They hide themselves in citadels and walled prisons, fearing the open and the savagely glorious moving flowing world. Stifled in the fug of their own stale breath, they stare at their walls and at each other, til their minds are mired in grandiosity, suspicion, paranoia. The poison festers in the standing water. The corruption of the civilized in their cloistered lives. Clinging to security. Clutching at the stonework.
How does the wind ever get in there?
Needless to say, it was with relief that I left their throng. As soon as we entered the walls – what town needs such walls? What are they expecting? Dragons? Ha! As soon as we entered I felt my spirit sink. Introductions, social niceties, feasting, ribaldry. My heart grew heavier with each passing cup. I left as early as I could – the others seemed to be enjoying themselves. The two brothers maybe a little too much. They bore the lick of civilization too though, and can hardly be blamed for softening once within the walls.
Shown to a room like a cell, with narrow windows onto a courtyard, views only of brick, rock and mortar. I ran my hands over my gear of war, letting the coolth of iron press against my forehead, the surety of Death against my brow, reassuring of the ever-changing movement that none can stave off for long. Those walls will not last. Gods! The atmosphere in there!
I doffed my armour and lay on my cot, meditating on the peculiar behaviour of foreigners; on the need to hold to the Truth…
The shouts awoke me. The same stuffy confinement, no breeze from the windows. Shouts from below again; footsteps, the clamour of bronze. Looking down into the courtyard, there was noise and men running. Armed men. Heavy footfalls passing my door.
Where were my friends? In my eagerness to leave the earlier feasting and dull conversation I had lost caution: I knew not where they were lodged tonight. The whole thing started to stink. I took no time in arming myself, readying for a rapid exit if required.
The passage outside was now clear. I edged down stairs to the courtyard, keeping close to the covered areas. Nothing in sight, but still the alarum sounding. To my memory the gates lay through the courtyard, but doubtless they were barred by now. Was the threat from without? Or within? Was this a trap?
Discretion, and a space to gather my wits was perhaps what the time accorded. These were foreigners, and God knows what they knew of honour.
Behind me, away from the courtyard, a passage led through to a small square, open to the stars. Intermittent clouds moved fast high above, but no wind reached down here. The sweat was building in my armour. To the roof! To the open air, and - one hoped – a better vantage point to inform a plan.
To the right appeared a residence. The hand of friendship is not always so readily extended toward one who, covered in the runes of Death, wakes a stranger in his own home in the night. Again, discretion.
I ran left, into some great and strange domed temple. Here were the runes of Truth upon the walls, but who-knows-what other blasphemy accompanied them. This world is strange! I was not here to sightsee – I spied the stair running round the entire dome. Heading up, my heart warmed to see a concealed door at their summit. Surely a way out!
As I pushed at the door, the clean air washed across my skin and, for the first time since we slipped under the shade of those accursed walls, I felt my face bare a grin. I glanced down at a noise – an old man was stumbling into the temple beneath me, hobbling on a stick, some bird screeching and flapping about him. An old fart of a caretaker with his pet for reassurance. Hah! I was out of there!
Out onto the roof. The breeze blew about me as I ran about the rooftops, past the great dome and over toward the overlook on the courtyard. I set down my spear and javelins, crouched, and waited. From here I could again hear orders shouted in some foreign tongue, see guards running below. How long before the Lunars got involved? Where were Orstanor and Aransar? Sage Kenstral? The two brothers? I needed some detail to inform a course of action.
The detail was not slow in arriving. Smashed from the back with a clatter of arrows, I felt something pierce my armour, and a wetness spread under the leather on my back. Assassin! Enraged, I wheeled about and brought my strong bronze shield up.
There was the bowman, silhouetted against the scudding clouds of the starlit night! With my left hand I spread the arc of the blinding lightwall before me: with my right I took up a javelin and spirit-sung my aim. The bowman gestured: my concealing lightwall disappeared! The distraction was enough: my javelin found its mark, and I heard his cry as he fell behind the dome. In my fervour, I failed in my attempts to shield myself with magics: I took up my iron spear and shield and charged.
As I rounded the dome, some thing tried to penetrate my spirit, sap my will – but I strong in the faith of Orlanth I shook it off. The bowman was there, struggling to his feet now: he had healed himself and took up spear and shield. I swore! It was the old man from the temple!
Yes, grizzled he looked, and past his full vigour, but heavy-set yet fast-moving all the same. As we set to with our spears it was clear that, though unarmoured, he had invoked protective magics about himself. Some spirit continued to harass me, but could not overcome my will. As we fought, the old man bellowed over and again for the watch to assist him.
Sensing that things could go ill for him, so keen was my spear and strong my arm, that again he called the occult to assist him. Some fiery wraith snaked forth from his hand to form a flaming devil, and its grasp flowed through my armour. I leapt back, badly burning. Now my enemy’s spear was finding its mark more tellingly than my own. Again the spirit assailed me, again I shrugged it off, and all the while this bird flapped about us, calling.
My mind cast back to my fight on the plains with the others. I remembered charging the vile Lunar Priest; how, even as we closed, with a mere wave he had brushed aside the life of my steed from beneath me – had called on foul powers beyond my strength to withstand in order to best me. We had stood long and exchanged blows, but he was beating me little by little, and I had only endured because my friends – finally – came in my time of need.
There was no doubt in my mind now: this was a battle priest. He was besting me. And no aid would come. For where were my friends now? I cursed my rashness at failing to trace their lodgings before retiring. Three enemies were too many – the priest was too powerful.
I turned and ran. The flame-beast followed. We flew over rooftops and garrets as I pelted for cover in the gables from the old priests sure-firing bow. Behind a raised wall I wheeled about on the salamander. My iron found its mark. There was an explosion of flame and the wild sparks blew out, carried into the breeze and fading in the night. Had it struck me again, it would have finished me. I could still hear the old priest bellowing. Curse his kind! Alakoring had the right idea about them!
There was no other way off the roof. No way but one.
I ran to the edge of the citadel, to the great high wall that stretched below me. I had no rope, but then no rope would reach. The ground was out of sight in the blackness beneath. My charred flesh stank; my laboured breathing echoed in my helm. The leather stuck to the congealing blood on my back.
Through the twin skull-eyed holes the stars around took on a sudden and searing beauty, intense in their orbits above me. The wind blowing up from the plain pushed a chill across my sweat-soaked armoured frame. There was a buzzing in the base of my brain. The spear felt light in my hand. I shouldered my shield, wedged the spear in its strapping.
I sat for what seemed an impossible age on the edge of the high wall. The priest’s shouts seemed remote; his bird’s screeching distant. The nighted plain was a sea of untroubled quietude. I thought again of the dream, of the Dragon, of Destiny.
I swung my scorched legs heavily over the side.
To climb in bronze-plate armour is not easy.
To climb in bronze-plate armour, at speed, in darkness, on a crumbling façade, with one’s flesh badly burned, a whisper away from death, on a windy night, with a hoplite’s shield and weapons strapped to one’s back, beleaguered by some mad priests screaming raptor – this is folly.
I did well. For the first four spear-lengths. And then the wall was away from me.
The breeze gathered in my ears. As I tipped backward into the night, the wind whistled past me. I looked upward at the glorious stars, as unblinking and stark as dragon’s eyes, and wondered at the spaces in between them. Orlanth’s voice shrieked in my ears, and I shouted back to Him in a grimace of death – my second smile that evening, as my sure promotion to Glory flew up to meet me.
To die in a foreign land.
And then the wind, whipping round my ears, gathered strength. I tensed my back and gritted my teeth. I forced my eyes to remain open.
And then the stars were moving sideways.
The high walls of the citadel were far away – not above me, but beneath. I was flying, on the shrieking wings of the night. Elation took me, and my tears flowed as I fell into a rapture. My spirit entwined with Orlanth’s Own presence. God’s Hand was beneath me, bearing me away, on and on. I lost all sense of time.
As dawn crept in, attempting to push the unwinking stars away, the winds died; the sylph dissipated.
I felt the solid earth beneath my feet. The citadel was long out of sight, its corrupt domes and towers swallowed by the hills. I looked at the empty slopes and vales surrounding. A light breeze blew. I held my hands aloft and offered silent prayer to the air about me.
I have been touched by God.
I am chosen.
The dream. The Dragon. Destiny.