that the world knows what is best for our
child, not us.”

In a sort of sigh, labored with the anxiety
and exhaustion of a thousand lives, Maire validated her husband’s
point.

The first rooster crowed above the village
home, as Maire and Seosamh fell to sleep on the hillside. The smell
of smoked sausages permeated the hut, and a stumbling Asgall
entered the room, where Isbeil had made a fire.

“
This is quite the meal for
the situation we find ourselves in, isn’t it dear?” asked Asgall, a
perplexed look upon his face.

“
Something about today,”
said Isbeil, “it feels different from the others. Maybe the Gods
have blessed us with a turn in the weather and a more prosperous
harvest!” she exclaimed.

In disbelief, as well as an exhaustion
conceived haze, Asgall sat upon the chair he was given as a gift
for the birth of his son, and began eating what his wife had
prepared.

“
So have you given any more
thought into the movement southward? It must be done before it is
too late,” a tired, yet alert, Asgall asked. Even in his most
energy deprived times he maintained a clear focus on what was best
for his family.

“
I think we should give it
some time dear. The weather is known to change here at every
moment, and we have a home here. Spleuchan Sonse is what we’ve
always known, and I refuse to abandon it just yet,” an adamant
Isbeil claimed.

Somewhat stunned by his wife’s proclamation
of faith toward the land, Asgall continued to eat the food she had
laid out before him. In a short while, he would venture toward the
meadow where the townspeople held plots of land; hoping to find a
surprising increase of growth, Asgall spent the rest of his morning
meal in silent prayer, professing his faith to the gods and asking
for their assistance in this time of trial.

It was customary in the village to pray for
help with crops. They believed that without any superior guidance,
they would falter in any endeavor they engaged in. In the moments
following Asgall’s prayer, a loud panting could be heard echoing
through the valley.

Maire had awoken only an hour or so after
her initial rest. To her surprise, as well as discomfort, her water
had broken, and she began to contract. Startled by the heavy
breathing of his wife, Seosamh awoke with as much vigilance as if
he had never succumbed to the sweet reprieve of rest in the first
place.

For the next few hours, Maire labored and
screamed while she gave birth to a baby boy. Seosamh removed his
robe from his wife’s body and wrapped his son in it. For a mere
moment, a rush of warmth could be felt throughout the valley.

“
You know what this means,
we must go,” said Seosamh. His look of determination was etched
into the very fibers of his face, as he held his wife in his arms
and carried her over the hill eastward.

On the eastern hill in the valley outside of
Spleuchan Sonse, a baby boy lay cradled in his father’s robe.
Nothing else could be found beside him except for a stone which had
a name marked into it. “Coinneach” it read, scratched deep into the
surface of the black, smooth rock.

As the sun continued its ascent into the sky
above the grassy meadow, the silhouettes of the two travelers could
be seen descending downward over the eastern hill, until their
figures were inadmissible to the naked eye. They had arrived and
left, as quickly as the morning dew that would have covered this
very meadow on a warm summer day.

Asgall had slowly made his way from his
home, towards the meadow which was steadfastly approaching.

It was times like this when his mind
wandered. In reality, he was bound for his crops, but in his mind,
he travelled back in time, to a period when he and his wife were
newly married. He could picture the day as if it were only hours
earlier: Isbeil strutting fluidly toward him, encased in a silk
gown, which had been purchased in Leirwold only a few weeks earlier
for this specific occasion.

Leirwold was the largest urban center in
proximity to Spleuchan Sonse.

The people there are different, Asgall
pondered.

Life in the village was simpler.

He snapped out of his growing anger toward
the city, and returned to the thoughts of his beloved Isbeil. She
had looked so beautiful in that gown, her skin radiating with the
passion of one hundred suns, and her cheeks the color of a newly
ripened apple, just plucked from the orchard.

The two had traveled along the river just
west of the village that day, and found themselves at the entrance
to a large sea. There, in the summer dusk, he held his wife in his
arms and watched the sunset upon the horizon of the dark waters,
which embodied the sea.

It was not unlike Asgall to lose himself in
memories of the past. The current weather and lack of resources
that the village found itself plagued by made life seem much more
desirable back in that time.

Awoken from his daydream by a cold wind, he
continued on his way to the plot of land his family had held for
generations.

A modest field, it held enough room to yield
a few hundred bushels of corn in a good year, along with a few
dozen bushels of tomatoes. Much of the meadow was untouched, and
that was how the elders wished it would remain. The relationship
between humans and nature was something they revered and held in
the utmost importance.

The sun began to raise high into the sky and
the morning frost was slowly retreating back into the depths from
which it came. As it became completely visible over the eastern
hill, it struck a shiny black stone which was located only a few
hundred yards in front of Asgall’s plot.

Lacking interest in his abysmal crop yield,
Asgall took the liberty of venturing toward the medium sized rock
which he had seen hundreds of times prior. It provided a sense of
solace in such woeful conditions for him to sit atop the rock and
gaze out at the western hill.

He neared the rock and at once, a shrill cry
could be heard emanating from what seemed like the depths of the
very Earth.

Just on the other side of the rock from
Asgall’s plot, sat a baby, wrapped in a cloth robe. Bewildered, he
rushed to its side to make sure it was still living. To his shock,
the baby seemed to be in perfect health, if not for the poor
conditions it found itself in. Scrawled into the rock which the
baby had been placed beside was the word “Coinneach”.

“
A name,” Asgall exclaimed,
“the boy has a name.”

It was an unseasonably warm morning when
Neach bound from his bed and into the center of his home. However,
there was good reason for his excitement. Today marked his
fourteenth birthday, and it was today that he would become a
man.

For years, Neach awaited it. In the village,
a boy was not a man until now, when he took up his father’s axe and
cut down a tree from atop the western hill.

His father, Asgall, had prepared the blade
of his axe days before and anxiously awaited his son outside of the
hut.

The excitement of the day was tangible, and
both the father and son acknowledged its presence. Once the ritual
was finished, Neach would be expected to take over his father’s
role in the house to provide protection and a plentiful
harvest.

The two met outside of the hut and began
walking in silent cooperation. Neither spoke a word, yet it was as
if their feet were connected by an imaginary string, as they walked
in unison toward the clearing at the top of the hill.