“He took some grain from the stables, some meat and turnips from the smoke-shed, then disappeared out behind, into the trees.” The Innkeeper waved his only hand towards the back of the Inn, cradling his bandage-wrapped stump close to his chest. He spoke with his voice trembling and without looking up. Then he started, once more, to rub the mark on the bar with a towel.
There was an age on the Innkeeper now, a look the mercenaries had seen before. It was the look an enemy had after meeting Ravan and surviving to tell of it.
The five took to the back of the Inn. Looking up at the small dormer window, two roof ledges up; they remembered the small footsteps which marked the snow the night they'd taken after the boy.
Several of these five men had been part of the chase that fateful eve and had seen what the boy had been capable of, even at that tender age. Tonight, they saw the prints of the stallion disappearing into the trees at exactly the same spot where the boy disappeared years ago.
This was what they told Duval. That Ravan had gone back to the cliffs...
* * *
The stallion walked slower, calmer, as though it sensed the same finality as did its riders. On through the dense, shadowy forest of pine, along the creek, deeper and deeper into the woods they went. It was long about noon, but the sun barely penetrated the density of the boughs overhead.
The woodland floor was familiar to the man who sat the horse, and he chose his path easily from memory. Now, however, the child’s footsteps were long ago erased, replaced by the heavy and sure steps of the war-horse.
It was peculiar to ride in this place, to recall when he’d walked here before. It seemed so long ago, so hard to think of the boy as himself. He remembered how he used to groom the horses that came to the Inn. He’d thought about how one fine day he might be so privileged as to ride a horse of his very own into these woods; how wonderful he’d thought that might be.
He reached down to pat the stallion on the neck. It had been loyal to him and true to all he asked of it. He’d recently pressed the horse very hard and it performed magnificently, without protest. One dream had come true—he owned a very fine horse to ride in this very familiar forest. “There’s a good fellow—we are almost done,” he murmured to the animal. Its ears flitted back and forth in response to its master’s voice.
Ravan closed his eyes at intervals, remembering that fateful night. How his lungs had hurt, how his body ached, the burn of the cold in the stream, and—of when he fell.
They passed a very old snare, one set by much smaller hands. It had sprung a long time ago; the one that lamed the soldier. He paused, thinking briefly about the man, how Duval had simply tossed him aside as disposable.
Everything finally seemed so clear.
Ravan was on the right path, but this time he did nothing to hide his trail. The woods spoke to him of that cold and dark night, when as a boy he'd given them the run of their lives. The breeze blew softly and chilly as it invited his memories. The tree boughs waved gently to him as though to say, ‘Here we are, just as before. We remember you.’
He looked back on it strangely, as though he'd not been that boy. He thought, in a sad way, how unfortunate it was for that child to fight so hard, to lose so much.
Where had God been? Why did that boy have to sacrifice?
Just as quickly he answered himself. God had not been with his hand here. Divinity had simply watched. It was the fate of humanity. Nicolette was right, fate had been unkind to toss a child about so, but fate did not care.
How long would it be before Duval and his men found them, he wondered. This time, he would give them chase again. It would not be a run of their lives, it would be a run to their deaths. He was strangely at peace with this and sighed deeply, comforted, breathing in the familiarity of the woods to the depths of his soul. It whispered back to him, sincere and melancholy, full of poignant memory.
Nicolette leaned her head against his back and squeezed her arms more tightly around him. He turned and saw her looking up at him with that eternally curious and baffling mystery that was Nicolette. She questioned nothing, accepted nothing, and was so sure of her space in the present. He was immensely gratified to have her with him. “You never ask me where we are going,” he offered.
She held his gaze, kindly but firmly. “I know where we are going,” she spoke softly, resolutely, and reached to rest her pale hand, so frail, upon his arm.
He nodded, strangely comforted by her certainty. “You never asked me what happened at the Inn,” he pressed.
“I know what happened at the Inn.”
He thought about this for a moment, believing her, but not sure why. “How can you know what happened at the Inn?” he asked softly, curious, quite sure that she really did know.
“Because, when you came from it, something was gone from you—something you have been meaning to cast off.” She offered no more, seemed content with her explanation, as though he should also be.
“I killed him, you know.”
“I know—but why is it significant that you tell this to me now?” There was little hesitation from her. “You have killed many, have you not?” She asked this as though she knew the answer.
“I have, but this one was...” he hesitated, struggling to finish the thought.
“Paramount?” she finished for him.
“Yes—yes it was,” he gestured with his hand out, as though to someone out there in the wildness of the woods, “to a boy.”
She sat quietly, satisfied that he had processed the murder reasonably. “And the boy?” she asked softly.
Ravan thought for a very long time. After a long and comfortable while, he answered, “The boy was ill, but is better these days. I think he will be well soon.”
“Then, you have done a good thing.” She leaned her head against his back again.
He thought about this for another spell before replying, “Nicolette?”
“Yes?”
He breathed in the crisp, earthen and mossy forest air and sighed deeply. “Thank you.”
Her silence was all the confirmation he needed. She accepted him, knew his heart, the light and the dark of it, and passed no judgment upon him.
It was late in the evening when they reached the cliffs. Ravan slid from the horse and helped Nicolette down. He loosed the girth, so that the horse might rest a bit and glanced up, only to see her standing at the edge of a very steep precipice, looking down.
She seemed to float out over nothing, and it startled him. He thought for an instance she might fall. Dropping the reins, he hurried to where she stood. She seemed to step back onto solid ground and continued to stare. Her expression was—sad.
It wasn’t until he was standing by her that he realized where she was looking. It was a very long ways down, almost vertical, very sharp and treacherous. There were jagged scrub trees and sharp rock along a drop of almost a hundred paces. He took a sharp breath in. To his dismay, it was the very spot where he'd fallen so long ago. Ravan hadn’t believed that he might have recognized the spot. He thought to have certainly forgotten it, but this was not the case.
So long ago, when he stepped from this ledge, he'd been beaten and broken at the end of a long and terrible night. As a boy he believed that he would step to his death, and now he found it hard to believe that he had not. Standing on the cliff’s edge, gazing down with her, he knew without a doubt this was the spot. He was unable to take his eyes from the vast and perilous emptiness which fell away in front of him. “How did you know?”
She continued to stare off and down into the terrible face of what had happened here. Just when he thought she hadn’t heard him, she looked up at him, dark eyes burning into him and reached a pale hand up to touch his cheek.
He took her hand in his and held it tightly. “How did you know?”
“It speaks of you—it endures the memory of your fall,” she said solemnly, as though she suddenly recognized that time was short and Ravan would face difficult decisions very soon. “It is a tragic spo
t—this is a good place for what is to come,” she murmured while looking back down at the nothingness beyond the abyss.
Ravan swallowed again, thickly, as he gazed back down the cliff edge and across the ravine. The wind whistled, and he agreed. “Yes, you are right. It is a good place for what is to come.”
They walked for a long time, leading the stallion down the ravine, switching back and forth across the terrain until they were finally at the bottom. The river was shallow and wide, but the footing was solid. They drank deeply, then splashed across the river and started slowly up the other side. It was late afternoon before they stopped.
Dusk was no longer young when Ravan started the fire and spitted the grouse he'd taken earlier on their ride.
Nicolette sat quietly, the ground hard and cold. She perched upon her cloak and pulled it up closely around her shoulders as she watched Ravan bent at his task.
Stoking the fire, he pushed the coals beneath the grouse and prodded the burning logs towards Nicolette to better warm her.
His expression was very far away and she tilted her head, studying the dark man whose expression was so intent and far away. His sword and bow lay nearby and, despite his preoccupation, it appeared that he carried a weight on his shoulders. She tilted her head curiously to the side, like a fragile bird, and said, “We wait for them here?”
Satisfied with the blaze of the fire, he came to sit next to her and put his arms around her. “Yes, we wait for them here.”
The sun had been down for a bit and they watched the purple and pink clouds of dusk give way to the velvet, black blanket of night. They had the cliffs to their back, steep and unyielding with a ledge very far above. They were safe—for the moment.
The only way to approach them was from the West, and this was an advantage to Ravan. He could see a long way down. Not only did he have the benefit of superior elevation, he had the good fortune of distance. An enemy would be visible from very far away and he had many arrows with which to reach them. In the morning, he would temper more in anticipation of the battle to come. His strategy was sound and all that was left was to wait.
The grouse hissed and browned to honey gold on the spit. Ravan sat close to Nicolette, enjoying the comfort of her beside him. She rested a hand on his knee and it felt warm through his trousers.
He'd thought of a moment like this before. There had been times when he’d wondered what it might be like to have someone sit next to him every day. Someone who knew him and accepted him, a partner to grow old with. He wondered what it might have been like if things had been different.
Briefly, his memories took him back to the time when the Fat Wife had cut his hair in the warmth of a kitchen, very long ago. Memories like these seemed seldom, and he collected them like the treasures that adorned the spaces of each child at the orphanage, precious and irreplaceable.
There was no need to state the obvious, that Ravan was terribly outmatched. He stood no chance against Duval and his men, or even Adorno’s army for that matter.
Nicolette didn’t waste her time with thoughts like these. Instead, she looked up into the eyes of her lover with a mystical curiosity and asked, “How old were you when you were last here?”
Looking at her, he was enraptured by her inquisitiveness, again overwhelmed with her effortless fascination with the world about her. Resting his hand gently on hers, he reached to pull her closer to him, to smell her hair, to feel her lean against his chest.
He studied the fire, as humans are compelled to do. “I was fourteen the last time I was here, but that was on foot, and it seems like such a long time ago.” He glanced towards the horse, tied and content to work its way through the dried grass thrown before it. “I did not have such a fine horse back then—did not have a horse at all, but I am no stranger to this land.”
“Hmm,” she murmured. “It must be reassuring, to have the familiarity of such a place.”
It occurred to him that Nicolette could stand within the devil’s pyre and if fancy struck her, she would be untroubled and ask of him what she would.
The grouse would wait. Ravan laid Nicolette down and they made love by the fire. It was at that moment that something new stirred within his heart. It was as simple and perfect as anything could be. It transcended the desperation of the here and now and cast him far away, into his past. He was, once again, a child, wild and free in the woods behind the orphanage. Only, this time, another child ran beside him—and he loved her.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
†
It was three weeks before Duval reached Ravan. The horse saw the army first. It was snaking through the forest on the other side of the ravine. Ravan had tied the stallion barely within view just for that reason; he knew the animal would sense an army even before it saw or heard it.
The stallion stepped nervously in place, anticipating the battle to come, but a well-trained warhorse would remain silent. Ravan moved the horse quickly, so that the army on the other side would not see them either.
For three weeks, Ravan made arrows, fashioned them true as he ever had, setting the feathers from the grouse and geese that they ate for suppers. They were perfect and numbered more than a hundred.
A clear blue sky shone brilliantly, and the air was light and crisp without moisture. Ravan was thankful for this. He nodded to himself, calm and resigned to this moment. It was a good day, a perfect day, and his arrows would fly true. This was something that he knew, familiar and comforting to him, a companion who would not desert him.
Today, Ravan would kill, and revenge would again be his.
He took the horse and Nicolette far back from the little clearing and the ledge, back farther into the brush trees where they would be safe from the blitz that was to come. As he adjusted his armor, settling it evenly upon his shoulders, he struggled with what to say to her. “Nicolette—the horse.”
“He will be mine. No other shall touch him,” she said.
Ravan nodded, now at a loss.
She approached and stood near to him. “Ravan,” she started.
He tried to recall when he’d heard her speak his name before.
Nicolette spoke. “There is no right or wrong today. Regardless of what happens, nothing removes what we have been to each other.” She stepped closer. “That is constant.” She spoke as though they had suffered an eternity together, and Ravan wondered if they had. It was the closest Ravan ever heard Nicolette describe trust, in her perception of an otherwise wildly fluctuating universe. She said it with so much immaculate calm, and his heart swelled at the honesty of her words.
“Nicolette...”
She shook her head, slightly, as though to stop him from shattering the mirror they looked into. “There are no words to be spoken now. You know what is—and what is not.” Her words were flawless, consummate, unspoiled by emotion.
The statement was devastatingly sincere and rang truer than anything anyone had ever said to him. He kissed her, did not need to tell her to stay safe and away from the fray. He did not need to say that he loved her, didn’t need to say anything at all.
He turned and walked back out to the small clearing, eased himself silently to the ledge, and waited. It was several hours before the army negotiated the switchbacks down to the canyon bottom far below, and another half hour before they pressed from the forest to the edges of the river.
As the mercenary army emerged from the forest, approached and entered the shallow current, Ravan drew his first arrow.
* * *
Duval had brought one hundred men with him, and forty of Adorno’s. He’d bargained with the little man, taking another twenty pounds of gold in agreement to hand Ravan over to him. Adorno would have his vengeance and exact it in as horrible fashion as he wished.
It annoyed Duval somewhat, that he would not give Ravan the final blow, but Ravan would suffer, and it would be a grave lesson for his men. That, and a coffer full of gold, was enough for Duval. He was always swayed most by coin—it was a lust for him.
&nb
sp; Twenty or so men scouted ahead of him, and he could hear the dogs’ excitement increase. They could also hear the mild roar of the river shallows ahead. He spoke to LanCoste as they approached the perimeter of the forest. “The dogs are restless, we must be closer.” He held an expression of sick satisfaction on his face.
The giant said nothing, but then again, he seldom did.
Moments later, it began.
* * *
Duval made a critical and strategic mistake. He'd heard his men talk about Ravan, about how he performed on the battlefield, but he neglected to really hear them. If he’d listened better, he would have known that Ravan was more than efficient, more than a profitable mercenary. Ravan was an artist, a master, and this was his consummate battle. It would be his magnum opus, his greatest symphony.
They fell as if ants stepped upon by a giant. Hardly an arrow missed as Ravan drew, launched, and drew again. He was methodical, calm and tireless as the bow bent repeatedly, not shuddering or wavering under the great strength of the arm which drew it.
From above and with flawless resolve, the arrows pierced armor easily, and Ravan’s skill allowed him to mostly miss the shields. When he could not, he took down the horses, the rider’s legs pinned to the animals as they fell screaming, into the current.
Hell rained down upon them. The water reddened downstream as the bodies roiled and died in the river. Still, the men pushed forward, struggling to gain a foothold along the base of the long climb that would lead them up the cliff—the only way to stop the slaughter pouring down from above. There was no other way, and Ravan mercilessly brought down even men who'd previously fought by his side.