Epilogue: The Three Kings
When a month later the magnificent Lyonese vessel Dynah, so named in honor of the young King’s long deceased mother, sailed into the largest of all Nekryan ports, Ffay, Iskald’s heart was filled with joy. He walked down to the shore accompanied by a dozen of his closest friends and advisors, and followed by a hundred of the Lyonese Wolves.
The grim Northern warriors surrounded their King as soon as they reached the ground, forming an impenetrable wall between him and the masses of Nekryans, all of whom emerged from their homes to witness the arrival of a Lyonese ship, the sort of vessel they had never thus far seen sailing into Ffay with other intentions than to raid and to plunder. It was a spectacle that no living soul wished to miss.
Glancing around the shore, Iskald found it difficult to believe that only a year ago he was here, in this very same place, but alone and unwanted in the world, drifting aimlessly through it and unable to find a place for himself, without a single place he could call home and where he could rest his head. How much his life had changed since then, he thought looking at the solemn faces of the men surrounding him.
“We’ll be in Arrosah in three days,” he told Aezubah.
The very sound of these words made his heart skip a beat and sent a pleasant shiver down to the small of his back.
Three days!
After two years of absence, after two long years of longing and hoping, the three days suddenly seemed too long to him. He wanted to spread his wings and fly, to soar through the sky, just so that he could be in Arrosah that much faster, just to be able to see the beautiful Princess that night, to be able to talk to her and to touch her again, to be near her once again.
Aezubah only shrugged his shoulders, however, and looked with distrust at the thousands of Nekryans swarming around them. He did not trust them at all, having spent much of his life fighting against them.
He had fought them first as a young and foolish hired soldier in the far-away land of Argaron, a dark Kingdom buried deep in the Black Steppes; he then roamed the Nekryan roads as the leader of a group of thugs and robbers; finally, he fought alongside the Lyonese against this fair-haired Southern nation, raiding them at every possible chance.
He had learned not to trust them following long years of warring and feuding. Moreover, King Diovinius, was his sworn enemy ever since on a fateful day long ago Aezubah had launched a spear at a Nekryan soldier. The gods decided against it, the weapon went astray and inadvertently pierced the Queen’s breast.
Mad with grief and hatred, Diovinius had banished Aezubah from his land and hunted him for years. There was much history between the two men and there was little trust between them.
Nekryans could not be trusted altogether, Aezubah concluded bitterly. And his fears were justified today, considering the very particular and intense period of time they chose to visit the Kingdom. People who disliked Iskald, those who always envied his rapid ascension up the ranks of the Nekryan army years ago.
These people, aided by others who had their hatred for Northerners inbred and passed on along with their mothers’ milk, spread many false and right out ludicrous rumors concerning the traveling Lyonese party. Consequently, the large masses of common, illiterate and uneducated Nekryans grew more and more hostile towards them as the time passed.
When the news that Iskald of Lyons was sailing towards Ffay was originally made known to the masses, for the first few days there was great panic in the villages, towns and cities situated near the Azmattic Ocean. Iskald’s enemies so as to rouse the crowds and blind them with fear and hatred twisted the reports. They spoke of the blood-thirsty ruler of the vicious and half-civilized Wolves soaring through the sky on his black stallion, a demon raised from hell, leading with him a hundred thousand ferocious and demonic warriors on ships faster than wind, with winged monsters and fiends not of this world circling above their heads as they sailed; that this hellish army was heading straight towards Nekrya and its aim was to destroy the Kingdom, murder and enslave the people, and leave nothing but piles of burning rubble behind them.
And although the truth eventually proved to be quite different, people were frightened nevertheless and with fear there inevitably came hatred.
As consequence of such misleading rumors the small Lyonese party was met with a grim and dangerously quiet welcome in Ffay. Subsequently, as they made their way further down South and as they moved deeper and deeper into the steppes of the Kingdom, they met not one friendly face and they were not greeted by one welcoming word.
Everywhere they turned they were met with hostility and animosity that the Nekryans did not even attempt to hide. Whenever the small party entered a town or a village, all the people stopped what they were doing and watched in grim silence as they rode through. Many times the Wolves were forced to surround their young King and his advisors, and then to forcefully make way through hostile mobs.
“Is this how you imagined your return to this Kingdom?” Aezubah spat with contempt on the second day of their journey after they had just pushed through a hostile crowd of people and had just broken free from the mob that followed them all the way through the small town.
Iskald only sighed in response, thinking that no, this was not at all what he had in mind. But he spent little time dwelling on the problem. His thoughts were with Laela. Often he would close his eyes and he would immediately see her smiling face before him. In such moments he wished Arrosah to be closer, that their journey would end now, tonight; but there was still one more day of riding before them.
Copyright © 2008 by Slawomir Rapala
