Dawn of Wonder (The Wakening Book 1) (58 page)

Merter would hunt on most days. When Aedan was able
to get off he would join him, slipping easily into the patient silence of the trail.
Merter tolerated nobody else near him, saying the rest of them breathed through
trumpets and stamped on every branch the ground had to offer.

One afternoon, following a gruelling weapons session,
Aedan was stretching out in front of the camp fire, watching a deer haunch
sizzle while beans and maize simmered in half-a-dozen blackened pots. He was
cooking a roll of stick bread – dough wrapped around a stick – which he would
stuff with beans and strips of meat. The idea was to pack it away for
tomorrow’s lunch, but the steam rising from the bread was tickling his nose,
and he was beginning to doubt quite seriously that the bread would survive the
evening.

His contemplations were interrupted when Thormar
sat down beside him, his ever-present pipe belching spicy clouds. Aedan was too
intimidated to cough. He’d seen this big commander smashing his way through the
Fenn attack, producing almost as much devastation as the general.

“Osric tells me you are from the Mistyvales,”
Thormar said.

“Yes, sir.”

“I’d prefer you to drop the ‘sir’ unless it’s in
front of the soldiers.”

“Yes …” Aedan caught himself in time.

“I remember the Mistyvales dimly. How well did you
know Glenting?”

“I only visited there once when my father went to
buy a mule.”

“Would that have been at old Ainsley’s stable? By the
river, just under the mill?”

“Yes, how did you know?”

“Glenting was my home … is my home. You know what
it’s like being northern – there’s that song, something about how the blood
seems ever to sing in our veins of going home.”

Aedan smiled. He had heard the song and knew the
longing, but in his case returning would be more complicated. “Do you think you
will go back?” he asked.

“I have another three years to complete in the
army and then I’ll be discharged, free to stay or leave. What would you do?”

Aedan began to answer and then realised he had no
idea what to say. As he thought of faithful Thomas and Dara, the other memories
rushed back – the slander and accusations, the way in which he would perhaps
even now be remembered. Perhaps charges had been laid against him.

“Ah, you have some attachment in Castath,” said
Thormar, elbowing him. “A young lass that holds you back?”

“Oh … no, it’s not like that. It’s just that,
well, we didn’t leave the north well. There were some lies spread about me. Going
back might not be a good idea.”

“Now that’s a serious matter …” Thormar drew and
released a small cloud that drifted towards the fire where the updraft whisked
it up into the air. “I’ve always found it better to face lies than turn from
them,” he said, gazing into the flames, “like keeping my enemy in front of me.
I’ll tell you what, young Aedan, when you decide to head back home, if I can, I’ll
make the journey with you. A good word from a retired commander will go a long
way – no sheriff would question my word. And I’m more than happy to add my
knuckles into the bargain if they are needed.”

“Thank you,” Aedan said. “That means a lot to me.”
The man’s generosity warmed him as much as the fire. He only wished that his
problems in the Mistyvales could be solved that simply. “But what will you do
if you go back to Glenting?” he asked.

“Ah, now you inquire after something that touches
near to my heart. How much do you know about the making of pipes?”

As darkness gathered around the camp, settling at
a respectful distance from the fire, Thormar expounded on the different shapes
of bowl, shank and stem, the characteristics of briar root, cherry wood, maple,
and clay. His voice became wistful as he told of his plans to build a small workshop
at the end of a quiet street where his cabin could overlook the river, and
where he could smoke an evening pipe on the veranda while dangling a lazy hook
in the water. Aedan found himself wanting to swallow the hook and clutch the
dream for himself. He had not thought much of a peaceful life. Other purposes had
driven him. But the commander’s plan sounded good, very good, except perhaps
for the smoke.

Later that night after he had retired, he spent an
hour trying not to smell or think of the meat-and-bean bread roll in his saddlebag.
Then he finally surrendered, wolfed it down, and rolled into his blanket again
with a broad smile and no remorse.

Before his thoughts grew sleepy, the vision of
Thormar’s peaceful retirement glowed in his mind’s eye. Surely that was the end
for which he too strove. Surely it was the only sense behind all the armies and
weapons and spilled blood of the nation – not battle and victory, but the peace
that lay on the far side, calling so patiently and so softly as to even be
forgotten by those who won it. Before sleep took him, he promised himself he
would not forget.

Aedan was beginning to feel slightly easier in the
camp, but there was one change that was for the worse. The nearer they drew to
the dreaded fortress, the longer the soldiers’ hushed evening discussions
became – discussions that would fall silent at the approach of anyone outside
their number. Aedan managed to catch the occasional drift of speech. They were
telling stories of Kultûhm, rumours of ghosts, giants, ogres and goblins. It
seemed that the fortress had a claim on every legendary horror.

But the stories that would have brought laughter
back within the city walls were having a different effect here. Some of the
tales he had read himself: “every man that entered was lost”, “sounds that
cause the earth to shake and birds to fall from the sky”, “black vapour like a
spray of night”. The last, he suspected to be from his own account, suitably
embellished.

And it was not just the stories. The land, too,
was growing stranger. Stands of giant trees began to reappear, more now than Aedan
remembered. They loomed over the hills like ancient watchmen – many of them
dead, but some very much alive. The feeling of being watched was heightened
during the dim, mist-cloaked mornings which played all manner of tricks on the
senses.

It was a little after first light when a trembling
soldier reported seeing the shudder of distant leaves on a wooded hillside, as
if some large beast was moving beneath the canopy, but Merter knew of no such
beast inhabiting this area. He wanted to separate from the party and
investigate, but Osric was not prepared to have anyone else lead their company through
the drifting fog, so the sighting was left unexplained. But it was not
forgotten.

Later, after the mist had cleared and the sun began
to warm the ground, they headed towards what looked like a broad tree and
turned out to be a colossal bush. Under the shade, they found, leering back at
them with dark bulbous eyes, a statue that Merter assumed was some kind of
boundary marker. It was a carving of the most monstrous locust, bigger than a
man, made from such materials and finished with such precision that the
creature looked real. Startlingly real. Normally the statues of kings or
mythical guardians were used, but a locust of this size was no less impressive
– or intimidating, seeing as locusts were considered portents of devastation.

The more superstitious believed that boundary
markers could be imbued with dark powers. Clearly the soldiers were of this
persuasion. None felt like resting anymore, and they moved on.

Aedan could sense the radiating fear. He was sure
the only thing that preserved order was the weight of Osric’s presence. The
general’s eye was quick and his discipline firm. The awe in which the soldiers
held him kept them in their place, especially after the way he had led them against
the Fenn war scouts with losses of less than one for each of the enemy’s ten. And
true to his values, he not only kept the company disciplined, but immaculately
neat at all times. Camp hygiene was better than that of a moderately priced
inn. Uniforms were cleaned, shoes polished, beards trimmed, and no man was
permitted to smell worse than his horse. None dared test Osric in this, so the
party looked almost parade-ready, both in appearance and discipline.

But it was not lost on Aedan that between Osric, Merter,
Thormar and Tyne, one was always on watch and the others slept fully armed.

That evening, as Aedan was stretching out by the
fire, Osric told him in Sulese to wait a while and then move to the other side
of the fire, away from the soldiers. That was when Aedan began to notice the
silent tension between soldiers and officers. The following night, he and Liru
were told to sleep with their weapons in hand under their blankets. The knot in
his stomach made it difficult to rest; stars were dimming by the time
exhaustion overcame him.

There was little talk in the camp when day broke,
and they travelled in silence. There would be one more camp before they reached
the fortress. Aedan disrupted the stillness to ask, in Fenn, what Culver was
planning to do when they arrived. Fergal gave a long answer in a language Aedan
had never heard. When asked for a translation, he said that it meant “patience
is acquired through exercise”.

By mid-morning, that dreaded round tower appeared
over the distant hills, as dark and watchful as he remembered. Aedan was unable
to eat anything more than a few raisins. It was afternoon when they crested the
final ridge.

No one spoke.

Aedan remembered well the plain that now lay
beneath them, and the rock-walled hill in the centre. On top of the rise,
dominating it, Kultûhm waited, challenging them, daring them to approach. Aedan
saw it as he had before – vast, lonely, and dreadful.

But if he was stilled by the sight, the others
were turned to stone. There was something deeply unsettling about the fortress,
in no way lessened by the intervening years. It was as though Kultûhm returned
the stares of its watchers.

Osric finally broke the spell and led them down to
the bank of a river. They made camp under the swaying locks of grey willows, but
it was a restless camp that became increasingly uneasy as darkness settled.
Heads were constantly turning in the direction of the fortress, often with
sharp movements as if in response to something sensed or imagined.

A camp of frightened soldiers held far less comfort for
Aedan than the surrounds. So, as he had often done over the past few days, he
used a skin to collect the entrails of the deer Merter had killed, and carried
them out into the night.

He could hear the soft tread of the paws that soon
followed him, but made no effort to run. He skirted the hill and placed his
burden on the ground, then retreated to a solitary rowan tree and pulled himself
up onto a smooth-skinned branch.

He did not have long to wait. The old grey wolf
looped past him and then around the meat. It circled twice more, sniffed, and
crept forward. Even when the meal was under its nose, it stood long and tested
the air for danger. Aedan climbed down from the branch and seated himself
against the trunk. The wolf looked at him, but over the past days it had grown
accustomed to this curious bringer of gifts. The meat was fresh and soon
overcame the animal’s fear.

As it ate, Aedan heard a soft tread nearby. He
guessed it would be Tyne. Merter would have been quieter; everyone else in the
camp would have been crunching leaves and branches from half a mile back. The
wolf looked up and retreated a few yards as Tyne drifted in from the darkness
and sat beside Aedan. After a while the wolf crept back to his meal.

“So this is where you go at night,” Tyne whispered.

“I remember him,” Aedan said. “The white patch
over the side of his face made him stand out. This old wolf once led the pack,
once terrified me. It was while we were fleeing his pack that we entered the
fortress.”

They watched the old animal, hunched with age,
devouring the meat with hungry gulps as his nervous eyes darted around him.

 “You would think,” Aedan said, “that I’d feel
good about this – I’ve grown while he, my old enemy, has shrunk. Yet all I feel
is a terrible ache. I pity him, that he has been called by age to surrender his
strength.”

“Old words for one so young.”

“From a song. I always hated that song, hated all
sad songs. I thought they made happy people miserable. Now I think I understand
them better. Bards write them because they can’t hold them back. Sadness has
got to flow out or it gets stuck and turns bitter.”

Tyne sighed. “I believe you are right,” she said
quietly.

Aedan looked at her. “Why did you and Osric not
marry? I see it in the way you smile when you bring him his food, in the way he
steps beside you at the first hint of danger.”

Tyne shuffled. “And I thought you a child,” she
said. Then she was quiet for a long time.

Aedan waited. Talking with Fergal had taught him
to do that.

“Perhaps,” she said, “it’s like with your bards.
There is deep sadness that we both carry. Love opens the gate to the deepest
hurt.”

“That sounds wrong to me,” Aedan grumbled, partly
to himself.

“Maybe when you’ve known a little more of what it
is to lose those you love, you’ll think better of me, better of Osric.”

Aedan decided to let her assumption be. He
wondered what the loss had been with Tyne. He stared out into the moonlight a
long time before he remembered a northern fable. “Have you heard the story of
the two lands?” he asked.

“No. But I’d like to.”

“It’s a rillom, but I’m not going to get the flow
or the rhyming parts right. As well as I can remember, the tale goes like this.
There were once two lands where great battles were fought. After they had ended,
both lands had corpses scattered all over. When the clouds approached, the
first land said, ‘Leave me. If you pour water onto me, you will spread the poison
of these corpses all over and disturb the little peace I have left,’ and it
drove the clouds off. The other land took a deep breath and let the waters wash
over it, gradually draining the filth away. After twenty years, the first land
had become a desert and the skeletons were the only things to be seen. The
second land was renewed. Not even the bones could be found.”