Chapter 27: Light in the dark
The king, encased in armor that he had not worn since a
young prince, mounted his horse with the aid of his servants, looking – if not exactly
like the figures in the tapestry in his mighty all, then nearly so, at least in
his own mind.
“Too long have a sat in the darkness of my castle halls,” he
thought, feeling the tingle of excitement he had not felt in many years, the
anticipation of a battle still to be waged many, many leagues to the east. “I
go to share glory with my son.”
Around him, throughout the court yard his captains sat on
their steeds, too, streamers and flags of each house flapping in their brisk
wind.
Winter was coming, the feel of it creeping over the
landscape as it always did, the first serious frost already evident in mountains
north, slowing making its way down from the peaks and into the valleys.
Farmers worked hard to get the last of their harvest done, a
battle of a different kind, the king thought, and done without flags or banners
or glory.
These men and their wives would later celebrate their
victories in a pub over ale, singing the old songs, recounting the old stories,
grateful that they had managed to survive another year, and hoped they would survive
through the heaviest the cold until the spring.
At times, the king envied them, their simple lives, their basic
choice, digging the earth or tending their herds, knowing what they had
accomplished when their labors ended.
Not so with kings and princes and others of the higher
realm, whose labors seemed more glorious and yet went without the same satisfaction,
often ending on a bloody battlefield with no glory nor crops to celebrate, no pubs,
no old songs or stories, just the retched cry of carrion birds waiting to feed.
The women of the court, dressed in elaborate gowns better
suited for a ball than a battle, stood along the battlements above, waving
kerchiefs at their captains and minor lords, smiling, yet their gazes filled
with the dread they might not see their husbands, lovers, brothers again alive.
“Quite right,” the king thought. “Many of us, or even all,
may not return.”
Then, as his thoughts turned to Ajax, the king wondered,
perhaps some of the greatest had already fallen.
And as if out of that thought, a crow flew across the sky
above the king, leaving the echoes of its eerie cry behind.
*************
Tarakan rolled the bones of his ancestors in the clay cup,
the rattling like a music different yet not so much as the war drums outside leather
hovel, bones – the bits and pieces of those who had come before him – rolled so
often for so many years they had become rounded, and thin, and yet still sang
their own quiet song to him before he cast them out onto the red sand of the
hovel floor.
He wore a cloak of beaver, and the feathered headpiece of
the sacred crow, his sun-worn face painted with pale white across on cheek and
the deep blue across the other, while beneath his lower lip, a slash of red,
each the symbol of the powerful gods, sky, sea, fire. He did not wear a color
for the earth or air itself, since the wind blew through him already carrying
his spirit, and he sat firmly on ground that would keep him safe.
Then, once again after many other attempts, he read the
bones, and they – filled with the wisdom of his ancestors – told again the tale
Tarakan did not wish to see.
Although the warriors and chiefs did the great dance of
victory outside, singing songs as they circled the great fire in thanks for the
outcome of their combat, the bones said this would not last, dark clouds would
move in over the world, engulfing all before it, native or not, warrior or not,
changing things so that the grain on the plains with which the horses fed would
not grow.
Anguish would wail in the villages for the doomed and for themselves
as hunger pangs would grow worse and the mighty people – even the high tribes
in the distant south – might cease.
The bones did not say this would definitely come to pass,
but suggested it would likely do so, although out of these clouds of doom a bright
light showed, a rider on a pale horse carrying a mighty sword, from which his
enemies would flee.
None of the casts of bones said who this rider was, if he
was good or bad, if he came to save or doom them, and yet, Tarakan knew once
this ride came – if he ever did – all would change, and what was once, would no
longer be.
Tarakan picked up the bones. He would not cast them again,
nor would he inform the tribal leaders of his vision.
“They them bask in their glory,” he thought. “They will not
see such glory again soon.”
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