IMPORTANT: Just to warn you, this chapter and the ones following it might become difficult for some readers to stomach (in some scenarios). If you do not like graphic violence, disturbing images or mature themes please stop reading this story right now! However, if you do like those kinds of things in a story, I hope that you enjoy this one. I don't like those things too much either, so the story doesn't overload on them, this is just a warning.
-Heartly
Chapter 4: Visitors
Like the water nymphs sliding
Through golden orbs and slipstreams,
Our girls should be careful
Else they stumble or fall.
M and Faye floated belly up in the cool waters of their secret childhood stream. It was located outside of the village, by the edge of the forest. The girls were the only ones who knew of the stream's existence. M gazed up at the clouds floating across the bright blue sky while Faye scrubbed her hair clean.
"Do you hear that?" Faye asked, peering around their little hideout.
"Huh?" M replied, lifting her head out of the water.
"That!" Faye pounded her fist on a near-by rock. "That rhythm…! Can't you hear it? What is it?"
M lowered her ear to the ground; staying completely still once she had done so. Then, M sprang to her feet, splashed out of the water and onto the ledge of boulders by the stream that protected them from any prying eyes.
"M what are you doing?!"
M shushed her sister before fixing her gaze on the storm of dust that was gathering on the horizon.
Faye pulled on her sister's arm. "M! You're going to be seen from the village…! M come on, you're naked for goodness sake!"
"No I won't… come take a look at this," M urged, pulling Faye onto the boulder beside her. "What do think that is?" M pointed to the dust rising in the distance.
The girls squinted their eyes, trying to focus in on the approaching mass of swirling dirt that moved towards them in the morning's brilliant light. Slowly, the mass started to become clearer and the girls could distinguish little pinpricks of gleaming light against the dust.
"Oh my god… its soldiers."
"What?" M whispered, shocked.
"Look," Faye pointed to the gleaming pinpricks of light as they approached, steadily becoming clearer. "Horses… there are men on horses… maybe forty of them in total…"
M was astounded. Soldiers…? What business did they have in Kelt?
"What do think that is behind them?" Faye asked.
"Its people…"
"No, it can't be… it can't be."
"Yes it is!" M almost shouted. "It is! There are people following them. If– if there are forty soldiers and what looks like at least a hundred people… my god! There must be almost two hundred of them in total!"
"Two hundred?! There can't be! What are they all doing coming this way…? The village can't house all of them if they ask to pass through here!"
"Well we just can't turn them away!" M cried.
Faye was silent for a moment before she spoke again. "We've got to tell the village M," she stated. "They might not even have seen them yet…"
Without a second thought Faye and M jumped into their clothes; their wet hair slapping against their backs as the raced across the open fields and into the village. The girls arrived within minutes, stepping into chaos. People ran helter skelter trying to catch loose goats or geese, cleaning or packing in case they should be forced to flee from attack. All around the wall that protected the village - made decades ago from the thickest cedars in the forest – sentries and scouts were posted waiting for a signal. The wave of a black flag meant war, run, a green flag meant peace, stay.
Faye and M were grabbed from behind.
"Where have you been?" Padma shouted over the ruckus, holding tightly to her girls' arms. "I've been looking for you both everywhere… there's a host coming—"
"—we know mama!" Faye shouted back. "We've seen them!"
Fifteen minutes later Padma, Faye and M stood outside the walls of Kelt٭ with the council of three elders, dressed in their finest. The elders all wore similar outfits: navy blue cloaks, the colour of midnight, over brown leather armor. In Kelt, every elder had once been a warrior charged with protecting their people at any cost. They had to pay a debt to the gods if they wished to progress further. The debt was paid with enemy blood. Beside them stood Padma in the place of honour; as the leading witch doctor in the region she and her daughters had high standings in matters of the law and war. Padma was dressed in robes of dark purple and green, the colours of witch doctors and royal blood. Faye was also dressed in purple, but softer and more in violet, her dress whipped out behind her in the breeze. M thought that Faye looked like the most beautiful figure head; able could adorn only the finest of ships as she faced the host. As the youngest member of the greeting party present M was allowed to wear her dark hair down and was dressed, from head to toe, in white and black. She would be the youth and the innocence of the village, but also the powerful magic of war speaking for those who could not. Next to the elders, M was the most valuable member present; she was her mother's apprentice, another future warrior or possible elder. M was the future.
The group of travelers drew near; most of the people on foot stayed back, at the edge of the rows of wheat. Some soldiers on horseback slowly dismounted and walked towards them. To the soldiers, a superstitious lot, the Keltish group looked like pixies: the tips of their garments fluttered in the breeze yet they did not appear to move, or even breathe. The weary travelers felt a stab of fear; had they stumbled upon a fairy city? The group of six Kelts – for that was what M and the others were – appeared as though they had stepped straight out of the dark forest behind them.
The leaders of the large horde, six in total, walked steadily forward towards them. They cannot all be soldiers, thought M, looking from one man to the next. Four of the leaders did wear the distinctive silver mail and crest of Irefort; M knew that they were the soldiers. One of the four was clearly a general; he carried a feathered helmet under his arm – a good sign M noted – and his cloak was pinned with a rusted broach at his right shoulder: the sign of the highest man in a hierarchy. M was quite sure he came from nobility; he had a certain swagger attainable only through a strong relationship to power and wealth. To the general's right were three more men, but strangely different. Whereas the soldiers gaunt and sweaty faces could be seen beneath their helmets, the faces of these three men were hidden in the shadows of their hoods and long black cloaks.
"Greetings," spoke the general.
They were close enough now for M to see that the armor of the soldiers was crusted in dirt; especially at the hinges and in the chain mail making it difficult for them to move without creating a trailing cloud of dust behind them. M imagined that beneath his heavy costume the general was drenched in sweat, but she could smell it on all of them anyway: traveler's grime. They stank.
"Greetings," Almar repeated.
"I am Ralick of Cur*, these men—" he gestured to the soldiers at his left and the hooded men at his right "—are my friends… we are traveling a great distance and ask that you might spare a little food and shelter for us and my people."
"Where are you coming from?" asked Eidolon. She was the only living female elder left in Kelt. Padma adored her.
"We bring evacuees from Dolør and Maläise from the southeast of Irefort. Wildfires have destroyed their homes… we must move them through the mountain paths to Montcéleste."
"That is a long way travel with such a large host," said Almar.
"Yes, it is," Ralick replied.
"Look at the children," M whispered to her sister, not taking her eyes off them; the feeble figures of the youngest ones worried her.
"Oh god…" Faye muttered as her focus settled on the starving mass behind the fields.
"Could you not have led your people to Irefort?" Malheur demanded. He disgusted Padma. He was the youngest of the council elders, but still, his temperament forced everyone to tiptoe around him.
"The city is full of evacuees," Ralick replied. "Every man I know fears the wild fires at this time of year when the crops and the land is dry—th—there's no room for a mouse in Irefort now… Montcéleste has always been an ally… they will help us…"
"…if you make it," M spoke up. She was allowed, but the strangers stared at her as if she had just screamed bloody murder. "Your people are starving, especially the ch—"
"—how many are you?" Padma cut in.
"A little over two hundred milady," Ralick bowed his head slightly in her direction; a sign of respect.
"We might only just be able to house your sick and elderly within our walls," Almar said. "Our doctors and healers can attend to them immediately."
"Thank you," Ralick whispered reverently.
"It is no trouble," Almar assured him, "but I am afraid that the best we may offer the rest of you is our open fields… it is not much, but here you shall be safe and warm."
"Get your sick into the village now, and let the rest of your people know they may settle where they wish," Padma said, and, with a nod to his left, Ralick sent out the four soldiers to deliver the news.
As soon as they departed, the group of cloaked men lowered their hoods and the Kelts were able to finally able to see their faces. All of them were fantastically tall. The three men were all taller than M and Faye by at least ten inches, taller than Ralick and his men by seven inches, and armed to the teeth. They also all had varying shades and lengths of brown hair and differed slightly in build: one was fat, the other thin, and the last was in the middle, but when M looked closer it was not fat, or lack of thereof, that she was seeing; it was solid muscle. They were hired men. Danger! A voice in M's head screamed. Danger! DANGER! These men owed their loyalty to no one: they were hired for it, paid in gold, trained to kill whatever or whomever they were told. Danger. Yet M, as only a young girl of seventeen, did not also fail to notice that beneath the grime of the road and minor scrapes, they were all exquisitely handsome: high cheekbones, fine, thin lips, and dark, deep-set eyes.
One of the strangers stared particularly at M with such an inquisitive gaze that she could not help but blush slightly. He was the middle one, shortest of the three, but at least six inches taller than M. She liked his hair; it did not look nearly as dirty as the others, and hung just above his shoulders in choppy waves, as though he had taken a hunting knife to it recently. He had the bluest eyes that M had ever seen: dark, sparkling blue… as blue as the ocean.
* Cur means coward/mongrel dog/mean person. It's a dated insult, but still pretty nasty.
٭ Kelt I realize now that I might not have been too specific on this term. Sorry. Kelt is the small province in which their village is situated. Being Keltish or Kelts is really just like being Canadian or the Canadian.