Risen (20 page)

“Here, this way.” Risen pointed
downstream then grasped her hand and moved west, climbing from the
ditch and following the edge of the creek. Gradually, the small
creek turned south, back toward the open fields that ran along the
edge of the realm.

Risen worried it would take them
close to the tree edge too soon, that they would be seen if they
continued to follow the stream, and so they strayed from it,
working their way deeper into the forest. “We’ll be safer if we
stay out of sight—in case any of the enemy are still coming back
from battle.” He tried to sound encouraging. “We need to make our
way west to the river. Then we can turn south to the castle. We’ll
be safe there. It shouldn’t take long.”

Sylvie said nothing, just nodded and
followed, staring only at her feet as she shuffled along. By and
by, it started to rain, and still they pressed slowly toward the
river, for Sylvie was unable to go very fast.

Risen tried to think of the colt,
tried to remember that morning when the day had held so much
promise. How quickly things had gone awry! He had no misgivings
about the fate of Sylvie’s family, and it made his heart sink to
consider the final moments of his best friend. He mouthed a silent
prayer for Tobias, that he would be without pain and with his
parents in heaven. He’d meant to save them all. This is what he
told God as he prayed.

Then he wondered if his mother would
be disappointed that he prayed to the God of Christians. Moulin and
Moira had taught him to, and he believed it better to stack the
odds in his favor. Nicolette would rather he appealed to the senses
of the universe although, truthfully, he was not at all sure how to
do such a thing yet. So, it was easier just to pray. The universe
did not seem like a friend right now.

Once, when Risen had pressed his
father about God, Ravan had admitted that he believed the harder
men struggled to define God, the farther they seemed to alienate
themselves from the idea of it.

“It’s something I believe we are
not supposed to comprehend.” Ravan took another swipe with the
blade as he helped Risen dress the deer out. “You will feel it, as
do I, when you allow yourself to be overwhelmed by the wonder of
all of this.” He motioned overhead and around with his knife,
suggesting something very universal. “Even at its most tragic, the
astonishment of our lives cannot be denied.

“Then where do you go, when you
die, I mean? If God doesn’t take you away?”

Ravan frowned. “I believe that the
essence of you, what is here…” he touched a bloody fingertip to
Risen’s forehead, “…is part of what God is. When you die, the soul
returns to the divine circulation. You needn’t look for it. You are
part of it, every bit as important as anything else.”

This had flat amazed Risen, that his
father genuinely believed this. It was a good conversation, and it
gave him courage as he stumbled along, that he and Sylvie belonged,
were significant in the grand scheme of things.

He glanced at her. She struggled to
keep up, but did so valiantly, a firm set to her mouth. When she
looked up at him, he looked away, unable to bear the pain in her
eyes. “It shouldn’t be too much farther,” he mumbled, then they
both retreated into their own thoughts and trudged on.

Risen knew his father would be angry
that he left the castle, furious, more likely. And his mother would
be worried too, probably in ways she’d never before been. Risen
felt bad for Moira and Moulin, wondered if they would be
implicated, and hoped that his parents wouldn’t blame them too
severely. He’d had to—had to leave without them knowing. This he
told himself over and over, for there was simply no other way. They
could not understand, and he would never have been
allowed.

Recalling the expression on Niveus’
face as he’d snuck from the library, he thought she had been all
knowing. She said nothing, hadn’t tried to stop him. He paused at
the doorway long enough to look back at her. All she did was sit
there, content in her understanding, calm in her extraordinary
insight. He sensed that somehow she knew—knew that he must leave.
And he also knew she would not breathe a word of it.

I saved Sylvie. This belief was
cemented firmly into his thoughts, for if he’d not left the castle,
if he hadn’t snuck away to try to retrieve Sylvie and her family,
they would have all perished on the hillside, she right along with
her father. Risen had no misconceptions about this. He’d heard the
stories—stories of how it used to be when a man named Adorno ruled
the realm. Life had been cheap in those days, and it still was if
you ventured very far from the sheltered safety of the
realm.

Today was Risen’s first taste of
true ruthlessness, of the savagery of man. So that was why his
father held such a countenance. Now he understood! It was suddenly
so clear to him, that his father’s scars were more than only on his
skin. Ravan bore them much more deeply than what could be seen. It
was because of the inhumanity of life that his father was the way
he was, because of his history—his years of pain and
suffering.

His father had immense power, was a
revered leader, and he’d worked tirelessly to create stability and
security in his realm. Risen realized why Ravan had a darkness
about his step, a mistrust, a wisdom born of ill fate. For the
first time, it made sense, was finally real.

He suddenly appreciated why his
father had forbidden he join in the battle, why he was prohibited
from leaving the castle. He’d resented him for it, thought he’d
been treated like a child. He realized that he was in the same
position with Sylvie as he’d been with his father. She wanted to
put herself in harm’s way, wanted to run to the burning house, and
he’d forbidden it as well.

Somewhere in the depths of his
heart, he believed his father would be proud of him, proud that
he’d been able to save at least one…Sylvie.

This gave him a small amount of
happiness, what little he could glean after the horrible string of
events, that she was not lying upon the hillside next to her
father, shot through with an arrow or speared to death. It was not
a small bit of grace, and he clung to it. She was alive.

Then, he heard the
horses…

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

†

Tor’s troops were thoroughly taken
by surprise. As they jockeyed into position for a covert attack and
snuck through the tall grasses to their point of charge, something
unforeseen happened. An alarm sounded, the deep call of a horn
answered by another, then another, and another, until the sweeping
echo of a battle signal sped above the trees, over the hills,
across the village and castle grounds.

Confusion ensued, and an onslaught
like no other was cast upon the intruders. It seemed the assault
came from everywhere, from the sky, from the trees, up from the
very earth beneath their feet.

Tor’s army, spread out and thinking
briefly that the echoing alarm was their own, stood up from where
they hid in the tall grasses and stepped into the open from along
the forest edges. That proved a lethal first mistake. Arrows,
seemingly from nowhere, rained down on them. It was as though God
dropped them from the heavens. From every tree, from every hovel’s
roof, from any and every perch on the village’s margin rained a
deluge of arrows.

A sizable portion of the invading
army fell straightaway, some turned in confusion and ran, and those
that remained scrambled to organize themselves for a desperate,
secondary counter attack.

Then, Ravan’s soldiers all at once
appeared as though from nowhere. Side by side and with their
shields overlapping, they moved up, taking ground as the battle
waged. Tor’s archers unleashed fire arrows, an attempt to create
panic and mayhem, but the small homes on the edge of the village
were deserted. There was no mass exodus, no screaming women or
burning children. It was a burning village of phantoms, a pyre of
ghosts, and it demoralized Tor’s forces greatly as the perimeter
homes went up in flames but with no voices attached to
them.

Next, the battle raged between the
homes and along the narrow village streets. Those enemy forces that
were able to break off and storm the moat of the castle were
immediately picked off by the remaining castle archers. It was a
brief and brutal skirmish, but the longbowmen made the difference
entirely, just as Ravan had believed they would.

Years before, Tor knew all too
intimately that it was Ravan’s bow that had been his final undoing
after the skirmish in the inn, the night they foolishly confronted
the dark, lean traveler who was so willing to step in front of a
handless maiden. Today, Ravan no longer wielded his bow alone, but
it struck as certainly and with as much fear as it had on that
fateful day when Modred was felled on the hillside overlooking the
inn.

Fighting to his last, the wounded
leader was finally overcome by Ravan’s cavalry. It was the final
blow for the enemy army as most of them lay dead on the fields
surrounding the village and between the streets of the burning
town. A handful were held prisoner, but the scant remainder of
Tor’s forces scattered and retreated from whence they’d
come.

* * *

The realm was wounded but secure.
Ravan’s heart, however, was not. With long strides, he strode into
the foyer of the castle to find Nicolette sitting unmoving, quietly
waiting for him to return. He dreaded what he needed to tell her
and expected tears, but when she looked up at him, there were none.
Her eyes were dry, her face almost calm.

“You haven’t found him,” she said
flatly.

There was blood on his armor, blood
on his sword, blood on his hands.

“My love,” he knelt before her,
taking both her hands in his, “we are searching every inch of the
town and castle grounds. The word is spread; all are looking for
him.” His voice was thick with regret, his mind awash with the
unthinkable thought of losing his son. How had this
happened?

Memories of his own childhood
threatened, and it was with great reserve that he held them at bay.
“Nicolette, I will find him. I will find our son.”

She remained stoic and calm as she
dismissed all else who were present. Waiting until they were
entirely alone, she spoke intimately to Ravan. “He is not here,”
she said simply, almost serenely, and pulled one hand free of his
to touch his battle smudged cheek.

This only confused Ravan, and he
arose, taking a seat next to her, still holding her. With everyone
else gone from the hall, it echoed his words as he spoke urgently
to his love, “How do you know this? Nicolette, how do you know he
is not here? We haven’t finished our search. Perhaps he was afraid;
perhaps he is hiding or—”

“Our child is not here.” She held
his gaze firmly, the finality of the statement
dumbfounding.

“But…how?”

Ravan was very nearly to tears,
undone by his inability to find his missing son. It’d been nearly
thirteen years since he’d wept tears of grief, but nothing in his
entire life had threatened him so much as the thought of losing a
child.

She waved the question aside. “Our
son is gone.” Then, matter-of-factly, “Now we must find him.” She
said it as though they were only just realizing it and simply must
effect a strategy.

“Gone? Is he…”

Ravan couldn’t finish his question
and swallowed the fear that choked him, that stung his heart in a
way he never thought possible. It was the most wonderful thing he
could ever have imagined, to have children of his own, but also the
most terrible, for it opened up a vulnerability he’d never imagined
could exist.

“No, my love.” She allayed his
fears at once. “Risen lives. He simply does not live here…on our
grounds. He has chosen either to leave, or he has been taken. I
cannot be sure which, but I believe it to be the
latter.”

“I don’t understand! How?” He knelt
in front of her. “Nicolette, no one breached the walls of this
castle. He would’ve had to exit by the tunnels, would’ve had to
make the choice to go away…”

“I don’t know how, or why—just that
he is.” Nicolette folded her hands onto her lap. “But we must find
him, quickly. I fear time is not on our side.”

Even as quiet and controlled as she
was, he saw beyond the stoicism, behind the stone wall of all that
was Nicolette. Ravan closed his eyes, drew a deep breath in, and
forced his mind to slow down, driving from it the images that
threatened, images of many years before, of when he was yet a child
and of how badly things could be for his son.

“Help me to know. Help me to search
where I must,” he begged.

Nicolette stood, took her husband’s
face in her hands.

His eyes pleaded as he rose to his
feet. “Can you? Can you help me find our son?”

“Sylvie,” came a weak voice from
the hall entry.

“Sylvie?” Ravan repeated as he spun
around to find Moira standing in the cloistered entryway. He asked
dumbly, “Herluin’s daughter? I don’t—”

“He is in love with her,” she
interrupted, mumbled as though sorry, as though she should have
known and shared this long ago.