The Last Summoning---Andrew and the Quest of Orion's Belt (Book Four) (37 page)

The people began to speak things and say
things they had never before voiced. The more they spoke, the freer
they became, and the more uplifted they felt. Unhindered and
unchained, their voices resounded with those unleashed whispers
that floated in on the air. The sound grew in volume as they went
throughout the city, crushing the soldiers that came at them,
gathering more followers as they went.

It was a rare victory like no other. It was
as if, in one moment, the pent up imprisonment the city had long
been under, swelled, and exploded in every direction, an
unstoppable force that the rulers of the city had not been prepared
for. For they had grown lax in their care, and guardianship of
their land. They had supposed that their iron hand and their
constant guidance had schooled the people so well that the chains
that held them in place were the chains they themselves had
made.

They needed no other.

But the chains were now broken.

The festering city was flooded with renewal,
and an awakening at last.

Entombed

The water was freezing, but Andrew did not feel it.
His whole body had become numb.

But his mind was not. It screamed out, begging for
freedom. He was trapped beneath the ice, while his men fought above
him. He was supposed to be up there with them, fighting. Guilt and
anger filled his heart. He had abandoned his men when they needed
him the most.

He pressed his hands against the ice, banging
against it with all his might. But the ice was too thick. He moved
to another place, probing the ice with his hands, but the ice was
the same, hard and as thick as a solid rock. There were no
openings. The ice stood unyielding, locked in place, like a lid on
coffin, holding him in.

He could hear the muffled sounds of horse
beats pounding against the ice, and feet trampling, seemingly
unaware that he was trapped beneath them. Desperate, he tried using
his sword against the ice, but the weapon was too heavy---it pulled
him down, dragging him deeper within the ocean. Black water
engulfed him, filling his lungs, and nose. He felt like someone had
stuffed his lungs full of black rags. Everything within him cried
out. This was not the way he was supposed to die. If he was to die,
he wanted to die above the ice, with his men. He could never live
with himself knowing that he had forsaken his men.

He was tempted to let go of the sword that
dragged him down, like an anchor to forever rest at the bottom of
the ocean. But he could not let it go. In the blade he still felt
the power of the souls who gave it strength. He felt that as long
as he held onto the sword, he had not utterly abandoned those souls
fighting above him.

The water swirled around him as if dragging
him down with black fingers. He struggled against it until he could
no longer struggle. His body grew limp, his mind fogged. All was
water and darkness. Then gradually a light appeared, soft at first
and then brilliant. He reached out his hand, and something caught
hold it. It tugged him away from the light.

A warm hand touched his face. Lips pressed
against his, breathing life into his lungs. The air that was
breathed into them, seemed to evaporate the water in his nose and
lungs, giving him life. The second the air washed into his lungs,
the light he had seen instantly vanished. Warm arms wrapped around
his cold body, tugging him up through the water. Above him he could
hear the muffled sounds of battle, though distant, and almost
dreamlike. The arms holding him would sometimes stop, and hold his
body close, warming his. Then in systematic increments, he would
receive air from lips that gave him life. He could not see who this
person was through the black water, but he didn’t need to see to
know who his rescuer was.

He was in Ivory’s hands.

It was a strange sensation, being tugged
along through the water, then given air. His mind was foggy. The
cold water caused his body to grow numb. He slipped from Ivory’s
grasp several times. But she was always there to bring him back up.
The minutes seemed to drag on. He became so numb that he felt like
he would soon turn into a brick of ice. It was all he could do to
hold onto those life-giving arms. The surface of the ice seemed to
go on forever, in a long unbroken sheet. The sounds of the battle
had gradually faded. It was as if he and Ivory were just existing,
becoming part of the ice itself, frozen and frosted over. He
drifted off into numb stupor, where he no longer was aware of what
was happening. Time, space, moving, even Ivory, all faded from his
mind.

A loud crash above the ice caused him to
reawaken. Ivory pulled him through the water towards the sound, up
and up. Small slabs of broken ice floated around him. Then he saw
it. Light.

There was a crack in the ice, big enough for
them to get through. A hand reached out from above, and grabbed
Ivory’s outstretched hand. She and Andrew were both pulled up
through the ice, and onto its surface.

“Ivory!” Freddie’s voice panted, “Andrew. Oh,
you’re alive! I knew you would be. I don’t know how. But I
knew…”

“You knew?” Ivory scoffed. “Really?”

Freddie’s stricken eyes filled with tears. He
fell to his knees, and began blubbering. “No…actually I didn’t. I
just had to do something. I had to…” His voice broke off and he
began to sob again.

Andrew lay there, his face against the ice,
shivering, he felt so cold and numb that he could barely feel
himself think.

“Freddie,” Ivory cried. “Hand me your cloak.
He’s freezing.”

“Aren’t you cold?” Freddie wondered taking
off his cloak and wrapping it around Andrew. “The water’s freezing.
You’ve been locked under there for hours.”

Ivory hugged Andrew to her, chaffing his
frozen skin. “I’m fine, I’m like a fish, if you haven’t already
guessed. You could say it’s in the blood. I acclimatize to the
water, whatever the temperature.”

Andrew’s lips were blue. His face was ghost
white. His body throbbed and ached as feeling slowly came back into
his frozen limbs. His hand went to his sword. It felt hollow,
empty, like a soulless body. In an instant he knew. His stomach
lurched. He staggered forward. “Th…the…battle?” Andrew chattered,
his whole body trembling. He stared at Freddie, frightened by what
he might hear. They had been trapped under the ice longer than he
had first supposed. What he had thought a few moment’s had been
hours. The night had gone, and with it all sign of fighting.
Freddie’s face was spattered in blood. His clothes were torn. He
had a nasty gash in his shoulder. His eyes looked different, like
he had seen something terrible, and could not speak it. “Andrew…”
Freddie’s voice cracked, his eyes filled with tears. He buried his
face in his knees, and wept. “We tried…but…”

Andrew quickly stood, and stared across the
ice, his blue lips trembling with cold. The sun was just coming up,
gleaming across the frosted surface of the ice, lighting up the
place where the great battle had taken place. Heaps of bodies
dotted the ice, like dead fish out of water, frozen forever in
place. Beyond the ice, he could see host of men marching away into
the Fractured Mountains.

Andrew pulled Freddie’s cape around his
shoulders, and took a step towards the awful scene. Something hard
crunched beneath his feet. Horrified he looked down. He had stepped
on an outstretched wing. “Flicker?” he breathed, panic lacing his
voice. He bent down and dug through a heap of snow, revealing
Flicker’s frozen body.

He cried out, and stumbled back. He opened
his mouth to speak, but the words caught in his throat, frozen by
grief.

Men and beast from both sides littered the
ice, frozen in death, on the battlefield of black ice. It was a
haunting scene, forever imprinted on Andrew’s mind. Andrew felt
like he was looking at a scene out of a nightmare he hoped he would
wake up from. He covered his face in his hands, overwhelmed. Oh, he
wished that this scene might dissolve---that he had never lived to
see it. Andrew’s eyes glistened. His head reeled. He wished that he
had been swallowed up by the water. The coldness he felt from being
in the icy water was nothing to the ice he felt now. It crept over
him, stabbing at his mind, accusing him, stabbing where it hurt the
most. He felt as if someone had grabbed his whole body and was
squeezing it. His stomach churned as if he had swallowed a load of
bricks.

“Andrew,” Freddie said, placing a hand on his
shoulder to steady Andrew’s faltering form. “Don’t.”

Andrew shook Freddie away from him and walked
over the ice, from person to person, looking for any sign of life.
He suddenly stopped and fell to his knees at the foot of one of his
faithful captains, crying out in great angry cries. The man lay
dead, with his eyes turned up as if looking at some celestial
object.

“I should have been there with them,” Andrew
sobbed, his voice ridden with anguish.

“You were, Andrew,” Freddie consoled.

“No! I wasn’t!” Andrew dropped to his knees,
overcome with grief. His eyes were glazed. He stared blankly ahead,
his face drained of all color. “Are they all dead?” Andrew gasped,
looking at Freddie for some sign of hope. “All 7,000?”

“I don’t know…” Freddie’s voice was soft.
“After you fell through the ice, and Ivory went in after you, I got
so angry I just threw myself at Vargas. He sliced my shoulder, and
something hit me in the head. The next thing I knew, I was waking
up to this,” He motioned to the bodies littering the ice.”

“What about Talic, and Croffin, and the
others…are they dead as well?”

Freddie shook his head. “I…I don’t
know...Andrew…I…I…” He too began to cry, looking very boyish and
not like the strong soul he usually tried to be.

Andrew grasped his friend by the arms.
“Freddie, you’re a good man. The best kind of friend I could ever
ask for. If I had a brother, he would be just like you.”

“I tried,” Freddie stuttered, his voice
rising. “I really tried. But after you went down, everything went
very bad, very, very bad. After I woke, I grabbed an ax and started
chopping holes in the water. Chopping, chopping, chopping…I knew
you had to be down there.”

“Freddie!” Andrew cried, shaking his friend.
“I know you tried. And you saved Ivory and me. You saved us,
Freddie!”

Freddie’s lips curved into a faint smile. He
stopped ranting, and wiped his bloodshot eyes. “Yes…I did, didn’t
I?”

“You did,” Andrew breathed, hugging his
friend tightly.

“Andrew…” Ivory ventured, tapping Andrew from
behind. Her face was serious. Her red hair hugged her face in
frosted locks. “Andrew…” her voice was barley above a whisper.
“There’s something you need to see.”

Andrew stepped away from Freddie. He stared
at Ivory. Her face was tight, and her eyes were wide like she’d
seen a ghost. “Oragino,” was all she could say. She pointed to a
body draped across the ice a few feet away from where they were
standing.

Andrew stepped over a mass of frozen bodies,
pausing before the broken body of his horse Oragino. The horse’s
beautiful body was covered in blood. A sharp metal prong had been
thrust through its torso, pinning the horse to the ice.

Andrew fell to his knees, instantly engulfed
by a new wave of sorrow. “Oragino…Oh, Oragino, my horse. What has
happened to you?” He stroked the horse with tender hands, burying
his head in the horse’s mane.

“Don’t be sad,” the horse murmured, trying to
lift its head and comfort Andrew.

Andrew sat up, his eyes wide, his face
streaked with tears. “You’re alive?”

The horse heaved a weary sigh. “No, Andrew, I
am not what you humans call alive, nor will I ever be again, in
this life. What I am is in between. I am leaving very soon.”

“No,” Andrew wept. “Don’t go. So many have
gone already. You can’t leave me, too.”

“Be still, master,” the horse wheezed. “It is
a terrible thing to witness so much death and destruction. But do
not blame yourself. We all chose to come onto this battlefield of
ice. And in doing so we chose to die, if that was what fate had in
store for us. It is fate’s will I go now. Just as you must
live.”

Andrew ran his fingers over Oragino’s soft,
velvet fur, brushing away the frost. “Then fate is unkind and
cruel. If fate is what it should be, it would have let me die along
with you, here with all these good souls, these voices who are
silenced forever.”

“Oh,” Oragino groaned, “their voices are not
silenced. They live on through you.”

“They cannot live through me!” Andrew cried.
“I am dead, just as they are, though my body goes on living. All is
lost. If fate had been kind, it would have led us on to victory.
No. Fate is nothing to me. I will never trust my life into its
hands again.”

“No,” The horse gasped. “Do not lose your
faith in a higher power. For that is what Fate is. Do not question
it. If you were a horse you would know that fate is something quite
different than luck, chance or happenstance. It is much more
precise and careful. With her, there is always a reason, a why, and
a perfect ending. Whether good or bad, only she knows. Just as she
has chosen my ending. And the ending of many other’s lives, there
is soon to be a new beginning for me, one that will never end, but
go on.”

“There is no such place!” Andrew shouted,
feeling an oppressive weight of sorrow press on him from all
sides.

“Do not be angry,” the horse murmured. Its
voice was soft, and fading, as if its lungs were filling with
water. “I and those of your men go to a far better place than we
are now. Do not be angry that you live, Andrew. It seems your work
is not yet over. You still have a job to accomplish, else you would
be coming with me.”

“Job?” Andrew murmured. “There is nothing
left for me to do. The Fallen has won.”