Sipping steaming cups of a berry and rose tea, Falcor and Emain relaxed in the medical tent and might have slept had not Fiora joined them the minute they had become presentable. The first question she thought to ask them answered itself. Of course they hadn’t retrieved the weapons. They had barely retrieved themselves. So the next question to break the surface was the logical one to follow: “Okay, what happened to you?” she demanded of her brother. Falcor’s eyes slowly rolled up to meet hers and a sly smile crossed his face. He shook his head and laughed. Emain joined him. After it was clear that Fiora didn’t—couldn’t—understand, he sipped his tea again, the silly smirk plastered to his face. His eyes shifted to Emain, who matched his gaze with a broad smile. Falcor felt his throat tighten and he licked his lips; she would not laugh at the truth, he knew, but to him—ahh, but to the both of them—the irony was complete. It would take a million words, a thousand days, to explain that which he and Emain had exchanged in a glance. She could not understand. But he knew his brotherly duty and began to recite his tale.
“I will start with this: we should have had the weapons.” Emain chuckled, but Falcor raised a hand. “Now, there is a reason, albeit a strange one, why we don’t. Ironically, it is the same reason we breathe right now.” He took a deep breath. “After we left Talorn, it rained again and kept raining…” as Falcor related those few previous days, his mind returned to the moment, while his mouth kept speaking. It stood out so clearly—he closed his eyes to see it better. When he opened them again, he was back in the soggy Plains of Raida.
~¤~
Between the flashes of lightning and the rolling blasts of thunder, the constant drizzle dampened both their cloaks and their spirits. Falcor trudged in front, while Emain trod behind him through the fog and rain. Neither spoke, for the rain told them all they needed to know: this task was impossible. Yet Falcor knew he must try—he must redeem himself. He had not journeyed only to return empty-handed—the thought violated some rule in his conscience. Yet, the downpour whispered on, “Turn back; it’s hopeless.”
Sometime on the second day, after a miserable, wet night that had offered little rest or sleep, Emain broke the lingering murmurs of the rain with a single phrase. “At least we’re clean.” Falcor stopped. Aggravation raced through his veins; how was this a time to joke? As he turned to reprimand his companion, a thought snuck into his mind. And, in that moment, the anger slipped from his grasp. He smiled at first, and then burst into laughter. Raising his face to the threatening, overcast sky and spreading his arms, he sighed.
“Yes,” he gurgled as the raindrops splattered in his open mouth. “At least we are clean. Emain laughed and imitated him. “You know what this means, though,” Falcor clarified. “We will always be cleaned again.” Emain raised an eyebrow. “For instance, mud will wash off.” He glanced at an embankment, slick with running water. Emain smiled. “After you.”
A pair of stormy days passed over the prairie. On the dawn of the third, Falcor noted the Nolkric mountains to the west, rising crisply against the morning sun. Still they traveled ahead, until those peaks merged north and joined the
In the middle of the storm, they crested a small hill and the edge of the valley loomed in front of them—along with the entire encampment of the invasion force. Falcor dropped to his belly in the soaking grass with Emain following his lead. While lifting a hand to stay Emain, he crept forward to the summit of the hill and grabbed a looking glass from his pack. He scanned the enemy ranks and embankments—they had constructed palisade walls around the exterior of the camp, with greater stone walls rising behind those. A massive stone gate already stood completed, along with the foundations of a fortress in the center of the encampment—a city, it seemed more to him. A mixture of tents and sloped buildings inhabited the interior, with thousands of soldiers scrambling like ants over the place, working despite the heavy oppression of the rain.
Falcor pressed the scope to his eye; but had to brace the lens against the quivering of his freezing hands. The soldiers moved queerly, he thought. He looked to the wall; a worker scrambled up the face of the wall. Falcor blinked and refocused the glass. “Emain…the old man knew something…they aren’t human,” he stated without lowering the glass.
“Well what are they then?” came Emain’s curious and overzealous reply.
Falcor’s eye squinted as he brought it away from the scope. “Lizards?” he guessed with an exasperated sigh and shrugging his shoulders as if to say, “I don’t think I’m awake.” His answer didn’t have the same effect on Emain, who, rather, perked and brightened with the suggestion. This was obviously a rare side of the generally reserved and introverted boy he had seen while in his sister’s presence, Falcor decided. Perhaps the notion of adventure invigorated the boy. No matter. His enthusiasm had caught Falcor off-guard and had instilled a sense of excitement within him. While he struggled to believe what he had seen, something deep inside him began to churn—a daring, impossible plan to infiltrate the city. A sly gleam crept into his eyes and he glanced at Emain. “I have an idea.”
~¤~
After they had eaten, Jumai and Balii parted with Boltor, for he had to report to Talibor and Valimor for planning and to give voice to the advice of Balii. Jumai strolled beside Balii as the sun sank lower in the sky. They wandered back to the courtyard and found Strati curled in a ball in the shade, napping. Balii turned to Jumai, “Do you think he has the right idea?” Jumai shook his head.
“I couldn’t nap now…not before a battle. Perhaps afterwards I could, and I probably will. But not now,” Jumai answered.
“Well then, my friend, wake me before the battle starts, for I will join Strati.” At that Balii collapsed next to the sleeping beast and snuggled up against its furry belly. Jumai left Balii and his atypical behavior behind and strolled along the walls. He strode up the northern staircase and crossed back southward over the gate. Rising up in front of him were the cliffs of the
He circled back around and looked westward. Noise greeted him as he past the fortress walls. Soldiers scurried about, carrying out various chores and running random errands. The city itself seemed to brace for the approaching storm, both natural and political. As he came around the circular inner walls, he found lords Valimor, Talibor and Boltor gathered around the command post, a jutting piece of rock extending from the fortress over the inner walls, with a clear view of the battlefield. Stretched out like a neck, it seemed to break the wind like a knife’s edge. He continued on around until he wound back at the bridge back across to the cliffs. Instead, he chose to take the staircase down to the bottom of the inner walls, where a smaller gate stood. It protected the inner walls themselves and lent itself to an easy defense. Jumai strode past the guards stationed there and lost himself among the side streets of the city. He walked around pillars and porticos, courtyards and gardens, retaining walls and balconies. He descended staircases and explored alleyways.
At last he found himself walking down a simple walkway between houses and he saw the flash of shadow. His instincts drew his gut into a knot and his eyes sharpened. He stepped into the shadow of a wall and peeked around it. The figure, clothed in light gray leather and without armor, scrambled up and over the retaining wall opposite himself, and stayed in the shadows…obviously making for the fortress. Jumai saw the figure heading for a main street and duck into the shadow of a small balcony. He turned and sprinted back the way he had come, leaping over a garden to his right and scrambling up a rock wall to railing. He leapt onto the road and ran towards the balcony by which he had seen the figure wait.
Instead, he saw only flowers and rocks. He looked around and saw the shadow creep behind a house and scramble up the inner walls. Jumai flew up the road and climbed silently up the cliffs next to the house that met the walls above him. He saw the figure scaling the wall stealthily in the shadows. Jumai narrowed his eyes and moved quietly out of view and skillfully made his way to the bridge from the southern cliffs and the inner wall. He managed to climb up the intersection with considerable speed compared to the figure’s slow going up the vertical face.
When Jumai reached the top, he hopped onto the wall and made for the place where the figure would appear, keeping low and scurrying forward silently on all four legs. He waited, but no sign of the figure appeared.
Deciding he must act quickly, he peered over the edge of the wall—only to find no trace of the intruder. He scanned the wall, but discovered nothing. Then, he realized the crenellations of the wall overhung the face of the wall, and he carefully climbed over the edge and looked underneath the joint. Sure enough, the visitor clung to the underside of the overhang, inching its way towards the neck of the inner walls, a jutting protrusion of the wall in line with the courtyard below, on top of which sat the command post. Jumai knew the intruder could only be a Masok assassin, sent to kill one of the lords, if not all of them.
Perfect, he thought, It takes one to know one…Jumai climbed back onto the wall, surprising a patrolling soldier. He quieted him with a wave of his hand and sprinted down the wall. At last he rounded the wall to see the creature working his way around the neck. It stuck to the shadows as much as possible, but Jumai knew it would have to move to the northern side to attack. Any soldier would spot him easily climbing over the top in the broad sunlight. It would seek the fortress’s shadow which covered that side of the neck. There it would creep up and, with one fell move, peek over, shooting a poisonous dart into the victim’s neck. Jumai stopped and crouched behind the crenellation of the wall. He dared not alert the lords to the assassin, or he would alert the intruder to the failure of his concealment and force him to rash action.
He slipped silently past the opening to the command platform, and climbed over the edge. Gazing down at rocky cliffs and the roofs of houses below, he hoped his fingers would hold. Edging beneath the crenellation and into shadow, he saw the assassin climb around the western edge of the command post. Jumai froze and squinted his eyelids, as clung upside down to the rock face and tried not to draw any attention to himself. He watched intently as the assassin climbed up into the crack and made his move, crawling silently towards the intruder who had made the dangerous climb back onto the overhanging crenellations. Jumai moved expertly and quickly closing on the assassin. He stopped in the joint of the neck and the inner walls, which was his last point to see the assassin and its progress. It had climbed onto the outer crenellation, hanging dangerously by toes and fingers over a certain death plummet. Jumai snuck towards the intruder, more intent on silence than on speed. He heard lord Talibor talking.
“I think we ought to reserve the troops for a rearguard,” he stated. “We cannot afford to jeopardize our troops. If they overwhelm us, we should not stand and fight, but pick as many off as we can while we retreat. We do not want to be trapped in the keep.” Boltor then spoke.
“I agree, my lord, but we must try to stop them here, as Balii said,” countered Boltor. Jumai crawled ever-closer to the dangling tail, but listened intently.
“I do not believe in these sacred weapons and their so-called ‘power’ that they might wield. But, I can still see the city being overrun at the wall or the gate being breached by conventional methods. And we do not have the numbers to drive off such a force,” Talibor retorted. Jumai stretched a hand out to find a suitable hold on the crenellation and pulled his face up next to the assassin’s foot. He slid his knife out from its sheath while he watched the free hand of the assassin drop to his blowgun. He waited while the hand fingered the blowgun and raised it to its lips. The assassin lunged upward and found lord Talibor with its dark eyes. At the same moment Jumai stretched up and buried the knife in the assassin’s back. The creature jolted and the stroke of the knife puffed the dart lazily from the blowgun, and it dropped harmlessly to the floor. Jumai let the assassin fall, allowing the knife to slip from his hand, with which he quickly found a handhold. Talibor heard the commotion and rushed to the edge to see the assassin plummet to ground. He ordered soldiers to retrieve the body, and hurried down behind them.
Jumai withdrew from the crack and climbed down the joint of the neck and the inner walls, arriving much sooner than the soldiers and pulled his knife from the dead assassin’s back. He wiped it off on his leather bracer, and scurried around the neck’s base, hopping down from a retaining wall onto a side street. He stood and strolled away from the rising commotion behind him. The afternoon sun dropped lower in the western sky, and a fresh breeze reminded him of the thickening clouds and the biting cold they brought. His fingers were numb, and, when he glanced at them, he noticed they were bleeding. He licked them, trying to revive their warmth and made his way back around to the northern edge of the city to the Courtyard of Ara-Min and Balii. He looked back into the graying sky. Snow would fall tonight. There was little doubt in his mind about that, but he still questioned about the ideals of Talibor. Would he truly turn and flee if the walls were breached? The fate of so many hung on the assumptions he made. He decided he would talk to Balii about it in the hours before nightfall.
~¤~
“And then we could burn the whole encampment to cinders!” Emain added gleefully. Falcor’s smile disappeared and he massaged his left cheek with the palm of his hand. “It’s freezing! I could use a good fire…couldn’t you?” Falcor shook his head.
“If we even make it within the walls, we’ll have enough problems remaining unnoticed as it is. You don’t think burning the city will alert them to our presence?” he added sarcastically. “No, once we go, it’s in and out, as quickly as possible.”
Emain pursed his lips together and nodded. “But couldn’t we at least light their food supply or something on our way out?” he asked, as a child might for another sweet snuck from the cupboard by an older brother.
Falcor closed his eyelids and shook his head again. “Do you truly love death so dearly?” Emain’s shoulders went rigid, defying the incitement that he would die, but shivers gently shook him in the downpour. Falcor ignored him and crept back down into the gully. “Come help me,” he commanded and began smothering himself with mud created by the drenching rain. The sandy soil of the alluvial earth made for a poor disguise, but he managed to apply a fairly thick base layer of concealing earth to both himself and Emain.
After this they scurried around the encampment to the forested hills on the western side, where the final remnants of light faded to black. They added a fresh layer of mud to themselves, combined with patches of prairie grass. It stuck this time, due to the relative shelter of the trees from the rain and the clever use of some pine sap. With their disguises complete, they waited for any noticeable break in the rainfall. Falcor found himself reciting the plan to Emain relentlessly, taking care he remembered every point.
When the rain broke and a heavy fog settled across the valley, the two ran at first towards the enemy camp, heading towards an incomplete section they had spied in the new walls. But before they could make out any figures patrolling the walls, they dropped into a low crouch and approached the target slowly. For the last twenty yards, they dropped to their stomachs and crawled towards the break in the walls. Several guards patrolled the section, two inside and a single outside. Falcor analyzed the patrol pattern of the near guard and dispensed of him silently.
“Can you use a bow?” he whispered to Emain.
“Yeah…why? We don’t have one.”
Falcor tossed him the sentinel’s bow and quiver. “I’ll take one; you must kill the other,” he said. Emain nodded resolutely and stuck out his lower lip. With a sudden rush and quite before the prairie boy had readied the bow, Falcor rushed to the incomplete wall, hurdled onto it and impaled the sentry through the back, covering his mouth with his hand. As the creature fell, Falcor snapped its neck to be sure of his secrecy. When he turned and found the other guard’s bow drawn and aimed at him, Falcor dove from the wall as the arrow sailed wide of its mark. Scrambling to his feet and withdrawing his dagger, he flung it at the sentry. The agile creature ducked the missile and readied another arrow. Where was Emain? Falcor wondered to himself as he dove for cover behind a pile of rocks. The arrow glanced off the block next to him and flipped away into the fog.
When a squeal pierced the darkness, Falcor rose to find the guard with Emain’s short sword protruding from its chest armor. Emain pulled it free as the guard fell and finished him off. Falcor shook his head. “Where were you?” he asked incredulously as Emain dropped to the ground.
“Well, you went so fast; I wasn’t ready…”
“He was standing up there like a blind Sanyx for the better part of two minutes!” Falcor declared.
“Just ‘cause I can use a bow, doesn’t mean I’m a crack shot! And it was only thirty or forty…” Emain began to retort.
“You missed?” Falcor exclaimed, open mouthed, his left eyebrow raised.
“Well…yeah.”
Falcor shook his head in bewilderment. “I could have died! And all you can do is leisurely take a pot shot at him? Come on!” Emain held up his hands.
“Okay, so I’m not crazy as you with this military stuff…”
“Don’t you understand? Our lives are at stake here! We mess up—we’re dead. Done. Gone. Next time, you can go first; I’ll watch your back,” Falcor whispered ferociously.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea…” Emain began, but Falcor interrupted him.
“And why not? Because it’s your life on the line?”
“No, because I can’t hold off any one of them in single combat. I saw their capabilities,” Emain replied.
“Then consider this your training. Let’s go.”
“Where?”
“To find the weapons…where else?”
“Well, where are the weapons?”
“Probably in the middle of the camp—the armory maybe; that’s where I’d stash them anyway.”
“Are you mad?”
“Perhaps. Come on!”
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