The Ancient

TWENTY-EIGHT

The Meaning of Home

Brother Giavno stepped out of the small boat onto the shore of Lake Mithranidoon for the first time in more than a year. He glanced back in the direction of Chapel Isle, the place that had been his home for these last few years. Not much of a home, and not much of an island, Giavno knew, but still there was in his heart a great lament, a profound sense of loss. Nothing more than a cursory glance at his dour companions told him that he was not alone in these feelings.

He let his gaze drift north along this, the western coastline of Mithranidoon. Cormack was up there, he knew, along with his strange collection of friends and perhaps with more allies culled from the various islands. He meant to go against Ancient Badden, and that was a noble cause, whatever the reason.

A splash behind him turned Giavno back to the lake, where the last boat, bearing Father De Guilbe and a foursome of Chapel Isle’s best warriors, neared the shore. As the five debarked, Giavno was left wondering how many years, decades, centuries even, might pass before the construction at Chapel Isle was once more inhabited by disciples of Blessed Abelle. Their monument would stand against the wave should it come, Giavno believed, and even if someone else, powrie or Alpinadoran, happened upon the island, they would more likely use the sturdy chapel fortress than tear it down. So maybe, someday long in the future, the Abellicans would return and continue the work done by Giavno and De Guilbe and the others.

“Form them up at once and let us be far away from this place,” Father De Guilbe instructed Giavno as he walked past. “I would find Dame Gwydre before the onset of winter, and that will be no easy road.”

“Of course, Father,” Giavno replied, and a part of him agreed. Another part, though, had him looking to the north yet again, and wondering about Cormack and the others. He recognized the expediency of De Guilbe’s decision to abandon their mission and return where they were likely needed, but that didn’t stop him from feeling as if he and his brethren were, perhaps, abandoning their neighbors in this time of dire need. For despite all of their fighting, even the deadly siege put upon Chapel Isle by the Alpinadorans, Brother Giavno did think of them, and of the powries, as neighbors.

That was the surprising paradox that dominated his mind and his heart.

“Brother Giavno!” Father De Guilbe shouted, shaking the man from his contemplations. He nodded and rushed off to rouse the brothers.

He was glad that it was not his place to make these decisions.

They glided out of the mists of Mithranidoon like the ghosts of their warrior ancestors, painted with berry dyes of red and yellow and blue, carrying spears and clubs, and decorated with trinkets and necklaces of teeth and claws and paws and beaks and feathers-so many feathers. Their flotilla numbered boats in the hundreds, each boat carrying as few as one or as many as a half-dozen of the proud Alpinadorans. Most stood up as the boats reached the shore, as if in defiance to the task and enemy that awaited them.

Even Milkeila, intimately familiar with her people, even Bransen, who had seen the armies of southern Honce, even Mcwigik, who was never much impressed with anything human, gasped at the spectacle of the many diverse tribes of Mithranidoon coming together as one. And for Cormack, this marvelous sight served to reinforce his understanding that proselytizing these people, with their traditions, heritage, and pride, was no more than a fool’s errand, and a condescending one at that.

For Milkeila, though, another emotion accompanied it all, based on her certainty that she was looking upon her people for the last time, likely forever. Even if she managed to survive the coming battle, she knew that it was over for her. Her small group of friends, co-conspirators dreaming of leaving Mithranidoon only two years before, had been split apart from her in more ways than physical. She stood with the man she had come to love, but inside, Milkeila had never felt more alone.

Still, the spectacle before her made her proud to be, or to have been, of Yan Ossum.

At the center of the Alpinadoran force came the shamans, Teydru and Toniquay prominent among their ranks. More than just spiritual leaders, Alpinadoran shamans were considered the wise men of their respective tribes, the advisors on all matters important.

“They will direct the attack,” Milkeila explained to her companions, indicating the select group.

“They will likely wish to speak more with Bransen then,” said Cormack, “as he has seen the passes and the glacial structures.” He was about to add that he would help Milkeila in translating the exchange, but the woman just shook her head.

“They have seen them,” she explained. “Both the way to Badden and his defenses. If we were to be a part of their execution, they would have summoned us as they debarked their boats.”

“What’s that to mean?” Mcwigik demanded. “Got all me boys together just to be a part of it.”

Milkeila calmed him with an upraised hand, and cautiously made her way along the beach to speak with Toniquay.

“The powries wish to help,” she said to her superior. “They have brought the whole of their force to join in our march.”

“Our march?” Toniquay quipped, his expression sour. “You have plotted to leave us, and conspired of late to expedite your journey. Because you brought us this information, Shaman Teydru has seen fit to grant you your wish without prejudice or punishment. You have paid your worth to us and are free to go.”

While those words might have once sounded as welcome to the young woman, in this time and place they hit her as mightily as a bolt of lightning. She had known it was coming, indeed, but still, to hear the declaration spoken so clearly and directly unnerved the poor young woman. The black wings of panic fluttered up all around her, threatening to drown her sensibilities in their confused jumble of flapping. She felt alone, suddenly. Homeless and without family, stranded on the beach of a hostile world, all security stolen.

She looked over to her tribesmen, trying to sort through the jumble to spot Androosis, or some other friend who had expressed similar desires of leaving Mithranidoon.

“Your young friends will not be joining you,” said Toniquay, as if he had read her mind (and indeed, that was not beyond his power). “They have offered no compensation for the freedom they desire-not even Androosis, though there was debate about whether or not he, too, should be given free leave.”

Milkeila stood there for a long while, trying to find her breath.

“I would have thought this news exciting and welcome to you,” Toniquay teased, for of course he had anticipated exactly this.

Milkeila regained her composure, albeit with great difficulty. “Of course,” she said, for what choice did she have? A decision so rendered by the shaman council was not an invitation to debate.

“The powries have come in whole to join in your battle with Ancient Badden,” she restated. “They are fierce allies and ferocious enemies, as you are well aware. They would know their place in this, among a force so many times their size.”

“How generous of them,” Toniquay remarked, contempt thickening his voice. “Better than the cowardly monks, at least, who debark far to the south and run down the road of the same direction. They stand strong only behind thick walls of stone, it would seem.”

“Their place?” Milkeila pressed, knowing well that Toniquay could launch into a diatribe of many minutes, and one that left him far from her original question, if he was not quickly reined.

“They have no place among us,” Toniquay answered bluntly. “If they wish a place in the battle, then it is to the side, and out of our way.”

Milkeila started to argue, but Toniquay was hearing none of it. “We do not train beside powries, nor are we to expect our warriors to trust any of them. The same is true of the monk and the stranger.”

“And of Milkeila?”

“You trained beside us once.”

“But the trust?”

Toniquay paused and let the question slide away before reiterating, “Their place is not among us. They, you, all of you, would do well to stay far to the side of our march.”

Milkeila couldn’t help it as her misty eyes were drawn out to the lake, toward Yossunfier, which had once been her home.

Once and always and nevermore.

They were not properly outfitted to survive the climate off of Mithranidoon, even now before the onset of winter, so the Alpinadorans, led by their shamans, who had used the views of eagles and hawks and crows to spy out and map the passes, wasted no time in their march. Long and swift strides carried their formations up the mountain passes beside the glacier; shamans and other leaders shouted encouragement and bolstered the warriors with magic and herb-treated waters to hold their spirit and their strength. There would be no camp, no respite. Their swift pace would end when they met the enemy.

Behind them came the powries, and among them Bransen and his two now-homeless companions, still trying to figure out where they would fit into this upcoming battle.

Before they had even reached the glacier, sounds of fighting erupted far ahead, at the front of the Alpinadoran line. The ranks tightened, powries eagerly adjusting their berets. But those ranks quickly loosened up again, and when the trailing group crossed the battlefield they discovered that the army had happened upon, and had summarily overrun, an encampment of no more than a dozen trolls.

“Here’s for hoping that one or more got away to warn their friends and set them all about us,” Mcwigik grumbled. “Sure to be the only way we’re to find any fightin’ this day!”

“Aye, the tall ones’ll run all the way through Badden’s door,” Bikelbrin, at Mcwigik’s side, lamented.

Bransen glanced at Milkeila and Cormack, the three of them understanding that they were the only ones among this group who hoped the prediction would prove true.

And Bransen, who had been at Badden’s camp, who had seen the hundreds of trolls and the giants there, knew it to be an unrealistic hope, and one that would soon enough be destroyed.

They ran over another group of trolls soon after. A volley of Alpinadoran spears flew out to the east soon after that, taking down a pair of scouts.

The barbarian horde didn’t even slow to retrieve the missiles.

Good fortune gave Bransen and his companions a fine vantage point as the real battle commenced. The path wound down and around a huge outcropping before spilling onto the glacier, and the powrie contingent, Bransen’s trio among them, was up high and still back of the stone when the leading Alpindorans swept onto the ice like a breaking wave, washing over those nearest trolls before smashing into a more coordinated defensive formation. Spears crisscrossed in midair, with the trolls taking the brunt of it, as their spears were too small and light to get through the Alpinadoran wicker and leather shields.

The Alpinadoran warriors poured over the front troll ranks, their towering line of broad-shouldered men and women, most well over six feet in height, dwarfing the diminutive, light-featured trolls.

But the trolls did not break and flee, and those in the back scrambled all over each other trying to get to the front ranks and into the fight. Like a horde of rats, they leaped and bit and scratched and kicked, flailing so wildly that they were as likely to strike their own as they were to hit their enemies.

More barbarians swept onto the glacier, lengthening the line and filling in the holes as some of their kin fell away.

In the back, watching from on high, Milkeila chewed her bottom lip, her knuckles whitening about the handle of the stone axe she carried.

“They are winning,” Cormack pointed out to her, and draped an arm across her sturdy shoulder.

“Yach, but we’re not to even get to the ice afore the fight’s done,” Mcwigik complained.

“Aye, and all that fine spilled blood’ll seep into the cracks by then,” added Pergwick, he and the young Ruggirs hopping over to join Mcwigik and Bikelbrin and the humans. “Or mixed with the scraped and melted ice to be even thinner!”

“Come on, ye bleating sheep,” another dwarf called, and as they turned to regard the shouter, he waved them his way. Apparently they weren’t the only ones concerned that the fight would end before their arrival, for before that yelling dwarf, a line of powries was going over the ledge and out of sight, picking their way, the group learned when they got to the spot, down a steep but climbable descent that would get them out onto the glacier just to the south of the Alpinadoran position.

Glancing over the ledge and following the line of powries climbing down (with amazing deftness, he thought, given their short limbs), Bransen could pick out the point of demarcation. Few trolls stood in that area of the glacier, focused far more heavily to the north and the barbarians.

For a brief moment, Bransen’s eyes flashed wickedly, wondering if the enemy had left open a flank they might exploit.

But as the leading powrie dropped down the last few feet to land upon the ice, Bransen’s excitement turned to dread.

A rain of heavy, large stones complemented the dwarf’s arrival. The northern, left flank, far from open, had been charged to the giants, half a dozen of the behemoths, standing tall now behind a wall of ice blocks that had obscured their position. With their light, bluish skin, white hair, and wrappings of white fur, they blended well with their shiny and eye-stinging environment, but that camouflage did nothing to diminish their overwhelming aura of strength now that they had been spotted.

Bransen started to call the dwarves back up, but stopped, stunned, as they seemed more excited and eager to get down than they had before the giants had risen up.

“Giants!” Bransen pleaded with those dwarves around him, a call seconded by Cormack.

“Bah, them ain’t giants,” Mcwigik said with a howl.

“Not like the giants we got on the Julianthes,” Bikelbrin added, using the powrie name for the Weathered Isles, their Mirianic Ocean homeland.

“Not half,” Mcwigik agreed, “but I’m betting their blood runs thick!”

That was all the others had to hear, and Pergwick and Ruggirs nearly tumbled from the ledge as they fought and scrambled over each other to get to the descent. After the dwarfish tumble rolled away, the three humans stepped up to the ledge.

“You do not seem convinced of your course,” Cormack remarked to Bransen, and the Highwayman smiled at his own inability to keep his emotions from his face.

“I came here to buy freedom for myself and my family,” he replied honestly. “Badden’s head for a journey south.”

“We’ll make sure that you get the foul one’s head, then,” Milkeila assured him.

Bransen snickered. “All who came north with me are lost. Either dead or trapped in that castle. Dame Gwydre would not refuse me my reward even should I return now, before the task is complete.”

“But Badden must be stopped,” Cormack said.

Bransen looked at him skeptically.

“Do you deny his evilness?” said Cormack.

“Not his, not that of your Church. Not of the lairds-not one of them,” said Bransen.

Cormack stiffened at that poignant reminder of the lack of familiarity between them.

“Then you agree that he, Badden, is worth killing,” said Milkeila, her voice taking on a distinctively sharper edge.

Bransen looked at her carefully, his expression measured, and caught somewhere between amusement and condescension. “That is not the question. The question is: Is Badden worth dying over?”

Below them, the powries encountered a group of trolls and the fight was on. “He is,” said Cormack, and he started over the ledge, moving swiftly down the steep decline. Milkeila shot a disappointed look Bransen’s way and followed.

Bransen passed them easily, using his Jhesta Tu training and his marvelous control of his body to run down the cliff.