G. Kelly - Sword and Circle

“That doesn’t absolve you G’wain, for making me feel ugly,” she pouted.

“I didn’t say you were ugly, E. Chilling perhaps, but definitely not ugly.”

Allazar sighed as he dragged himself into the saddle and then drew his horse alongside Elayeen’s left flank. “I think we should move on quickly, Longsword, for the sake of our new friends’ nerves if nothing else. The sight of the stones brings back bad memories for the poor people.”

“Aye, and none too pleasant for me, either.” Gawain agreed, and with a nod to Tyrane, they set off again.

“I marvel, my lady, at the range of your new sight. To see the guardstones at such a distance, and spent ones at that.” Allazar shook his head in wonder.

“Thank you, I’m glad someone appreciates my eldengaze and doesn’t find it chilling and hideously ugly.”

“Eldengaze?” Allazar looked puzzled.

“I didn’t say it made you look hideously ugly, miheth, merely chilling.”

“It is my king’s new name for the gentle looks his queen bestows upon him in times of peril.”

“Ah.”

“It is not my new name for… never mind. I refuse to be baited.”

Elayeen allowed herself a triumphant smile, and then became serious once more. “You say the stones were spent, Allazar? Yet I could still see the darkness glowing about them.”

“Quite possibly an artefact of the dark runes still graven upon them, my lady. Such runes still contain power, even though the material upon which they are cut is crumbling. Only when the runes themselves are broken is their power destroyed.”

“Oh. Well, if that’s how they appear when spent, I should be able to see unspent ones a mile away.”

“That, my lady, would be most useful indeed.” Allazar agreed.

“Though chilling and hideous to behold of course,” Elayeen said, archly.

“I am saying nothing.” Gawain sniffed haughtily.

And for the best part of an hour, no-one did. They progressed slowly along the Jarn road, though at a slightly quicker pace than earlier in the day, and not even the Gorians on foot protested at that. But with the late afternoon sun dipping slowly to the west behind them, Elayeen sent a shudder of apprehension through them all when once again she stood in her stirrups. Then, to the vanguards’ alarm and Gawain’s, she kicked her horse forward through them, ten yards ahead, and then swung the animal to a halt broadside on across the road, gazing north along its length.

“There is something dark ahead,” she announced, swinging her head around towards them, and with it the eldengaze that had so disturbed Gawain an hour before. “And it is moving toward us.”

At once, the Gorians crowded around the rear wagon, the men within jumping down to make way for the women, who were bundled up into the wagon in their place. The Callodon guard closed ranks, and the rearguard advanced.

“What is it, my lady, can you tell?” Allazar asked, his voice hard, and Gawain would swear it was edged with excitement.

“No. It is moving slowly, straight along the road toward us. And it is much darker than the guardstones were.”

“Where are the scouts?” Tyrane wondered aloud. “If they encountered something on the road their orders were to return at once to alert us rather than engage.”

“It has stopped moving.” Elayeen announced, unslinging the bow from over her shoulders.

“I can only see a vague shape on the far rise, it must be at least a mile from here.” Gawain muttered. “And the heat from the track is making it shimmer.”

Gwyn’s ears were fixed forward, and she snuffled and bobbed her head. Something was there, far ahead of them on the arrow-straight road.

Everyone seemed to be waiting for a decision to be made. Gawain decided they were waiting for him to make it. “We advance, slowly. Ready string and steel.”

Tyrane signalled the command, and the air was filled with the sound of crossbows being cocked and bolted, and swords loosened in scabbards.

Then slowly, the column began moving forward once more.

“It still hasn’t moved,” Elayeen announced, adjusting her grip on her bow, her damaged fingers still paining her greatly.

“We’ll lose sight of it ahead where the road dips a little,” Allazar muttered. “Perhaps…”

“I won’t.” Elayeen asserted, and again her voice carried with it a distance and hardness not her own. “I have it fixed.”

The road dipped, and to the ordinary vision of all but Elayeen at the head of the column, the heat-shimmering above the track blocked their sight of whatever it was awaiting them. The wind blew in swirling gusts from the east, across the road, but Gwyn seemed nervous, her ears twitching this way and that, giving the snuffling warning signs so well-known to Allazar and Elayeen as well as of course to her chosen rider.

When they crested the rise the vague shape in the distance seemed a little clearer, the shimmering of the heat trapped in the sun-baked and rocky road diminished by virtue of their height above its effect combined with the gusts of wind whipping it away, dust-devils swirling across the track here and there. But still it was too far to identify. Eyes strained as the column marched on, quietly, cautiously, heads and eyes scanning the woodlands all around.

“It is large.” Elayeen said softly, her voice her own again, “Larger than a horse.”

“Moving?” Gawain asked.

“No, it’s just waiting there.”

Gawain flicked a glance over his shoulder. The Gorian men flanked the rear wagon, some of them resting their hands on its sides as a visible sign that it was under their protection; it was, after all, the wagon in which the women rode. Their faces were worried, but heads held high and resolute. They had travelled far, and suffered much, but had found friends in a new land and would not flinch. After all, with Raheen gone, there was nowhere else for them to go now, except north along the road to Jarn.

The wagons and the Gorians themselves were flanked by the mounted guard of Callodon, helmeted and uniformed, quiet, alert, and efficiently drilled, but more than likely untested in combat. Nevertheless, they had done well at the outpost when the Grimmand of Sethi had revealed itself; the number of Callodon crossbow bolts that had slammed into the creature before Allazar incinerated it was testament to their nerve as well as their marksmanship. The western flank was stronger than the eastern one, at Gawain’s request. Some unknown intuition had spoken silently of a threat from that direction.

But it was due north that the threat now waited. After keeping a slow but steadfast pace, they finally came to within half a mile of the thing, and Elayeen drew them to a halt, peering ahead intently with the eldengaze that had so discomfited Gawain earlier.

“It looks like a rider,” Gawain said.

“I have seen this shape before,” Elayeen said, “Though not as I do now.”

“What is it, miheth?”

She stood in her stirrups, her gaze fixed ahead, and then she sat back, and when she spoke, her voice was hard and distant as the Dragon’s Teeth. “It is a Graken, with a rider on its back.”

“Dwarfspit!” Gawain spat. “Captain, the body and the tail will remain here to protect the Gorians. The head will advance with the three of us.”

“Aye my lord,” Tyrane acknowledged, signalling his men, and with a glance across Elayeen at Allazar, Gawain advanced.

They rode in line abreast, Elayeen at the centre, Gawain to her right and Allazar on the left. Behind them, Tyrane in the centre flanked by the two hefty men of the vanguard, and then three more Callodon riders behind them. This was the ‘head’ of the column. Behind it, the remaining nineteen Callodonians sat saddle, weapons at the ready under the watchful eye of their sergeant.