In the High Pass
by Alcuin Fromm
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Table of Contents parts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 |
Uncertainty rules in the Empire. Strange tidings from beyond the Harrun Mountains fill the men of the Western realms with apprehension, and a renewed Imperial tolerance of the Magician’s Guild divides the Great Families. Nowhere is the seething anxiety more apparent than in House Ælliri.
Some of the wise and honorable Ælliri can see the gathering storm. Others are not so wise, and still others are not so honorable. Accompanied by his three sons, the Duke of Ælliri brings the Second Army to camp in the High Pass, occupying the strategic entry into the Duchy.
But there is another reason for the Duke’s campaign in the mountains: a dangerous gamble that has more to do with legend than with politics. He sets out from camp one day with the eldest of his three sons. The remaining two will have to deal with the consequences.
part 1
Doustian of Ælliri had never visited the Realms of the Hallowed Dead. Just shy of his twenty-ninth year, he had no intention of seeing them any time soon. But he thought those Realms might resemble the majestic vista sprawling before him as he looked out over the High Pass at the break of dawn.
Ruby-red light ascended in vertical rays from behind jagged mountain peaks, whose summits cast caressing shadows over the uneven slopes and crevasses of the valley. No trees grew and no birds sang, but the stark silence engendered peace and calm. Each inhalation of the cold air penetrated into him, integrating without dissolving his being with Creation around him, and above all, with its Creator. For a fleeting instant, he felt outside frenzied time and crude material. He felt good and right.
Then the sentry shouted.
A long moment of confusion followed. Doustian could not reconcile the intrusive sound with the otherwise undisturbed tranquility of his surroundings. The sentry shouted again, “Rider approaching!”
He blinked and, in an instant, reality seemed to become the contrary of his reverie. The sunlight turned blood-red, the shadows and the broken landscape hid potential dangers, and the silence belied stalking hunters. Above all, he suddenly felt alone.
Doustian shook his head to clear it. He carefully scanned the sloping hills, dales, and rivulets of the High Pass, a wide, winding valley that cut a path through the towering Harrun Mountains. Behind him, the Ælliri encampment began to stir in preparation for another day of interminable waiting. With the troops of Viscount Myronokor in motion to the east beyond the mountains, House Ælliri had established a warning presence in the High Pass, the most accessible point of entry into the lands of the Ælliri Duchy.
Movement caught Doustian’s attention. A small shape in the valley advanced slowly towards the camp. He would have to reprimand the sentry’s inaccuracy, he thought, for no rider approached, but merely a riderless horse. Doustian narrowed his eyes to focus his gaze, then he opened them wide. He recognized the chestnut mare that belonged to his older brother Cenn. But Cenn was nowhere to be seen. Doustian broke into a dead sprint. He bellowed in panic over his shoulder, “Cenn’s in trouble! Sound the alarm!”
A few seconds later, a bell began ringing and the camp burst into activity. Fit from years of physical training and well-rested from weeks of uneventful, sedentary camp life, Doustian flew down the valley and covered the distance to the horse in little time. He stopped short and trotted to the animal that stood watching him quizzically. Doustian patted its neck.
A quick examination of the horse revealed that something had pulled the saddle from the center of the horse’s back toward its right flank. Cenn must have fallen or been pulled off, dislocating the saddle, Doustian thought. He began tracking down the valley, following the animal’s trail, his heart anxious but still full of hope.
The horse had meandered its way among the banks of unmelted snow and craggy boulders, but Doustian could identify a clear path. After a short time, his hope of finding Cenn proved correct, but terror gripped him an instant later. He saw a figure lying on a mossy stretch of ground. Multiple arrows, some cracked, some still with black feathers, protruded from the prone body. Doustian swallowed hard and ran to the figure, collapsing by its side.
Cenn’s eyes were closed and his blood-spattered face was locked in an expression of agony. Doustian felt paralyzed, staring dumbly at his brother. Cenn lay on his right side, arrows sticking out from his back, chest, and legs. Any movement could force one or another arrow deeper into his body. The man still breathed, but only in raspy, shallow gurgles.
Doustian closed his eyes and said a quick prayer, then hazarded to rouse his dying brother. “Cenn, can you hear me?” he said in a quiet voice. “Cenn?”
Keeping his eyes closed, the tiniest of smiles crept onto the older brother’s lips. “Doustian...” he whispered, his voice barely audible. “You... still owe me... owe... book...” His voice trailed off.
Doustian blubbered a laugh as his eyes overflowed with tears. “Don’t speak anymore,” said Doustian. “Help is coming. Don’t worry. I’m here. Just be calm. Don’t speak.” The words, more for himself than his brother, came out in a panicky stream, his voice cracking and trembling.
Cenn shook his head slightly then forced his eyes open. “No...” began Cenn.
“Shh,” said Doustian. “Help is—”
“Listen,” said Cenn louder, pouring his last trace of strength into the effort to speak. “Father... he’s coming... he’s... before he left... he... he said...”
Cenn’s eyes glazed, and Doustian felt a wave of dizzying nausea wash over him.
“He said... hold the Pass... hold... hold...”
“Cenn—”
“Hold the Pass.”
Then he died. Doustian sensed Cenn’s soul depart from his body. From one instant to the next, he recognized the change. The dead man’s face softened and relaxed. The expression of pain melted away to be replaced by one of peace. Doustian wept.
After a short time, he heard pounding footsteps and the clatter of armor growing louder behind him. Without looking up, he knew who would be fastest to react to the raised alarm. Pavill of Ælliri, Doustian’s younger brother by three years, fell to his knees next to Cenn’s body.
“No, no, no...” Pavill repeated, each word growing stronger in despairing realization.
Doustian moved aside and sat at the feet of his dead brother, allowing Pavill to look at Cenn’s face. Pavill hunched over the body. He muttered his brother’s name once under his breath, then quickly rose and turned away. He staggered for a few paces then leaned heavily against a tall boulder, placing his palms and forehead flat against the stone for a few silent moments.
With a bestial cry, Pavill suddenly pushed off the boulder, unsheathed his ancestral Ælliri longsword, a gift from their father to each Ælliri son, and swung it with all his might, dashing it against the stone. The tip of the blade snapped and flew off. He swung a second time, a third time, a fourth time, each stroke accompanied by a hellish howl of unfettered rage. The final blow cracked the remainder of his sword just above the hilt.
Pavill spun around and hurled away the haft with its handguard of intricately intertwined griffon wings. It disappeared down a deep, narrow ravine, the sound of its clanking against the rock echoing through the valley, then fading to silence. Pavill turned back to the boulder and swore a blasphemous oath.
Rising to his feet, Doustian strode over to his brother and stared at the man’s back. Doustian knew Pavill’s temper all too well, but an unwarranted irreverence went too far, especially at such a time.
Doustian opened his mouth to upbraid Pavill, but softened his tone upon second thought. “You need not have uttered such a phrase, brother,” Doustian finally said in a quiet voice. “It is precisely to the Creator that our Cenn has now departed.”
“Spare me all of that!” shouted Pavill, whipping his head to one side but remaining fixed to the boulder. “He’s dead and that’s all. You can keep your pious fables. Cenn’s dead and gone. He’s dead! He’s...”
Pavill’s voice faltered and trailed off. He turned back towards the camp and began marching up the valley. Doustian sighed, his heart breaking not only for the deceased, but for the living as well.
Soldiers arrived shortly after Pavill’s departure. One of them helped Doustian carry Cenn’s heavy body back to the camp with sorrowful, silent reverence. The soldier’s sympathy touched him, but Doustian felt disappointed that it had not been Pavill to share the somber task with him instead.
News of the event spread through the camp quickly. When Doustian arrived at the palisade gate, a large group of soldiers and camp auxiliaries had already gathered, standing in wordless tribute. The senior captain had procured a funerary shroud and presented it to Doustian with a salute, spreading the black cloth onto the ground. Doustian and the soldier gently placed Cenn on the shroud, then Doustian, his eyes full of fresh tears, gazed one final time at his brother. He drew one side of the shroud, then the other, over Cenn’s placid face.
By the morning meal, everyone in the camp knew that the eldest son of Duke Rikkon of Ælliri was dead. Cenn’s title, the Margrave of Ælliri, and his military post, Commander of the Second Ducal Army, automatically passed to Doustian, even before the completion of the Three Day’s Vigil and Cenn’s burial at the familial estate, Vayria, in the heart of the Duchy of Ælliri.
Aware of his new rank, Doustian launched himself immediately into his responsibilities. After a short rest to compose himself, he made the rounds among his men, alternately consoling them and receiving their consolations gracefully. He met briefly with each of the four cohort captains, who commanded the nearly one thousand soldiers in the camp.
Finally and most painfully, he wrote a letter to their sister, Klyte-Ara, informing her of the painful news and requesting her to begin preparations for burial and a public declaration. He sent their best rider on the camp’s fastest mount to bring the letter to Vayria, two days’ hard ride away.
Pavill remained in his tent and received no one.
Doustian ordered a pavilion erected to house Cenn’s body, which the camp surgeon had sealed in a coffin with aromatic herbs. Doustian covered the coffin with the funerary shroud himself, then took the first watch over the body. Neither eating nor drinking for the rest of the day, he finally succumbed to fatigue shortly after nightfall. He was slumped forward on a folding stool when a soldier kindly woke him and relieved him of the watch. Doustian thanked the man and staggered to his own tent where he collapsed in exhaustion.
Two more days of mourning followed. Doustian spent most of the time watching and praying in Cenn’s tent, leaving only for necessary duties and short rests. All the soldiers took turns before the body of their fallen Margrave and Commander, and the Three Day’s Vigil proceeded day and night with an unbroken, prayerful presence to accompany Cenn’s soul on its journey to the Realms of the Hallowed Dead.
On the morning of the fourth day, a distant horn sounded from deep within the western valley of the High Pass. It was an Ælliri horn. Riders were approaching from Vayria.
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Copyright © 2022 by Alcuin Fromm
